The Tree of Good and Evil

             

            How did we all get here?  Well, we know that we were born.  Most of us have birth certificates that spell it all out for us.  In this world, though there are countless people who have no idea where or when they were born, who their parents were, and any of the particulars.  They are simply here.  Agencies try to fill in some of the details; they are often counselled and given hope that somehow they will discover their roots.  But for most of them, they will lack the hoped for news of their birth and their parents and simply live their lives.  That isn’t easy.  Understanding our heritage gives us some clues about who we are and what we are doing here.  Without knowing any of this, we are often left to just get on with our lives without any inkling of how we got here.

            The lessons in the first week of Epiphany try to offer some help for all of us to understand our parentage and our beginnings, who we are and why we are here.  Genesis begins with the magnificent words: In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.  The earth was without form or void; and darkness covered the face of the deep.  Here, we are given the basics of how this world was formed.  We are wedded to this world, which was created by God to provide a place where his will could be worked out.  After creating the world, God created humankind in his own image.  Adam and Eve were placed in the Garden of Eden to be the earthly supervisors of God’s kingdom.   God’s plan was to have a place where heaven was replicated with its goodness intact.

            To create all things, God placed the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the middle of the garden and told both Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit of this tree.  Also in the garden was the serpent; the snake that worked on Eve and told her that it would be perfectly all right for her to eat that fruit and to offer it to Adam.  The result of this was that these two first beings immediately knew that they were naked and that naked was bad and then did everything that they could to hide themselves from God’s sight.

            The knowledge of good and evil has been the basis for our legal system, our political system and all of the ways that we interact with each other.  I think that even if God wishes that we didn’t know about it, we would not exist without having a knowledge of good and evil.  I think that Jonathan Edwards great sermon in Northampton, Massachusetts called Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God sets the tone for God’s interaction with a world full of argument about who is right and who is wrong.  Edwards thundered to his congregation about how we are being held over the burning fires of hell by a thin, fragile strand held in God’s hand.  That strand Edwards called Grace, that wonderful characteristic of God that expresses the divine love for all of humankind.  When the people in that congregation heard that sermon, many of them got up and ran out of the church in terror.  Edwards was one of the heralds of what we call the Great Awakening, a largely Puritan evangelical movement in the eighteenth century that re-established protestant theology in this country that included other great preachers such as George White, a largely Methodist theologian from Georgia. 

            The notion of God’s grace spelling out his incredible Love has helped many people come to an understanding of the authority of God in this world.  We are a country founded on Puritan values from the time of their landing in Massachusetts and William Bradford’s governance.  These Puritans has escaped religious persecution in England only to re-establish it in their new homeland.  Roger Williams was chased out of the Massachusetts Bay colony to establish his own theological area in Rhode Island.  We are continually eating of the fruit of the tree of good and evil.  What is important in this world is that God’s love continues to keep us safe and bring us back into the reality of goodness.  May God continue to bless us in this Epiphany season.

           

           

           

           

The Peace of Jerusalem

            When we made a trip to the Holy Land in 1983, it was fascinating to see what Israel had done to the Palestinians who were in the West Bank, which included part of Jerusalem.  Palestinians and Jews had different license plates.  It was easy to tell one from another.  There were numerous check points where Israeli cars were waved through and the Palestinians were all stopped.  Israeli troops were everywhere.  In those days, in the eighties, there was not much open fighting, not much outward turmoil; but in the hearts of the Palestinian people, there was a great feeling of being ostracized and left out. 

            Of course, the Israelis claimed all of the West Bank as their own and were just beginning to open “settlements” in that area, which have surged in the years since until at the present time they occupy a great deal of the territory.  In Jerusalem itself, Israelis are occupying much of East Jerusalem, where Palestinians have long been the chief residents.  Jerusalem is not a peaceful place at all, nor has it ever been.

            Pray for the peace of Jerusalem has long been a standard prayer in most churches.  It signifies the longing that the world has to see peace and harmony in that place.  We have been aware of the turmoil in the Middle East for a long time.  The movie Exodus with Paul Newman was an excellent story of the beginning of the struggle.  Finding a common solution to the division that exists in what we call the Holy Land seems to be farther and farther from what is possible.  There have been a number of attempts to bridge the gap, but they have all ultimately failed.  We need to keep Jerusalem and all of the Middle East in our prayers that somehow God will intervene to help us to calm the chaos.

            Jesus was born in Bethlehem, which is now in the West Bank; lived his early life in Nazareth in Galilee and spent his ministry helping the people in all of Israel to find healing, comfort and peace in their lives.  When finally, he entered the city of Jerusalem on Palm Sunday it was on the back of a donkey while the Roman military entered the city with horses and troops.  Jesus came to Jerusalem to live the last days of his life that ended with his betrayal and crucifixion and finally his resurrection and eventually his ascension.  Christianity was born in Jerusalem.  His followers began small churches that spread the word of the risen Christ throughout the known world. 

            Today, Jerusalem is divided into three divisions:  Christian, Jewish and Muslim.  All of these religions are present and in places of worship.  The Church of the Holy Sepulcher is a Christian church where Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian Orthodox worship. This Church is the place where the story of the last days of Jesus’ life are told, with his sepulcher in the middle of the church.  The Western Wall is the remains of the last Jewish temple where faithful Jews gather every day to pray, and the old Temple Mount is the home to Al Aksa mosque and the highly visible Dome of the Rock where supposedly Abraham offered Isaac to God and also where Mohammed on his horse leapt into heaven.  This is a powerful city to visit and I can see little hope that one religion will finally occupy it alone.

            It also seems to me that Jerusalem is a powerful symbol of what God has in mind for all of humanity.  Living together with different religions and different views of the world is God’s plan for all of us.  If we can learn to put our differences aside and respect one another, we will eventually find the peace that passes understanding.  That isn’t easy.  Money and politics sometimes dictate our beliefs.  None of us die rich.  Eventually, we all stand before God as who we are and who we have become.  Who has the most money or the most powerful political standing doesn’t mean a thing in God’s sight.  It is only how much we have loved and cared for those around us that matter as we stand before our God.   May God bless us in this new year as we try to look past our differences to a world of peace and harmony.