Pastor Vicki Zust was the rector of St. Paul’s, Clarence, NY. Having completed a 2 year cycle of reading the entire Bible she decided to try something different. As she writes, “So I went through the Old Testament and wrote down the stories that a lot of our theology and history depends on. It turns out there are 40 of them.”
Here is #2 The Fall. Read it here.
"Most of us know about the snake and the apple and the fig leaf. Some of us know about the angel with the burning sword and God walking in the cool of the day. Most of us don’t remember that the clothes that God gave Adam and Eve were leather – which raises all kinds of questions.
"In brief, God has placed Adam and Eve in the garden. They have been given all the trees except one. The tree that they are not supposed to touch is called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now, you have to think that staying away from something called "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil" would be a good idea without the commandment from God, but there we are.
"There are a few things about this story that make me either smile or think.
"The first is that the incarnation of evil is a snake. I can think of no better animal to be the personification of evil then a snake.
"I love that God takes a walk in the garden in the cool of the day, it feels like God was just out for his evening constitutional.
"But my favorite part of the whole thing is the conversation between Adam, Eve and God. God wants to know what happens and Adam blames Eve and Eve blames the snake. It’s like listening to five year olds say "not me".
"The reason that this story is one of the ones we should know, is that for most of Christian history this is the story that was told about how sin entered the world. It was cited as the reason that women have pain in childbirth (and thus why pain killers shouldn’t be used). It was cited as the cause for many other things that today we find to be ridiculous or wrong.
"So the question for us about this story is: What does it teach us about evil, the nature of evil and our part in evil?