1st 3 paragraphs of Pastoral perspective; (Allen C. McSween Jr)
The season of Lent in Year A of the lectionary opens with the narrative theological artistry of Genesis 2–3. The story is often interpreted theologically in terms of temptation, “fall,” sin, and death. Read from a pastoral perspective, the story serves to narrate aspects of human brokenness that every pastor deals with professionally and all of us deal with personally.
The story begins with a programmatic statement of our human vocation and its limits. Humankind is placed in the garden of God’s creation to “till and keep it.” The Creator who gives life also gives meaning and purpose to life. We are called to serve as caretakers in God’s good creation—stewards of a world we did not make and can receive only as a gift held in trust.
In the exercise of our vocation the Creator gives us remarkable freedom. “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden”—every tree, that is, except one. The freedom God ordains is expansive but not boundless. There are limits to the exercise of our creaturely freedom. “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die” (2:17).
1st paragraph of Exegetical perspective; (Judy Fentress-Williams)
In J’s creation account (2:15), God creates the man, ha adam, and places him in the garden as its caretaker. The garden is named Eden, which means “delight,” “luxury,” or “dainty,” giving rise to the sense of Eden as paradise, a place that contains “every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food” (2:9). The man is “placed” in the garden to “till,” literally, to serve and to keep it. The word used to describe God’s placement of the man is nuha, which means “rest, settle down, and remain,” suggesting that the garden is a place of repose for God’s creation—the man belongs there.
Homiletical perspective (Jon L. Berquist)
When we hear the familiar story of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, we are tempted to think of this as the story of sin or even of original sin. Hearing the story at the start of Lent makes the connection to sin all the stronger in our minds. A careful reading of this passage, however, reveals a surprise. The word “sin” never appears, and there are no synonyms for sin, either in this passage or elsewhere in Genesis 2–3. The rest of chapter 3 does not talk about either “punishment” or “the fall.” By starting with 2:15, we begin to get a different sense of this story’s subject matter. This verse reads “The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.” This is not just a statement of location, in which God moves the first human from one place to another. Clearly the verse concentrates on the purpose for the human: to till and keep this garden. Human purpose is the focus of this crucial statement; and human purpose forms the backdrop for the rest of what happens in the story of the garden of Eden.
The Purpose of Creation. The majestic chapter 1 and the intimate beginning to chapter 2 both tell much about creation, showing God’s character and God’s priorities through divine initiative and action. So far, however, we have not been told what God’s purpose was in the creation. Here we learn for the first time. God made humans in order to till and keep the garden, and perhaps even someday the whole earth. This purpose is amazing. So many other creation stories of the ancient world depict the creation of humanity as a by-product, an accident, or even a mistake of the gods. Genesis makes it clear that God intended to create people, not for a whim but for a reason. Herein lies the possibility for human dignity, because we are designed and fashioned with something in God’s mind for us to do. The statement of purpose may well surprise us in another way. In the modern world, we often think of humanity as the apex of creation, as the goal toward which God was working. We emphasize some other part of the story, such as the assertion in Genesis 1:26 that God gives humanity a responsibility for (or dominion over) all the rest of creation or the command in Genesis 1:28 that humans be fruitful and multiply. Sometimes our science or our psychological theories elevate us humans to the highest point of creation, assuring us that we are God’s greatest creation. Genesis 2:15 explains things differently. We humans have a God-given purpose. We were not created for ourselves; we were created in order to till and keep the garden.
Tilling and Keeping. The phrase “till and keep” may be familiar (or perhaps we still remember the “to dress it and to keep it” of the KJV), but this is not the best translation of these two Hebrew verbs. The first, usually rendered “to till,” is ‘abad, more often translated as “to serve” or “to be a slave of.” The second, “to keep,” is shamar, which means “to preserve” or “to protect.” Clearly, being a servant or slave of the earth moves us from the center of God’s creation. God makes us in order to take care of the earth itself, and to look to its interests instead of our own. We work the ground and work with the earth, and already we know that our brows will sweat in this labor. Not only does God give us purpose, but reason for labor—even hard labor. The garden is no small responsibility, and we are not to be lords of leisure over the garden, but to be its servants and slaves. We are responsible for the garden, now and into the future, so we must preserve and protect it.
Mission and Distraction. Care of the garden, God’s earth, and all God’s creation is more than a purpose. It is our mission. Living as servants of creation fulfills God’s intention for us and lives up to the reasons why we were created in the first place. Caring for creation means doing God’s work in the world. This is no pastime, nor is it a strategy for us to feel good about ourselves. God sends us into the garden because the garden needs service and preservation, and we are God’s instrument for caring for creation. Even though this mission is compelling and should be all-consuming, we share a human propensity for distraction. In the midst of caring for the garden, we will inevitably find fruit, and we will think that the fruit looks good to eat. We will meet interesting animals and strike up conversations with them to pass the time of day. We will use our God-given intellect to rationalize doing things that are not part of our mission, or we will just settle for doing as others tell us, when we need to concentrate on God’s mission in the world. Even our nakedness becomes distracting, and we know full well that wardrobes to cover our nakedness can also distract us. Human excuses for avoiding our mission may start in the garden, but we experience a full range of such excuses today that distract us from our mission. For people of faith, distraction may prove more frequently troublesome than temptation. We think of ourselves for a while, or we focus more on other humans than on God’s mission. With just a glance away, we start to wander from God’s mission.