more Godly Play stories or hymnals or a piano. Most of all, though, they’re responsibilities to be entrusted with those who share in the belief that Jesus is key to what God wants us to know about himself, who have no agenda other than to live by the law of love, and who will stand together as one risen body witnessing to what abides, that is, faith and hope and love.
You know, response isn’t the only way by which ancient promises are reaffirmed. It also happens in responsibility—in taking it and entrusting it. So not only are we to be a people who respond, we’re also to be a people who take responsibility and who entrust responsibility. It’s leadership that’s less “beside” and more “beneath” (undergirding, establishing). Membership is one way this is done.
And so we do celebrate new members among us—not as contradictory to our mission but as a needful part of it.
A little over five years ago, on Easter Sunday, as I remember it, I wished that this little church would just die. It’s tough to be so small. It’s draining to be so tiny. I even said I planned to see if I couldn’t kill us.
I see now what I can’t do.
Thanks be to God.
1. All Bible citations are from the New Revised Standard Version unless otherwise noted.
2. Gould Farm is a working farm as well as a residential facility for adults with major mental illness. Situated in Monterey, the farm is a wellspring for the church I serve. On any given Sunday, as much as half the worshipping congregation might come from Gould Farm, be they staff, patients (called here “guests”), or yearlong volunteers.
Being Suggestive
The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.” . . .
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?” The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden”; but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die. ’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves. (Genesis 2:15–17, 3:1–7)
Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted for forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” But he answered, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”
Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’” Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”
Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’”
Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him. (Matthew 4:1–11)
Scripture’s earliest preacher is the serpent. If preaching is interpreting the word of God, then the first one to do this according to the Bible is the serpent.
Just saying.
But that actually gets me thinking. The serpent in the garden and the devil in the wilderness don’t share a name, and they don’t share a form; many a scholar would caution us against making too direct an equivalence here. But, look, they do share a same technique—suggestion—and that counts for something.
The serpent asks the woman, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” It’s an ambiguous question; I imagine it’s so by design. Consider, does the serpent mean to ask, “Did God say that, of all the trees here in this garden, there are any from which you may not eat?” If so, then this would allow for God to be felt as gracious, having offered the man and woman a great abundance—everything here but one. Or does the serpent mean to ask, “Did God say don’t eat from any tree in this garden?” in which case God would be felt as withholding, even cruel, a tempter himself—laying out an abundance before the man and the woman, and then saying, “Don’t touch.”
We should recognize, of course, that what God actually says according to the story is neither of these. We should recognize that the serpent frames in negative terms what God just prior framed positively: “You may eat freely of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.” Really, we should recognize that the question as asked cannot be answered. But I imagine that’s also by design. As any student of politics knows, the one who frames the debate wins the debate—and the serpent means to win this debate, so indeed to frame the woman and the man.
These two naïfs are no match for the serpent, but their innocence serves them well for a moment. The woman doesn’t answer the question as asked; instead, she repeats what God did say. “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but not of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden.” And in so saying, she seems to hold on to the hope that God is not withholding, that God is gracious.
But the suggestion otherwise is a potent one, isn’t it?
Here’s another potent suggestion: “If you are the Son of God . . .” The devil is said to have said it to Jesus twice in the wilderness, the whole temptation essentially energized by this word: if. It’s a brilliant approach because, though Jesus never claimed such status for himself, it’s a pretty powerful one to be pinned with, one that he might want now to prove true.
Ironically, he would prove it by steadfastly resisting the proving of it.
If you feel you’ve heard this story before, then rest assured you have. This scene appears in all three synoptic Gospels, and so we hear it every year and always on the first Sunday of Lent. It sets up so well the forty days of Lent that are before us, forty days until Easter not counting Sundays. These are to echo the forty days that Jesus is remembered to have spent in the wilderness, away from all the comforts of his culture, away even from the law and ritual that safeguard living and give shape to time. To be in the wilderness is to be on your own, really on your own.
Mark, the earliest written gospel, doesn’t recount any details of Jesus’ time on his own, really on his own. According to that rendering, Jesus’ experience in the wilderness really was empty—a formless void, even, as before when God began to create. Pre-created: we might call it postapocalyptic these
