One of the things we have to remember is how very easy it is to misread (or mis-hear) the scriptures - even the scriptures we think we know well. Take the story of our first disobedience, the Fall of Man, the Original Sin. When we hear this story we tend to hear it through the ears of Adam and Eve, which is natural enough, I suppose. What I mean is this, that when we hear the serpent slithering over toward our magnificently and unashamedly nude first ancestors, we are nearly as naive as they were. And when we hear the serpent engage Eve in conversation, like her, we tend to take him at face value.
“Did God say ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden?’” the serpent provoked.
Eve answered him honestly that they were allowed to eat the fruit from any tree in the garden except the one in the middle of the garden. And for good measure, God had told them not even to the touch the tree. He probably should have told them not even to look at it.
Like any good lawyer, the serpent was not going to ask a question he did not already know the answer to. He was more crafty than any other wild animal, after all. And he had an answer at the ready. “You will not die,” the serpent said, “God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good from evil.”
Now, stop right there! Because chances are, that, like Eve, you take the snake at face value, you take him at his word, as if what he is saying is true. And if you remember the text even more exactly, you might feel justified in doing so. For, later in the narrative, we do indeed hear God say, “See, the man [by which I take God to mean “the man and the woman”]… “the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil.” So, you might argue that the serpent was telling the truth. And I think that many people read this story as though the serpent was, in fact, telling the truth. But in case you hadn’t noticed, believing what the serpent says is a mistake. Because the serpent was deceiving Adam and Eve, and it would be a serious mistake to overlook his deception.
How do I know that the serpent was deceiving Adam and Eve? Because I have read the text, and I have noticed what actually happened, as opposed to what the serpent said would happen. The crucial thing to notice is what happened when Adam and Eve’s eyes were opened, which, of course, is only a figure of speech.
The serpent said to Eve, “God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good from evil.” Of course, the prospect of becoming like God is supposed to be greatly alluring to Adam and Eve, but even this statement is deeply misleading, as we shall see. And despite the testimony already offered here, the serpent is not telling them the truth - at least he is not telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Crafty as he was, the serpent must have supposed that this was his only chance to get the upper hand in his relationship with the man and the woman, who were themselves a whole different order of creation from him - for he was only a wild animal. “Your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God,” he said, “knowing good from evil.” But that is not precisely what happened.
Precisely what happened is this: “Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked.”
They knew that they were naked. Only a few verses ago we were told that “the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.” But the knowledge of good and evil brought with it the possibility of shame. The proof of their shame was in their reaction to the knowledge of their nakedness: “they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.” The serpent never told them about this possibility, did he? The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth would have included the information that when you eat of the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, your eyes will be opened, and with the knowledge of good and evil will come also the possibility of shame.
I have to assume that the serpent himself had already come to this very realization. I don’t suppose that he, or any of the wild animals, was given an injunction against eating the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden. For most of them it would not have mattered, they were not clever enough to make anything of the knowledge. But I rather suspect, that the crafty serpent had slithered up the tree and swallowed a bright, red apple whole, and then got a look at his reflection in a puddle: with his stubby little legs, his beady eyes, and his cold and mirthless flesh, his whole body contorted to the shape of the apple until it was digested… and he must have been ashamed of himself… or at least as close to ashamed as a serpent can be. Crafty as he was, the serpent must have then looked at Adam and Eve, gorgeous as they were - made, as they were, in the image and likeness of God - and he must have felt ashamed of himself.
He might have gone off to chat with an iguana basking in the sun, or a chameleon flashing its colors, or a Komodo dragon looking fierce, and gotten a little encouragement from them, a boost of self-esteem. Instead, I suppose he stared with envy at the stunningly naked man and the beautifully naked woman - so curvy, and soft, and fuzzy in the right places, and warm, and tender, and appropriately vulnerable; vulnerable enough to need each other - and, oh, how jealous that serpent must have been!
Was it his jealousy that drove him to undertake his plan of deception? I can only surmise. But deceive he did. Clever as he was, the serpent made his counsel to Adam and Eve sound an awful lot like the truth. That’s the way really good liars lie: by making it sound like it could be true. And he took advantage of the realization that Adam and Eve seemed to have more or less forgotten that they had already been made in the image and likeness of God: they were already like God! They even had access to the tree of life!
There was only one thing that God wished to keep them from in the garden, one attitude that God knew would despoil the splendor of his creation: the knowledge of good and evil that would also bring with it the ready possibility of shame. God had tried to keep them away from this possibility; he warned them against getting too close to the fruit whose seeds would plant the seeds of shame inside of them. And he did so because God already knew that they had nothing to be ashamed of. But his love for his creatures, and their freedom allowed for the possibility of their transgression and whatever consequences might come from it.
If you accept the proposition that I have made elsewhere (along with Albert Einstein) that the 3-dimensional perception of the time-space continuum is a very limited perception of reality, and that actually everything is always happening everywhere, that time can wrinkle up on itself, and space is more complicated than we know, then you can begin to imagine that the story of the serpent’s encounter with Adam and Eve is not really a story meant to describe something that happened once, long ago in the garden of Eden.
If everything is always happening everywhere, then the serpent is not so far from us now, and the tree in the middle of the garden is not so far from us, either. If everything is always happening everywhere, you could be Adam, you could be Eve. And if everything is always happening everywhere, the serpent is trying to deceive you and me, even now. And the trick he has up his short little sleeve is that he knows how to make us ashamed of ourselves. He tempts us, and tells us that, oh, there’s no danger to us, it’s perfectly safe, you do as you wish; God is just trying to keep you in your box.
You would think that if this is the case, if the serpent is near, then the thing to do is to simply avoid the forbidden fruit. But in actual fact, we don’t even know if it was an apple tree or a pomegranate, or something else altogether. And one of the ways to misread this story is to think that the key learning is to be found in knowing where the tree is found on which there grows forbidden fruit, and to avoid that tree; don’t touch it; don’t even look at it! And I am sure that there are times and circumstances when it is true, that certain fruit should be avoided.
But the deepest truth of the story is not to be found in correctly identifying the tree and its fruit, which is meant to be obvious to us: you’ll know it when you see it. The deepest truth of the story is that God did not make us to be ashamed of ourselves! The truth of the story is that we are very likely to have forgotten that we are already made in God’s image and likeness.
The truth of the story is that there is a serpent out there in the world who is more crafty than any other creature, and that he is lying to you and to me, although he’s making it sound very much like the truth. And the truth of the story is that the lies the serpent tells usually sound something like this: “You are not good enough. You are not smart enough. You are not pretty enough.”
These days, the serpent’s lie has become even more subtle, often sounding like this: “You are not white enough. You are not straight enough. You do not conform to your assigned gender enough.”
Just like the old days, the serpent relies on the likelihood that many of us have forgotten that we are already made in the image and likeness of God. This likelihood has two tragic consequences. First, as is the case for so many, failing to recognize the divine image in each and every one of us, we forget who God is, and as a result we can neither feel nor know his love, because we have ceased looking for it in our own lives, our own selves. Second it means we are prone to listen to the voice of the deceiver who is probably projecting his own shame on us, and yet, we fail to see that it is the serpent who is responsible when we discover that we are ashamed of ourselves. And this is a pernicious type of shame that is not the response to a real failing, it is the result of a deception.
And the reason that it’s so important not to misread or mis-hear this story, is because there are people out there who want you to believe that God wants you to be ashamed of yourself. Yes, there are people who, having misread the story themselves, or, having become preoccupied with identifying forbidden fruit, maybe even projecting their own shame onto you and me; there are these people who want you to believe that God wants you to be ashamed of yourself - especially if you are not white enough, or straight enough, or gender conforming enough.
But the truth of this story has never been to teach us that we have reason to be ashamed of ourselves! The truth of the story of the Fall is that we never had any good reason to be ashamed of ourselves; we never had any reason to be embarrassed about being naked; we never had any reason to be unhappy with who we are… until we listened to a lie! The truth of this story has always been to show us that God made us with nothing to be ashamed of - naked, and beautiful, and unashamed. Shame came to us when we believed a lie. And we believed the lie because we had already begun to forget that we are already like God in so many ways; we already bear God’s image and God’s likeness. We have been filled with God’s breath, and we are meant to live in God’s love.
Everything is always happening everywhere, and there are serpents repeating that old lie to us over and over, even today, trying to make us forget that we are made in God’s likeness, with the suggestion that God is keeping something from us. Jesus heard the same old thing himself in the wilderness, and he could tell you that the serpent has not given up; he knows; he’s dealt with him face to face.
There are serpents who want to shame you when you open your eyes and look at yourself and see yourself naked, when you see yourself for who you are, who God made you to be. The serpents tell you that God was not telling you the truth, and that he’s just trying to prevent you from reaching your own god-like potential.
But this is a lie! God has always been trying to keep you from having any reason to be ashamed of yourself. God made you naked and beautiful, in his own image and likeness - and there is nothing and no one else like you in the world! God made you unashamed and beautiful in your nakedness, and God has always wanted to keep you that way. And anyone who tells you differently is lying to you!
Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
26 February 2023
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia
The Temptation of Eve by William Blake