Sermon for Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-19

During the Wednesday nights in Lent this year, we are going to explore “forgiveness.”  We will explore God’s forgiveness.  We will explore the forgiveness that Christ promises to his people and to the world.  And, we will explore our participation in forgiveness, our joining in this holy task by forgiving others.

So, it seems wise to begin with the first instance of forgiveness in the Bible to get our grounding.  We find that all the way at the beginning of the Bible, in the Garden of Eden.  Now, you might question why I chose this story of Adam and Eve’s failure in the garden as the starting point for forgiveness.  After-all, the story is filled with lots and lots of punishments.  

After the man and the woman eat of the fruit that they were told that they should not, God confronts Adam and Eve.  In a windy rage, like a parent storming into the playroom, into the scene of the crime, and swiftly delivering time-outs to the children, the snake receives a cursed life of existing in the dust; the woman from then on will have strife in her marital relationships and pain when trying to bring about and raise children; and the man from then on will struggle in making the earth produce any food.  Hand work and weeds will be his life.  In fact, almost a whole third of the story is about the consequences of not trusting in the Lord.  It is about what happens when you blatantly choose death instead of choosing life.

Yet, hidden underneath the curses and consequences, hidden underneath the stormy rage of the Lord (that “evening breeze” that blows in the garden in our English Bibles is not actually a nice “evening breeze,” in reality, it is a storm), under that raging storm we find forgiveness.  How so?

What was the punishment that God promised if the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was eaten?  Here are God’s exact words: “For in the day that you eat of it you shall die.”  On that very same day that the fruit was eaten, the man and the woman were to die.

Now, you tell me, what did not happen on that very same day?  You guessed it, the man and the woman did not die.  Sure, they will be removed from the garden, removed from the tree of life of which they could continually eat, but God does not strike them dead that very day.  Like any parent who has compassion on their wayward and faulty children, God does not kill his children that very day, like God promised.

I guess that you could say that God is the first over promising and under-delivering parent.  How many times as a parent has this happened?  “If you do that one more time, I am going to throw away all of your toys!”  Guess what?  Most of the toys are still there the next day.  Sure, two or three will be gone…there will be a consequence…but the parent has shown the child something that we like to call “mercy.”  And, God shows the man and the woman mercy, not letting them get away with no consequences, but God forgives them out of a parental sort of love.

And, that is where it all starts.  All the way at the beginning of creation’s story we see that God’s story, our story, is actually a story about forgiveness.  It is a story about working though the consequences and moving forward in life with a second chance…and a third chance…and a two hundred and seventy fourth chance.  It is all about forgiveness.

When Jesus is asked how many times we need to forgive, Jesus answers, “Seventy times seven times.”  Now, that does not mean we keep track up to 490 times.  Rather, it means that our lives are forever built on mercy and forgiveness; the same forgiveness that Jesus gives as a gift to the world on the cross.  But, we will talk about that later.  Just know tonight that the foundation of all creation was built on forgiveness.  It is upon forgiveness that we stand, and walk, and live, and breathe.  We breathe forgiveness, just like God.