One of the best times of my day is in the evening. Often I’m part of the bedtime “process” -- pj’s, teeth brushed, reading a chapter, singing a hymn, saying a blessing. Sometimes not, if I have a meeting or am traveling, but after bedtime, at about 8pm, Chloe our energetic dog starts getting super excited because she knows after the kids are in bed (and if both of us are home), it’s time for an evening walk. She starts jumping up and down, if we’re sitting on the couch she nuzzles her way under my leg/arm, nudging me up, kind of getting crazy with excitement. And why not? Dogs love going for walks! We usually walk about a mile, mile and a half. For a dog, in the evening breeze, we see rabbits, skunks, squirrels, coyotes, opossum, there’s this funny cat that comes out to say ‘hi’...it’s heaven...all those smells, the exercise... Like I said, taking that walk with Chloe is one of the best times of my day; but for her, it’s definitely the best part of her day. She must dream about our walk, while she naps all day, while she lays around in the dark house. She’ll come running wildly in from the farthest corner of the back yard at the faintest sound of a jingling leash. Yeah, she lives for taking that evening walk, it seems.
But truth be told: I don’t take her for that walk every day. Sometimes I’m out too late. Sometimes I’m traveling. Sometimes there are guests that we’re entertaining, or conversations that Heather and I are having. Sometimes there’s a game or a program on that I absolutely can’t miss. Sometimes -- and this of course makes no sense to a dog and is totally unfair -- but maybe at some level I’m rationalizing that I’m punishing her for an accident she had or some food that she stole off the counter... And sometimes, I’m just plain lazy.
I guess you could say that at times, I just get distracted -- too distracted to take Chloe for a walk.
And isn’t taking a dog for a walk the whole point, “the primary mission”? I mean, there’s a reason she lives for it. That’s the whole point of having a dog, it’s what the labrador rescue place wanted to know. “Will you walk this dog?” It’s like your vows.” It’s the best way to love a dog: take it for a walk. That’s all the Dog Whisperer does, isn’t it? Behavioral issues? Just take her for a walk, right? It’s the primary mission.
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We have a rich text today! So many angles, so many things we can do with this. This text has been used to justify the mistreatment and subjugation of women. I’m not going to preach a sermon specifically about misogyny and Genesis (but toward that: I will however plug some new study materials that our ELCA church body has just released…)
Today I want to reflect on getting distracted from the primary mission and God’s response to that. The primary mission is to take care of the garden. In this second creation story, God needs someone to till the soil and keep it. Our translation says to “till it and keep it” but the Hebrew words are even better translated “serve and protect”. As one of my profs notes in his book, The Yahwist’s Landscape, Genesis 2 has the human’s role not as ruler but as groundskeeper or tenant farmer. The primary mission is to take care of the garden, to tend the earth. That’s hard work, it takes patience and consistency, it takes partners. (Adam couldn’t do it alone. He needed a partner, a helper -- which doesn’t mean a sous-chef, an under-study -- the same Hebrew word for helper here is used for God in Psalms: “God is our refuge and our strength, a very present helper.” The helper is not a lesser being.)
The mission is to care for the garden together.
But, omg, how we get distracted…just like me, making excuses not to walk Chloe, which I know is the whole point. But I’ve got all kinds of reasons why I don’t do it.
One commentator points out how we are Adam and Eve: we’re supposed to be tilling the soil, serving the earth and protecting it, but there’s this really enticing fruit that catches our eye, and we get sucked in. We strike up conversations with fascinating animals and waste the day away. How have you been distracted lately from the original mission of caring for God’s garden?
Maybe you “stay out too late”. Maybe you’re too busy. Maybe you’re too “caught up with a certain program or a game”. Maybe you even justify (in your mind) punishing the garden or just plain ignoring it -- which makes no sense, when we really think about it. Maybe we’ve convinced ourselves that there are other more important things. And maybe we’re just plain lazy.
But God has called us -- not just that: God has actually created us -- for the purpose of serve. God. Needs. Our. Help.
And here’s our Gospel image for the week, here’s the good news, amid all this September 11th bad/sad/painful/shameful news: God comes to walk with us.
There’s a whole lot of mischievousness and deceit and laziness and ultimately sadness in this passage for today. But here’s the gem: God comes looking for us at the time of the evening ruach (the same thing, by the way, that moved over the waters and rushed in at Pentecost). God comes looking for us.
“Adam, Eve, [other names], where are you?” And we’re ashamed. We hide. We cover up and crouch down. We duck our heads and close our eyes.
But God walks among us, and calls us out of our shame and hiding. Reinhold Niebuhr once wrote that “the greatest human sin is pride”...
But some female scholars countered his strong argument some years later, and posited that for many, the great sin is the sin of hiding -- the sin of tucking away in the face of domestic violence, the sin of hating ourselves so much that we don’t even defend our own skin, the sin of buying into the narrative that “I am inferior because of gender identity or skin color or sexual orientation or immigration status…” The sin of hiding.
Sisters and brothers in Christ, God is calling us out for a walk in the cool evening breeze. What an image of peace and grace. God desires our partnership, our accompaniment, our helping one another, our serving and protecting the garden that is God’s creation: the primary mission. (That’s what so tragic about both planes flying into buildings and forests being chopped down: God’s garden is being desecrated.)
But here’s the thing (and I don’t care if it’s cliche): the past is prologue. Do you think Chloe’s will be holding a grudge that I didn’t walk last night at 8pm tonight? So it is with God, who this morning is ready to offer new life, peace, forgiveness, hope, and reissue this invitation to service. “Weeping spends the night, but joy comes in the morning” (Ps. 30:5). AMEN? Reconciliation is real, friends. Today’s a new day. Our attempts at hiding are pretty futile, our fig leaves. But God sews us new clothes. God covers us with new garments -- garments of grace, clothes of the cross, outfits of outreach, fabrics of forgiveness, strands of salvation. We are wrapped in God’s love and joy.
We live for this walk. Christ lives for taking this walk with us. The hiding is finished; the healing is now [altar]. Come and receive. Alleluia! Thanks be to God! AMEN.
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