“Boundaries”

Genesis 3:1-7

Please excuse the brevity of today’s sermon. It just couldn’t decide what it wanted to be when it grew up, and thus came to include a sermon within the sermon. Sometimes you just have to hit the delete button a little harder than you originally thought.

A few Christmases ago I had an interesting interchange with our granddaughter Alisa. For whatever reason that sweet little girl turned ornery and defiant that week. She loudly proclaimed to one and all, “You don’t tell me no. You don’t tell me, stop.” To which her Dad- Dad – moi – replied, “I will if I have to.” Boundaries have to be established even, maybe especially, with those we love.

God created humanity and proclaimed us good. God loves us. That love began at our creation. It continues to this day, and will continue into eternity. The creation of Adam and Eve - man and woman – humanity itself is an intentional act of God. We are not some by-product of creation. No, God created our original parents by design. More than that he placed them in the garden, which was a perfect paradise. He intentionally placed them in that paradise because that paradise was where humanity was supposed to be.

In that paradise Adam and Eve had great freedom, including the freedom of total vulnerability. There is no point at which we are more vulnerable than when we’re naked. Over that paradise they had dominion. Within it they were perfectly safe from sin, death, and evil. That was God’s will for them. Their only limitation was that they could not eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That was the one boundary their loving Creator set for them. As long as they didn’t cross it they would remain in right relationship with God and one another.

They were free to cross that boundary if they so chose. But if they chose to do so there would be consequences. Reading God’s warning to them from chapter two, verse 17, “… of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat it you shall die.” How much clearer could God be? He loved them. He wanted only good for them. And in his love he set boundaries.

Enter the serpent. Maybe this serpent was an agent of Satan. Maybe it was Satan himself. That is the long-held belief of classical Christianity. The text doesn’t say. What it does say is that the serpent was more crafty than any other animal that the Lord God had made. He truly was the original silver-tongued devil. He was slick.

He convinced Eve that God was holding out on her and Adam, as in keeping the best goodies in the garden for himself. He further convinced her that God had lied to her and Adam, and that he was being arbitrary and unreasonable. So what did Eve do? She ate the fruit. Then she shared it with Adam. Then quite literally all hell broke loose. Their tight relationship with God came to an abrupt halt. They had broken God’s trust. By giving into temptation they indulged in a wayward desire to be like God and thus found themselves estranged from God and one another. And that’s the way it’s been for humanity from that day forward. In the words of Judy Fentress-Williams, “One does not have to look far to find examples of how our life together is undermined by the refusal to accept the gracious limits of God’s truly liberating grace.”

Boundaries are necessary. Crossing them brings consequences. The good news is that what was done in the garden has been undone by Christ. We still cross boundaries we shouldn’t, but if we’ll ‘fess up to what we’ve done and repent of it, in Christ there is forgiveness. That having been said, there is still some bad news. We can be forgiven for the boundaries we’ve crossed, but quite often the damage we’ve done in doing so cannot be undone. Sometimes our misbehavior brings great pain into our lives. Even worse it can bring great pain into the lives of others. I’ll say it again. Boundaries are necessary. Crossing them has consequences, some of which are eternal.

Our sins, particularly those that arise from our desire to take God’s place, often bring us to the brink of self-destruction. In the process we destroy relationships, bring pain to our friends and families, disrupt the Body of Christ, and on a global scale bring about wars and rumors of wars. Crossing the boundaries set by God is always to a greater or lesser extent destructive: to ourselves and to our world. And it’s all because we human animals so pridefully refuse to honor the gracious boundaries set by our Creator. “You don’t tell us no. You don’t tell us, stop.” Not when it comes to greed. Not when it comes to lust. Not when it comes to the myriad of ways in which we try to put ourselves in God’s place.

The bad news is that, in every aspect of our lives, we keep crossing those boundaries set for us by God. The good news is that God still loves us, and as was said earlier, in Jesus Christ he has done what was necessary to undo Adam’s sin. To quote from the Great Prayer of Thanksgiving for Lent: “You formed us in your own image to love and serve you, but we forgot your promises and abandoned your commandments. In your mercy, you did not reject us but still claimed us as your own… You sent your only Son to be the way to eternal life.”

Today is the first Sunday in the season of Lent. Lent is a season for reflection: on our sinfulness and God’s faithfulness. Lent is a season in which we take stock of our relationships, especially our relationship with the Lord our God. Lent is a time in which we remind ourselves that there are indeed boundaries we should not cross, seek the Spirit’s leading in making those boundaries clearer to us, and thank God that there are boundaries, not arbitrary and rigid commandments, but gifts of love.

In closing I will share these words about Lent from Jon L. Berquist: “For the church, [Lent] is a time of penitence, of recognizing the ways we have let ourselves be distracted from the mission that God intends for us. God’s mission has not changed, and in the aftermath of our stumbling, God still calls us back to the right path. God calls us back every day, and every Lent.” Amen.