respectfully, i say to thee

i'm aware that you're cheatin'

A sermon on the creation and fall of Adam and Eve:

In these days of COVID, Amanda and I have taken no small amount of pleasure by dusting off old records and giving them another spin. 

Lately, we’ve been playing Diana Ross’ album, “Diana,” nearly non-stop. As you may know, the first track on this excellent album is the outstanding single, Upside Down. 

“Upside down / Boy, you turn me / Inside out / and round and round,” Diana sings. Celebrating that her world has been flipped on its head! 

As Diana and Nile Rodgers swagger and strut their way through the song, it’s clear that although it may be disorienting to be turned upside down, inside out, and round and round. It’s the best kind of disorienting.

Which I reckon you have your own hunch about. After all, isn’t that why you’re searching out the Word?

If you’re anything like me, all week you’ve been trying to do everything in your power to keep a handle on your time. Scheduling. Budgeting. Watching the clock. And the like.

And, if you’re anything like me, it’s also not working all that well! On the best days, it’s exhausting. On the worst days, it’s a disaster. And most days, it’s just not that much of a way to live. 

Our regimented and organized little lives are just that, little. Like Adam and Eve in the garden, we trade untold adventures in God’s good care for the illusion of our own control. 

Which is all Sin ever is. 

The fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, whatever else it is, represents to Adam and Eve nothing less than control. The means to play God in their own life.

As the serpent tempts, “…for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God.”

The trespass isn’t disobedience, per se. It’s the fruit of doubt. The inSINuation that God can’t be trusted. That God holds back. That it’s our job to handle our own lives. 

Taking that bait, Adam and Eve reach for the fruit. And it turns to ashes in their mouth. By trying to secure their own fate, Adam and Eve undo it. Hoping to be like God, they realize they’re not. And in the process, they get a glimpse of what only God can manage, their vulnerability. 

Adam and Eve’s action doesn’t change anything. But now everything looks differently. Now, instead of seeing a paradise, they see only a wilderness—a wilderness where everyone is for themselves. 

By trying to control their own lives, Adam and Eve have only made them smaller. 

Which we all get. Don’t we? Our efforts to try and keep a handle on our lives are just another way we reach for the fruit of trying to play God. But it never works out for us. Does it? 

Instead of increasing our power, we just make our world smaller. It’s not much of a way to live. 

But, this sobering realization actually puts you at an exciting CROSSroad!

The temptation at this point is to try and repair the breach made by Adam and Eve ourselves. Isn’t it? But you have to wonder, how is that any different from rehashing the original transgression all over again? Trying to control our own little world ourselves. 

The way forward, you see, isn’t forward at all. It’s backward! Or, more accurately, it’s upside down, inside out, and round and round. 

Like that hilarious episode of Seinfeld, where George goes against every one of his natural inclinations to magnificent results, you must go against your intuition, too! Instead of reaching up to try and be like God, look down! Down to where God has promised to meet you in Jesus Christ! At another tree. The great tree of reversal. The tree that turns death to life; the cross…

Right after Jesus is anointed for ministry in his baptism on our behalf, where does the Spirit send him? …Yes! The wilderness. 

And what does he do there? … Right again! Resist the serpent’s temptations! 

Jesus, by his obedience, transforms the wilderness of Sin into the paradise of his righteousness! 

And you, by your baptism into him, have received nothing less! In Jesus, the path to Eden has been cleared FOR you!

In baptism, God has adopted YOU into the holy family! Now you are no longer an heir to Adam and Eve and their graveyard plot. Now YOU are an heir of Jesus and his righteousness. With a full share of his paradise inheritance, too!

…Look down. This promise is transforming the wilderness of trying to make it on your own into the paradise of every one of God’s promises! Isn’t it?

Or, maybe it isn’t. Maybe you’re still trying to make heads or tails of it all. Sermons are like that sometimes. You don’t land until later. But, when you do, you’ll be just like Ms. Ross, turned upside down, inside out, and round and round!

…Yes, that old serpent will still come around whispering all those worn out “what if’s” in your ear. And seeing as you still share Adam and Eve’s ancestry, you’ll take the bait. 

Just like every time in your past, though, your efforts will fail. They’ve been subjected to futility. (Rom. 8:20) But, they’ve been subjected to futility, not in a curse, but hope! The hope of Jesus’ great reversal.

And, when you come back to Jesus’ tree of life after yet another week of failure Jesus will enter into that wilderness all over again. Just like he is now. And there he will do what he does every time, transform it by his righteousness into his very paradise!

You cannot out-sin Jesus’ redemption!

As the sheer goodness, fullness, and completion of this promise lands in your lap and sends you spinning, know it is no void you’re sent spinning into. No, you are sent directly into the pierced hands of Jesus Christ, your Savior! Jesus, who has promised not to lose a single one of the sheep his Father has entrusted him with. And who has promised to hold you in the palm of his hand!

It’s a bit disorienting, I know. But, don’t you have to sing it’s the best thing that could have ever happened to you?!?

“I said, upside down you’re turnin’ me / You’re giving love instinctively / Round and round you’re turnin’ me / Upside down / Boy, you turn me / Inside out and / Round and round.”

Go, it’s nothing less than the pleasant pastures of the Lord’s promises blossoming up from underneath you. Have fun