(Last week I'd invited the congregation to write down the one question they'd ask God if they were given the chance. These were then presented back to them prior to today's sermon in what was a very moving powerpoint presentation)
Like Job in our sermon last Sunday, we stack up our questions – these are the ones we wrote down last week when I asked you what you'd like to ask God if you were given the chance.
If you were here, you’ll remember I argued that contrary to what we might have been brought up to believe, it’s good to ask questions of God, because our questions create a space where our relationship with him can mature and grow.
But I ended with a reminder that in that same space, God has questions he wants to ask of us; and today we begin a series of sermons where we look at some of those questions which we find scattered throughout the Bible. And it’s my hope that by the time we’ve finished, we’ll be able to see some of our own questions in a slightly different light.
We start this morning in Genesis chapter 3 with the story of Adam and Eve. And reading Genesis Chapter 3 always brings a particular story to mind.
It's the story of the minister who tried visiting the house of a parishoner, and though he saw movement behind the frosted glass there was no response when he kept knocking. Finally, he took out a card and wrote "Revelation 3: 20" on it - a verse which says: “Behold! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me”.
That Sunday, an embarrassed looking lady handed him a slip of paper on the way out of church and on it was another Bible reference: "Genesis 3: 10". When the minister looked it up he had a good laugh because the verse says: “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid”!
In a way it’s good that we’re beginning at the beginning this morning, and the question we’re going to look at is one of the ones we asked of God last week; one of the ones that’s just appeared on the screen.
But this morning that very same question is found on the lips of God as he surveys a suspiciously quiet Garden of Eden. “Where are you?” he calls out. And he’s been asking that same question of us ever since. “Where are you?”
Why does he have to ask that question in Genesis 3? Well, up until this point we’ve had nothing but harmony and unity in the story. God, Adam and Eve have lived in complete joy and ease with one another: they’re unselfconscious, mutually loving, and utterly open. The authors of Genesis give us this lovely image of God walking with the man and the woman in the cool of the day.
And then – well, you know the story. Some day it would be worth going in to all the nuances of that first temptation: the serpent’s subtle undermining of God’s command; the way the apple appeals to Eve’s senses – the way she was captivated by the look and the smell and touch of it.
But the real heart of the fall is the sowing of a lie in the human soul. The lie which says. in a thousand different ways. that life will be far better if you go your own way and forget about God.
“Just eat that apple, Eve. Things will be so much better than they are now”. Intoxicated by that marvellous idea, she ate.
Poor Eve – she’s been castigated for that decision ever since, and to the church’s shame this story’s even been used in the past to keep women subordinate – as though Adam wouldn’t have made the same mistake if he’d been the one the serpent had come to first. Adam was made of sterner stuff. Adam wasn’t nearly so gullible; Adam knew how to apply the offside rule – he wouldn’t have made that mistake. Somehow I doubt it!
But anyway - they ate. And their eyes were opened, we’re told. But the brave new world they were promised didn’t materialise.
Instead they lost innocence. They lost bliss. They lost paradise.
From being carefree they became uncomfortably self-aware. They discovered fear and shame and the overwhelming response to all of this was to hide. Hide yourself. Hide from God. It’s the only thing to do. Grab some fig leaves and head for the bushes….. that’s where our story’s going to be played out from now on.
And indeed it has been, right up ‘til the present day. We’re still hiding, in so many ways.
We hide from one another.
“Fit like” – “Chavvin awa”! (How are you? - I'm getting on fine! in the Doric tongue!)
My right leg might be hanging on by a thread, but I’m chavvin awa!
Can’t talk to that stranger. They might think I’m being nosey. Or they might ask me things I don’t want to talk about.
Can’t talk to anybody about what’s really going on just now. I’ll just have to put a smile on and try to keep going.
Can’t let any emotion show – that’d be giving away too much. Have to keep a lid on it.
We hide. The most eloquent visual metaphor I can give you for that is a London Underground Carriage – a hundred people crammed together like sardines, and they’re all trying to hide. Drowning out the world with their iPods. Taking an unnatural interest in the advertising hoardings or their own shoes rather than look anyone in the eye.
Hiding.
But of course, we can’t hide everything. To a degree, we’re always on show. We live surrounded by other people. People whose approval and respect we crave because when we’ve hidden from God we have no-one else to tell us who we are! And so, like our illustrious biblical parents, we gather fig-leaves to preserve our modesty and present an image. Whatever fig leaves our time and our culture tell us are in vogue.
Ideas, possessions, attitudes, experiences, theologies – we’ll try on just about anything to cover-up our basic nakedness and earn the approval of the rest of the herd.
Because if they don’t give us their approval, we’ve nowhere left to turn. We’re hiding from God.
And though my comments so far are about society in general, we in the church can be just as guilty of hiding. Churches can be great places to hide from God. There are plenty of folk who kid themselves that if they keep their noses clean and their theology shiny and they’re seen with a degree of regularity in the place of worship they won’t really have to do business with God. At least, not the kind of business that involves a sacrifice of time, talents or money. Not the kind that means killing off a few sacred cows now and again.
God’s first question comes to all of us: to every bush-rustling semi-hidden native of our fallen world.
“Where are You?” he says.
I wonder if any of you have picked up the irony in those words yet.
Christian theology holds that God is omniscient and omnipresent, which means he knows everything and he is everywhere,
So at the point of asking this question, not only does he know exactly where Adam and Eve are, he’s right there in the bushes with them!
So why does he bother to ask at all?
The answer, I think, is that he’s asking more for their sake than for his own. This question is their way back.
Having three perfect children, you’ll understand that this next illustration doesn’t apply to me, but many of you will be familiar with the scenario where a child stomps off to his or her room in high dudgeon because of some perceived injustice.
An adult will be duly dispatched to said room after what’s deemed to be a reasonable amount of time, and on occasion, depending on the mood and temperament of said child, the adult will enter the room only to find it empty and conclude that the child is attempting to hide.
Now any child’s bedroom has a limited number of hiding places. The prospects of the child rendering him or herself well or permanently hidden are vanishingly small. A brief search should unearth all but the most persistent and imaginative child, and the adult knows this. But the rules of the game do not involve making such a search.
The adult is there to offer an olive branch, and what is customary in those circumstances is that he or she, in a firm but caring tone, should say “Come on out. I know you’re in here”.
With this verbal cue, the child realises two very important things
1) Escape is impossible and
2) Despite what’s happened, the lines of communication are still open.
That’s our story from Genesis in a nutshell.
“Where are you?” says God to his hiding children.
Does he really need that information?
No. He already knows where they are and what they’ve done. What he’s doing here is offering them a way back into his presence. An invitation to stop hiding.
I wish we could hear how he says those three little words.
We’re in the realm of speculation, but given what I’ve said this morning I’m pretty sure they’re not barked out in anger.
I think we’d hear compassion, disappointment, judgment and love in his tone, and read them in his eyes, if we could bear to meet them.
“You’ve set the world on a hard road”, he might say. “You don’t know how much it will cost me to make this right. But I will be with you. No more going your own way, though. No more hiding.”.
“Where are you” says God? What I want you to realise this morning is that he only asks the question because he wants us back. He wants to find our way back.
The verses after this morning’s catalogue the consequences of the fall – strife, struggle, pain and separation from God. But even as he packs them off from Eden, do you know what God does for the folk who’ve messed up the whole enterprise? He makes them some clothes to wear. It’s there in verse 21 of chapter 3 if you don’t believe me.
It’s a lovely wee detail we could easily miss. But it’s exactly the kind of thing your mum would do when you were a kid. She’d lay into you for half an hour about something you’d done and five minutes later she’d be giving you a glass of milk and a biscuit. Why? Because despite what you’ve done, she still loves you.
Why does God send Adam and Eve away with clothes? Because he hasn’t given up on them. And he hasn’t given up on us either. He wants us back too.
“Where are you”? God asks,
And our reflection on those words leaves us with two questions to ponder this morning
Firstly - where are you hiding from God?
In your work? In your pleasures? In your pursuit of the fig-leaves of material prosperity? In your addictions? In the routines of your day, or even the routines of a religion where you readily take God’s name on your lips, but bar him from changing your heart?
Maybe you’ve knocked up a hiding place from bits of past bitterness and disappointment. Maybe you’ve holed up in an igloo, fashioned from your cool reserve.
You alone know. But we all do it. Where do you go when you want to keep God at bay? That’s where you’re hiding.
But secondly, and probably more importantly, why are you hiding?
When you lift your head towards him, do you assume that all you’ll see is judgment and disappointment in his eyes, and forget about his love and compassion?
Do you worry that you might end up giving him everything you are, and end up getting nothing in return?
Are you wedded to the age old lie that Eve fell for? That life will be far far better if you go your own way and forget about God?
Are you afraid that somehow you’re not good enough for God, and you never will be?
Again. You alone know.
But know this also.
The God who brought the universe into being is wandering the world looking for you. He is calling you by name. Calling you out of your hiding places, not so he can condemn, but so he can mend and redeem.
He said he would walk this hard road with us, and he has done – his feet are dirty from the journey, and his hands are scarred. For the path we chose in Eden led all the way to the valley of the shadow of death and to a rough wooden cross. And on that cross, God made good the fall of the first Adam through the death of a second Adam, Jesus Christ.
“For God so loved he world” John tells us, “he sent his only Son”.
Sent him to undo the mess, so that you and I, and every son of Adam and Daughter of Eve, could come blinking out of the bushes and back into the light of God again.
We don’t need to hide any more.
Thanks be to God.
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