Genesis 2:7-17
It is difficult for us to imagine what it would have been like to live in the Garden of Eden. This garden is so very far removed from anything we have ever experienced: not only according to the distance in time that is involved; but also according to the totally different nature and character of what the garden of Eden was, in comparison to any place we have ever been.
Eden was a pristine, beautiful place. It was inhabited by pristine, immortal people, who were without sin, and who had a perfect, unbroken fellowship with God.
In comparison, the world in which we live is nothing like that, and we are nothing like that. The corruption of sin and the stench of death surround us everywhere. The corruption of sin and the stench of death reside in each of us, as well.
We are by nature sinful and unclean, and we are all people of unclean lips. That’s the curse that we have called down upon ourselves by our many transgressions.
We have inherited sin from our parents, through a line of ancestry going all the way back to Eden, and to the time when our first parents got themselves expelled from that beautiful place. And we so often also bring harm upon ourselves, by the foolish and destructive things that we ourselves do, and by the bad decisions that we ourselves make.
We also spread this sin around to each other, as we hurt each other, and treat each other unkindly, unjustly, and unfairly. The world in which we live is filled with example after example of man’s inhumanity to man.
Right now, the nightly news is telling us about the death and destruction that are taking place every day in Kyiv, Ukraine, and in Gaza, in the middle east. In the past, we have been told of similar tragedies in other places.
This sort of thing is always going on somewhere in the world, and is usually going on in more than one place. And that’s not even to mention the continuing problem we have with crime and violence in the streets, and in the homes, of our own towns and cities.
Indeed, as the Book of Genesis tells us elsewhere, the whole earth was cursed because of human sin. The earth now brings forth for us thorns and thistles, and not only the results of our labor that we would wish for.
Sometimes we work hard for something that we never get. Disappointments abound. Poverty often stalks us, and occasionally overcomes us.
Each of us is, in more than one way, living in a different place in this world. What’s going on in your life is not exactly the same as what’s going on in the lives of those who are sitting near you right now. You each have your own unique struggles and challenges.
But one thing I can say: none of us is living in Eden. Wherever we are living, we are all living in a place where we experience our own pain, our own regret, and our own sadness. We are not in paradise.
But is it possible to go home to Eden, at least in some respect? Is it possible for us, even while we are living in a fallen world, to experience at least a taste of what it was like for our first parents, in the world in which they lived before they rebelled against God and his word?
Yes, in Christ, and through the power of his gospel, this is possible!
Today’s reading from the Book of Genesis tells us that the Lord God put the man whom he had formed in a wonderful garden. It describes four rivers that flowed through and from Eden, keeping it lush and beautiful.
And we are still able to find things that are beautiful in this world. Beauty is not all we find, but we can find it, even in the midst of ugliness and suffering.
And within the fellowship of the church – as God’s people gather to receive his gifts in Word and sacrament, and to offer their praises and petitions – they also look for opportunities to express the joy of their faith, and to beautify God’s house and God’s worship, with the use of art and music, symbol and ceremony.
The Garden of Eden was a paradise. It was like heaven on earth. The seventeenth-century Lutheran minister and devotional writer Christian Scriver once said:
“I would that one could make the whole church, and especially the altar, look like a little Heaven.”
The Christian faith has inspired the greatest works of art, and the greatest musical compositions, in human history. And the church retains and preserves the beauty of this wonderful culture, and passes it on to future generations.
Of course, God has not attached his promises of grace and forgiveness to works of art as such, or to musical compositions as such. But art and music have always been used to underscore, and draw attention to, the means of grace that God has given us for our salvation.
Good art and good music have also always served as teaching tools, to testify to the seriousness and reverence that properly should characterize God’s people at prayer. So, we can get a small taste of the beauty of the Garden of Eden, also when we see and experience beautiful things in church: such as colorful flowers on the altar, or colorful vestments on the minister.
When they need to, God’s people can, of course, worship in very austere settings. When they have no other choice, Christians can worship in a dungeon or in a catacomb – and in history they have often done so.
And sometimes a dedicated Christian sanctuary is decorated and appointed only very sparingly, especially in places where there are limitations on what the people in those places can afford.
But we do what we can, and we make use of what we have, as we find even small ways to adorn our worship and our worship spaces.
Today’s reading from the Book of Genesis also tells us that the Lord God gave Adam the task of tending and keeping the garden. So, there was work to be done. Adam was not to spend his days loafing and doing nothing, but was to find joy in labor that was fruitful and beneficial.
As Christians, even with the struggles and frustrations that we often experience in this fallen world, we too are able to find satisfaction in the work that God gives us to do, according to our respective earthly vocations.
Through various external means, God puts us in positions of responsibility and service, through which we can enrich the lives of others, and provide for them, in God’s name. He puts us into godly relationships, in which he calls us to love and serve others.
And especially within the fellowship of the church, God puts us into relationships, and entrusts important duties to us, that serve the higher purpose of extending his eternal kingdom into the lives of others.
I as a pastor do, of course, have a very public position in the church. But no one else who faithfully fulfills a task that has been entrusted to him is unimportant, even if this goes largely unnoticed by other people.
God notices, and God blesses you in your service and in your generosity: for his church, and for the extension of his means of grace to your community and to the world.
In the verses that immediately follow today’s appointed text from Genesis, we are told that God said:
“It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him.”
And that’s exactly what he then did, as he brought forth Eve to be Adam’s companion, friend, and beloved wife.
So, in the Garden of Eden, not only did humanity have unhindered fellowship with God, but the first human beings had a loving and rewarding fellowship with each other. And more specifically, the first man and the first woman were united in holy matrimony.
This established a God-pleasing pattern for their descendants, which is why the Book of Genesis also tells us that, following the example of Adam and Eve and of their commitment to each other,
“A man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”
For Adam there was literally no other woman for him to think about or be drawn to, besides his wife Eve. And for Eve there was literally no other man for her to think about or be drawn to, besides her husband.
Even though that’s not the way it is now – with all the billions of people who now live on this globe – once you get married, your vow of fidelity is supposed to have the same effect on you and on your affections, in terms of undistracted love and devotion for your spouse, as Adam and Eve’s marriage had on them.
Certainly we can have friends and acquaintances who are of the opposite sex. But at that deeper, more intimate level, if you are a married man, then for you there is no other woman. You are like Adam, and your wife is like Eve.
And at that deeper, more intimate level, if you are a married woman, then for you there is no other man. You are like Eve, and your husband is like Adam.
To the extent that you are blessed to have this in your marriage – if you are married – then in this you are able to have a small taste of Eden.
It is a wonderful thing when a married couple is able to be a part of a Christian congregation, and when children can be born and then raised in the faith. But even if you are single, or if you experience loneliness, disappointment, and unhappiness in your family life, you – as God’s son or daughter – are a member of his family: with all the blessings that come with that.
In your baptism, you have been supernaturally born into this family, by the regenerating work of God’s Word and Spirit. You now cry out, “Abba, Father,” to the God who has forgiven all your sins, and who is perfectly reconciled with you, through the death and resurrection of his only-begotten Son.
And you, as a member of Christ’s church, participate in the loving and forgiving relationship that Jesus has with his church. St. Paul describes this relationship, which he compares to the devotion of a husband toward his wife, in his Epistle to the Ephesians, where he says that Christ
“loved the church and gave himself for her, that he might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that he might present her to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish.”
You have been baptized into this, as well. In this way also, you are able to have a small taste of Eden.
And finally, in today’s lesson from Genesis, we are told that God included, among the trees that were present and growing in Eden, something that he described as the tree of life. The fruit of this extraordinary tree was, for Adam and Eve, an extraordinary kind of food: which preserved their immortality, and which would have kept them alive forever.
One of the chastisements that God put upon Adam and Eve after their sin, is that their access to this tree – and indeed, their access to the entire Garden of Eden – was now cut off. But the Book of Revelation tells us that the tree of life and its fruit will be accessible to God’s redeemed and resurrected humanity once again, in the new Jerusalem, and in the paradise of heaven.
The language is certainly symbolic at some level, but we are told in Revelation that the tree of life will never stop bearing fruit, and will in fact bear twelve kinds of fruit in an endless rotation. And we are told that the leaves of the tree will be for the healing of the nations.
And even now, God sustains our faith, and our hope for eternity, through a special, powerful food that he makes available to us – even now. This sacred food is the true body and true blood of Jesus Christ.
This food is offered to us, under the form of bread and wine, in a supernatural way, but in a very real way. This food nurtures and sustains us with God’s pardon and peace.
We do indeed need God’s pardon, because of our many continuing failures to live up to our callings and vows. We do indeed need God’s peace, because of the troubled consciences we have due to those failures.
God meets these needs for pardon and peace with the comforts of his gospel in general, and with the comforts of his Son’s sacramental meal in particular. This Supper is also a medicine of immortality, which heals us of all the wounds that sin and death have inflicted upon us.
So, whether you have brought pain into your life through your own sins, or whether others have brought pain into your life through their sins against you, or whether you have experienced pain simply due to the damage that the fallen world inflicts on everyone who lives in it, that pain is healed here by Christ, the great physician.
The resurrected body of Jesus that you receive is, as it were, a down payment on your own future resurrection. Those who live and believe in him, will never die. This basic Christian truth is reinforced profoundly when we, in repentance and faith, partake of the blessed Sacrament that Jesus has made available to us, and through which he comes to us personally.
Indeed, Jesus in his person is, for us, the living, divine tree of life. He is the vine and we are the branches.
We live as we abide in him, clinging in faith to his Word, knowing that he is clinging to us with his love and grace. And that – all of that – is a very real taste of Eden.
It is a very real taste of what life was like for our first parents when sin was not yet a part of their life, because in God’s forgiveness, our sin is now washed away and covered over. As far as God is concerned, and in how he sees us, we are now like Adam and Eve before the fall.
There is no sin to disrupt our relationship with God, because all our sin was nailed to the cross of Christ, was buried in the tomb of Christ, and in Christ has been removed from us as far as the east is from the west.
The world in which we live is so different from the world in which Adam and Eve originally lived. When we look around us, and see the many ways in which our faith is threatened and attacked by the powers of sin, death, and the devil, then we know that we are not in Eden.
And yet, as God brings beauty into our lives, and especially as God’s means of grace and our response of faith are ornamented by beautiful things, then in that sense we are back in Eden once again.
As God calls us to our work in this world, and in his church, so that in his name and under his direction we can love and serve our neighbor through useful vocations, then in that sense we are back in Eden once again.
As God unites us in godly relationships in our families, and in loving relationships with all the other members of his family; and especially as his gift of baptism incorporates us into the heavenly bride whom Jesus loves perfectly, then in that sense we are back in Eden once again.
And as God feeds us with the life-giving gift of his Son’s body and blood, and brings healing and restoration to us through this wonderful sacrament, then in that sense we are back in Eden once again. Amen.