a sermon on genesis 2:25 ff, on shame and pretense

I confess. Once I was naked and unashamed in a garden. I was not quite two. My mom is planting tiger lilies and I am wandering, standing shakily, looking in wonder at the world around me, as only a small child can. I gaze at the world in wonder and everything is the same to me. I prefer nothing to anything else. I see the blue jay in the pine tree and the snail upon the rock, loving them equally. I don't care who looks at me. My nakedness is meaningless to me. Just a year or so later, I would be embarrassed to be seen naked, outside or inside. I come to feel the eyes of scrutiny upon me. I come to feel judgment.
I believe that this is a common experience. Most of us have embarrassing photographs our parents took when we were babies. Why are these photos here? For one thing: We wax sentimental over innocence: a respite from the cynicism and knowingness we live with as we grow older. We grow older and we know that we're being looked at. We look at others and distinguish between friend and foe, who we'll trust with what.
It's a process we all experience. Some of us integrate it better than others. But we all have that feeling that we've fallen from something. That behind us is a special place where all was right, a golden age, a time where people treated other people right. A simpler time than now, where you could leave the door unlocked, and we all had a party line and everyone listened in. Just one big warm fuzzy filtered through amber light and an apple pie is always cooling on the window sill.
This story in Genesis deals with such a process: what happened that we were once innocent and felt no shame but now we feel shame at the drop of a hat? What did we lose back there? Wasn't the past better than things are now? Can we ever get back there?
Imagine Adam and Eve in a more modern telling. They are home and watching TV late at night. Twenty minutes into the late show there's a commercial with a once in a lifetime life-changing offer - call now, operators are standing by - this product will fill the empty gnawing void in your existence, and your hair will always be right and you'll greet the world with confidence. They excitedly call in and give their credit card number. A week passes and finally a box arrives. They open it and turn it on. And with great expectation they wait to see what will happen, how their lives will be fuller, their hair thicker, their feet nimbler. And their lives remain the same, their hair retains its thinness, their feet stumble along as always. They can now discern good offers from bad offers. And so a trusted friend calls and says, "so how's it going." and they say that all's well. They plaster their faces with fake smiles and put on fast music. Gray skies are gonna clear up - put on a happy face - they sing. And inside they're feeling awful, they're the most embarrassed they've ever been in their lives. But their friend recognizes what's wrong and so she asks and persists. To admit the truth is the hardest thing they've ever had to do, because they feel stupid. They feel stupid because they should have known better than to believe a late night commercial promise of life fulfillment in a gizmo - the pocket deity. They feel stupid because they're lying to themselves and their friend about what has happened to them.
Of course in the story the friend they lie to is God. The spurious product they exchange their current relationship for is the promise of a relationship where they're God's equal in wisdom. But what's key in this story is shame causes them to hide. We read that they cover themselves with leaves. That is: they camouflage themselves. They pretend to fit into their environment and hope that no one will notice. That what they've just done will go away and be forgotten. They pretend to be someone and something that they're not. They are ashamed of what they've become and hope that no one, especially God, will notice.
But God, who cares more for them and us than we can imagine, even when we feel so very embarrassed, does notice. And despite their fears, God doesn't turn from them. God remains with them and talks them through their shame. God coaxes them out of their need to pretend to be trees- to fit in and conform. God helps them be themselves. The so called curses are really promises of work and family. At no point does God say that he is estranged from them. In fact, as the story of Genesis continues on into Noah, people exasperate God, but he can't quit them. God has created humanity in God's image, and it's that image God sees in each of us, no matter what we feel that we've done, no matter what our shame is or guilt or fear or anger. Finally, in Abraham, God declares that he will bless all humanity. God declares Abraham's faith as justifying without reference to an inherited guilt. In all of the old testament there's not one verse that indicates that Adam's action in the garden affects the relationship his descendents have with God. God doesn't hold fathers accountable for the sin of the children and vice versa - as the prophets say time and again.
What happens in this story is the revelation that God is separate from people - just like one day a child discovers that she is a different being from her mother. It is frightening to realize that you're on your own. A boy realizes that he is not his father or his mother and is embarrassed when he acts like an infant. Many of us learn to pretend that we are growing up. We can tell that we're pretending when our minds are clouded with thoughts of what other people are thinking about us. Our pretending is aided by how well we follow the rules and conform.
In all this we desire to be authentic, to be naked before God again, but in a more grown up way: honest about who we are. Perhaps we don't believe that God could love us. We have a notion of how perfect we should be which is in conflict with how we fear that we are. If we insist on our perfection, we are bound to fall. Reality will pull us down.
Certainly God knows the truth about us - even as we know the truth about each other and ourselves. God sees through our camouflage: how we've covered ourselves with material goods and awards for deportment.
And God doesn't leave us. In fact God comes to us and lives among us. In Jesus, God came and was an authentic human. While humans pretend to be God, God came and was a human being without pretense. Where in the gospels does Jesus pretend to be important or act as if entitled to the best seat in the house? Christ says that the greatest among us is to be a servant; that the first will be the last and the last first. He says that we must become as children to enter the kingdom of God. Where does Jesus worry about what the neighbors will think? Where does Jesus pretend to be something that he is not?
Time and again God demonstrates what it is like to be an authentic human being. He talks with the poor and outcast. Prostitutes, tax collectors, thieves, party goers, as well as Pharisees and scribes - all get his attention. He doesn't spare feelings, but he admits that he's wrong - as in the case of the syro-phonecian woman: who when she asks for Jesus to heal her daughter is rebuffed with the phrase that "we don't give the children’s food to the dogs" to which, when she answers "but the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the children's plate," Jesus says "well said" - an admission that this humble foreign woman has bested him in an argument. How difficult it is for us to admit that we're wrong or that someone understands a situation better than we do. He is loving as well as brusque with his disciples. He doesn't put up with people who weasel out of obligations. He is gracious and forgiving. He says that he came not to judge but to heal. And he heals all who come to him.
If, like St Paul, you want to think of Jesus as the second Adam, think on this: he returns to the garden. As with Adam things go badly in the garden. He is betrayed and abandoned. He hangs on a tree - strange fruit indeed - naked and unashamed. He is laid down dead in the garden, naked and unashamed. And he leave this garden on his own. Rising up - death is swallowed up in God's victory.
God takes us back to the garden and leads us out. To him, we can expose our shame, and we can be who we are. In his grace, we can quit pretending, and be who we really are, who God created us to be in freedom.