but on a bright fall morning i'm with it

i stood a little while with it

A reading from Genesis 2:

Seeing as we're dealing with fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, let’s not beat around the bush… 

We all KNOW Adam and Eve did eat from that forbidden tree; the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

What we don’t know, though—and we hate not knowing things—is why Adam and Eve were forbidden from eating the fruit from that particular tree.

After all, it’s fruit from the tree of knowledge! 

…Knowledge of good and evil, yes. But still knowledge! And what could ever be wrong with knowledge?!?

Knowledge is one of our most prized virtues. Isn’t it?

We even have an adage, a proverb, about it. Those who don’t know their history are, what? Yes, doomed to repeat it.

And that sounds good… 

But if that proverb were on a true or false test, if we wanted to get the question right, we know we’d have to mark a “false” next to that saying. False! That adage is patently not true!

…Leslie Jamison in her memoir about sobriety says that all her self-awareness in the world couldn’t release her from her compulsions. 

Her knowledge, vast as it was, was unable to free her from that evil or make her choose the good!

Understanding the problem rarely helps us solve the part of the problem that’s really the problem. 

And we know all about that. Don’t we?

It doesn’t have to be capital “h” history we repeat over and over again although we know better. Does it? 

We all have places in our lives, our history where we have learned better; but STILL find ourselves going back to and REpeating all those same, old errors all over again!

…I know I have…

The truth is, the proverb, “those who don’t know their history are doomed to repeat it,” may be well-meant, but it’s completely UNtrue!

We know plenty. BUT, despite all our knowledge, we’re still the same old, error-prone creatures we’ve always been! Aren’t we?

So here’s the first thing to know when it comes to dealing with the knowledge of good and evil: Knowing what’s good and what’s evil ISN’T enough! 

Knowing the difference between good and evil DOESN’T presume the power, the ability to choose the good and spurn the evil.

Which is what we really need. Isn’t it?

Knowledge is well and good, perhaps the best we can aspire to; but to solve our age old dilemma of why we choose evil and not good we need something more.

…And this fact of our existence actually helps you understand why God forbid Adam and Eve, and their kind—us, from eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil!

It wasn’t because God was holding back. No, that’s just the serpent’s old lie all over again. 

No, the really reason God forbid our kind from eating the fruit from that tree is because we were never meant to bear that burden to begin with! 

It is out of our class, as you might say…

Just knowing good and evil only makes matters worse. Doesn’t it? All it helps us understand is how severe our dilemma is!

*Which is all Adam and Eve learned upon eating the fruit, too. How naked. How helpless they were…

Adam and Eve’s first mistake was to try and enroll in a class they were never meant to take! The business of good and evil is God’s business. And the moment we try and take that into our own hands, things go sideways real quick!

And so long as we insist on trying to pass the exam, we too are resigned to the same, old sad fate of Adam and Eve! Life upon the perpetual treadmill of good and evil. 

Which was never meant to have any place in the Eden God has gone ahead and prepared for us, sheerly out of God’s GOODness! 

Get this: the knowledge God wants most for you to have isn’t the ability to correctly understand between good and evil. It’s to have a promise you can stand under when, despite knowing better, you’ve failed to choose the good! It’s a promise you can take refuge in when, despite knowing better, you’ve chosen evil yet again!

And this situation you find yourself in time after time, it puts you in the company of the folks who make up Genesis. 

Genesis is all about this business of good and evil, you know. It’s what Genesis begins and ends with.

Adam and Eve start the whole thing off by raising their hands to elect to take a course they were never intended to take. 

And then, character after character tries to pass the exam. And in the process, usually only succeed in making matters worse for everyone. Until good and evil butt heads in the conclusion to Genesis.

The drama between Joseph and his brothers who sold him up the river is coming to a head. And although everyone is reunited, the business of the brother’s past evil still hangs over everyone’s heads. 

So Joseph’s brothers beg him not to hold a grudge against them. And at that, over tears, Joseph full of wide-eyed wonder at God’s GOODness, chocks out, “What you intended for evil, God used for good.”

In that last review, when it comes to good and evil we don’t know an “A” from an “F!”

The most important lesson when it comes to good and evil is to know it’s God’s business, and the smartest thing you can do is commend the whole matter into God’s capable hands!  

Which God has promised to do!
It’s how the rivers flow and the crops grow. In Eden, and east of Eden, too…

Faith is an education, yes. But it’s an education all its own! It’s a strange education. An education that’s upside-down to our ways of thinking! An education that is completed only when we’ve flunking out!

The problem when it comes to our knowledge of good and evil is that we fool ourselves with it, every time! Knowing good and evil, we start BELIEVING we have the power to choose the good and spurn the evil. 

…In other words, we start fooling ourselves into the thinking we can do God’s business. 

But, as story after story in the Bible witnesses to, and our own lives attest to, it’s an erroneous belief!

So God, in all the wisdom thereof, has elected to do something truly UN-wise! Up-end our knowledge of good and evil! Put it on its head! 

Put it on its head by putting all our evil upon the One who is head of our salvation!

At the cross Jesus took all our failing marks upon himself. He suffered the expulsion from the school of good and evil on our behalf.

But, in his resurrection he established a new school! Or rather, an old school! The school of Eden! The school where all God’s good gifts are handed over freely without any business of good or evil!

To our way of thinking the cross, Death and failure are only ever evil things. But God apparently flunked the class of good and evil, too! Because for God these are the places where the matter of good and evil is put to rest once and for all!

And knowing good and evil will never help you understand this! 

No, the only way to grasp this upside-down goodness is to flunk out of the school of good and evil yourself!

…Which, if you’re anything like me, you have plenty of low marks to your name when it comes to good and evil.

We’ve been going along thinking the only way to make it into God’s good graces is to pass the exam of good and evil. But God in all God’s foolishness has made our failures the means whereby we’re made into pupils of the school, not of good and evil, but Eden!

Here’s a foolish thing, when you finally know you were never meant to understand good and evil anyway, you’re most ready to hear the promise you can, not understand, but stand under!

The business of good and evil, it’s God’s business. Leave it to God. God has promised to handle it, after all. 

And here’s how: God, in Jesus Christ, apart from any of your good and in spite of all your evil, gives to you the innocence from way back in Eden! As I declare to you, + in the name of Jesus Christ, I the entire forgiveness of all your sins!

You hear what that makes you? Innocent! Innocent, knowing NOTHING of good and evil, just that you have a God who promises to handle that whole matter for you!

From the tree of life God planted in the middle of Eden, to the tree of life God planted in the middle of Golgotha, to the tree of life God planted in the middle of the new Jerusalem; God has always wanted you to know where to get the fruit, not from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, but the tree of life! Eternal life!

And his name is Jesus! And on account of your baptism he’s all your’s! And his innocence, too!

Better than knowing good and evil, is simply knowing how much we don’t know when it comes to these things. But even better than that knowledge, is to quit the game altogether! To flunk out! To know NOTHING!

Nothing except Christ and him crucified! 

Drop out of the class of good and evil and play hooky with your savior Jesus Christ! 

Here, at this altar rail God invites you to sneak out of the class of good and evil once and for all! And to instead simply receive what God has planned to give you all along! The fruit of life, Jesus Christ and his innocence!  

Beloved, there’s nothing more you need to know, in Christ you already KNOW everything you'll ever need!