First Sunday of Lent – evening
Sunday 18th February 2018
Lent 1 – evening
Gen 2. 15-17; 3.1-7
Romans 5. 12-19
Revd Preb Maureen Hobbs
Original sin eh? Disobeying God’s very clear instruction… Adam and Eve, you had one job! “Be happy and avoid the tree in the middle of the garden”
I ask you, what was difficult about that!? And look where you’ve landed us every since! As someone once said – there is no original sin…. they’ve all been tried before!
Now many people feel a bit annoyed with God for entrusting the future of the world and particularly humanity to two such twits…. incapable of following a simple instruction and prone to being persuaded by the first wheedling politician (sorry, I mean serpent!) that comes along. Many feel they would like to have an argument with God about this. And about landing us with pain, suffering and death as a result. But that is to place the blame in entirely the wrong place.
God wanted a paradise for us – a walled garden as those who have watched Monty Don recently will know. A paradise where men and women could live contented and happy. But the only way that was going to work was for human beings to live in the way that God advised then to. Yet we are a stubborn lot, and as soon as someone gives us a piece of advice, or allows us to occupy a position of power over those more vulnerable than ourselves, we persist in doing the wrong thing and then howl if we get hurt too in the process. As soon as human beings evolved the power of choice, we have been making the wrong choices. And as we have seen this week, even people who’s whole lives are devoted to bringing aid to the vulnerable, can make wrong choices and abuse the power that they have. So God had to change to Plan B. – Not God’s fault, but ours!
And we now know – as ancient peoples did and could not – that evolution is the means by which God chooses to create more and more complex creatures. But pain and death become essential parts in the process. Individual animals or plants develop new features or abilities that help them better to adapt to a changing environment and to thrive. To pass them on, they must give birth to a new generation, and soon there would be no more room for everyone, so the older ones must die. Then if they are to adapt to a new environment, there must be pain as well to warn them to behave in a different way. You would never learn that fire burns unless it hurt to hold your hand in a flame. We may howl about pain and death, but they are an essential part of the process. We all have to die sometime, and we nearly all long for more time here on earth, but God has also given us the hope of life after death; and we learn about our dependence on God from our suffering.
Some oriental religions teach that we continue to return to earth to experience life in different forms and to learn different lessons until we reach a condition of such spiritual enlightenment that we pass into a state of bliss called Nirvana. Christianity however, teaches that we have only one life in which to learn all the painful lessons leading to reliance on God alone, but that it is OK, because our faith in Jesus Christ is the one thing that will set us free.
That is not to say – despite what some preachers will tell you, that Jesus had to pay a fine on our behalf to God or the devil, but rather that by revealing how much our sin hurts God, and setting us an example of unselfish love, he delivers us from that original sin – by offering us the chance to make a fresh start in life and embrace it fully while we still can. Amen.