A Brief Introduction to the Human Condition

Scripture: Genesis 2 and 3

It is impossible to overstate the influence that the story of Adam and Eve has had on Western culture. It serves as the focus of the greatest epic poem written in the English language—John Milton’s Paradise Lost. It provides the subject matter for countless masterpieces of Renaissance art, including works by Michelangelo, Raphael, Tintoretto, Titian, and Masaccio—about whom I’ll have more to say later. Indeed, their pervasive presence in Renaissance art leads me to wonder whether Adam and Eve fled Eden for Tuscany, a notion that might explain why my Italian in-laws are constantly urging me to eat something.

But the story of Adam and Eve has not been reserved to the lofty bastions of high art. For better or worse, it permeates our popular culture as well. It has been parodied in countless jokes and cartoons. It shows up in the lyrics of songs by everyone from Paul Anka to Gary Puckett to Bob Marley to Bruce Springsteen.

Clearly, and I guess ironically, we find this story irresistible. But this familiarity brings with it the risk that we will not just secularize, but trivialize, this important piece of scripture. That would be a terrible shame, because—as is true of so many passages in the Book of Genesis—this is not just a story about where we came from. This is a story about who we are. Indeed, I want to suggest to you that this passage is nothing less than a brief introduction to the human condition.

Of course, we all recognize the tragic human weakness of Adam and Eve. God gave them a single rule—and they could not follow it. Little wonder that God did not meet with much better success in persuading humankind to follow the ten rules he later delivered to Moses.

After Adam and Eve disobeyed this command they heard the sound of God walking in the garden, felt ashamed, and tried to hide. As I have observed before, trying to hide from God is surely one of the stupidest ideas ever. It is right up there with the idea that the earth is flat, the idea that the world is the fixed center of the universe, and the idea I had in high school that I could persuade a girl to go out with me by observing that she had the same name as my dog.

Then, when God found Adam and Eve and confronted them with their transgression, they did not accept responsibility. They did not ask for forgiveness or express regret or demonstrate repentance. They just tried to lay the blame on others.

Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the snake. In fact, have you noticed that the snake is the only player in this drama who didn’t argue with God and blame somebody else? I thought about titling this sermon “On the Moral Superiority of Snakes” but I did not want to generate unnecessary controversy.

We can see so much of ourselves in Adam and Eve. They don’t like being told what to do. They try to hide from the consequences of their misconduct. They dodge responsibility. They blame others for their failings.

But the story does not portray them as one-dimensional troublemakers. If it did, the story wouldn't be so engaging. To the contrary, their decision to eat the apple seems driven by a complicated collection of motivations: aspiration; imagination; curiosity. It may help us to appreciate the full humanity of Adam and Eve to remember that, in other contexts, we think of those motives as virtues.

In Milton’s memorable words, Adam and Eve were “sufficient to have stood, though free to fall.” They had a choice. It was the basic choice inherent in the human condition, and, as the old hymn says, that “choice goes by forever, twixt that darkness and that light.”

Over time, we have made Adam and Eve into symbols—even into caricatures. But it is important to recognize that this is not how the Bible gives them to us. The Bible presents them as fully human: at once extravagantly noble and catastrophically weak. And it is only when we can see them as fully human that we can begin to imagine the unspeakable pain and horror they must have experienced when they were cast from Eden and separated from the place that God had made for them.

I suppose that is why I find Masaccio’s famous fresco in the Brancacci Chapel in Florence among the most powerful renderings of this story. Adam bends over, his head in his hands, his muscles tight with sobbing. Eve throws her head back, her mouth agape and gasping, her eyes clenched shut. It is the perfect expression of inexpressible despair. I cannot look at it without remembering W. H. Auden’s observation about the Old Masters of painting: “about suffering they were never wrong.”

And this, too, is part of the story’s brief introduction to the human condition. From the beginning of time, we have gotten ourselves into places where we have felt hopelessly separated from the things we treasure, even from God, perhaps especially from God. Then we have looked around and asked ourselves—as Adam and Eve surely must have asked themselves—how did I get here? How did my mortality and my weakness bring me so far away from where I belong?

Those are the questions posed by this story. Those are the questions posed by this season of Lent. They are hard questions.

This week's New Yorker includes a fascinating article about one G. Stanley Hall, the founder of gerontology and a character of major proportions. The piece describes a questionnaire that Hall sent around to all the "mostly eminent and some very distinguished old people" he could think of. Among other things, he asked them: How do you keep well? What temptations do you feel? Are you troubled with regrets? The article rightly points out that these are still our questions. Indeed, I think they have been our questions since that first morning east of Paradise.

But there is good news. The truth reflected in the story of Adam and Eve may be fundamental but it is not final. It tells us alot about who we are. But it tells us very little about who we might yet become. For that, we need to look to a different story--the story of an obscure itinerant preacher from the town of Nazareth. It is, as they say, the greatest story ever told.

Certainly, it is a story about betrayal and pain and suffering. But it is also a story about mercy and forgiveness and rebirth. It is a story about peace and reassurance and comfort. It is a story about redeeming sacrifice and everlasting love and amazing, amazing grace.

It is a story about hope, even in a world battered with hate and violence and natural disasters and political upheavels, even here, even now, even this far from a place called Eden.

Praise God that it is so.

Amen.