That man stand for all people, is all people – and in his sin we are all convicted. And, the biblical witness would tell us, this story encompasses all stories this tale tells all tales the man and the woman of this garden stand for all men and all women of any garden, any village, town, city.Īnd so Paul refers back to Eden, to the sin of Adam, the sin of disobedience, the sin of self-centredness, the sin of pride and, Paul tells us, that sin is not just Adam’s sin, it is our sin. Because, as we know, the story of the Garden of Eden attempts to capture that primeval tendency we have: to go where we are told not to go, to do what we are told not to do. Today we are reminded again of the narrative of sin and salvation, the narrative that points to the ways in which, to the archetypal way in which, humanity manages to divert itself from the paths of continuity and contact with the divine, to divest itself of the clothes of justice and righteousness, and thereby to create barriers between themselves, and barriers with God. 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.’ The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. ![]() If we had read the Old Testament reading set down for today, we would have found this: Today, though, we begin with the overarching theme of the biblical narrative, that of the barriers created by sin and separation. It’s a theme that will look at personal barriers, and societal barriers, and traditional barriers at barriers of sickness and death at barriers created that we find it hard, even impossible, to bring down or to live without. Today we here begin to look at our theme for most of this season, the theme of ‘breaking the barriers’. ![]() Today we begin to consider again what a story from a different time and a different place and a different world can mean for people today who, it turns out, are not really that different after all. Today, the first Sunday of Lent, we begin our journey toward Golgotha and Gethsemane, toward defeat and despair, betrayal and denial, suffering and abandonment, wholeness and hope.
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