Worship
Service for September 15, 2024
Prelude
Announcements:
Call to Worship
L: O God, we come into Your courts with
praise and thanksgiving!
P: We come in celebration and song.
L: We come into Your courts with praise and
thanksgiving!
P: We come as those who have received
blessing upon blessing.
L: We come into Your courts with praise and
thanksgiving!
P: We come in celebration and song.
Opening Hymn – Holy, Holy,
Holy #138/3
Prayer of Confession
We confess that we find Your
medicine hard to swallow. The quick
fixes of this world are so much more pleasant, leaving us free to go back to
our usual routines. But Your medicine is
powerful. And if we take it, it will
remake and renew our lives. It will
re-orient us to You and to You alone.
Turn us toward Your love for justice and true worship. Forgive our sins, for which You weep. Forgive our hesitation. Grant us courage to choose You as our
physician of the soul, and to serve You and You alone. (Silent prayers are offered) AMEN.
Assurance of Pardon
L: The God of salvation, the God who weeps
for us and for our world, is the God whose compassion comes speedily to meet us,
and to forgive us.
P: Thanks be to God for this saving faith. AMEN!
Gloria Patri
Affirmation of Faith/Apostles’
Creed
Pastoral Prayer and Lord’s
Prayer
Hymn – Open My Eyes that I May See #324/563
Scripture Reading:
First Scripture Reading – Genesis
3:20-4:17
Second Scripture Reading – Mark
8:28-37
Sermon
Garden
of Eden vs. Land of Nod
(based
on Genesis 3:20-4:17)
Last week I began a series on the
scripture passages that have made a transformational impact on my faith journey
which started when I was about 12 years old.
This series will include passages from my Confirmation Class all the way
up to about a year when I found passages with a new interpretation. Last week, I began that series with my
Confirmation Class and the very beginning text of Genesis. Genesis, Chapters 1 and 2 included two
different creation stories and the impact that those two different stories had
on my interpretation of scripture, understanding of scripture, and the
relationship between scripture and the world we live in. It was extremely impactful during those
formative years of faith.
But,
there was more to come. Week 2 in our
Confirmation Class comes around and all I’ve been thinking about for a week was
the idea that maybe that first Day 1, Day 2 Creation Story that I’d always been
taught wasn’t the only truth about Creation.
Perhaps the second story we read in Chapter 2 was also true even though
it told a very different order and even timeline of when and how things were
created.
Our
homework assignment was to finish reading Chapter 2 and to read Chapter 3 about
the disobedience of Adam and Eve. During
the second class, we spent the majority of our time talking about this original
sin. About Adam and Eve being thrown out
of the Garden of Eden and their penalty for having disobeyed God. In class we talked about our own disobedience
and how the rebellious nature of ours to “do our own thing” regardless of what
God wants for us could be traced all the way back to the beginning of time. That this was now part of our DNA, to rebel
against God. Hmmm..
I
thought about that. And, I had problems
with that, too. If sin was just a
personality problem or something that you could change, then it could be
something that you could work on like changing the style of your hair. Junior High was that time in life when you
experimented on things like that. A lot
of the boys in my class were getting perms and suddenly having curly hair. I thought about it briefly, but realized I’d
just look stupid, as most of them did, too.
But, if sin was part of our DNA, then there wasn’t anything I could do
about it, like there wasn’t anything I could do about how short or tall I’d
become. How tall or short I’d grow was
already determined for me by my DNA – which as most of my peers were beginning
to soar over me, I really did wish I could change. But, if sin was like that then there wasn’t
anything I could about being bad or making poor choices or…sinning. Then why bother trying to be good if I
couldn’t “control” myself? Well, that
didn’t make any sense, and I didn’t like that idea at all – not for me and not
for society, in general. In my mind that
only created a doomsday kind of mentality.
And I remembered reading in other places of scripture, particularly in
the New Testament, that Christ taught us lessons about making better choices,
about being more holy, about our Sunday School Teachers telling us to be more
like Christ. So, in that sense, sin had
to be a choice, just like being good had to be a choice. And if that was true, than the fall of
Adam and Eve the original sin of disobedience, wasn’t written into our DNA, as
the curriculum would have us believe.
My
head and heart mulled over this for the next week.
Then
came week three.
During the 3rd week we were
reading Genesis 4 and the story of Cain and Abel. About Cain killing his brother Abel due to
jealousy – how God accepted Abel’s sacrifice, but found Cain’s sacrifice
wanting. I had questions about that,
too, but skipped over that for the moment.
Because there it was, perhaps the
proof that sin really is written into our DNA, the story of Cain and Abel, the
very next story in scripture after Adam and Eve are thrown out of the Garden of
Eden, we have this story of sin. There
was a cross-reference to a passage in Romans 3:10 and passages from various
Psalms. “None is righteous, no not one;
no one understands, no one seeks for God.
All have turned aside, together they have gone wrong; no one does good,
not even one.” We began learning a
little bit about John Calvin during week two, as well. I don’t remember much of that any longer, all
I remember is that he was sited as the Father of Presbyterianism and that he
had an understanding of human beings as totally depraved.
I daydreamed in class. I thought of some of the other familiar
stories I’d learned in all those Sunday School Classes, VBS lessons, and kid’s
club meetings. Two of my favorites were
Noah and the Ark and Joseph and his coat of many colors. I quickly turned a few chapters ahead as the
class was discussing this total depravity idea.
Chapter 6: “But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord…Noah was a
righteous man, blameless in his generation.”
The previous year our entire Sunday School had done a rendition of
Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat.
I couldn’t remember Joseph doing anything wrong either. Everyone around him did bad things to him,
but he was also righteous, blameless.
I came back to the present and the
class was discussing Cain and Abel. My
conclusion, Cain made a choice. No one
forced his hand to kill his brother, it wasn’t written into his DNA to kill his
brother. No, he got mad and chose to
kill his brother. Just like when I got
mad at my sister when I was younger and chose to do something not nice to her. As I got older, I was learning to make better
choices.
Nope, regardless of our depravity, we
choose sin, just like we choose to do good.
These Confirmation Class lessons were putting me in a bad mood. I felt like a was struggling against each and
every lesson, against what the curriculum was teaching us, against what the
Sunday School teachers were saying.
Mr. Matthews could tell, I guess from
my body language, that I wasn’t buying it.
So, he asked, “Walter, what do you think?” I said, “I don’t agree, I think we have a
choice. I don’t think sin is written
into our DNA, I think we choose whether to be good or not, just like Adam and
Eve chose to eat from the tree. Nothing
changed about that when we were banished from the Garden of Eden. Cain was mad at his brother and chose to do
something harmful to him. We have the
very same choice each and every moment.
Maybe it became harder because we know more, perhaps because we know
that we have choices. But, no, I think
we get to choose.”
Mr. Matthews was smiling and nodding,
then said, “Ok, everyone, your homework assignment this week is to write an
argument based on scripture whether or not we choose to sin.” Most of my classmates grumbled and looked at
me glaringly.
But, class wasn’t done yet. We continued to read into Chapter 4
When
Cain complains to God about being afraid of being killed by other people
because of what he’d done, God reassures him that no harm would ever come to
him as he’d mark him for safety, my ears picked up a little and something again
inside me started to crank. Another
question, a problem, was just on the periphery of forming and we get to verse
16, where Cain went away from the presence of the Lord, and settled in the Land
of Nod, east of Eden. And here it comes,
verse 17, “Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch.”
Wait, full stop – Where did Cain’s wife
come from? More importantly, if Adam and
Eve were the first people on earth and they only had two sons Cain and Abel and
one of them is now dead, where did all these other people come from?
I make an audible sigh. I don’t remember reading scripture to be this
hard. What in the world was going
on? I wanted to go back to the simple
Sunday School lessons that made sense, that were easy. What bible had I been reading all this time?
Tentatively, my hand goes up. Mr. Matthews looks at me, “I know what you’re
going to ask.” He sighs, “Go
ahead.” Taking a deep breath, hoping
there was an easy explanation, hoping that this was explained somewhere else in
scripture that I just didn’t remember reading, “Where did Cain’s wife come
from? And this land of Nod, where did
all those people come from?”
Mr. Matthews says, “That would be a
great question to ask Rev. Allen.”
At coffee hour that Sunday morning, I
again, get a cup of juice and a cookie, find my sister and look for my
parents. This time, they are talking to
both Dal Matthews AND Rev. Allen.
Rev. Allen says to me, as I approach,
“So, it sounds like you have a bunch of questions from Confirmation
Class.” I nod my head and tentatively
say, “I do.” “Why don’t you come by my
office some day after school next week.
Okay?” Rev. Allen looks at my mom
and says, “Call the church office and make an appointment.” He looks at me and says, “I’ll see you next
week.”
Thursday afternoon, I’m in Rev. Allen’s
office.
I
start by saying, “Ok, so far, I really just have one question, I’m working the
other ones out on my own.”
“Ok,
what is it?” he asks.
“In
Genesis, chapter 4, we read that after Cain killed his brother Abel because he
was jealous of him or angry at God for not accepting his sacrifice and I guess
I have a question about that too, but the more important question is this; Cain
found a wife in the land of Nod – where did his wife come from?”
“Well,”
Rev Allen began, “the short answer is that nobody really knows because the
Bible itself doesn’t tell us. The longer
answer is more complicated because various theologians and scholars have come
up with basically two main ideas. The
first idea is that Adam and Eve had many children, but only some of them were
named like Cain and Abel and you’ll also read about Seth who came later. The reason why these children are named and
perhaps not others is because these children had a role to play in the formation
of the Israelites, the people of God.
It’s extremely important to the Jewish faith that they can trace their
roots back to Adam and Eve. There are
lists of these family trees in several places in the Bible. You’ve probably already read the first list
in Genesis and there will be more of them.
There’s also a long list in Matthew for the heritage of Mary and
Joseph. Also, in scripture, they rarely
list any girl’s names. It’s always just
the boys. Again, this was just due to
the culture. Adam and Eve lived a very
long time, something like 800 years, so imagine how many children they might
have had, then how many children their children had and so on and so
forth. Back then, their directive from
God was to be fruitful and multiply, so it was okay for relatives to marry and
have children together. Eventually,
those relatives became more and more distant from one another.
The
second main idea is that perhaps Adam and Eve were simply representatives of
the first man and first woman. If you
look at the Hebrew meaning of their names this becomes a logical possibility. Adam, whose name in Hebrew comes from the
word Adamah, means “dirt”. Adam then
means “son of the dirt”. God took the
dirt and breathed life into it. And Eve
in Hebrew means “to give life”. If you
remember, Adam called her that because she became the mother of all
living. Perhaps they just represented
all the first men and first women that God created to populate the earth. That is certainly a more complicated answer,
but one that I think you can ponder about.
The
Bible doesn’t hold the answers to everything.
It’s not a science book or a history book. It’s more than that. The Bible is a book about our faith and about
our relationship to God. Because of
that, it’s full of stories about people and their relationships to God and to
one another and the lessons we learn about those relationships and the people they
were. Some will be good and some will be
bad. The important point to remember
will be how those stories and those relationships were resolved. Keep in mind two things; one, what was the
point of the story and two, in the end what was their relationship to God.”
Because
of Rev. Allen’s explanation for me that day, I’ve been a critical thinker of
the Bible since I was 12. It helped me
put the whole purpose of the Bible in perspective and helped shape my faith.
May
the words of this sermon and the meditation of my heartfelt offering be a boon
to your spirit and to your own growth in faith.
Thanks be to God. AMEN.
Offertory –
Doxology –
Prayer of Dedication –
Closing
Hymn – Now
Thank We All Our God #555/788
Benediction –
Postlude
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