Our Fall From Grace
The “Fall of Man”, as this used to be known, is an important idea in our Christian faith, and in the world of literature. Many fascinating stories surround this tale of the human fall from God’s grace. I once attended a week of study at Naramata Centre where we discussed this story at great length from the perspective of Muslim, Jewish, and Christian faith. Many women were caught up in and angry about the gender stereotypes that were implied by the story, and the blame that has been imposed on women since. My view is that the story tells that the man was equally complicit in the break from God’s loving grace when he also ate the fruit, so that issue is a minor one for me. The man in the story could have separated himself from the woman’s choice to eat the forbidden fruit, but I would argue that he chose to participate and therefore is an equal partner in the fall.
I would rather focus my attention on wondering what would have happened if the man and woman had NOT eaten the fruit and had continued to live in the garden. Would we as humans have continued to live forever and not know good and evil? Why did God keep or put the temptation of the tree in the middle of the garden, and have it be fruit that was good to eat, if She did not want them to eat it? It seems like God purposely set up a difficult scenario for them and wanted the couple to at least be tempted. Why? Do we have to be tempted by difficult choices to fulfil our role as a beloved part of God’s creation? As a parent, I would not purposely set up a difficult scenario for my offspring just to see what would happen.
Another question that arises for me is God’s admonition that the people would die if they ate the fruit in the middle of the garden. They did die, but not immediately such as they would have if the fruit was poisonous. They go on to see themselves for the first time as naked. What is the shame in the human body? I wonder about that as I find human bodies beautifully made and a wondrous part of God’s creation, especially as I learn about how our body systems work together in such harmony (most of the time). Our society holds so many conflicting views about our body and how we see it. Are our bodies inherently good or evil? I don’t think that they are inherently evil, but this part is extremely complicated.
What’s the message from this passage for us today? As the serpent said, “God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” How does that help us live the lives that God wants us to live? I do know that living our lives worrying about being fallen creatures will not let us focus on being responsive to God’s continuing grace and love. I see our bigger responsibility as that of carrying out Jesus’ work in our broken and needy world.
God of the Garden, We pray that you will forgive our human transgressions and empower us to live out your will for our lives in response to your forgiveness, love, and grace as exemplified so marvellously in Jesus. Amen
Barbara Fraser Tilley
A Broken Heart
Psalm 51: 1-17
A Broken Heart
Today, you are invited to the practice of Visio Divina (divine seeing). This is a way of praying with an image, allowing God to speak to your hear without words. Spend a few minutes simply reflecting on the image, followed by a time of prayer in response.
Karen Truscott
God Centred
In this passage, Jesus focuses on three spiritual practices: almsgiving, prayer, and fasting. His teaching is prefaced with a warning to beware. Jesus advises us to reflect on the condition of our hearts as we live out our call to be “the salt of the earth ... a light to the world” (5:13-14). Jesus calls us to be God-centred, not self-centred; to humbly carry out these practices with God’s glory and reputation in mind, not our own.
Jesus also shines a spotlight on the truth that our hearts follow what we treasure. Where we focus our time, money, relationships, possessions, and everyday pleasures shows God what and who we treasure. Jesus has nothing against treasure. If we hold our treasures loosely and use them to deepen our devotion to God, then we will have lasting treasure that no one can take from us.
Are your spiritual practices and treasures a hindrance or a way of deepening your communion with God? The season of Lent is a gift to help us get our hearts back in the right place with the One who is our greatest treasure and the giver of all good gifts.
Gracious God, help us live with open hands, so that the treasures we have in this world, and indeed our very hearts, might also be with the Lord. Amen.
Sumarme Goble
The Righteousness of God
Just about every verse in this passage could be the focus of its own reflection. But as I read and prayed it, the line that kept coming up was this: “For our sake, God made him [that is, Christ] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
There is more than one way to understand what happened and what was accomplished in Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. But the Church has always said that this is how God has chosen to deal with sin, how God has, is, and will overcome the brokenness and pain, the evil in the world and in our own hearts. We might disagree on the logistics, but there is no Christianity without the Cross, and there is no Church without the Resurrection.
It’s the second part of that that has caught my imagination here. St. Paul, who wrote this letter, calls us to know that our lives are meant to be the evidence of the fact that God has made a way out of the stuff that binds us and weighs us down, and into the freedom and full humanity for which we are made. God, in Christ, did all of it so that we might become the righteousness of God.
Our lives in Christ, as followers of Jesus and receivers of his grace are meant to reflect the things of God—love and justice, peace and joy, mercy and generosity, grace and healing, on and on—wherever we are, and come what may. We’re not made just for private devotion; we’re created to image the God who loves this world to the end and then through it, in all we do.
Lord Jesus, thank You that there is nothing that You won’t give to set us free from the stuff that would destroy us. Help us to receive the gift of Your grace, and share Your life-giving Way with everyone we meet. Amen.
Aaron Miller
A Call to God’s People
Another glorious Isaiah passage—yet I have questions. Who were these people Isaiah was preaching to? Were they religious hypocrites, simply putting on an outward show of piety while doing whatever it takes to live lives of comfort and wealth? Or were they returning from years of captivity in a cosmopolitan city where they had held on to their traditional practices of their faith and were now home again but in a land so changed, listening to Ezra exhorting them to follow the Mosaic Law without understanding that the practices were not just outward actions but were intended to lead to care for others? For example, when you fast you have food to give to those without. Isaiah, however, as had prophets before him, has to shout from the pulpit that outward practices are meaningless to God without the practical activities that feed the hungry, clothe the naked, house the homeless, ensure justice for all.
I wonder if some of our religious practices are as empty as those Isaiah condemned. We certainly have a history of doing what we truly believed to be right only to later discover how wrong they were. Isaiah understood that a right relationship with God could only come if “you remove the yoke from among you…offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom will be like noonday. The Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your needs in parched places.”
We, however, believe that God sent Jesus to allow us, imperfect beings who never get it all right no matter how hard we try, through grace freely given, to be children of God, saved and loved. Thanks be to God.
O God, Creator, Redeemer, Comforter , help us to see beyond our familiar practices so that we can truly participate in your vision of shalom in this world. Amen
Janet Reid
Ash Wednesday
The season of Lent is such a gift to all of us humble, human, humus. The imposition of ashes to start Lent reminds us well of the good news that we are not nor do we have to be God; we are created creatures of dust, to which we will return.
But we are, incredibly, such beloved dust, spirit-infused, called to love as we are loved.
Lent steadfastly rolls around each Christian year, always beginning in this lectionary with this reading from Joel, one of the prophets. It may not seem like good news, with its alarming trumpet blasts, trembling, and thick darkness, its army (described for nine more verses, 3-11) spread upon the mountain like blackness, reminiscent of a scene from Lord of the Rings. Only the Lord of this army is none other than the LORD of steadfast love and mercy.
How did it come to this?
Joel’s message uses prophetic tradition, such as “the day of the Lord” (judgement, when consequences come home to roost) as a framework. His message is directed to Judah, likely when it was a part of the Persian Empire, but it’s written to address the ages, now including us.
The text begins with the call for a trumpet blast, an alarm that is not only heard but viscerally felt in the body. STOP it cries. Stop what we are doing—marrying, feeding, playing—all the day-to-day affairs that busily take up our time. Stop and gather everyone together, because this is about the most important thing in Creation: right relationship with God and one another.
Stop, and then TURN, instructs Joel. Re-turn to God, who utters a word of hope even as the army marches nearer: “Yet even now, says the LORD, return to me with all your heart…” (v.12) I imagine this call from God like a loving parent that calls to a wayward child, about to step off a precipice and harm themselves, perhaps fatally.
Stop, turn, and REND our hearts (v.13). Rending our clothing (virtue signalling) is the easy thing to do, and we humans are often tempted to do what is easy, like water finding the path of least resistance. God, through Joel, is calling us to break open our will—our desires, our inclinations, our choices—and to realign it to God’s will: to God’s desires, God’s inclinations, God’s choices because God loves us and wants us all to flourish.
Lent is our trumpet blast. Lent is the gift of a season that reminds us to stop, to return to God, to rend our wills. Not because this will save us—we know from Jesus’ death and resurrection what it took to save us—but because God’s great and steadfast love seeks flourishing life for all of us and deserves a loving response in kind from us.
May we respond to Your love with our love, returning to You and offering our life that Your will may be done on earth as it is in heaven. Amen
Janice Love