You know, never in my whole life did I think I would ever see the things I that saw today.  Boy and how, it’s been quite a day, I can tell you!  What did you think?

Oh, that’s right: you were out in the vineyard since early this morning, picking grapes for the master.  So, I guess I’d better tell you the whole thing from the beginning.

You remember the steward telling us that today was the day when the master was going to come out from the city to settle accounts?  That’s right, I guess he was going to do you after you guys came back from the vineyard.  Yeah, I know, it’s been a long time.

Well, this one fellow – you know, the guy with a swelled head, always thinking he’s some hoity toity bigshot?  Parading around showing off his nice clothes?  Yeah, him!  Well, now we know where he got the money for all that nice stuff!

You shoulda seen his face when he was brought in to the master!  He was the first one!   Hee hee hee!  It was just too good!  I don’t think he ever imagined the master would actually make him settle up.  Maybe he thought the master had forgotten about him.

Anyway, my jaw just about hit the floor when I heard the steward tell the master how much this bozo’s debt was: 10,000 talents.  10,000 talents!  Can you believe it?  The master couldn’t!  He was angry, I can tell you.  And you know, I think the guy spent all of it.  I have no idea where, you could buy a whole kingdom with that kind of money.  Remember how he’s been calling in the debts us other slaves owe him for the last few months?

So, like I said, the master was already really angry, I think because the steward never told him about the debt.  Then this guy said he didn’t have the money to pay it back.  So the master, he stands up, turns red and starts shouting at the guy.  Then he tells the steward to sell him, his wife, his kids and everything he owns to repay the debt, not that the few thousand denarii you’d get for the sale would do any good against a debt like that!

What’s amazing is this guy is as cheeky as ever.  He falls down on his knees and starts worshipping the master – worshipping him!  I mean, I never saw a bigger suck up in my life.  He grovels, pleads for mercy, tears running down his cheeks, grabs the master’s knees, said he’d name his oldest son after the master, kisses his feet, the whole bit.  Yeah, can you believe it?  I wanted to poke a stick in the guy, the whole thing was absolutely nauseating.

What’s worse, the master buys this guys act. He eats it up!  Really!!  We all knew the master wasn’t the brightest lamp on the block, but come on!

Then comes the part you just won’t believe: the master goes ahead (and I think probably went soft in the head) and forgives the guy’s debt.  The whole thing!  Every last bit of it, down to the last mite!  … And the guy just gets up and walks out of there without a word, and what does our master do?  Nothing!  He just smiles, lets him go, and starts reviewing the accounts of the next guy in line.

Ah, but then the good part.  A little later, after my turn, I went to have lunch in the shade, you know, where everybody hangs out under the fig tree over by the far wall of the barnyard?  And here comes that guy, the one who’d had his debt forgiven.  You should have seen him! …And we thought he was bad before!  The guy was acting like he was the master!  Kicking the old woman and making her give him the best spot; then taking the best piece of meat away from her, too.  I could hardly stand being in the same province with the guy!

Yeah, I know –hold on, I’m coming to it!

Then the guy who just had a baby comes up.  You know, he had a rough time the last few months, his wife was sick while she was pregnant, and he had a real hard time scraping together enough money to pay the physician.  Now he’s trying to do both his job and his wife’s because she’s not up to working yet, and the steward isn’t giving him or his family any slack.

Well, the new father gets his lunch and sits down.  Then this other guy, the one with the swelled head, goes over, grabs the new father with both hands and hauls him to his feet.  He starts yelling at him, cursing, choking him, and demands that the new father pay him back what he owes him – 100 denarii – right now.  I was like, be real!  It may not be as big as that stuck up guy’s debt was, but nobody carries that much money around with them!  It’d take any one of us years to pay back a debt that big!  What was Mr. Fat Head thinking, that he was the master?  Unbelievable!

The new father didn’t have that much money either, of course.  So, this guy, he throws him in prison until he can pay the debt.  Now, how’s that going to help?  Not to mention that when the steward finds out he’s in prison and that neither he nor his wife are working in the field, then the stuff is really going to hit the wall, if you take my meaning.

That guy’s fun didn’t last long though.  We all ran up to the house – really! We ran into main hall where the master was, and told him what had happened – yeah, me too.  I don’t know what we were thinking, the master could have whipped or tortured us for coming to the house, let alone interrupting his meal like that.  But, when he heard the story, he got mad like we were afraid he might, but (praise the Lord) not at us!  He had the steward go out and drag that guy into the hall.

Then the master said “You wicked slave, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me.  Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, in the same way that I had mercy on you?”

He didn’t say a thing.  I mean, really, what could the guy say?  Then the master handed him over to the torturers until he could pay back everything he owed him.

Good riddance, but I wonder: I mean, we all knew this guy was a real nut job.  Yet, the whole thing is just too bizarre.  Running up a 10,000 talent debt, and the master didn’t even know, then forgiving the guy?  Then the idiot goes ahead and acts like he’s the master!  I mean, what did he think was going to happen when the master found out about that? And so, when we tell the master about it, he tortures the guy – no surprise there!

But, the master doesn’t even try to reclaim the debt.  Torturing him until he can pay it back? … Never going to happen: that guy’s gonna be in a world of hurt for a long, long time!

You know, the master would’ve done better if he’d just sold the guy and his family, like he said he’d do at first.  I just don’t get it.

 

Copyright (c) 2010, Allen Vander Meulen III, all rights reserved.  I’m happy to share my writings with you, as long as you are not seeking (or getting) financial benefit for doing so, and as long as proper credit for my authorship is given (via mention of my name on your site, or a link back to this site).

Below is the text of a sermon I gave in a class at Theological School on 11/19/2009.  The scripture is Genesis 2:7-9; 2:15-17 & 3:1-7, which recounts the creation of the Garden of  Eden and the eating of the fruit of the “Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil” by Adam and Eve, up to the point where they are “ashamed”, sew fig leaves together to “cover their nakedness” and then try to hide from God.  The reading includes only those scripture verses pertinent to the sermon – others, such as those describing the rivers that flowed out of the Garden of Eden, are omitted.

Many of my readers with a strong knowledge of the Bible will note – and some will probably object – to my using “she” when referring to God, as well as to the use of the name “Yahweh” instead of using only the more traditional consonants (YHWH) or phrase “Lord God”.   I use the name “Yahweh” and pronoun “she” very intentionally here: to emphasize that YHWH as shown in this story is seen as a very personal, relationship oriented sort of God (wouldn’t you know the name of a very personal acquaintance or friend?) and to emphasize that Yahweh’s attributes seen in the scripture we examine here are often traditionally associated with the feminine.

Why No Fence?

You know, the story of Adam and Eve is a great story, but it’s always bothered me.  I mean, come on: if the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil were so darned important, why didn’t God put a fence around it?  I mean seriously: even if the man and woman obeyed, I could easily see one of their kids or grandkids, or great-grandkids “forgetting” and taking a bite.  Without a fence, someone was bound to slip-up eventually.  So, why run the risk?

On the other hand, there was no penalty for eating of the Tree of Life – until we slipped up.  Was God trying to trick us?

Well, let’s step back for a minute and consider the text as a whole.  This particular story, the second of the two “creation narratives” at the start of Genesis, belongs to the “Jahwistic” tradition: identified primarily by its use of the name “Yahweh” when referring to God.

In this narrative, Yahweh is a very hands-on sort of God: unlike the “Priestly” God that we see in the first narrative (in Genesis 1).  God (in Genesis 1) “spoke” the world into being, hovered over the waters and said “Let there be light!”, but Yahweh (In Genesis 2 & 3) doesn’t command things into being, Yahweh gets down and dirty: She lovingly forms us with her own hands, then gently breathes the breath of life into our nostrils.

Yahweh is concerned for us personally, saying “it is not good that the man is alone” and created the woman.  Yahweh isn’t a distant, hands off God.  She talks face to face with the us.  The man and woman, we are told, “heard the sound of Yahweh walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze.”  Yahweh works, walks, talks and breathes.  Yahweh is a very human God.  Yahweh is a very personal God.  Yahweh is a God of Relationship.  Yahweh is a God of Love.

So, what does the type of God that Yahweh is have to do with all this?  Why wasn’t there even a “keep off the tree” warning sign?  Why was it left unguarded, tempting us?

First: its clear God was not trying to trick us.  Nowhere in the Bible is there a case where God “tricks us”.  True, there are many places where God tests us, but such tests are always explicit, never hidden – never a trap.  As James 1:13 states, God never seeks to “ensnare us”.  Yahweh did not “trick” us into eating of that tree.

Still, there had to be a reason for no fence!  My hunch is that it has something to do with the kind of God that Yahweh is.

What kind of relationship can you have if you have no choice about it?  Sure, you can have relationships with a doll, or a toy, or a computer – but they don’t have any choice in the matter, do they?  Such relationships don’t have much going for them because you control both sides of the interaction.  There is no synergy, no freshness, no exploration, no intimacy, no growth. They are relationships that give nothing back.  They are relationships without a future.

If Yahweh controlled every aspect of our relationship with her (which she could easily do), we wouldn’t be much different from that doll, or that toy, or that computer.  At best, we’d be a kind of pet: cuddled, fed and watered, but not an equal, not in charge of our own destiny.

We need a real choice as to whether we will have a relationship with Yahweh.  The fence can’t be there – if it is, we’d never have a choice.  To have a meaningful relationship with God, we have to choose to have it: it cannot be forced upon us.

But, let’s not forget about the other tree, the Tree of Life: it has a role in this story, too.  The Tree of Life was no big deal to the man and the woman.  There were no rules concerning it – Yahweh doesn’t even mention it to them.  It was just another tree – over there, next to the “Knowledge of Good and Evil” one.  There was no reason why they wouldn’t have eaten of it all the time.  They had eternal life in the bag (at least, as long as they hung out in the garden)!

But, we don’t even know how long they were in the Garden.  If you think about it – what would it matter?  With Eternal Life, and no experience with death, time was an unlimited commodity for them: every day was just that – simply another day – one of an infinite number.  There was no need to count them, no need to keep track of them, no need to worry about them.  With Eternal Life, time meant nothing.  It was not a precious commodity.  Phrases like “saving time”, “making time” or even “wasting time” – all of which you and I hear every day – were meaningless.  The man and woman never ran out of time, they never gave time a thought.

Yet, they certainly made choices all the time – whether and what to eat, when to sleep, but their choices were never about the future – they were always about immediate things: after all, they didn’t even worry about what to wear!   They never considered the consequences of their choices, they couldn’t – they hadn’t eaten of the fruit.  They existed purely, and eternally, in the present.  In a sense, they had no future, because their future was identical to their present, and to their past.

In this timeless world, Yahweh was … just there: there was no choice as to whether we wanted a relationship with God – or not.  Without meaningful choice, there was no meaningful relationship.  Yet, Yahweh is a God of Relationship: She would not have created us without providing a path for us to choose to have a meaningful relationship.  There had to be a way to escape eternity.

Let’s call that escape-path the “First Choice” – the choice of whether to eat of the fruit – or not.  But, we had no knowledge of Good and Evil.  Or, to put it another way, we never had to choose between Good and Evil.  We never had to deal with the consequences of making choices.  Good and Evil are always the outcome of choices.  Good and Evil cannot exist unless there are choices, choices with consequences.  That tree is all about knowing the possible consequences of our actions, about choosing between what is Good and what is Bad, about knowing the difference.

Eating of that Tree was the only thing in the Garden for which we’d been told there was a consequence – “In the day you eat of it, you shall die.”  Yet, the man and woman did not know what a “consequence” was: Yahweh was speaking way over their heads: a specific day?  Time?  Death?  What’s that?  I’m sure the man and woman thought: “Hmmm, sounds bad, let’s not go there!”  Time was infinite, so why rush? Why push the boundaries?  Why risk change?

Yet, there was a reason.  The serpent knew what it was: they would “become like God, knowing Good and Evil.”  Eating that fruit meant we’d learn new things: we’d escape from merely existing.  Something new would happen in the never ending cycle of days.  But, to do so, we had to be willing to face what we had never known: change.  We would have to experience limited time, we would have to experience death.

Yahweh knew we would eat of that fruit when we had outgrown the Garden, when we were ready for change.  She did not tell us we’d be cursed if we ate of that fruit, She told us change would happen, that things would be different.  The endless sameness would go away.  We would step into a world where we would have to make choices, we would be able to envision the consequences of our choices, and we would see our choices making a difference in the world: consequences we would have to live with – for Better or Poorer.

Our relationship with Yahweh would change from a one sided, limited relationship to a full one, a two way relationship: one capable of growth and change, one that would produce fruit.  Eating of the fruit marked the point where we changed from being one creature among many, to being capable of having a real relationship with Yahweh.  We escaped from eternity.

Now, we can’t say this escape was all good!  Having choices means we have to live with the choices we make.  We’ll inevitably make bad choices, and will be faced with situations where even the best choice is not good.  It means pain.  It means loss.  It means death.  (I could go on, but would rather not do two sermons at one time!)

But, most importantly, having choices is part of Yahweh’s plan for us.  As we saw: Yahweh is a God of Relationship.  To have relationship with her means being allowed to chose to have a relationship with her.  To make that choice required the man and the woman to make the first choice, of whether to eat the fruit: the choice to have choices.

We cannot Love Yahweh through a fence: we first had to be allowed to escape eternity.  We had to be able to make choices that mattered.  We had to have the choice to Love.

Copyright (c) 2009, Allen Vander Meulen III, all rights reserved.  I’m happy to share my writings with you, as long as you are not seeking (or getting) financial benefit for doing so, and as long as proper credit for my authorship is given (via a credit that mentions my name or provides a link back to this site).