Separated

 Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7

Merleau-Ponty was one of my favorite philosophers to read. He had a different way of looking at philosophy through perception. This is what is thought of when we read the Genesis story today because it all depends on where you sit. Your own life experiences, whether you are a man or a woman hearing this and how you receive it.

A friend and I wanted to take a course in Women's studies through the lens of women in the Bible. We talked with our religion professor and she agreed to offer a study to us. When we met for the first time she asked us questions about the readings and we responded. We got outside her office and my friend looked at me and asked, "Were we reading the same material?" He thought he had missed something but his perspective is different from mine. Being a woman I could answer the questions he couldn't because he had never thought about the stories from that framework.

Why are we starting with all this? Because I want this to be our framework to remember we are all hearing this differently from one another and I want us to delve into this scripture in ways which might be uncomfortable because you don't experience life in this way.

This text has always been used as the jumping off point in the church for where sin enters the world. With this perspective it has put a weight on women as the ones who bring this into the world. Now remember we all have different perspectives and I'm not saying yours is wrong, but please listen to the next things. The commentator this week put the blame on blame. Once we start blaming one another this is where things have gone into realizing sin in the world. 

I want to consider another perspective on this though. Shame. Shame separates us from knowing how beloved we are from God. They, Adam and Eve, became aware of their nakedness and were ashamed. Shame separated them from one another and God. 

Think about it this way. If we really think God is all knowing and all seeing doesn't God know every bit of us. All those thoughts we hide from others. All those actions we have taken in our life. All our nakedness and doesn't thinking about that make us feel entirely too vulnerable and when we feel too vulnerable our defenses start to come up. We want to clothe ourselves from that reality. We are ashamed to think too deeply about it because God can't possibly love all that, yet God does.

The more we put up the defenses. The more we don't see those ugly places as beloved we separate ourselves out and from the love that made us. It is so much easier to concentrate on the ways we sin than to explore the depths of where we feel outside of God's love. It is a much easier way to go through this season. What is harder is to see how we feel separated from God. 

What things do we hide in order to believe they are hidden from God? What things do we clothe and stifle in order to hide our own shame. Our own core belief that we are separated from God. When all God wants to do is to clothe those places in redemption. They are thrown as far as the east is from the west, but we still continue to hide them.

Maybe this Lent it is time to take those out of our closet. To know God sees all of us and yes, still loves it all. We have been marked as Christs own and when we live fully into that we can then love others the way God intends for us to.