One of the most ancient stories in the Hebrew Bible is our First Reading for the First Sunday in Lent in the Year of Matthew: Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7, the story of the Fall. We have heard this story so often we are prone to overlook many of its subtleties. How we will preach this story of temptation, sin, and the Law is a great challenge. The preacher best begin by identifying with those tempted.
(The following questions are not meant to be exhaustive, but are best used in conjunction with other fine sets of questions available to Biblical exegetes. These questions have been developed to lift up the function of the Word in the text, a central concern of Law and Gospel preachers. For more on this method, see my brief guide, Afflicting the Comfortable, Comforting the Afflicted, available from wipfandstock.com or amazon.)
1. How does the Word function in the text? The Word functions clearly as Law, no more simply than in 2:17 when God says, "For in the day that you eat of it you shall die." The evidence of the Law also comes clear in 3:7 as the man and woman both experience fear and shame, a direct result of their disobedience.
2. How is the Word not functioning in the text? The Word functioning as Gospel is hard to find here. Verse 2:15 reminds us that God is the One who put the man in the garden and gave him a vocation, but that alone is not Gospel.
3. With whom are you identifying in the text? It is important to identify here with those who are tempted. If, as preachers, we give any hint that temptation is something we are not prone to, we are most to be pitied. As Augustine said, humility is the way to God for those who have fallen through pride.
4. What, if any, call to obedience is there in this text? The Word functioning as a call to obedience is as an invitation to live in response to the Gospel. While obedience and disobedience are certainly at the heart of this passage, the call is really to faith in God, not to obedience, per se.
5. What Law/Gospel couplet is suggested by this text? There are some obvious couplets here: unbelief/faith; death/life, but perhaps Stuempfle's classic couplet, alienation/reconciliation, or Lischer's guilt/justification is a strategy to employ.
6. Exegetical work: I love Luther's translation of 3:1 because it captures the subtlety in the Hebrew and expresses the seed of doubt that is so important to this text: "Did God really command you not to eat from every tree of Paradise?" (LW, "Lectures on Genesis, Chapters 1-5, p. 146). You can hear in that word "really" the doubt that the serpent is sowing in the heart of the woman. Luther goes on: "Truly, therefore, this temptation is the sum of all temptations; it brings with it the overthrow or the violation of the entire Decalog. Unbelief is the source of all sins; when Satan brought about this unbelief by driving out or corrupting the Word, the rest was easy for him." (Ibid., p.147). Johannes Oecolampadius, a contemporary of Luther's, supports Luther's view and adds his own insight: "First [Satan] wants to create in us the suspicion that God does not want the best for us. He suggests that God is somehow jealous of us, [he tries] at least to make us less certain of those things that have been said by him... Thus Satan wants to persuade by saying, 'Those things aren't as sure as you say.'" (Reformation Commentary on Scripture, OT, vol. I, p. 119). Augustine, in his early analysis, thinks that Satan, signified by the serpent, is appealing to our pride: "For the serpent, seeking a way to enter, clearly sought the door of pride, when he declared, 'You shall be as gods,' that is why it is written, 'Pride is the beginning of all sins,' and 'the beginning of the pride of man is to fall away from God.'" (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, OT, vol. 1, p.77). Augustine's teacher, Ambrose, has another suggestion. He thinks that Satan is appealing to our desire for pleasure, even suggesting that the serpent represents pleasure in the story: "Moses was quite right in representing pleasure in the likeness of a serpent. Pleasure is prone on its belly like a serpent... It glides along, so to speak, with the slippery folded curves of its whole body... It feeds on things of the body, and it is changed into many sorts of pleasures and bends to and fro in twisting wreaths." (ACCS, OT, vol. 1, p. 76).
7. How does the Crossings Community model work with this text? Bill White, in his analysis, correctly sees that the Gospel is not present in this text, but it is proclaimed magnificently in the Second Reading for this Sunday, Romans 5:12-19. There we hear that "by one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous." White's analysis reminds us that the Gospel must be proclaimed even when it is not present in the text. See his entire analysis at crossings.org/text-study, archived under its reference.
Blessings on your proclamation!
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