March 1, 2020, Hide and Seek, Rev. Dr. Judy Fentress-Williams

0:06 Good morning, Alfred Street. As I say every time, I give honor to God and I give thanks to our pastor for this opportunity to share with you today. I do not take it lightly. It is both an honor and a responsibility. That being said, I invite you, if you would, to turn in your Bibles to the book of Genesis. We're going to be looking at Genesis chapter 3. And I would love it if you would stand out of respect to God's word when you find it. And we're going to read Genesis chapter 3. Chapter 3. Praise God. There it is. Genesis chapter 3, verses 8 to 10. Reading from the Common English Bible today.

1:03 During that day's cool evening breeze, they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden. And the man and his wife hid themselves from the Lord God in the middle of the garden's trees. The Lord God called to the man and said, Where are you? The man replied, I heard your sound in the garden. I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid myself.

1:37 I want to speak to you this morning on the topic, Hide and Seek. Hide and Seek. Please join me in a word of prayer. Lord, you know everything about us. So we're just gonna do away with all the pretense. There are no secrets with you. And you know what you're dealing with this morning. So come into this space and do what only you can do, Lord. Speak to us so that we can hear you today. this is our prayer in jesus name amen Sisters and brothers, I stand before you this morning as the product of a Christian education. I went to Christian school from kindergarten till 12th grade.

2:38 I went to church and Sunday school on Sunday with a full complement of Vacation Bible School, Five Day Club, Pioneer Girls, and Youth Group. I say all of that to say I've had some Bible in my life. So imagine my surprise when I went to seminary, the place where they train people for ministry, and found that none of what I had learned seemed to fit in with what they were talking about. There was all this stuff they were talking about I had never heard of before, didn't make sense, I didn't think it came from God. And there were times when I wondered if my professors even knew Jesus.

3:24 There was one professor, I'm pretty sure she was going to hell. But when I got into one class and they said to us, the first 11 chapters of Genesis are an origin story. It was one of the first times they said something that made sense to me. You see, I am a comic book fangirl. I know something about an origin story. An origin story is the key to the character, whoever they are. When you know the origin story, you know the ethical code of your hero. You know their motivation. You know their weakness. You know their strength. You know where their costume looks the way it does. And there's not one episode in the story of any superhero that is not influenced by the origin story. The story of origin is the framework for the rest of the story.

4:27 It's the skeleton for the narrative arc. The origin story is the character's DNA. So when we understand that the first 11 chapters of Genesis are the origin story, and then we understand that it's not just Israel's origin story, but that it's our origin story, Then we need to read the stories about Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel and Noah and Enoch and Seth and look for family resemblance. These stories are our origin stories, which means that in them we find our hereditary traits. You should be reading to find yourself, to see how you fit in. It's kind of like when you were in fifth grade and you got the math prize and your grandmother pulled you aside and told you about all of the people who had gone before you who didn't have a formal education but were good with numbers.

5:38 She was trying to tell you what you were capable of. Or when you put on a few pounds right before the family reunion, that's really bad timing, And you walk in and your auntie say, Ooh, girl. Here you are looking just like your mama. Your mama who struggled with her weight her entire life.

6:02 It's shady, but they're trying to tell you who you came from. Or maybe it's when you sort through all those pictures in the basement, and you realize that the baby picture of your father looks just like your baby picture. Genes don't lie. This is your DNA. So now come back with me to the story in Genesis. And remember, this is not just somebody else's story. This is your origin story. This is where you came from.

6:44 Genesis 2 tells us that in the day that the Lord made the earth into heaven, when there was no plant in the field, and when there was no herb that had sprung up, but there was some water that would spread out and water the whole face of the earth, that's when the Lord God formed a man. He formed him out of the dust of the ground. And then he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. And the man became a living being. The Bible says that God planted a garden in Eden in the east. And in that garden, he caused to grow every kind of tree that was a delight to the eyes and good for food. And it tells us that in that garden, there was a tree called the tree of life. there's another tree called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and then God took the man that he had created and put him in the garden he had prepared for him and told him you may eat freely from every tree in this garden except from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil for in the day that you eat from that tree you will surely die and then the story says God said it's not good for the man to be alone I'm going to make a helper for him and so out of the ground the Lord God made every beast of the field and every bird of the air and he brought them to the man to see what the man would name them and whatever the man called it that was its name man named all the animals the man named all the birds he named everything God put in front of him but there was no fitting helper found for the man then God caused the man to fall asleep and he removed a rib and closed over the place with the flesh and he took that rib and made it into a woman and brought the woman to the man and the man said Zot that's Hebrew for hot dog.

8:49 He said, this one at last, right? This one at last is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. This one shall be called woman, for out of man she was taken. Then the story says, therefore a man will leave his mother and father and cling to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. And then it says, the man and his woman were naked, and they were not ashamed. I love that story, but it doesn't end there. The very next verse says that the serpent was the most intelligent and clever animal of all the creatures that God made. And the serpent rolls up and initiates a conversation with Eve by asking her some questions.

9:51 And he said, did God actually say that if you do this, you will die? And Eve responds, and they go back and forth. And finally Eve decides that the fruit does look good and she does want to be wise. And so she took up the fruit and she ate it and she gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate. And then their eyes were open. And they saw that they were naked. So they took fig leaves and they crafted them, sewed them together to cover themselves. when we understand that the story of adam and eve is our story what we learn is that we were created from the dust of the ground and that god breathed into us god's breath we learn that we we were created to be in relationship with God and with each other.

10:59 That's what we are capable of. That's what we were made for. When we get to the part where Eve and Adam took the fruit, then we learn about our spiritual DNA. We learn that we have a proclivity to sin, that we have a tendency towards willfulness and disobedience.

11:22 And when we get to the part where we realize that taking the fruit results in guilt and shame and hiding and blaming and separation. That's the part of the story who tells us who we are. We are a fractured people.

11:42 Now I want you to stay with me, saints, for just a few more minutes, because I'm trying to go somewhere. When it comes to this story, we tend to spend a lot of time focusing on that whole scene where they eat the fruit. We go over it with a fine-tooth comb. We act as if somehow, if we were there, things would have gone down differently. Right? So we go over and we look at every single character and everything that happened. Why did Eve say this? And where was Adam? And we're trying to figure it out. We look at Eve and in the old days they said, well, Eve was the weaker sex. And then later on they said, well, she was kind of uppity. Who told her she needed to speak? Some people say she was too curious. and some people say that's what happens when women start thinking in the first place some people come back and say well where was Adam he didn't protect her he fell down the job there was a vacuum in leadership And then the people who are really saved focus on the serpent.

12:41 That's the devil. That's the accuser. Give him a chance. He'll steal your joy. We blame Eve. We blame Adam. We blame the serpent. And we reenact this story as though it's really about them. When in fact, this is our Ancestry.com. We're focusing on the wrong point. The story in the garden is the back story. You can't change your parentage. We do not have the power to undo what happened down in Eden. And we get stuck in the details. And we can't see the forest for the trees, get it? We can't see the forest for the trees. I really like that. We get so obsessed with the details that we miss the genre of the story.

13:42 This is our origin story. And this is why I want to say to my brothers in Christ, who out of their own obsession with human sexuality, have coined the phrase, the Bible said Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. Y'all have heard that. But the problem with that is that the genre is not focused on Adam and Eve. When you recognize that the genre is an origin story and that the story is about us, then you can make the case, well actually it is about Adam and Steve. It's about Adam and Steve and Jose and Rupert and Mary and Eve and John John and little sister and big brother and me and you. It's about all of us.

14:37 Stay with me here. It does not matter who you put in the garden. They will eat the fruit. Alright? If you put a mother and a daughter in the garden, a husband and a wife, an only child, if you put our Alfred Street Baptist Church Deacon Board, somebody, I don't know who it is Deacon Charles, somebody is going to take the fruit. And that someone bears a striking resemblance to me and to you. The story is trying to tell us that we are people who trespass boundaries. We are people who eat fruit. We are people who are blessed but curse others. We are covered with guilt and shame so that we can't even stand to look at ourselves.

15:38 and we hide. We hide. The departure point of this story is Adam and Eve hiding from God. That's where we actually come in. The Bible says that Adam and Eve's whole world unraveled when they disobeyed God. The whole thing fell apart. And so they sewed fig leaves together. Now, they don't have a needle and thread. So they had to figure out what kind of leaves to get, what to do with them, how to fashion it together so it's going to hold together and stay on their bodies and cover them in the right places. They had to work at this. It was a process. They sewed to hold together what was coming apart. My sisters and brothers, this is what we do.

16:35 We are masters of deception. We are really good makeup artists. And we have down the art of illusion. And we got it from our ancestors. The consequence of sin is that we cover ourselves and we hide. We feel inadequate and unworthy, and so we hide behind beautiful clothes and fancy cars and things that we can't afford, hoping that maybe nobody will notice. We feel tremendous guilt and so we take cover behind our accomplishments and our titles, hoping that we can distract somebody from what's underneath. And we feel shame.

17:32 And so some of us use religion as our covering. We come to all the services. We know all the words. we have the holiest face of all, and we shout louder than anybody else. Surely no one would suspect what's happening underneath.

17:55 We hide in plain sight, and we've gotten so good at it that we convince ourselves that our fig leaf self is real. We think our hiding actually works. When our daughter was a little girl, when Sam was a little girl, there was this game we would play most days. Towards the end of the day, late afternoon, she and I would be hanging out in the family room, and the family room in our house back in that day was right underneath the garage. So when the garage door opened, you could hear it, and actually, there wasn't a whole lot of insulation. You could feel it. The garage door would open, and as soon as she heard that sound, her eyes would get really big. Daddy's home! Daddy's home! And then the game was on.

18:48 So the whole point was that she had to hide so that he could find her when he came in the house. So he would walk in, and he would say, where is Samantha? And I'd say, I don't know. And then we had this whole ritual of him finding her. And what was so funny about it was that there was a developmental stage in her life where she thought that she could be anywhere and just close her eyes, right? Yeah, because she thought if I can't see you, you can't see me. She thought she was invisible, right?

19:22 Then when her little brother came along and we played the game with him, he tried to close his eyes and she pulled him aside and said, bro, that's not going to work. So he had to come up with another way to hide. And so his way of hiding was he would get behind a curtain, All right? So now, unless your curtains billow out onto the floor, your feet are sticking out. And he was a little toddler, and toddlers, you know toddlers breathe heavy.

19:48 Right? So there's a curtain that's got feet underneath it that's vibrating, right? And the more excited he gets, the louder he gets, and he starts giggling, right? But for all of that, Jacob Williams knew he was a good hider. and he knew he was a good hider because his dad would walk right by the curtain and not see him. He would walk, he'd get real close and then he'd turn away and go another way. He was convinced that he was a good hider. But the funny thing about Jacob is he couldn't take it for long and so eventually he would burst out because he couldn't wait and say, here I am, daddy. Jacob thought that he could hide, but what he didn't realize is that his daddy owned the house.

20:39 Right? Right. Before he purchased it, we saw the blueprints. We did a walkthrough. After we bought it, we painted it. We placed furniture. We hung the curtains. He knew the layout of the house. And he knew his son. There was nowhere in that house that our children could hide. And there's nowhere we can hide where God doesn't know us. So tell me, saints, why does God ask Adam, where are you? This is a God who forms him out of the dust of the ground and breathes into his nostrils the breath of life, put him in the garden that he planted and designed. God knew the cycle of every plant in that garden.

21:39 God knew the sound of Adam's breath. God knew what Adam looked like when he was asleep. Knew his down sitting and his uprising, according to the psalmist. Knew his thoughts afar off. Even the thought that said, I'm about to eat that fruit. God knew everything about him. That all-knowing God, that God who is everywhere, that God who is all-powerful says, Adam, where are you? God exercise divine restraint because God wants to invite Adam and us into divine relationship hear me sisters and brothers God is not going to show up to expose you God is waiting to invite you No matter how long it takes, God is going to wait because God made you for relationship.

22:45 This morning, we come into a season of seek, which is nestled into the season of Lent. We have a lot to remember, a lot to be mindful of. We have a reflection book, we've got a devotional, we have a workbook. There's a lot that we have to think about. This morning, I want you to remember this. Genesis 2 tells us that we are made from dust. But the psalmist reminds us, God knows our frame. God remembers that we are dust. God knows what you're made of. We know we don't have the power to undo what happened in Eden. But our Creator, who is all-powerful, has the power to redo, renew, and restore relationship.

23:48 Remember that as you seek God, God is seeking you. Now, I want to make sure you get this, because sometimes we think we have to do a whole lot to find God. We have to do something to get to God, to reach God. We've got to get our words right. We put on our King James English when we pray, right? We say, Father, I stretch my hand to thee. And God says, you had me at Father. You say, Lord, help me. And the Lord says, I'm right here. You say, help. The Lord says, I'm right here. What we need to do is open our eyes, come out from behind the curtain, bring all that brokenness you've been trying to hold together. And in that moment of encounter with God, find no condemnation but grace.

24:49 Find no judgment but mercy. And hear the voice of the God who loves you say, oh, there you are. I recognize you. sometimes we struggle because we focus on the wrong thing and I want you to know the answer is simple the answer is always God that's all it's always that we're trying to figure out we look at the the Israelites well let's look at the answer of the Israelites it took them 40 years to get to the promised land because they felt the promised land was the goal that was never the goal. God wanted relationship. And God said, I'm going to keep you into this desert as long as it takes for us to be in authentic relationship. Some of the things that we think we must have are of no consequence to God. God doesn't mind if you have it. God doesn't mind if you don't.

25:48 But what God must have is relationship with you. when God called Abraham we have trouble translating this because there's a command and then there's this other this pronomal thing God says to Abraham lech lecha it says go but then the next part it actually is like a a preposition to and then it's like to yourself so we often translate it like you go you really go but I wonder if the the thrust of that passages go into yourself get rid of all the layers of fig leaves that you have piled on top of you because you didn't think you were worthy by yourself and let God show you the promise that God has put in you Over the next 31 days, as we seek God, as we shed and strip away and take off and sit still and divest and let go,

26:56 remember God is ready and waiting to do the work. There's a song that I learned growing up. I don't know whether I learned it in vacation Bible school or Sunday school. I don't know where I learned it. But the lyrics are, the Savior is waiting to enter your heart. Why don't you let him come in? There's nothing in this world to keep you apart. What is your answer to him? Time after time, he has waited before. And now he is waiting again to see if you're willing. to open the door. Oh, how he wants to come in.

27:45 Hear the word of the Lord. Come out, come out, wherever you are. Let us pray. Lord, in this moment, we ask that you would take away the fear that makes us think we have to hide in plain sight. remove the sense of unworthiness or anxiety, and help us only to focus on the love and the mercy and the grace that you have for us. help us Lord to realize that even as we seek you