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SundayFebruary 13, 2005 - Lent 1, Year A

Crime and Punishment. It's the name of a famous book by the Russian writer Dostoevsky, and its one of those huge, complex, and fundamentally confusing ones, that most people only read when they have to for college — and even then, try to rely on other people's summaries.

The basic story begins simply enough — a young man, Raskolnikov, down on his luck, murders a pawnbroker and her sister
and steals the few items worth anything
that he finds in her room.
But from then on
it becomes more complicated as Raskolnikov tries to escape the consequences of his actions, drawing his family, friends and the police into the web of crime, and it's not until he falls in love that he finally admits to the murder and shows some remorse. And all along we are invited into Raskolnikov's mind: the obsessive wanderings where guilt becomes obsession
and we almost want to tell him just to pull himself together
and get on with it.

And if you read the critics, you'll find that they identify one of the major themes of this epic
as being that of alienation. Raskolnikov, one way or another, has become alienated from society; he's lost any sense
of what it is
to be a human being
in relationship with others
and accountable to them
as part of society.
And in the end
he finds himself alienated
from himself, and he faces himself
as a stranger.

Crime
and punishment. For Dostoevsky, the crime is a universally recognized one, murder, taking the life of another human being,
but the punishment is not so much the one that Raskolnikov fears at first, imprisonment or death, payback
for his action,
but the inevitable consequence
of deciding that life was expendable:
the slow deterioration of his relationships, the slipping into something close to insanity
as the relationships
that give meaning to his life
slowly shrivel away.

Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment
is one of the great masterpieces of literature.
And like most masterpieces, its greatness lies
not simply in the plot or the skill of the author with words
but in the ability to tap the deep themes of human existence.

It's these same themes
that we find throughout literature and history,
themes that have their roots
in the stories
that are at the heart of our identity,
and at the heart of our faith.
And today we heard
one of those key stories
that teach us who we are,
the story
from the first book of the bible, Genesis
chapters 2 and 3.

It all begins
with God.
Genesis chapter 1, verse 1: In the beginning, God created...
God created light and darkness, sun and moon, sky and land and sea,
plants and animals and fish and birds, and as the climax of it all
God created human beings, male and female, in God's own image.
And it was very good.

The story of creation
in the book of Genesis
is not intended, first and foremost,
to provide for us a scientific explanation
of the origins of our world. It's theological,
like the whole of Scripture.
The word theology comes from two Greek words,
and ,
, meaning God,
and , meaning word or discourse.
So theology
is words about God,
and the story of creation
is first and foremost
words about God.
And what it says about God
is that before anything else existed,
there was God, and this God
is one who creates,
the source of all life and existence.
And this God, in creating,
chose to make something
that bore the divine image,
human beings, male and female,
made
in the image
of God.

And God loves these human beings
and puts them safely
in a garden, a place
where all their needs are met,
and God spends time with them,
walking
in the garden, seeking out
their company.

But then, then comes
the story we heard today.
God has told them
to take whatever food they want from the garden, from any of the trees, except for one.
They can eat apples and oranges
and plums and pomegranates,
even the fruit
from the tree of life,
but they are not to eat fruit
from the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil.
We don't know
what that fruit was. One tradition says it was apples, but there's nothing to suggest that in the text. And we're not really sure
what this knowledge was
that the fruit could give. Jewish tradition says it was one of three things:
it was about morality, or sexuality, or even a way
of talking about the knowledge of everything — the good and the bad, the long and the short of it. That one makes the most sense — the idea that what this tree offered
was knowledge
of all things, the sort of knowledge
that God alone knows,
and so to eat it's fruit
would be putting yourself
in the place
of God.

Anyway, the man and the woman, they can eat any fruit at all, except for the fruit
of that
one
tree.
And then along comes the snake. Slimy, slithery thing, sneaking its way
into the story, sneaking its way
into their minds.

"Listen," he said to the woman, "listen. Did God really say , you can't eat fruit
from any of the trees
in this garden?"

"N-n-n-no," she answered. "We can eat any of the fruit, except for that one." And she pointed right at the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil.
"And we daren't even touch it, or we'll die."

"You'll die?" said the serpent. "Of course you won't. Don't be so silly. Come on, just one taste. It won't hurt you — it's not poisonous. You'll see — in fact, when you eat it, you'll know everything. You'll be just
like God."

"Well, just a taste then." And the woman took a piece of fruit
and tasted it, and so did the man,
and suddenly
they gained a glimpse of the knowledge of God.

But it wasn't good, nothing like what they expected. They looked at each other
and saw they were naked; they rushed to find something to cover themselves, and they went
and hid
from God.
They gained knowledge; they lost
their innocence.

You see, it's not so much
that they ate the fruit, per se. It wasn't a physical thing — the fruit didn't do the damage.
What did it, was that when it came down to making a choice,
they decided
to trust the words of the serpent
above the words of God.
God, who had created them
and breathed life into them; God who had placed them in a garden
with everything they needed to live
and walked alongside them.
It was as if
they turned to God and said
"Thanks for everything, but we don't need your advice any more."
And not surprisingly
their relationship with God changed.
It couldn't be the same.
How could they continue to live with a God
who they didn't bother
to trust; how could God live with them
when they had betrayed
God's trust?

And so God
sent them away.
Away from the garden, with its wonderful fruits.
Away from the tree of life
that could have ensured
that they would not die.
And away from the God
who had walked alongside them
in the cool of the evening.

They didn't die, not then. But away from the tree of life,
away from the God who gave them breath,
death became an inevitability;
and worse,
they had lost
that wonderful relationship
with the God
in whose image
they were made,
the relationship
that had given meaning
to their lives.
It was worse
than they could ever have imagined.
The curse
of Adam and Eve.

And Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov
is an inheritor of that curse. An inheritor of the human condition
that sees us constantly failing to trust,
failing to trust God
and one another
so that our relationships
are always prone to fracture.
sucked down
into isolation.

But the reason we read
the story of the man and woman in Genesis
this first Sunday in Lent
is not in order to get depressed,
to get stuck in obsessing about our failure, like Raskolnikov.
No, the reason we read it, is because without this sort of honesty
about our human failings
its almost impossible for us to recognize
the amazing gift God offers us in Christ.

You know how hard it is
to forgive someone who has betrayed your trust.
But what God does in Christ
is gives us a second chance.
God says,
"will you trust me?"
It's that simple. All God asks,
is that we take a chance
and trust the one who has created us, trust the one
who has given us life.
Even though God knows
that we will continue to betray him, we will continue
time after time
to trust the words of others
over the promises of God,
God offers, and keeps on offering
the promise of forgiveness, the promise of life
if only we will trust.
Because it is trust
that restores our relationships, trust in the one who on the cross
brought salvation
and redemption.

That's what Raskolnikov discovers. A cross
given him
by his friend
becomes the symbol of his redemption. He wears it to the police station
to confess
because he no longer has to fear,
he is no longer alienated, he is not longer
a stranger.

And the cross
is the symbol of our redemption. With it
God offers us a new beginning,
a renewed relationship with our Creator
that will bring us healing
and forgiveness
and life.he
And we no longer have to fear,
we are no longer alienated, we are no longer
strangers.

 

Sermon ©Raewynne J. Whiteley 2005