Sermon: Stories about being human

Genesis 2:15-117, 3:1-7; Romans 5:12-19

I love Genesis. There are master-story tellers at work as well as a brilliant editor and it does theology through story. Today we heard a story that may be three thousand years old and, while not historical fact, is timeless in its portrayal of humanity which the Lord God has created. We need to remember that in Hebrew ‘Adam means ‘human' so stands for humanity in general and can present universal truths through the story of one man in particular.

What does Genesis tell us about what it is to be human? Humanity is God's idea and we are God's handiwork, charged by God to sustain and nurture the life God has created. In story form, to be human is to have responsibility for tending God's garden and to be free to eat anything except the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In other words, we have freedom with responsibility rather than licence, as a God-given gift for the good of all. To be human is to be contingent, created for goodness, for enjoyment, for relationship, for creative and caring work, to have a vocation, to have permission to act in God's world, and to be subject to restriction. To be human is to hold all this together.

Then what happens? We hear a story of sly half truths. The serpent is not satan, just a crafty manipulator who uses words to devastating effect, as people have done ever since. He does not lie directly but distorts what God has said, ‘Did God say you shall not eat from any tree in the garden?' and thus trips the woman into misrepresenting God's instructions when she replies that they may not even touch the tree without dying. The serpent then simply casts doubts in her mind about God's trustworthiness and the rest is history. To be human is to have a basic innocence that makes us vulnerable to manipulation and exploitation, to want what is forbidden, to want pleasure, to rebel, to overstep boundaries that are part of God's design for creation, to doubt God's good intentions.

Adam and Eve want wisdom but get knowledge. They are wholly responsible for their actions which bring shame rather than guilt, and devastate their relationship with each other and with God. God says they will die if they eat the fruit, the serpent flatly contradicts that. They eat and do not drop down dead immediately, but lose eternal life since God acts to stop them living for ever with the consequences of their sin and the bible is assiduous at telling us of people's deaths.  

It is a powerful way to do theology, to tell a story like that.

The Genesis creation stories echo throughout the bible; the final chapters of Revelation are still interacting with them. Today's second reading works with these themes and we find Paul in the middle of a complex argument.  We don't know if he believed literally in a man called Adam or saw him as a type of humanity and of Christ, the perfect human. Either way, Paul echoes Genesis in seeing the consequence of human disobedience as death, which is not punishment for sin but its end result. Sin is the gateway, death is the outcome. Because of the vagaries of translation from Greek to Latin centuries ago, the western church has assumed that Paul claims sin is hereditary - hence original sin - but many scholars now believe he means that death rather than sin is innate, and that is what the Genesis story is explaining. We sin by our own actions, not Adam's.  Paul argues that only after Moses could sin be breaking the law because there was no law to break until then; before that the relationship of sin and death was that of cause and effect rather than crime and punishment. Since Adam's disobedience, death affects everyone, including people who do not share the precise sin of Adam. Paul is expressing theologically what Genesis tells us in story. And he goes on to say that God's grace has acted through the second Adam, Christ, the perfect man. As Cardinal Newman's hymn expresses it so brilliantly,

O loving wisdom of our God!

When all was sin and shame,

A second Adam to the fight

And to the rescue came.

O wisest love! that flesh and blood

Which did in Adam fail,

Should strive afresh against their foe,

Should strive, and should prevail.

Hold on to the truth that just as in Adam, all die, so in Christ all shall be made alive. To be human is to be faced by death, to experience ultimate limitation, but to be human is also to be given new life in Christ, the Second Adam.

This juxtaposition of Genesis and Paul exposes us to some profound insights about what it is to be human - the focus of our Lenten explorations this year. What happens when ask about being human today? What stories can we tell that express such theology today?

In June 1976 a new word entered the world's vocabulary, ‘Soweto'. Some of you immediately have memories flooding back, others don't know what I am talking about. For the choristers in particular, Soweto stands for South West Township which is a settlement of 900,000 people, larger than Newcastle and Gateshead together, that grew up on the south western edge of Johannesburg in South Africa when, in the 1950s, the government led by white people introduced a policy of racial segregation and forcibly moved black people from their homes into townships which had appalling living conditions, particularly in the early days. That policy of racial segregation was called apartheid and it was a terrible period in South African history. Many people were imprisoned, injured or died opposing it and some of us here boycotted of South African products in protest.  Then the government required school lessons to be taught in Afrikaans, the language of some white people which most people did not speak. It would be like all your lessons suddenly being taught in Welsh, you would be confused and stop learning anything. 10,000 students joined a protest march. They had walked several miles and were close to their destination at a sports stadium when the police opened fire outside a church and riots followed in which over 500 young people were killed (figures from Wikipedia). Many were children. The first child to be killed, Hector Pietersen, was just 12 years old which is younger than some of our choristers.  The Soweto uprising became one of the bleakest moments in the terrible history of apartheid and is an example of how we humans can be brutal with one another, in this case because our skins are different colours. Had we read on in Genesis we would have heard stories of the same human hatred beginning with Cain killing Abel and Lamech killing a young man: human nature is the same throughout the ages.

But the stories also tell us that humans we are not entirely at the mercy of our capacity for wrongdoing, we can do good. Paul tells us that being human means that there is grace and life in Jesus Christ, who shares our human nature and Genesis goes on to tell of humans facing the consequences of their actions and rebuilding their lives. That is why I reminded you about Soweto because in the 1980s the courageous opposition to apartheid contributed to its abolition: humans can do immense good in the face of evil. When I heard the shocking news from Soweto in 1976 I never dreamed that one day I would go there but in 2007 the bishop invited me to lead some conferences there and for part of the time I stayed just round the corner from the childhood homes of Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, the two great Christian statesmen who have led their country towards reconciliation and continue to show how to tend God's creation and nurture its life. One Sunday I worshipped in the church outside which Hector Pietersen was killed. I had preached and then, at the very last minute when the table was set, the priest indicated I was to preside at the Eucharist. It was one of the most humbling moments of my life, I was one foreign white woman in a church full of black people whose welcome was overwhelming and joy was tangible despite the devastating impact of AIDS and poverty on their lives. Talking with the priest later I learned that they work hard to make their worship a foretaste of heaven. (Do we similarly work hard with our worship?) In Soweto I put human stories on Paul's insights about the effect of death and the abundance of grace and God's free gift of righteousness in Christ. To be human and in Christ, the Second Adam, is to know that reconciliation and hope, though very costly, are possible; In Christ we are estranged no longer.

Our Lenten theme of ‘being human' is stimulated by the exhibition in the Galilee Chapel about which there's another story to tell. Jane Alexander, a white South African teenager in 1976, is now a professor of sculpture in Cape Town. Her work is a comment on the apartheid legacy, showing its continuing impact not in Soweto but on the displaced children of Cape Town. They are vulnerable and face enormous risks but also display great resilience as they struggle to build dignified lives. As we focus on what it is to be human in our Lent course, her work is a dialogue partner; it may perplex and disturb us because it reminds us of a side of human society that we do not encounter in Durham but is all too real on the streets of many cities around the world. If you've seen ‘Slumdog Millionaire' that film brings Mumbai's vulnerable children to our attention, as well as human cruelty, avarice and love.

So, at the start of Lent, what do our readings tell us about what it is it to be human?

To be human is to be created in God's image, to be entrusted with the care of God's world, to have freedom to explore all aspects of it - what a wonderful licence for scientific research that is in this year when we remember Darwin - but it is also to face boundaries put there for our own good, and to be limited by death. It involves taking responsibility for our actions but also for knowing and caring about the injustices and inequities in this world because people are vulnerable, even gullible, and willing to exploit others in their greed for instant gratification. The world economic crisis is forcing us to face these truths about ourselves and the whole world seems to be trying to blame someone else. That's no surprise, it's all there in Genesis when Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the serpent: plus ça change. Perhaps Lent is a time for being accountable ourselves in areas of our life where we'd rather abdicate responsibility.

But, finally and gloriously, being human is forever determined by the fact that Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity, the Second Adam, has conquered death which is the consequence of sin, and opened to us the gate of glory. To be human is to be capable of transformation. For that, thanks be to God.

In the light of all this, and bearing in mind the power of story to embody theological insights, what do our lives show of what it is to be human? what would it be like if, this Lent, we were all more conscious of our humanity? What simple actions of living for good can we do today, this week, to show humanity in its true light in Jesus Christ?