Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: From Genesis to Jesus

The First Sunday after Christmas Day
December 30, 2007

The Reverend Paul R. Abernathy, Rector

I love the Genesis story of humankind’s Fall from grace in the Garden of Eden.^[1] I simply love it! Not because I like focusing on other people’s problems – even less on their foibles (the more blameworthy, the better!) – as a way to avoid facing and addressing my own. But rather because this story – although the events of which it purports to tell are ahistorical, unreal – is historical, is real, having been written and preserved in human time and space. Even more, as a story, it is a grand metaphor, filled with symbolic meaning about our human existence. That’s why I love it. Still more, because it reflects so well, so accurately some of the most salient, if also unsavory characteristics of our common humanity.

To look at the Genesis story, then, is to encounter the truth about ourselves. And sometimes, even when it’s most painful, it’s best to know the truth. To look at the Genesis story is to be like Snow White’s stepmother standing before the magic mirror, asking “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is fairest of them all?” and longing to be told, “‘Tis you,” yet, hearing only the sad refrain, “Ain’t you.”

So, looking into the Genesis mirror, what do we see?

By the way, remember, this story is about us, not God. So, we can leap over the issue that the story seems to raise about the serpent, that cunning tempter and distorter of truth who, after all, was God’s creation and what that might suggest about divine duplicity. Even more, we can bypass the point the story seems to make about the commonsense of a God who only goes out walking “at the time of the evening breeze.” Still more, we need not focus on the fact that God must ask questions and, thereby, trouble ourselves or, depending on how traditional our beliefs, be troubled by this depiction of a decidedly non-omniscient God who apparently possesses deep pockets of ignorance about the creation God created. No. For again, this story isn’t about God, but us.

So, now, let’s look. What do we see?

Sin. Please, let me remind us that when we talk about sin, we are not talking about the intrinsic evil, the inherent badness of our humanness and, therefore, our utter inability to do what God desires.

Sin, derived from the Greek, hamartia, literally meaning, “to miss the mark,” has to do not with iniquity, but inauthenticity. The mark we miss is not the perfection of doing God’s will, but, rather, our failing to be and to become fully human, our being and doing far less love and justice of which we quite naturally are capable.

The Genesis story, then, reflects the characteristic ways that sin appears.

When the man and woman ate, their eyes were opened. They discovered their nakedness and clothed themselves.

So it is for us, when the innocence of a natural state of trusting vulnerability is lost (and that, for all of us, right soon!), we, afraid of our nakedness, and even worse, ashamed of who we are, hide from others and ourselves.

When the God figure came, found, and questioned them – “What have you done and why?!” – Adam blamed the woman and God and Eve, the serpent. Neither could claim personal responsibility. Neither would be held personally accountable.

So it is for us, when caught in the glaring light of our acts of commission and omission, how difficult it can be to see our part and to confess the hand our hands have played in the mess we’ve made.

When the God figure rendered judgment, the penalty that stills my heart and chills my blood the most is the command, which is the terrible opposite of the trusting innocence of vulnerability, that the woman be ruled – humiliated, dominated – by the man.

I can ne’er forget many years ago attending a lecture on Genesis by our own Verna Dozier. She sat surrounded by a standing room only audience. After her lecture, she fielded questions. The first to speak, a priest, asked, really stated his belief that the Genesis story verified that the divine order for human relations involves the subordination of women. The room was hushed. Verna, her head bowed for a moment, her hands folded in her lap, looked up and across the room at the man and said, “Yes, but that was a condition after the Fall. It was never a part of creation’s design.”

So, after the Fall, it has been. Peoples and cultures throughout time unto this very day, have created and maintained gender disparities that deprive women of the opportunities – relational, educational, vocational – that make for fulfilling life. It is no surprise, then, that of the Millennium Development Goals, those eight United Nations statements concerning the world’s major challenges, the third is to promote gender equality and to empower women.

What do we see in the Genesis mirror? Fear and shame of our vulnerability. Rejection of our responsibility and accountability. Hunger and thirst for dominance.

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is fairest of them all? Genesis tells us that it ain’t us.

So, where are we left? If all we can see is a dismal reflection of an unalterable reality, then, perhaps, despair. That, at least, would show that we’re paying attention and not in denial. But we are in Christmastide, the twelve day season in which the church celebrates the birth of Jesus – a new, our new creation story.

John the evangelist in the prologue of his gospel account,^[2] seeking to share a Hebrew story with a Greek speaking and thinking world made a number of startling assertions. The chief of which is that the Word, the divine logos, the creating, animating power of the cosmos took foul, frail human flesh.^[3] Yet, for my purposes this morning, John’s most stirring declaration is that this Word in flesh, this true light coming into the world gives us power to become God’s children.

I take this to mean that the Jesus story, the story of the one who is love and justice incarnate, is another mirror. A mirror in which we see the reflection not merely of who we are meant to be, but are not yet. But rather the reflection of who we already are by virtue of being God’s children, that is, created, born, alive in this world. The reflection of who we are in all of our on-target-making-the-mark authentic humanness.

The image we see reflected through the mirror of the Jesus story is just as true, just as now as that of the mirror of Genesis. The question always is which do we believe about our human nature? And, even more, which will we follow?

Choose.

[1] Genesis 3.1-23 is one of four biblical passages appointed for the Service of Christmas Lessons and Carols observed on this day at St. Mark’s.

[2] John 1.1-18 was also appointed to be read this day.

[3] John 1.14