Today's chapter finds me again on familiar ground. The Good Lord has a real sense of humor and timing, definitely...to have me reading this on Palm Sunday, only hours after hearing the Passion read out to me. What wondrous love is this!
This story is, just like the Creation, a part of the underpinning of our culture. Just about everyone, Christian, Jewish, agnostic, Buddhist alike, have heard at least in summary the story the Abrahamic religions tell of how the world fell from grace. Paradise was lost and the world became the frustrating, disappointing place it is. I cannot speak for my older brothers and sisters in faith in the Jewish tradition, but in our belief, the sin of the Fall didn't just have ripples down the centuries, doesn't just affect "the world" in a general sense...it applies to us. We have the sin on our shoulders as though we had bitten the fruit ourselves.
The serpent, the monster of deception, calls us the way he called Adam and Eve, to question "Did he really say that? Could that really be a sin? What's wrong with that?" Human reason said there was nothing wrong with eating the fruit of That Tree...I mean, come on. What difference could it possibly make? Would God be such a mean, petty guy that he'd see us perish for something so little, so stupid? No sins look as terrible and damning to us as they do to the Perfect One. Eve, Catholic that she was :), even avoided the "near occasion of sin", interpreting God's command not to eat the fruit of the tree as a command not to even touch it, until the Father of Lies convinced her that this was stupid and was holding her back. He convinced her that God was the way many unbelievers and questioners say He is, concerned with details and ready to punish in grandiose, unjustly cruel fashion for any misstep. "Come on, He can forgive you a little thing like that. He just wants you to stay lowly and groveling before Him, when if you just used your head, you could be as awesome as He." Those old men in the Vatican just want to keep all the power for themselves, when if you just saw the truth and used your head, you'd see that there's nothing different between men and women, and women should be able to be priests if they "feel called" to it. Who cares if the priest only says half the words of the Eucharistic prayer and lets a random lay woman give a homily on "saving Mother Earth"? That sin I committed last week had to be venial, right, so I'm still totally fine to approach Our Lord in the Eucharist? Lies...the earliest lies. These are lies I tell myself all the time.
The glory of this chapter lies in what we commemorate today...the New Eve, the Woman Crushing the Serpent, watches her son die in agony, the New Adam, the one who would not pass off responsibility for his actions but took on those of others. Our Blessed Lady cooperated with God where Eve refused and Jesus cooperated with his accusers and executioners where Adam went his own way and wouldn't admit it. Therefore, when I listen to the lies, I have the chance to return to the truth when I really come to see it.
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