A Journey of Disconnection and Reconnection

 First, a shout out to the Wednesday Night Bible Study!  God bless your wisdom!  

On this Pentecost Sunday, in Our Story, Jesus prays for us.  The prayer of our Lord Jesus is that we receive the Holy Spirit, the indwelling of our God.  It is in the gift of the Spirit that the church was founded and continues to this day. 

Humanity has not had access to that kind of intimacy with God since Genesis.  In the first chapters, God created the heavens and the earth, planted the Garden of Eden, put the man and the woman (whom we come to know as Adam and Eve) into the Garden, and carried on a close, personal relationship with them.

What was that relationship like?  Well, in the cool of the day, God walked in the Garden, came in to hang out with the First Couple.  How did God care for Adam and Eve?  Gave them every tree to eat from, they simply needed to go out and partake, not only to be alive but to thrive in their Creator’s care.

Then came the Fall. Adam and Eve ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, in disobedience to God.  Consequently, they were banished from the Garden.  Curses followed, including the removal of the easy food supply of the Garden.  Adam would now have to toil on the ground, by the sweat of his brow, to grow the food they would need to eat.  But one thing did not change.  There was still an open relationship with God, to be seen in the next generation of Cain and Abel.  

Since I was Sunday School age,  I have pictured the nature of the communication changing.  Before the Fall, Adam and Eve spoke to God like people having a conversation.  Like, if they had a water cooler in Eden, that's where they might have gathered.  But when it came to Cain speaking to the Lord, well after the Fall, I picture Cain looking up into the sky to talk to God, that God took a step back and...up, away from humanity.  This is the picture from the mind of a kid.

Irrespective, it is not pleasant communication, because the conversations between Cain and God concern Cain’s anger, hatred, and eventual murder of his brother.  But the communication remains.  Until the next curse comes down from God.  There are two pieces to it.

The first is that Cain, who had been a tiller of the soil, is cut off even from that.  He will not be able to make things grow.  He will be a wanderer in the lands.  Is the implication that, cut off from his livelihood, he is now going to have to live off scraps or something?  But there is more.  He will also be cut off from God.  We know this from Cain’s protest in Genesis 4: 13.

“My punishment is greater than I can bear! Today you have driven me away from the soil, and I shall be hidden from your face…”  God’s final 'act' of communication is to put a mark on Cain so that, when people meet him, to kill him is to suffer massive divine retribution, seven fold's worth.   

From there, the nature of God's communication with humanity shifts.  God will still speak to humanity, to Noah, to Abraham, to Moses but on God’s terms, in God’s own way, to God’s Chosen.

Sidebar: This is a VERY brief summary of the depth of context and content in the first chapters of Genesis.  But it is our origin story; from God’s good creation to humanity’s choice of disobedience-the Fall of Humanity.  It lays the groundwork for our understanding of what God has planned out, in Christ, to restore us to right relationship with God.  The open communication ended, until Pentecost. 

Communication is opened once again.  God indwells us as the Holy Spirit.  Jesus, in the Holy Spirit, lives in our hearts.  This is the result of Jesus, by His death and resurrection, having undone the consequences of our sins, undoing the curses inflicted upon us, renewing our right relationship with the Almighty.  Whenever we need Him, Jesus is right there with us, there for us.

Thanks be to God.

Pastor Pete