Nine Lessons #1: Genesis 3

Photo credit: ibrahim34 | Pixabay

Like many people, I have attended countless carol services: often by candlelight, in venues from the smallest chapel to a cathedral.  Sometimes I've been taking part in a choir or doing one of the readings, other times simply as a member of the congregation.  First used at Kings College Cambridge in 1919, Nine lessons and carols, or some variation upon it, has become almost the standard for such events, and the selection of readings are therefore familiar to many.  They feel comfortable in their familiarity, bring our minds back to our own traditions, perhaps even invoke the feelings of childhood and the excitement around Christmas that often features.

And yet whilst familiarity can be a good thing, it is easy to take such familiar passages for granted, and to get caught up in all the beautiful trappings of a good carol service without seeing how those things point to Christ.  As such, I have decided to kick start myself back into blogging with a series on those nine lessons.  The first, is Genesis 3:8-17

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”

He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”

And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”

The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”

Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”

The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,

“Cursed are you above all livestock
and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.
And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.”

To the woman he said,

“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.”

To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’

“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.”

I mentioned about that it is the Nine Lessons and Carols or some variation upon it that is ever-popular at Christmas, and on taking to google to actually look up these nine passages, I was surprised to see that the first was from Genesis 3, as I don’t ever remember hearing it at a Carol service.  Now, granted that doesn’t mean I haven’t, but I’m pretty sure that most of the Carol services I have attended have started instead with the passage from Isaiah 9 and skipped over Genesis completely.  Now, there is nothing sacrosanct about the nine lessons chosen in 1919, and a narrower selection of teachings is often necessary to make a experience more accessible for small children, who may find it difficult to engage with long spoken passages of scripture.  However, it is also very possible that this first lesson is skipped because it is uncomfortable.  At first glance there is none of the hope of Christmas.  People go to a Christmas Carol Service in order to celebrate, not to be reminded of the failure of mankind and our alienation from God.  We like to celebrate the goodness we see in people, not be told of our sin.

And yet, like in God’s picture of a fallen world to Adam, we find ourselves in a dark time of the year where little grows.  Everywhere around us we see death and decay.   Many of us are shielded from some of the harshest realities of winter due to global food trade, technology, and shelter - although rising fuel prices make this winter particularly bleak for many.  But it is still no surprise that pretty much every Northern hemisphere culture has festivities associated with this time of year: whether the pagan midwinter solstice, Divali, Hannukah, Thanksgiving, or simply a secular ‘Christmas’.  I'm pretty sure our collective mental health would take an even greater hit without these in place.

Our mid-winter festivities always feel like light in the darkness to me.  Twinkling fairy lights, candles, cosy homes surrounded by snow, gifts to those less fortunate.  Obviously, these are idealised images, but it seems to me that at the centre of it all is hope.  Hope is trusting in something that is not fully seen at that time, but which we feel certain will come, like the rising of the sun each morning or the coming of spring.  But, in the cold darkness, what is it that is giving us hope?  Sure, the orbit of the earth around the sun and the knowledge that warmer weather will come is pretty important, but there are other things too.  I was reflecting recently how many people see this time of year as a time to give money to charity or take part in activities to help those less fortunate that themselves.  Is Christmas, or another mid-winter celebration, about the hope of the goodness of humanity for many people?  We look to and participate in those small random acts of kindness, amongst all the greed, indifferent and hurt, to give us that hope that human beings are good at the core.

It's possible to feel this in our churches too, particularly as we feel that warm glow of self-righteousness as we fill up a shoebox of gifts for an unknown child.  And that is why the part of the gospel message that starts with our passage today is so important.   Our passage gives us no hope for humankind - it paints a bleak picture of a world that is the result of our sin.  The ancestors of all sparse larders and broken relationships, of which the pain is often felt especially keenly at Christmas, are all there in Eden. Ephesians 2 describes us as 'dead in [our] transgressions and sin' (v1) and 'by nature deserving of wrath' (v3).  We are not just weakened or not-quite-perfect, but cut off from the author of life himself.  There is no hope for humanity to save itself.

And yet, even in the dark winter of Genesis 3, we see a flickering candle of hope.   

And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.

Evil would not go unchecked and unpunished - a rescuer is promised to crush its head, although he himself will be stricken.  We, with the benefit of thousands of years of history unfolding, know the identity of this rescuer who will bring hope to the world as the baby lying in the manger that we remember at Christmas.

The celebration of Christmas in mid-winter has mixed origins, but it is not because Jesus was actually born at this time.  And yet, despite its origins, it is fitting that we celebrate the birth of Christ during what is otherwise a bleak and dark time.  Christ himself came into poverty, shame and obscurity - a quite literally tiny sign of hope.  He did not come to stay a baby, but to die for our sins and defeat death.   When we search around in the darkness for hope, it is not to the goodness of humanity we should look, but to the baby in the manger - to Jesus Christ, our rescuer, redeemer, king and Lord.  And when we see hope in the words and actions of others, we would do well to remember that these things are but a reflection or outworking of our Lord.  He is the hope of Christmas.