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Eve Her Due

The Epiphany - January 5, 2025

Father Vincent Pizzuto, Ph.D.

St. Columba's Episcopal Church


Isaiah 60:1-6 + Psalm 72:1-7, 10-14 + Ephesians 3:1-12 + Matthew 2:1-12


Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn. + I speak to you in the name of the Three-in-One and One-in-Three. Amen.


A Joyful New Year! A blessed Christmastide, and Happy Feast of the Epiphany we gather to celebrate this morning.


Last week I reflected on how myth and history mutually inform one another in order to lay the groundwork for how the historical incarnation of Christ informs a rich theology of creation for ecological discipleship among Christians. 

To that end, I observed that Genesis, the first book of the Bible, in fact, presents two distinctive creation myths, written centuries apart and which also circulated independently for centuries, only later to be placed side-by-side, by ancient Jewish scribes (whom we call ‘redactors’) as they were weaving together the Torah. 


The first of these two creation stories is found in what today we call Genesis 1:1-2:4a. This creation myth, written in the mid-6th century BC tells the story of a transcendent God, Elohim, who creates the world in 6 days, resting on the seventh. In this story we hear nothing of the Garden of Eden or the “Fall” of humanity, where “male and female” are created simultaneously in the “image and likeness of God.” 


We should note that in stark contrast to the surrounding creation myths of the ancient near-and-middle East, there is no language of “cosmological battles” or wars among gods to render creation. Rather, as a polemic against such violence, in Genesis Creation is rendered effortlessly and in placid harmony by the spoken word of God: “And God said, ‘Let there be light…let dry land appear…let Earth produce every kind of living creature…and so on.” 


Despite the fact that Genesis 1 draws from the same conceptual reservoir as other contemporaneous Near Eastern cosmologies, every sense of creation as being rendered through war, violence, or force is systematically eradicated from Israel’s cosmology. Indeed, this creation myth concludes in absolute serenity and peace, with God acknowledging the goodness of all creation and resting on the 7th day, destined to become Israel’s Sabbath.


Thus, as I observed last week, reflecting this creation story, the opening prologue of John’s Gospel, unambiguously proclaims a new creation story, a new beginning through the lens of Christ where, God leaps from the pages of mythology to the annals of history as the Word-Made-Flesh:


In the beginning was the Word, 

and the Word was with God, 

and the Word was God. 

2He was in the beginning with God. 

3All things came into being through him,

and without him not one thing came into being… 

And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.

(John 1:1-4, 14)


Echoing the identical phrase (“In the beginning…”) that opens Gensis 1, John goes on to assert that the very Word through whom God rendered all creation, “Let there be light, let dry land appear…” now dwells among us as Jesus of Nazareth.  It is this same Christ, whom Colossians will proclaim as the one in whom all things in heaven and on earth were created, in whom all things hold together, and who, “is all and is in all!” Or again, whom Revelation will call the Alpha and the Omega. Here we see the so-called “leap” from myth into history. The manner in which both history and myth mutually inform and interpret one another. 


But there is as yet a second creation story in Genesis, typically identified as spanning Genesis 2:4b-3:24, which was composed much earlier than Genesis 1, around the mid-9th century BC (some three to five hundred years prior). In contrast to the absolute Transcendent God of Genesis 1, this narrative tells the story of an immanent God, whom the writers call YHWH. Here we encounter for the first time the paradisical Garden of Eden, not mentioned anywhere in the first creation story, but central to this second narrative.


Creating Adam first out of the rich soil of the earth itself, and then by extension, Eve, from Adam’s very flesh (vs. 7), God places them in rich fertile garden of Eden (vs. 8). Indeed, the very Hebrew word, adama, means “earth or soil” thus translating literally, “earthling” – one who is of the earth.


It is notable that also from the same soil God caused to grow every kind of tree (vs 9), which the writer describes as “enticing to look at and good to eat.” The text goes on to describe the four rivers that flow from Eden – not really to identify a geographical location to a mythical paradise but to demonstrate that the great rivers that form the vital arteries that flow throughout the region have their origins in paradise. We are told that our first parents were settled into the garden to cultivate and take care of it, free to eat of all its luscious fruits except the one Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. They give names to each of the animals in the garden, establishing deep intimacy with them. It is only after Adam and Eve, having been deceived by the serpent, are cast outside the garden to suffer the consequences of their disobedience.


As a result, man (Adam) was now forced to work by the sweat of his brow to earn his food in a land destined to produce brambles and thistles. And he shall be forced to work this land to eek out sustenance until he, himself, returns to the very earth from which he was created: Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. To the woman (Eve), she will suffer pain in childbearing and be dominated by her husband.


With these myths in mind, I want to share with you another creation myth as it is told in Robin Wall Kimmerer’s stunningly beautiful book, Braiding Sweet Grass, published in 2013. Incorporating the wisdom and history of her native Potawatomi Nation and her expertise as a professor of Environmental Biology at the State University of New York, her book weaves together indigenous wisdom, modern science, and personal autobiography to create a compelling narrative about the wisdom of plants and our fundamental interconnection with all of creation.


In the opening chapter of her book, Kimmerer attempts to contrast the creation story of the Potawatomi people with that of Genesis. However, her comparisons are ultimately as distorted as they are misleading, insofar as she fails to acknowledge or appreciate that Genesis presents us with two distinct creation accounts, and more so conflates these narratives to the point of misrepresenting both.


My goal in pointing this out is not to denigrate the Potawatomi creation narrative of the Sky Lady which in its own right presents a beautiful portrayal of creation, but rather to clarify that her distortion the Genesis creation narratives does a great disservice to scriptural texts that have the potential to profoundly impact a Christian understanding of the sacredness of all creation and as such to inform what we might call Christian ecological discipleship. Let me then observe two facts about the genre of myth that we must hold in mind as we clarify the record:


First, mythology, and by extension theology, are both shaped by landscape. Make no mistake, the God of Israel – and by extension Christianity – is a desert God. By contrast, the god of the Potawatomi people is the god of some of the most fertile land the world over – that is what they would call “Turtle Island” or North America. These respective landscapes shape the mythologies and theologies that grow out of them.


Secondly, Myths, are ancient ways of explaining why things are the way they are, but they do not make them so. When ancient peoples observe their world, they develop myths to explain why things were the way they were – and these are closely related to geography, natural cycles, and so on. But we clearly cannot misunderstand myths as causing the realities they attempt to explain.


For example, when the ancient Greeks wondered why we had four seasons throughout the year they did not know anything about the Earth rotation around the sun, or the tilted access that in fact causes the seasons. And so emerged the myth about Persephone (the goddess of agriculture), who was abducted into the underworld by Hades. When her mother Demeter (goddess of fertility and harvest) was told of the affair, she left Olympus and walked the Earth, disguised as a mortal, forbidding the trees to bear fruit and the earth to nurture vegetables and herbs. Eventually she brokers a deal with Hades, in which Persephone would spend six months in the underworld and six months with her mother on Mount Olympus. As a result, whenever she is with her mother, spring and summer bloom. But during her time in hades, the death of fall and winter ensue. Clearly there is no causal relationship here, but as you can see the. Myth to explain seasons results from the observation that there are indeed seasons. And one can see also how tethered the myth is to this aspect of creation.


Likewise, the Potawatomi creation story and those of Genesis speak to already existing realities reflecting their landscapes and local geography because it was within the context of the questions themselves arose. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer tells the story of Sky Lady, so named because she fell from the sky from another world to which she cannot return. Assisted by geese who help her land safely in an endless ocean, the animals realize she needs land to live upon. Many try to plumb the depths of the ocean to gather mud for land, but all fail until the Muskrat succeeds, but forfeits his life doing so. Using the mud that Muskrat retrieved from the ocean depths she spread it across the back of Turtle and from there the land “Turtle Island” formed. From a branch she had grabbed when falling from Sky World she spread seeds of every kind creating Earth’s vegetation. Allowing all to eat of the luscious fruit and grasses. 


Over against this story she begins to make her comparisons with Genesis, in which she writes:


On one side of the world were people whose relationship with the living world was shaped by Sky woman, who created a garden for the well-being of all. On the other side was another woman with a garden and a tree. But for tasting its fruit, she was banished from the garden, and the gates clanged shut behind her. That mother of men was made to wander in the wilderness and earn her bread by the sweat of her brow, not by filling her mouth with the sweet juicy fruits that bend the branch is low. In order to eat, she was instructed to subdue the wilderness into which she was cast (Kimmerer, Braiding, 6-7). 


Firstly, we should observe here that it was Adam not Eve who is made to wander the wilderness and earn bread by the sweat of his brow. And this, only in the second creation narrative.


Furthermore, Eve is never instructed to subdue the wilderness into which she was cast. And in fact, neither is Adam. Unfortunately, Kimmerer’s reconstruction of these stories seems to confuse the fact that any mention of “subduing” is in the first Genesis account (in which there is no mention of Adam and Eve). Moreover, it is precisely in this first account that God says, “Be fruitful and multiply” which is a description of the earth as fertile (not a barren wilderness as she Kimmerer suggest). Moreover, there is no “exile” from Eden (or anywhere else in Genesis 1. In short, Kimmerer utterly confuses elements of creation that are limited to the first account of creation and reads them into the story of Eve.


Furthermore, Kimmerer patently overlooks both the description of the earth as fertile in Genesis 1 and the lusciousness of the Garden and its fruit given to humanity and all animals in Genesis 2. She goes on to say, 


Same species, same earth, different stories. Like creation stories everywhere, cosmologies are a source of identity and orientation to the world. They tell us who we are. We are inevitably shaped by them, no matter how distant they may be from our consciousness. One story leads to the generous embrace of the living world, the other to banishment. One woman is our ancestral gardener, a co-creator of the good green world that would be the home of her descendants. The other was an exile, just passing through an alien world on a rough road to her real home in heaven. (Kimmerer, Braiding, 7).


I have to confess that I found the irresponsibility of her over generalizations here to be shocking. The question for the “children of Eve” is “How, indeed, do these cosmologies continue to serve as a source of identity and orientation to the world?” Certainly, for Jews, from whom these narratives first emerged, there was not now, nor has there ever been a sense that this world is one through which we are passing to our real home in heaven.


In certain in quarters of Christianity, that idea certainly arose, but was not in any way based upon these texts. More importantly, for our purposes, the incarnation, as it has been predominantly and correctly understood does not make of this world a passing fancy, but the very milieu of divine revelation and the very subject of salvation. It may have been the case that for gnostic heresies Christians were understood to be saved from the world. But orthodoxy has always held out that it is the world itself that is saved by God becoming “flesh.” That is the meaning of resurrection: the very salvation of the material world being even now transformed into what Christ calls “the Kingdom of God,” not the abandonment of the material world for a spiritual heaven.


Finally, Kimmerer concludes, “And then they met – the offspring of Sky woman and the children of Eve – and the land around us bears the scars of that meeting, the echoes of our stories. They say that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and I can only imagine the conversation between Eve and Sky woman: “Sister, you got the short end of the stick…” (Kimmerer, Braiding, 7).


Kimmerer is of course here speaking of the colonization of Turtle Island by Europeans; undoubtedly a history full of tragedy and pain. As I noted last week, however, it is a leap too far to claim that our Genesis myths were either the origins of earths exploitation or for the colonization of the Americas. This is why it remains essential to appreciate the complex history between Christianity and Empire – which I spelled out last week and do not have time to repeat here. While there can be little doubt that the story of Sky Lady speaks eloquently of a creation narrative that is rich for reflection, it is not this story that our own sacred texts have canonized. But Eve deserves her due.


For example, the Israelite myth of Eden speaks to humanity that is of the Earth not from elsewhere. Eve may not be native to Turtle Island but is there not something profoundly powerful in a myth by which our mother is a native of the Earth – not falling from another alien world to which she cannot return? I think it profoundly important that we ask what that beautiful aspect of our creation myth has to teach us about humanity’s native place on earth, connection to earth, having come precisely from earth along with all other animals – not elsewhere.


We need not denigrate one another’s sacred texts in order to appreciate our own. We just need to better understand the geographical and historical contexts in which they arise. The myths of Eden and that of Sky Lady each explain already existing realities to their own people. For a desert nomadic people, the story of Adam and Eve explains why they now must toil to raise their own crops is so difficult. For a local tribal people, living in one of the most fertile regions of the world, their myth speaks to the giftedness of the fecundity of their land.


Yet, while the myth of the sky lady was destined to remain a localized tribal myth, whereas by contrast, the myth of Eden was destined to be taken up into a global religion across every continent and culture over the course of now 3000 years, one could imagine it being interpreted, drawn upon, and indeed, even co-opted by various national, political, and theological agendas. Any attempt to fully appreciate the breath and scope by which the myth of Eden has been variously interpreted and enculturated across time and place over the past 3,000 years would be impossible. 


However, as I observed last week, what cannot be missed here is that Christians who lived in what we would now call “ecologically sustainable” ways did so precisely because of a spirituality deeply informed by the Christian scriptures, NOT despite them. They rebelled against a newly established imperial Christianity of the 4th century in order to continue the countercultural, pacifist, and life of simplicity which lay at the heart of the gospel call to discipleship. Their understanding of the sacredness of all creation was not incidental to this commitment, but central.


And so too can it be ours. Our task is to ruminate on our texts in light of all of scripture, most especially the witness to the historical incarnation of Christ, to begin to grasp the profound sense of sacredness of all creation and how we are summoned to live into a deep interdependence, harmony and gratitude to which we are summoned.


+ Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

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In the shadow of your wings, I take refuge.

Psalm 57:1

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