Through the Bible in one year - Day 3

Genesis 3:4-5, 22-24 

But the serpent said to the woman, "You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

Then the Lord God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—" therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.

Luke 1:57-80 

Now the time came for Elizabeth to give birth, and she bore a son. And her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had shown great mercy to her, and they rejoiced with her...And they would have called him Zechariah after his father, but his mother answered, "No; he shall be called John." And they said to her, "None of your relatives is called by this name." And they made signs to his father, inquiring what he wanted him to be called. And he asked for a writing tablet and wrote, "His name is John." And they all wondered. And immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue loosed, and he spoke, blessing God. And fear came on all their neighbors…and all who heard them laid them up in their hearts, saying, "What then will this child be?" For the hand of the Lord was with him.

And his father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied, saying, "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David, as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, that we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us; to show the mercy promised to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our father Abraham, to grant us that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days. And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace."And the child grew and became strong in spirit, and he was in the wilderness until the day of his public appearance to Israel.

Maybe you didn’t want to read all these verses together with me today, but it is hard to pick out just a few. As my mother used to say – ‘they are all so good.’

The thing I wish to mention about the Genesis passage I have highlighted is this comment from the serpent about “knowing good and evil.” That sounds like a good thing doesn’t it? Isn’t it what we try to teach our children; what is acceptable and what is not? However, at this point we know the Lord hasn’t given us the law. He actually had only said one thing, and that was not to eat of that particular fruit. Why? Well, if we were our children, sometimes the answer is – because I said so. Do we tell children not to go out at night because they might be stolen or ravaged or run over and killed-this knowledge may be too scary-too much for them to bear. No, sometimes we say don’t do it because it is unsafe. I am not saying this is the case here, but I did wonder about it. The serpent goes on to say that Adam and Eve will be ‘like God.’ I talked about this passage in the E100 and I really spent a lot of time pondering these phrases; they deserve our attention. (Here is a link to that previous post.) How exactly do we wish to be “like” God? Is it really that we wish to make our own choices of what is good and what is evil? Isn’t that what we see and hear a lot about in our world today? This relativistic good and evil.;“he had to do what was right by him” as Captain Jack Sparrow of movie fame would say. So then we get to the second section from Genesis, and this is where I am really saddened today. We lose our time in the Garden, we lose our eternal life. The cherubim are set to keep us out. How truly sad for us; sad, because we were already there, we already had everything we could possibly need – or want. God walked with us in the cool of the evening and all our food was provided-and we could do this for all eternity. Sure, now we like to rationalize saying we ‘need’ to make it on our own, that we ‘need’ to strive, and ‘earn’ what we get, but you know what? These are truly just rationalizations – ways for us to accept this lesser life we now have. And, now, all the time we spend trying to get back to that garden, and to find that intimacy with the Lord.

The reading from Luke is a beautiful story of hope, and I will not say too much about it – but believe there is also a lot there to read and ponder – as the witnesses did in their own day. The second half of the reading is said in Morning Prayer and has become a welcome friend to me – these messages of hope that can be memorized and recited to give us hope. This reading, in concert with the Genesis and the 1 Chronicles gives me a richer understanding of the message God gives us through his Word.

Today’s readings: Psalm 2, Genesis 3, 1Chronicles 3, Luke 1:57-80