On Nakedness & Knowledge

 

Knowledge and revelation… as we consider today’s reading from the book of Genesis, I ask you to keep these two words parked in the front of your mind: Knowledge and revelation

At the same time, I ask you to hold onto two images as well. The first is a garden in the evening, where God walks as a gentle breeze rustles the leaves. The second is a little pair of Minnie Mouse underpants, strewn casually on a hardwood kitchen floor.

“Blessed daughter of mine,” or something to that effect, “for the love of all that’s Holy and Good would you please put on your underpants… or anything, really, in addition to your chef’s hat and apron.” The plea was halfhearted at best… 59 days into the pandemic last spring and our new reality of juggling work, toddler-care, and infant-care had worn us down. While we tried our best, keeping the two-year old in her clothes was not at the top of our hierarchy of needs.

Truth be told, however, I don’t know that it was the pandemic at play as much as it was the nature of being that age. Rumor has it when I was that little, I used to enjoy a post-bath saunter through the house in the evening and a peek out the window into our back yard – enjoying the view and the breeze.

There’s something about childhood and nakedness and carefree innocence… 

Until -suddenly- there’s not. 

There’s learning… there’s growth… there’s knowledge… there’s awareness and there’s fear.

There’s also no going back. Once you know you are naked, well… you know.

The Lord God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?” He said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.” 

While there’s wordplay in the original language that gets lost in translation here, with ‘being naked’ and ‘being crafty or clever’ having a linguistic similarity, one need not be a scholar of Hebrew to observe that the knowledge acquired in verses 1:7 through the eating of the forbidden fruit leads to the awareness and fear in today’s text.

Fear, here, comes not because man and woman disobeyed God. Rather, the man says, “I was afraid because I was naked.” 

While today’s reading is often described of as a fall, I wonder if it is better understood as a story of maturation and growth… Of knowledge and revelation…

There was something about carefree innocence until -suddenly- with the tasting of the fruit, there was not. Suddenly the man -or- humankind is exposed… self-consciously aware and vulnerable. 

It is as if humanity suddenly grew up.

Reflecting back on the year that we have had, I have sympathy for the man in the story and his feeble attempts to hide among the trees – naked and aware. 

With a global pandemic, social unrest, righteous calls for racial justice, and political division threatening statehouses and family dinners, many of the things in which I have placed my trust and security have, in fact, been tattered if not entirely stripped away. Foundational myths and assumptions about the way things are and supply chains that deliver things like toilet-paper and computer chips… Those things have ALL been disrupted. Naivete, if not innocence, has been lost. 

Our nakedness has been revealed… again.

And this time, it was revealed not by an apple or a serpent, but by a virus .125 microns in size, by the ticking of a clock and the 9 minutes and 29 seconds a police officer kneeled on a man’s neck as the world looked on, by fires and food deserts in our city cores and insecure employment all around.

In this time of revelation and disruption, there’s been learning… there’s been growth… there’s been knowledge… there’s been awareness and, Lord knows, there’s been fear.

Even as these disruptions subside. Even as we return to familiar spaces like this sanctuary, there’s still no going back. The world has shifted. We have shifted. You have shifted too.

Now we know and we cannot/ should not/must not try to unknow all that we have learned.

Knowing more than we did before, our responsibility to love and serve God and neighbors only deepens. Easy enough to say, this is a lot harder to do… especially with base instincts in each of us as old as Adam.

The Lord God asked the man, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” And thus the blame-game begins as man blames woman, woman blames the serpent, the serpent is cursed and a violent cycle of naming, blaming, and shaming spins up that shapes the world to this day.

Called to love and serve and turn the other cheek, the story names that the instinct to lash out and strike the heel with a venomous word or deed that is always just below the surface in each of us… Saints and Sinners  one and all. 

Thank God, then, for a God who enjoys the evening breeze and garden trees. 

Thank God for a God who meets us where we are, even in our hiding places, mindful of our own nakedness, fragility and brokenness.  

Let us thank God for a God who knows the inward curve of our interests and sends God’s Son to show us the way and save us from ourselves time and time again.

Let us thank God for a God whose Spirit abides, comforting, guiding, gathering, and inspiring God’s people in all times and all places… in Saint Paul and Iringa and in Newport and Kimala.

If the last year has revealed our nakedness, vulnerability, and fear, it has also revealed where and how God meets us where we are. One of the gifts of serving on Synod Staff is the ability to see and to share what is happening in and among the 110 congregations and 108,000 people who compose this expression of God’s church. As we close our time together, I’ll share a couple stories I’m familiar with and ask you to consider your own. 

One year ago this week, thousands of people and hundreds of thousands of dollars in aid (both cash and in-kind donations) poured into Bethlehem Lutheran Church in the Midway as a response to the ‘sudden appearance’ of a food desert in the middle of the family.

In the wake of the unrest and protests that followed the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, grocery stores and retailers – including my Target on University Ave- were impacted. With stores shuttered and mass transit ground to a halt, lower-income families in the neighborhood found themselves cut off both from food, medicine, and baby supplies as well as their primary forms of transportation to get to work and resources elsewhere in the city. Over in Minneapolis a similar scenario was playing out at Holy Trinity on Lake Street.

In both instances people of faith stepped up and responded to the urgency pleas of their neighbors. In the heat of the moment and cool of the evening, God was there as doors were opened for medics to provide care to those injured on the streets. In the face of great uncertainty, God was there as leadership teams improvised their way though questions they had never considered before with a posture of, “Yes, and…” God was there as word trickled out through grassroots connections and social media channels and others stepped in to help as they could… first by the handful, then by the car-full, and then by the truck-full… from elsewhere in the city to the suburbs, exurbs, and rural places God’s people did not hide.

Pushing the story deeper, crises like pandemics and civil unrest have a way of imparting knowledge and bringing revelation – or the seeing things as they really are. For many members of Bethlehem and others who took the lead in that response, the impact of that time has been just as consequential for them as the knowledge gained by man and woman all the way back in the garden. What shifted for the players in both stories was not their nakedness or vulnerability, but their awareness of their condition and response to it…

It turns out that the food desert everyone was responding to didn’t just suddenly appear. What changed was people’s knowledge of it… Food insecurity was not caused by the civil unrest. Instead, it has been a longstanding concern of people who call that neighborhood home and is the result of decades of public policies, real estate deals, and often unarticulated biases. 

Like the tasting of the fruit, the crisis brought knowledge… Nakedness and vulnerability have been revealed in the heart of our cities. The question for all of us is this: What have we learned and what will we do? Do we fall into the vicious cycle of he said > she said > the serpent made me do it? Or do we fall in behind Jesus, who shows another way?

Switching gears and zooming out, the pandemic has had a similar effect on our global relationships. While the partnership we share with companions in Tanzania is described as Bega Kwa Bega… shoulder to shoulder… being done in a manner that is mutual and reciprocal, most of the work I’m tasked with directing has been focused on helping folks like you meet the needs of people in places like Kimala through projects like a new water system. This last year flipped the script and revealed us and our own vulnerability as well.

With the US bearing the brunt of COVID-19 infections throughout much of 2020, the self-made myth we project to rest the world of invincibility and strength was torn asunder. While we know the image is incomplete, for many of our companions in Iringa the way we were brought to our knees as a nation was a revelation. The flow of information and communication my office facilitates reversed as inquiries and offers of prayerful support and encouragement poured in from Tanzania and was directed to congregations like yours.

Last June I was copied on an exchange between Pastor Sue and Pastor Moto in Kimala. Your friends halfway around the world heard of your heartbreak, suffering and loss. They were with you then, holding you in prayer, and they are with you now. And with them is God, enjoying the cool evening-air in the Tanzanian highlands, and the heat of a summer morning here in Minnesota.

As we head into the unknowns of the days ahead, God is there and God is here. Let us not unlearn what we have learned. 

Even as you re-enter your building and life inches toward a sense of normalcy here, please continue to hold your companions in Kimala in prayer… Globally, we are not out of the pandemic woods and places like Tanzania are months -if not years- away from enjoying the kind of access to vaccines we may now take for granted. 

Closer to home, let us not unlearn the lessons from the last year either. Much has been revealed about the composition of our neighborhoods and the differences that make a difference between neighbors. Let us tend to those wounds and places of broken-openness with just as much care and concern.

While what has been exposed on both fronts might make us uncomfortable, may we not hide behind the fig leaves and trees of feigned ignorance but, instead, listen for the sounds of God’s gracious footsteps among the rustling leaves. 

And then, when God calls, be bold enough to say, “Here I am.”

Originally delivered as part of a Message at Newport Lutheran Church, Newport, MN on 6 June 2021.