The Most Important Question in the Old Testament: “Where Are You?”

Genesis 3:8-19; Mark 3:20-35

          It’s always dangerous to call something “the most important” of anything, like the most important question.  When you do that, someone is bound to find a question that is more than that.  So, I will say the question asked by the Gardener in Genesis 3 is “arguably” the most important question in the Old Testament: “Where are you?”

          The garden in this story is the Garden of Eden, meaning the garden of “delight.”  And that’s exactly what it is, a delightful, ideal setting for the human family.  We can imagine a temperature of 72 degrees year-round.  A comfortable breeze blows at all times.  Vegetables and fruits grow naturally, so the humans don’t have to labor for food.  The humans are named Adam and Eve.  The Hebrew word adam means “humankind.”  The word for Eve means “mother of all living.”  They are at peace with each other, all the animals of the garden and the Gardener.  For Adam and Eve, the garden is clothing optional, and no one is embarrassed.

          The Gardener, of course, is God. God created this delightful garden and its occupants.  It was an act of sheer graciousness.  The Gardener and all of creation—the humans, the animals, nature—all are in perfect union, a state of innocence.  The Gardener watches over his garden and its occupants.  Adam and Eve welcome the Gardener’s visits and are grateful for his loving attention and care.  It is a garden of gracious permission.  In fact, there is only one prohibition: don’t eat the fruit of one certain tree.  That is the only boundary.  Everything else is permissible. 

          The Gardener has never had to ask that question.  Adam and Eve are always present, always eager to welcome the Gardener.    But this day is different.  The Gardener enters the Garden of Eden in the cool of the day, and Adam and Eve are not present.  They are not welcoming.  On this day for the first time, the Gardener has become unwanted, an unwelcome guest, a third wheel on a date.

          “Where are you?” calls out the Gardener.  The word “you” is singular in the Hebrew language.  The Gardener is calling to Adam.

          Adam answers, confessing for the first time that he is afraid of the Gardener.  While the Gardener was away, he and Eve ate fruit from the forbidden tree.  They violated the only prohibition.  And they become aware.  Aware of their nakedness.  Their exposure.  Their otherness. They hid from the Gardener, who now knows what has happened. 

          “Who told you that you were naked?  Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” the Gardener questions.

          Their answer betrays them, “I heard…, I was afraid…, I was naked; I hid…, I ate.”  Their own language indicts them.  Clearly their concern is no longer the Gardener.  Their concern is “I.”  (Brueggemann, p. 49).

          They transgressed the boundary established by the Gardener, the one prohibition.  Like King David when he spied Bathsheba bathing on the rooftop, they went where they were not supposed to go. Adam and Eve’s action was a failure of trust.  They failed to trust that the Gardener’s boundary was fair and should be honored.  Now everything has changed.  The perfect union is split.  They are alienated from the Gardener who created them.  They are alienated from the garden. Instead of vegetables and fruits, it grows thorns and thistles.  They are alienated from each other and make clothes for themselves.  They are for the first time afraid, anxious, and ashamed.

          Where are you?  It is the most important question in the Old Testament, I argue, because it is the question God ultimately has to ask each of us.  The ancient story about the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve is the story of adam, all humankind.  We are adam.  This is our story.  It is the story of our loss of innocence, our becoming aware, our willfulness, and the sense of alienation, lostness, that pervades deep within us.  We move from the innocence of childhood into an adulthood that is characterized by fear, anxiety, and shame.  Our garden becomes broken, and something within us become broken too.  The result of all this is that the Gardener, the gracious One who created us and the garden, feels far away, a third wheel. 

The Bible uses one word to describe this:  sin.  And we are all marked by it.

          That is why Jesus’ words in Mark 3 are so important.   He and some scribes are in an argument, and he tells them, “Truly, I say to you all sins will be forgiven the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they utter.”  All sins.  All the brokenness.  All the alienation.  All of that will be healed by God, he says.  Jesus then looks around at the followers who had gathered and says, “Here are my mother and brothers!  Whoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother.”

          He claimed us as his own family, his own brothers and sisters, allowing us to live in this broken garden without fear, without anxiety, without shame.  He said we belong to him, to his family.  And he challenges us to recognize and honor the boundaries set by God.  That is how we find the best life in this garden. 

          So today let us listen for that important question that still reverberates through history.  Where are you?  And let us come out of hiding and welcome the One who is always searching for us.  Let us claim that by the body and blood of Christ we are made his brothers and sisters.

          A Prayer of Confession is printed in your worship guide.  Join me as we confess our sins together.