Sermon - June 6, 2021

<p>When my three boys were young children, the middle one seemed to always be getting himself into trouble.  He tended to cross boundaries and do naughty things more frequently than the other two boys.  And, when he did something wrong, he would often hide, or he would inevitably blame his brothers for what happened, for what he had done.  Thankfully, he outgrew these behaviors.  However, I will always remember that if he was blaming his brothers for something that happened, he usually was the one who was responsible for the incident and, if he was hiding, he had probably done something he should not have done.  In fact, I vividly remember calling out to him on multiple occasions, “Chris, where are you?”  Well, today as we hear this reading from Genesis, we hear the words, “Where are you?”  And, these words echo right down through the centuries into <strong>our</strong> very lives. </p> <p>The Genesis story we hear in our first reading is part of the <strong>second</strong> creation story we find in the Bible.  Yes, there are <strong>two</strong> very <strong>different</strong> creation stories in this first book of the Bible.  Today’s reading comes from what is known as the Yahwist narrative.  It is just one among many of the early story threads gathered from multiple traditions that became sewn together to compile the book we now call Genesis.  And, as with many familiar Bible stories we <strong>think</strong> we understand, we often read into this passage and deduce ideas that really are not there.  You see, this whole slithering, deceptive snake portion of the story likely was originally told to explain the animosity that exists between humans and serpents.  Furthermore, as scholars have studied these writings, theologians now agree that the snake insertion into this story was also likely meant to provide an explanation for the Israelite rejection of the Canaanite goddess Asherah, who was imaged as a snake in a tree.  Asherah was the great Canaanite fertility goddess, so one can detect here a not too subtle p