Midweek
Advent Week 1 (December 6, 2017)
“Walking in
the Garden” (Genesis 3:1-24)
Scripture
Readings: Genesis 3:1-24; Psalm 139:1-12
Hymn: “In
the Shattered Bliss of Eden” (LSB 572)
Christmas is about the Incarnation
of the Second Person of the Holy Trinity.
The Son of God took on human flesh.
He is God. And he is a very real
man. Conceived in the womb of the Virgin
Mary. Born in a stable with a cattle
trough for a cradle. Forced to flee to
Egypt because of the powerful intentions of a murderous king. Brought back to live and grow up in the
region of Galilee, working side by side with his carpenter foster father. Became a travelling rabbi around the age of
30, gathering a band of followers and offending the religious establishment …
so much so that they plotted to put him to death. And they succeeded. Jesus was crucified and died on a Roman
cross. Laid in a borrowed tomb. Rose again.
Ascended to the position of all power and authority in all
creation. Returning at his glorious Second
Advent.
But many years before God entered
into this world as a baby – to live and breathe the same air we breathe, to get
himself dirty with the same grime that accumulates on our bodies, to allow
himself to be bloodied so that his shed blood might cover our sins – many years
before all this, God manifested his presence in his own creation. We call these appearances “theophanies” …
taken from two Greek words: qeoz meaning “God” and fanhrow meaning
“to make visible” or “manifest.” A
burning bush. A pillar of cloud by
day. A pillar of cloud by night.
But it wasn’t only spectacular
appearances such as these. It seems as
though God also appeared several times as a man even before the Son of God
actually became a man. And it seems to
have happened already at the very beginning.
In the Garden, after Adam and Eve had fallen into sin, God appears. What did he look like? The Bible doesn’t tell us. The artwork on the cover of tonight’s service
folder has him looking like an old, bearded man … depicting his eternal nature,
God the Father, the Ancient of Days.
While I was searching for artwork on the internet, I ran across one that
has Adam and Eve in the foreground, with God approaching in the background, and
he looked suspiciously like Jesus has been depicted traditionally. That would agree with many theologians over
the centuries who have thought that these pre-incarnate appearances of God are
not appearances of the Father, but rather of the Son, the Second Person of the
Holy Trinity.
Whichever person of the Trinity this is, what this
depicts is God’s relational presence. He
appears as a man in order to be able to relate to his creation and communicate
with his creatures. Of course, were he to
appear in all his unveiled glory, sinful humanity would not be able to bear
it. They would be consumed. And certainly, this was the first time here
that God had to confront sinful human beings.
They had just disobeyed their Creator and were about to face the
consequences. And so he appears and
veils himself.
He veils himself, yet still makes
the point that he, the Creator of all things, is active and present. He made everything, but has not left it to
run on its own. He enters into his
creation. “They heard the sound of the
Lord God walking in the garden.” He
makes noise, rustling past the brush and branches. He walks and talks. A preview of the day when God’s only begotten
Son entered into this world, filling the space in his mother’s womb, then
making his first noise on the day of his birth.
Okay, I know the song says, “the little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes,”
but I’m not so sure that’s how it went down.
Maybe.
God entered into this world and searched out his
lost and fallen creatures, his sinful human beings who attempt to hide from his
presence. At first, he plays dumb. “Where are you?” he asks, as if he didn’t
know. He’s God, after all. He knows all things. He calls out to Adam and Eve to draw out a
confession from them. But it’s not much
of a confession, is it? It’s the first
round of the blame game. Adam blames Eve
and God: “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me the fruit of the
tree, and I ate.” Eve blames the
serpent: “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
The only one who doesn’t get to speak in all this is the devil who had
taken the form of a serpent. An
interesting choice. Quite the contrast
to the form the Lord had taken, his relational presence in the form of, we are
assuming, a man.
And that leads me to speak of God’s
redemptive promise. The old evil foe is
cursed. There offspring of the woman
will bruise the serpent’s head, a fatal blow delivered to the author of sin and
death … even though he will nip at his heel.
That offspring eventually was born through Eve all the way down to
Mary. Jesus suffered the bruising of his
heel when he was crucified, died, and was buried. But a heel bruising is something you can
recover from, which Jesus did on the third day, giving the fatal blow to all
the powers of hell when he rose to life again.
Still, there are consequences to sin. Life gets messy from here on out. There will be pain. Dysfunctional families. You and I try to hide from God’s
presence. We bear guilt and shame. We may try to blame everyone else for our
problems. And there will be death. Something God never intended to be a part of
creation in the first place.
Paradise was lost to all humanity. Apart from God’s intervention, we would all
have to live east of Eden forever. But
God does not abandon his creation. He
gave them a promise a redemption, a promise to cling to and trust in and be
forgiven. And like his concrete
theophany, he provides a concrete sign of his forgiveness. He makes garments of skin for Adam and Eve and
clothes them. It’s as if he was making
the point that in order for this guilt and shame of yours to be covered over,
life has to be taken. Blood must be
shed. This all points to God’s own
sacrifice, the Father eventually offering his Son, the Son offering himself. His shed blood covers over all your guilt and
shame. You are forgiven.
The tree of life was lost to Adam and Eve. In fear and guilt and shame, they hide among
the trees. Jesus died on the cross for
you. His cross becomes a tree of life
for all who trust in him. You have no
more need to hide from the presence of God.
In confidence and peace and assurance, you can rest in the shade of this
tree. And you can joyfully eat of the
fruit of this tree, knowing that in the bread and wine, God is truly and graciously
present with you in Christ’s body and blood.
And wherever God is with his grace and mercy, that is paradise for us …
a preview of the day when Paradise is restored to us and all the painful
consequences of sin will finally be done away with. We sing in the Christmas hymn, “O Jesus
Christ, Thy manger is my paradise at which my soul reclineth” … although we
really don’t get to go to the manger except in our hearts and minds. Yet we do get to go to the altar. That is our paradise where our souls can
recline in the presence of Jesus until he takes us to be with him in the new
creation at his glorious return.
Amen.
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