Genesis begins with two creation stories. These stories are so different as to be irreconcilable. Because neither account was written to tell us how things came to be but rather to address the metaphysical and theological question “Why is there something rather than nothing,” there is no need to reconcile them.1
In fact, any attempt to blend these narratives into a single, unified account does violence to the sacred text and drains both accounts of their revelatory value. Literalism is the enemy of the scriptural interpretation. This is why the only way these two narratives are contradictory is if you read them in a literal, flat, two-dimensional way.
God did not drop the Bible out of heaven one day. The "Bible," a word that just means "book," is a collection of texts. The various books that make up the Bible were written over roughly a thousand years. Among the books of the Bible, sometimes even within the same book- Genesis is a good example of this, one finds various genres of literature: poetry, aphorisms, historical writings, novellas, etc. As with any other text, how you read the Bible is determined, at least in part, by the genre of what you’re reading.
The first creation story, which is the one with which you’re probably the most familiar, the one that frames creation occurring over six days followed by the sabbath, is a beautiful Hebrew poem. Nonetheless, it is interesting to note that the order of creation set forth in this first biblical creation account exhibits an evolutionary structure. God creates the heavens and earth. God then separates day from night, followed by causing dry land to emerge from the watery abyss.
At this point, beginning with its simplest forms, life begins to emerge, culminating with the creation of human beings, who, together as male and female, are “made” in God’s image and likeness. The distinction between being “begotten” and “made” that we profess in the Creed, in which we confess that Jesus Christ is “begotten” of and not “made” by the Father, indicates that he is “true God from true God.”2 In short, Jesus, despite being borne of the Virgin Mary, is not a creature.
By contrast, human beings, while made in God’s image and likeness, are “made” and not “begotten.” We are creatures. Our creatureliness cannot be overcome. We become God’s children through Jesus Christ when we are reborn through the waters of baptism. It is for this that we are made and redeemed. Baptism makes explicit what is implicit in everyone, highlighting the fact we are made in God’s image and intended to live in the divine likeness.
While the imago Dei (i.e., God’s image) which constitutes the humanity of each and every person, is ineradicable, our likeness to God is lost through sin. This divine likeness is restored by Christ through grace. This why in our second reading Saint Paul insists: “For if by the transgression of the one, the many died, how much more did the grace of God and the gracious gift of the one man Jesus Christ overflow for the many.”3
But the first part of our first reading today is taken from the second creation account. For lack of a better word, this account is the more “primitive” of the two. It is at the beginning of the third chapter of Genesis that the two stories converge. The picture painted in the inspired text before the ancestral sin is a world in communion. God and human beings have an immediate, that is, unmediated relationship. They speak to God and God speaks directly to them. There is a deep unity between the woman and the man as well as harmony between people and the rest of nature.
The “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” is symbolic. It symbolizes our creatureliness. It symbolizes that we are not gods, let alone God. The dialogue of the serpent with the woman is very instructive about how temptation works. The serpent asks the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You shall not eat from any of the trees in the garden’?”4 Nothing could be further from the truth, as the woman’s response indicates:
We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; it is only about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden that God said, ‘You shall not eat it or even touch it, or else you will die 5At this point, the serpent, who symbolizes the devil, tells the biggest lie ever told. In addition to telling the woman she will not die if she eats the fruit, the serpent insists: “God knows well when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, who know good and evil.”6 This, my friends, is the temptation that not only resulted in the original sin but in every sin in the history of the world! The original sin is rejecting your creatureliness and seeking to become your own god. Being your own god allows you to determine for yourself what is good and what is evil.
As soon as the woman and the man ate the fruit everything changed. The state of original grace, or communion, was lost. This is demonstrated in our reading by the instantaneous change in how they saw each other. While they had been naked and unashamed, they were suddenly naked and ashamed. They felt the need to cover themselves.7
Rather than fasting and praying in a lush garden, Jesus went into the wilderness, into the desert for forty days and forty nights. By resisting everything the devil threw at him, our Lord overcame human disobedience. As Saint Paul, in our epistle reading, insists: “just as through one transgression condemnation came upon all, so, through one righteous act, acquittal and life came to all.”8
Do not be misled, the temptations Jesus faced were real temptations. To believe that he was utterly impervious to temptation is to deny his humanity, which is heresy. It’s important to know what is presented to us as Gospel today is not the enactment of a cosmic puppet show, a scenario in which the outcome was never in doubt. God is the ultimate risk-taker. “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses,” the Scriptures tell us, “but one who has similarly been tested in every way, yet without sin.”9
Our Elect- Rachael, Stephanie, Amber, and Sawyer- are listening to and heeding the voice of God. As a result, they are on their way to the sacraments of Christian Initiation: baptism, confirmation, and Eucharist. By these sacraments, they will be restored the state of original grace, the state of communion, in which God created us to live.
Lent is a season of grace, not a season during which you try to get back into God’s good graces through strenuous effort. The apostle assures us that “the gift is not like the result of the one who sinned. For after one sin there was the judgment that brought condemnation; but the gift, after many transgressions, brought acquittal.”10 Repentance and the good works that flow from it is an act of gratitude for the love God freely lavishes on you in and through Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Be assured that right now, strongly affirming “our goodness and [with a] gentle understanding of our weakness, God is loving us… this moment, just as we are and not as we should be.”11 “Eucharist” means thanksgiving. We gather together to thank God and offer ourselves to him again. Because of Christ Jesus, we are confident our offering is acceptable.
What the Scriptures teach us on this First Sunday of Lent is that our own feeble attempts at obedience cannot save us. We are saved by Jesus, who was obedient even unto “ to death, even death on a cross.”12 Because of Jesus’s obedience unto death,
God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father13
1 See Genesis 1:2-2:3 and Genesis 2:4-25.↩
2 Roman Missal, "The Order of Mass," sec. 18.↩
3 Romans 5:15.↩
4 Genesis 3:1.↩
5 Genesis 3:2-3.↩
6 Genesis 3:5.↩
7 Genesis 2:25; Genesis 3:7.↩
8 Romans 5:18.↩
9 Hebrews 4:15.↩
10 Romans 5:16.↩
11 Brennan Manning, Ruthless Trust: The Ragamuffin’s Path to God, 19.↩
12 Philippians 2:8.↩
13 Philippians 2:9-11.↩
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