January 5th, 2025 - "Epiphany: Scripture Surprises" - Rev. Dr. Michelle Morris

Matt Nelson: Welcome to the sermon podcast from First United Methodist

Church in downtown Bentonville.

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Rev. Dr. Michelle Morris: Those are beautiful words.

In words we need to be reminded of and we're going to explore a little

bit more in depth how we are created to be partners with God as we are in

this series called Epiphany Scripture Surprises, which those of us that are

preaching are picking passages that surprise us in one way or many ways.

Today, it's going to be one that surprised me in many ways.

We plan to have a couple of guest preachers over the next couple of weeks.

Next week it'll be Bill Fernandez, and the following week it's going

to be our own Andy Barrington, which we're very excited about.

So, as we approach this series, like I said, we're going to talk about a

scripture that isn't surprising today.

I'm only going to read you a portion of the Adam and Eve.

Uh, creation story, but we're going to be dealing with the whole of the story.

I just figured you probably didn't want to listen to two

whole chapters from the Bible, but hopefully this will jog your memory.

So here now, the word of the Lord.

The Lord God took the human and settled him in the Garden of Eden

to farm it and to take care of it.

The Lord God commanded the human, Eat your fill from all of the garden's

trees, but don't eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, because on

the day you eat from it, you will die.

Then the Lord God said, It's not good that the human is alone.

I will make him a helper that is perfect for him.

So the Lord God formed from the fertile land all the wild animals and all the

birds in the sky and brought them to the human to see what he would name them.

The human gave each living being its name.

The human named all the livestock, all the birds in the sky, and all the

wild animals, but a helper perfect for him was nowhere to be found.

So the Lord God put the human into a deep and heavy sleep, and took one of

his ribs and closed up the flesh over it.

With the rib taken from the human, the Lord God fashioned a woman and

brought her to the human being.

The human said, This one finally is bone of my bones and flesh from my flesh.

She will be called a woman because from a man she was taken.

This is the reason that a man leaves his father and mother and embraces

his wife and they become one flesh.

The two of them were naked and the man and his wife, but they weren't embarrassed.

This is the Word of God for the people of God.

Thanks be to God.

Let us pray.

Lord open our hearts, our minds, and our eyes that we might see and know

the word you have for us this day.

In your holy name we pray.

Amen.

So today is the twelfth day of Christmas.

It's twelve drummers drumming.

Tomorrow is the new season.

And that is the season of Epiphany.

Epiphany always follows on January 6th.

There's the twelve days of Christmas that start December 25th and go to January 5th.

And then Epiphany is on January 6th.

And Epiphany is the season that we mark the arrival of the wise ones

to come and kneel before Jesus Christ and to proclaim him as king.

And what's significant about that celebration is that

that's the first arrival of the Gentiles before the Lord Christ.

And so what that signals is that with the coming of the wise ones, the Gentiles

are now welcomed into God's story.

Now that was always the case.

But that moment is a revelation of that reality for us.

That things will be different now because we are all part of God's family.

That season is called the Epiphany, comes from the Greek word Epiphano, which

means to arise, to appear, to shine.

Which are words that fit very well with the story of the Wise Ones who

followed the star shining in the sky.

And then, as they appeared, they came to understand something new.

And they would arise new people with a new understanding.

And that's what epiphanies are.

Epiphanies are surprising, shocking, stupefying.

They can be exciting, but they can also be disorienting.

Because they are a new way of seeing old things.

Now for me, as your pastor and as a Bible scholar, there's nothing

so exciting as epiphanies that happen when we come to scripture.

When we see something new in scripture and it comes alive in a new way.

And for me, if I think about a particular set of stories or a

particular story, that over and over and over has had more and more and more

epiphanies, it is the creation stories.

Now, we're going to focus in on the Adam and Eve story in Genesis 2 and 3 today.

And as I mentioned, I just read a portion of that.

And to set us up for that, to set that frame, I'm going to talk about

this fact that this is what we consider one of our primordial myths.

Now, when I say the word myth, I do not mean false.

Sometimes that's how we talk about the word myth.

When I say myth, I mean it in the literary sense.

Which is that it is a story that tells us something about who we are and

how we are oriented in the world or how we understand the world together.

So that's what we're going to be looking at today is this myth of

creation through Adam and Eve.

And I am going to say that I believe that the Adam and Eve

story was not just relevant.

You know, as an origin story, but is relevant still to this day and

may be one of the most relevant stories we have in our entire Bible.

But I'm also going to say that is what I believe was one of the most

misread and misunderstood stories.

that we have as well.

So we're going to go on an epiphany journey together and I'm about to take

you in about 10 minutes on a journey that took me years, so strap in.

But I am going to give you a map and tell you how we're going

to go through this journey.

We're going to look first at things that either are or are not actually in the

story that we might be surprised by.

Then we're going to look at things that You really need to know

Hebrew in order to understand.

So, you get a pass.

You don't know Hebrew, but I'm going to bring you in on the Hebrew pieces as well.

And then we're going to close with a reflection on how this all fits

into our understanding of myths.

So let's talk first about some things in this story that either are or are not.

When the snake is having the conversation with the woman.

And the woman sees the fruit, and sees that it is good to eat, and pleasing

to the eye, and decides to take a bite.

She takes a bite, and then hands the fruit to her husband, who was with her.

Who was with her.

That's what it says in Genesis 3 6.

He was right there, standing there while the conversation went on.

While she's deliberating about the fruit, he is right there too.

Which means that he was part of the decision.

Because he didn't raise any objections.

He just stood there and watched how it unfolded.

And then, also 8.

You can pick up any Bible and look at Genesis 3 6 and see

that it says who was with her.

Unless you pick up a strain from the Douay Rheims.

The Douay Rheims was a translation that saw that the text said who was with her

and decided that was not an important detail and dropped it out of the Bible.

You always gotta watch translators, right?

So, the man was right there as the conversation was taking place.

Here's another thing.

This is one of the things that's not in there.

It's not an apple.

Ah, I saw eyebrows go up.

Right?

I bet as you were imagining this story, you imagined the fruit that I was just

talking about that they were about to take a bite out of was an apple.

Except we're never told that in the story.

It's never mentioned that it was an apple.

And they didn't have a lot of apples in the Middle East at the time.

So, likely not an apple.

But, our culture has told us over and over and over that it's an apple.

And so that's what we picture.

And then there are a lot of people who think that after they eat of the fruit,

the first thing that they do is, uh, you know, have some relations with each other.

It's never mentioned.

What is mentioned after they take a bite of the fruit is that they see

each other and see that they are naked.

And instead of getting busy, they get busy sewing.

So, for people that use this story to try and make sex something evil and

bad that we only did after the fall, there's no basis for that in this story.

There is a basis in this story to say that the first thing that we did after

the fruit is eaten is they sowed.

So.

This is where I'm, I'm, Velma's probably going to get me for this,

but maybe the only thing that's sinning in this story is sowing.

So that's not present in this story either.

Now, here's some things that it's helpful to know about this

story if you understand Hebrew.

When the Lord God decides that He wants to make another being to be with the human,

He says, I'm going to make a helper.

Now, when we hear the word helper, a lot of times what we think is assistant.

Someone who's lesser, someone who's not as authoritative as the other one.

Except in Hebrew, the word is Ezer.

And Ezer does translate as helper.

But it does not have that connotation of being lesser than.

It has a connotation of being equal to.

And in fact, the only time that Ezer is used besides here, at

least in this phrasing, is for God to describe who God is for us.

God is our helper.

That's what's being created for the human.

Someone who helps like God helps.

Someone who's a partner, and they were all created.

We were created in this garden to walk alongside God.

And then this other helper was created to walk alongside God as well.

It's alongside, not in a hierarchy.

Another important piece to know is that word Tselah.

Now Tselah is translated here as rib, and remember I warned you guys

to watch your translators, right?

Translated here as rib, but This is the only place in the Bible, the only place

in the Bible that it is translated as rib.

Every other place in the Bible, it is translated as half, side, one in a

set of rooms, it's one of the rooms, or in a set of double doors like we

have going out of this sanctuary, one side of the double doors.

It's not a piece of It's half.

So, what this story is actually saying is, when they couldn't find a suitable

helper for this human, cut the human in half and created another human.

It's why early Judaism portrays that first human being.

As, back to back, one side is a woman, the other side is a man, God cuts the being

in half and then they could turn around and see each other and be man and woman.

Which also brings us to understanding what these names mean.

Adam, in Hebrew is Adam, and it comes from Adama, which means earth.

And it means not man, it means human.

Human created of the earth.

So, you have a human created of the earth, and then, after they eat of

the fruit, after they eat of the fruit, the woman is given her name.

She's not given a name before that.

After they eat of the fruit, the woman is given her name, Eve, Eva

in Hebrew, which is very similar to the name Yahweh in Hebrew.

Eva means life.

Y'all remember what was going to happen if they ate of the fruit?

You will die.

But they eat of the fruit, And then, she is named Life?

And that brings us to what it means to see this in terms of being a myth.

Allegory is at work here.

It's a tool of myths.

You have this story of a human, planted in the garden, made of the earth,

in harmony with creation, caring for creation, and walking alongside God.

A human who is then divided into two, into equal parts.

who also walk alongside God, but when they make the decision to choose to reject

The one limitation that God has given them, they reject that relationship.

They reject that equality of being alongside one another.

And when they do, they should die, except they don't.

Instead, God closed them.

And the woman is named Life.

This is the first resurrection story in the Bible.

The very first resurrection story.

And it opens the Bible.

It tells us that every time that we choose death, God will choose life.

Every time we choose death, God will choose life.

Which is why I tell you That this is such a live story, because this story

happens over and over and over again.

We as humans, that God wants to be in relationship with, choose something other

than that, and there are consequences for that reality, but God is going to continue

to invite us into life, to bring us to life anyway, even when we choose death.

Now I mentioned that there were consequences, because that's

part of the story as well.

But you can read this story, and I'm gonna go ahead and say, this is where I'm

really stepping into interpretation, but I'll give you a reason for why I do it.

You can read the end of the story when the snake and the woman and

the man are all told things that are going to happen to them.

You can read them as punishments.

or you can read them as consequences.

And basically what you're choosing is whether you're going to read this as a

prescriptive myth or a descriptive myth.

A prescriptive myth means that it was prescribed, that God always

wanted the story to end out this way so that God could put these

punishments on these people.

And so that we would live in this punished state forever,

that that's what God's design is.

Or you can read it as descriptive.

Descriptive means that it just describes the reality of how we

are in the world that we are in.

Because we have made the choices that we have made, these are the realities.

And if you read that, then God is just recognizing what was the

likely outcome of this story.

Because remember what happens when God comes to find them.

They've realized that they're naked, they're hiding.

God comes to find them and says, where are you?

They come out.

Why were you hiding?

Adam says, this woman you gave me, gave me the fruit.

The woman says, this snake that was here in this garden started talking to me.

They start the finger pointing right away.

Right?

And God sees in that moment.

This is how they're going to be.

They're always going to try to blame each other.

And when they blame each other, when they cause this finger pointing, then

they break that relationship too.

And they create these automatic hierarchies of who's right and who's

wrong, who's better and who's worse.

And so the snake is never going to get along with humans.

And the woman is going to have pain in childbirth and is

going to desire her husband.

But he's going to be like, look, you made one big mistake.

I'm not going to let you make another one.

So he will rule over her, even though he was right there.

He didn't say anything, but anyway.

And then the man who was created of the earth has broken his

relationship with the earth.

So there will be toil.

It's not what God wanted.

It's what God saw us choose.

And the reason that I say it's not what God wanted, because if it is

what God wanted, then why send Jesus?

Why send the gardener to heal the relationship?

That's what Mary Magdalene calls him.

She thinks he is the gardener because he is the gardener.

He is restoring the garden.

And why in the Bible, in a garden, where we all have access to the tree

of life, if God didn't mean for us to all get there in the first place?

Those consequences are the reality of what we have chosen, but

that's not where we have to stay.

We can choose to turn and live the way God created us to live, as partners with

each other, with the earth, and with God.

That's what the reign of God looks like.

That's why this story for me is so alive, so real, so true.

It happens every day, every day we as humans choose to break it.

Every day God tries to bring us back to the garden.

Every day.

So why do we tell this story so wrong?

Part of it's a language issue.

If you don't know Hebrew, you can't get there.

But part of it is because we've so long heard the story told another way,

it's hard to see it any other way.

Someone told us to believe it.

to be an apple, to have all this brokenness in it.

I lay a lot of the blame at John Milton's feet.

He wrote Paradise Lost and he writes this beautiful story

where the snake and Eve are off.

By themselves, having this conversation, and Adam's over

making a bouquet of roses for Eve.

And then he comes and he finds that she's already eaten the fruit, and he

is so moved by love, that he decides he'll take a bite of the fruit.

Nah, that, that, that, that,

that is not what happened!

Heh.

But Doritos commercials, there's a billboard driving down between Little

Rock and here on I 40 that says, what really happened in the Garden of Eden?

And there's an apple with a bite taken out of it.

So I just, every time I passed that sign, I was like, well, not that.

There's so much, so many scales that would have to fall away from our eyes.

But I invite all of us to be open to the surprise, to be open with the

Bible actually has written in it.

There are a lot of problematic texts in the Bible.

I absolutely will say that's the case, but sometimes the

problems are not in the Bible.

Sometimes the problems are what people have told us is in the Bible.

We got to get past that.

We got to be open to the surprise, open to the epiphany, open to seeing in a new way,

open to the light of God shining through.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Matt Nelson: Thanks for listening to the sermon podcast from First United

Methodist Church in downtown Bentonville.

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