THE SNAKE DOESN'T HAVE TO GET ALL THE LINES

September 21, 1986, 11:00 a.m. Worship Service
John M. Buchanan

Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago

“The man said, 'The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me fruit
of the tree'... The woman said, 'The serpent beguiled me, and I ate.‘"
--Genesis 3:12,13 (RSV)

Scripture
Genesis 3:8-14, 20-24

Dictators exert controi over the behavior and the thinking of people
in a way those of us who live in a free society have trouble understanding.
Part of it is a place, or the threat of a place, where totalitarianism
reduces human life to its basic biological functions: a place where the
dictator's authority and power over the humanness of his critics can be
observed and acted out - namely, a concentration camp. George Orwell wrote
about it with frightening eloquence in 1984. No one ever did it with more
commitment, and with more efficiency, than the Nazis. And yet, in gorgeous
counterpoint to the systemic and utter evil of the Third Reich and its
concentration camps, is a persistent refrain of human nobility and
unselfishness and courage and beauty. Somehow some people held on to this
humanity in the midst of the most. incredibly dehumanizing environment ever
devised. It is one of the most inspiring stories in all of human history.
Viktor Frankl is an Austrian psychiatrist who lived through Auschwitz and
Dachau. His view of humanity and much of his subsequent work were
influenced by the experience. He wrote: “We who lived in concentration
‘camps can remember men who walked through the huts comforting others,
giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number,
but they are sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but
one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in
any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way." [From Death-Camp
to Existentialism, p. 65 - see David 0. Woodyard, To be Human Now, p. 87]

"the last of the human. freedoms -
to choose one's attitude in any given
set of circumstances..."

To choose to be, to affirm one's own being, by deciding to be or by
refusing to allow someone or something else, to decide who [I will be; to
hold out for the only thing that is mine - my self, my being, my integrity.

The ones who do it publicly usually are visible. They are the
Sojourner Truths who will not drink any longer from the “Colored only"
water fountain: the Rosa Parks whe one day decide that they wili no more

sit in the back of the bus: the Patrick Henrys who know that to hand your
identity as a person over to someone else - even the state - is to be less
than a full human being and that “give me liberty or give me death" is, in
fact, a moral decision we all make every day. They are the heroes of the
concentration camps who Frankl remembers did not become less than human,

the Solzhenitsyns and the Shcharanskys and Sakharovs the Gulag could not and
did not and will not break.

They show us something that is inside cach of us, something strong
and free and noble. The fact that they are so visible, however, indicates
that most of us don't live that strong, free, noble part: that part of the
human dilemma is that most of us do not live up to the potential within us,
are less than we could be and, with pathetic monotony, hand over
responsibility for our own lives to other people or other powers. In the
life drama of most of us the snake gets most, if not all, of the lines.

Douglas John Hall, a Canadian theologian who writes very perceptively
about “many of the things traditionally believed concerning the human
condition by Biblical faith seem (are) so often corroborated today by
sociologists, historians, anthropologists, political scientists,..." [The
Steward: a Biblical Image Come of Age, p. 51]

The story cf our roots, the very first story in the Bible suggests
that while all of us think more highly of ourselves than we ought, at the
same time we relinquish our essential dignity, give up our God-ordained
status and let the snake do ali the talking.

The creation stories in Genesis - that sustained look at the human
condition: Adam —- all men: Eve - all women, tells us that Ged is the
creator, and that what God created is good: not divided between good and
evil, not even ambigious, but very good! The story tells us that our roots
are in the Garden, our home is Eden, we are God's. The purpose of the
project, the story affirms, is a humanity with God's image built in, with
freedom and responsibility sufficient enough to exercise management over
all of creation: a humanity living in harmony with the rest of the
creation. But the human creatures can't obey the rules, can't let God be
God, and tragically take matters into their own hands, substitute their
wills for God's wil] and listen to a snake who, someone suggested
sounds like the first theologian, and do the one thing God has told them
they must not do.

The portion of the story we read this morning continues to describe
the human condition in deceptively simple terms which we are tempted to
regard as mythology until, as Hall warned, in the idiom of sociology,
history and psychology, it turns out to be declaratively on target. The
man and woman, now aware of their nakedness, their frightening
vulnerability, are hiding as God is walking in the Garden in the cool of

_the day. “Where are you?" God asks and there ensues an interrogation. Now
a funny thing happened last week as I was leading a discussion of this
passage with a group of church women. I had told them that instead of
being so determinedly analytical we really ought, on occasion, be silent
before this magnificent text and let its beauty and poetry simply wash over
us. So they were Listening and [ was reading. slowly - carefully. And [
got to the place where God asks,... “Have you caten of the tree of which I

9/21/86 2

commanded you not to eat?” And instead of saying, “Yes, I did," the only
thing the man can think of to say is, “The woman gave it to me" and over on
the side someone snickered and then someone else giggled and in an instant
the group was laughing and even though I knew the answer I asked them why
that was so funny and one of them said, “It is funny because that sounds
exactly like something a man would say." But then we went on with the
exercise in poetry where the Lord God turns to the woman and says "What is
this that you have done?" And the only thing the woman can think of to say
is "The serpent beguiled me, and [ ate." And there were a few snickers but
not many really because to hear that is to know terribly and honestly that
it is the truth about us, all of us and each of us. We don't live within
the rules of the place. We substitute our own agenda for the agenda of the
creator. We continue te pour our toxic wastes into the river and bury our
radio-active debris in drums that rust, and we kil} the animals for the joy
of the kill, we overpopulate and we invest cur resources, our energy and
money and the precious lives of ‘our youth not in the management of the
quality of life but in the process of making war on the other people in the
creation. We devise socially and politically convincing arguments to
fortify cur positions and to belittle, humiliate and demean those who try
to call us to account. And when we ourselves are pressed on the matter we
don't usually come up with anything more criginal than - "she made me do
it" and “the serpent tricked me."

We need, it seems, anew notion of sin... It isn't just pride,
egotism, thinking too highly cf ourselves. I[t certainly is not adequately
defined as sensuality. We need a definition of sin which incorporates this
refusal to be, to take responsibility, to be the responsible managers of
creation - the creator has made us to be.

There is a definition, a very useful word, used in the ancient
church: sloth, one of the seven deadly sins. The early church theologians
understood that pride and sloth go hand in hand to create our predicament

Harvard theologian Harvey Cox, from whose writing about the human
condition I borrowed the title for this sermon, defines sloth, which comes
from a Greek word meaning “not caring” as “the determined or lackadaisical
refusal to live up to one's essential humanity. It is the torffid
unwillingness to revel in the delights or to share in the responsibilities
of being fully human." [Who's Killing the Church, p. 111]

In the last century the Danish theologian Soren Kierkegaard taught
that the only real sin is “the despairing refusal] Wé be oneself." [Ibid]
And about a decade ago Dr. Karl Menninger did a classic work, Whatever
Became of Sin, in which he argued eloquently and persuasively that the
dominant psychological dynamic of our age has been the reduction of the
individual to insignificance. [t has come about as a result of a lot of
factors: the sheer size of our nation, our institutions and the remoteness
of the solitary individual from the places where important decisions are
made, for instance. And along with the shrinkage of the individual's
importance has come an alarming propensity to excuse the individual from
any responsibility for the common Jife, or for personal life for that
matter. Karl Menninger wrete that most of us seem to believe that "it's
aJl out of our hands.” We are cither victims of penetics, or social
conditioning, or bad parenting. Our lives are determined by big

9/21/86

ie)

government, multi-national corporations, big labor. And the real
temptation is, in despair about our personal importance, to give the snake
all the lines, to bury ourselves in the rhythmic lulling of nightly
television or the relentless pursuit of personal pleasure and instant
pratification celebrated so seductively in the temple across the street.

Christopher Lasch wrote a book about what happens to a culture when
people give up responsibility for the welfare of the common life. He
called it The Culture of Narcissism and in it he wrote:

“Americans have retreated to purely personal preoccupations. Having no
hope of improving their lives in any of the ways that matter, people have
convinced themselves that what matters is psychic self-improvement: getting
in touch with their feelings, eating health foods, taking lessons in ballet
or belly-dancing, immersing themselves in the wisdom of the East....
Harmless in themselves, these pursuits, elevated to a program and wrapped
in the rhetoric of authenticity... awareness, signify a retreat from
politics and a repudiation of...the past." [p.4- see Hall, p. 51]

The trouble with Narcissism and our relentless infatuation with self
discovery, self actualization, self-fulfillment, is not that our selves are
so unredeemingly sinful, or that the flesh is evil, but that it reflects
actually a lack of true caring and valuing ourselves. We were created for
more than self-amusement.

Genesis suggests that we are so important God has given us
responsibility for the management of the whole creation. Our culture
suggests that responsibility for creation is not as important as getting in
touch with your needs, doing your own thing, discovering your true self.

History teaches that there is real danger when the individual
abdicates responsibility for the common life. Every time another war
criminal is tracked down and exposed, we are reminded again that rather
ordinary peaple proved to be capable of monstrous crimes - essentially by
ahbdicating responsibility for their own behavior. Adolf Eichmann did not
appear to be an evil man. He simply obeyed orders. The truiy frightening
thing about Eichmann was not his monstrosity ~ but his ordinariness. What
a painful trauma it was to acknowledge that that kind of reasoning was at
work in Viet Nam, at My Lai, for instance.

The thesis that Americans would never behave as the German people who
were involved in concentration camps did, was tested at Yale University
twenty years ago.

In a now famous experiment researchers chose a cross section of 2,000
males from Bridgeport, Connecticut. Divided into learners and teachers, a
learner was strapped in a chair which was wired for electric current.
Behind a wall in an adjoining room teachers were seated at a table. An
inner-com allawed sound to be heard in both rooms. The teachers were
instructed to ask a list of questions and then administer electric shocks to
the learners by pressing a button for each wrong answer. The teachers were
told that each shock would increase in velocity. There was no shock, of
course, but into the inner-com system were fed recordings of screams of
pain. The object was to discover at what point individuals would take

9/21/86 4

charge and refuse to obey instructions out of conscience or compassion in
this authoritarian atmosphere. 62% af those tested went al] the way,
administering all the current they could. The report concludes: “With
numbing regularity good people were seen to knuckle under the demands of
authority and perform actions that were callous and severe. Men who in
everyday life are responsible and decent were seduced hy the trappings of
authority. The results are disturbing." [See Thomas Harris, I'm OK —

In theological terms 62% were guilty of the sin of sloth. The man
said "The woman made me do it." The woman said, "The snake tricked me."
The good men of Bridgeport said, “I was just doing what I was told.’

Who among us is without that sin? Who has not pondered the fact of
homelessness, the existence of homeless people here, of ail places, in the
nooks and crannies of Water Tower Place and the Drake Hotel and Fourth
Presbyterian Church and dealt with that jarring incongruity by mentally
abdicating. It's not my responsibility. Who hasn't heard the discrepancy
between what we are in the process of spending to turn outer space into a
nuclear Maginot Line and the quiet fact revealed last week that our infant
mortality rate is now 17th in the worid - and dealt with that jarring
incongruity by a kind of personal, emotional surrender? What, after all,
can I do?

What I can do, of course, is at least not make peace with it, not
save my conscience by concluding that it is someone else's business, not
mine. What I can do is retain the spiritual courage necessary to have an
active conscience. I can refuse to allow the snake all the lines and, at
least, allow the responsibility for the common life, for the welfare of the
creation, to rest where God placed it - namely on me and you. I can
reinvest the ancient language of the General Confession - when it asks us
to confess “slothfulness in good" with my own experience and at least ask
God for forgiveness.

What this world needs are people who know the story in Genesis 3 and
who understand that penetrating and magnificent assertion about the human
predicament. We are in charge. The creator has made us the managers of
the place. We will not be bailed out or rescued by any power other than
our own. If the best we can come up with as the management is a nuclear
technology designed to cbliterate them and silly civil defense schemes to
save a few of us from being obliterated by them -if that's the sum total of
our stewardship, that is what it will be. The world needs people who know
that the fulfillment of creation is in our hands and at the moment, that is
what we are preparing for, with all intentionality and all seriousness.

The late Abraham Joshua Heschel was a beloved and revered theologian,
philosopher. He wrote: "The universe is done. The greater masterpiece
still. unfinished, still in the process of being created, is history. For
accomplishing his grand design God needs the help of man. Man is and has
the instrument of God, which he may or may not use in concert with the
grand design." [The Insecurity of Freedom, see Robert McAfee Brown, Saying
Yes and Saying No, p. 49]

I am guilty of sloth when I abdicate responsibility for creation, and

9/21/86 5

also when I abdicate responsibility for my own life, the part of the
creation occupied by me, my space, my time. When [I conform to an image
superimposed by someone else, when I find myself living to meet other's
expectations, when my major goal] is to conform, or when I simply allow
another person's anger and meanness to make me angry and mean, I have been
slothful. God has made me bigger than that. I have been created for more
than that.

The Judeo-Christian tradition portrays human beings as the crown of
creation, God's masterpeices, given management and dominion over the world,
endowed with the potential for freedom and beauty and justice and love.

The word, in Genesis 3 continues graciously. The creator does not give up
on us when we fail to measure up. Adam and Eve are driven from the primal
paradise, into the world, into history, having badly blundered, sold out,
relinquished responsibility to the snake. But as they leave the innocent
paradise of the Garden ali that potential is intact, to be exposed to the
ambiguities of human history every single day from then on. And with one
thing more. The creator God knits clothes for them as they walk out of the
Garden into history. Grace, continuing care, creative love follow as they
go. That is also God's word spoken on creation, spoken with ultimate
eloquence in the birth and life and death of one, we believe, was God's
Word.

In Christ we have a model: human life as God intended it: free,
compassionate, committed, fully responsible - sinless life, life without
abdicating responsibility. In Christ we can see what the new humanity
which God is creating in us looks like. And one thing further: in Christ
we have access to a power te be ourselves, to be whole and free and
forgiven and recreated.

St. Paul, in spite of his deep sense of human sin, announced and
celebrated the new being, the redeemed humanity which happens to us when we
trust Jesus Christ.

“Are we to continue in sin?" he asked. "By no means!"

“Be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new likeness
of God in true righteousness and holiness.“

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is not an invitation to self depreciating,
self demeaning, self denying guilt. It is an invitation to honesty about
ourseives, and honesty which includes our excluded status in creation: the
fact that we are loved of God - laved so much that God gave a son to die
for us. I[t is an invitation to learn about responsibility: to learn how to
say “I'm sorry," when we fail and then to try again. It is an invitation
to know and believe and trust the love of the God who creates us, who loves
us, who follows us inte history with grace and care and who intends us to
be responsible, in charge, to be all that we were created to be.

The simplest and most profound truth about us is that the snake
doesn't have to have all the lines.

Amen.

9/21/86 6

0 Lord, our Lord, how majestic is thy name in all the earth.

When we look at the heavens - moon and stars and vastness unknowable,
who are we that you have conceived us and loved us?

You have made us in your image, you have covered us with glory - and
responsibility. You have given us dominion. Give us now strength, courage
and grace to be all that you created us to be.

O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is thy name in all the earth.

Amen.

9/21/86 7