Week of March 12, 2001
Wesley S.
"Then the Lord God placed man in the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and guard it. He told him, 'You may eat the fruit of any tree in the garden, except the tree that gives knowledge of what is good what is bad. You must not eat the fruit of that tree; if you do, you will die the same day.'"
Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-9
"Now the snake was the most cunning animal that the LORD God had made. The snake asked the woman, 'Did God really tell you not to eat fruit from any tree in the garden?' 'We may eat the fruit of any tree in the garden,' the woman answered, 'except the tree in the middle of it. God told us not to eat the fruit of that tree or even touch it; if we do we will die.' The snake replied, 'That's not true; you will not die. God said that because he knows that when you eat it, you will be like God and know what is good and what is bad.' The woman saw how beautiful the tree was and how good its fruit would be to eat, and she thought how wonderful it would be to become wise. So she took some of the fruit and ate it. Then she gave some to her husband, and he also ate it. As soon as they had eaten it, they were given understanding and realized that they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and covered themselves. That evening they heard the LORD God walking in the garden, and they hid from him among the trees. But the LORD God called out to the man, 'Where are you?' "
If I mention the name "Frankenstein," what do you think of? A monster? A story by Mary Wolstonecraft? "Boris Karloff?" Those would be true, but Frankenstein is about something else, something more than that. It is a story about a doctor who discovers that some modes of knowledge come at too high a cost. In creating a monster, Baron Frankenstein tries to become godlike in mastering all knowledge of life and death. In so doing, he obscures the boundaries between Creator and creation.
And so to the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden. When God places Adam and Eve in the garden he gives them a vocation to take care of the land, permission to live and do freely as they wish, and a prohibition against eating of one particular tree. Human freedom and the human vocation to manage and control is set in the context of the prohibition of God that preserves the distinction between creator and creation. When Adam and Eve sin, God's prohibition is violated, God's permission is perverted, and human vocation is neglected. By eating of the tree of knowledge, Adam and Eve try to attain total mastery of all knowledge and they assert complete autonomy from the rule of their Lord.
What is the answer to the human desire for autonomy from God that is everywhere around us? As the world claims to find more and more knowledge and put it to more and more uses, should we retreat from knowledge? Is the lesson of the Tree that ignorance is better than too much knowledge? No. We find the answer to the tree in the garden by turning to another tree, the tree on Calvary. What we learn from the cross is the lesson of trust.
The more the world seems to spin out of control, the more humanity asserts independence from God, and tries to master all of live, we need to trust in the Christ who died on the cross for us.
Gracious God, as we walk through our Lenten journey of forty days, may look to the cross to learn again our need for you, our need for repentance, and the need to trust in you and your salvation for all things. Amen.
Contributed by Westly S.
Published Monday March 12, 2001
Week 16 of Liturgical Year C