Reverend Marci Scott-Weis, MDIV

Eve is the biblical first mother upon which so much has been laid over the centuries. And indeed so very much has been laid on Eve’s shoulders through the years. For many, Eve represents sin, seduction, and the inferior nature of women. Within our tradition, Eve is understood as the catalyst that sparked the story that is considered to be the very foundation our understandings or original sin. Within our tradition, Eve was also the one whose actions resulted in the story that is considered to be the very foundation of atonement theology, the understanding that Christ died for our sins.

In addition, Eve’s choice to eat the apple has often been used as a brush to paint women as impressionable, stupid, or easily deceived. And Eve’s choice to offer the apple to Adam has routinely been cited as evidence for a women’s tendency towards seduction and treachery. Many theologians through the centuries have argued that Eve was the direct cause of Adam’s eating of the fruit, and that her foolishness was responsible for his and all of humanity’s fall.

And Eve’s faults have routinely been applied to all women. Biblical interpreters have concluded that because Eve was second to be created and first to sin, all women are in fact intellectually and spiritually inferior to men. For centuries the Christian church has taught that like Eve, all women are ‘the devil’s gateway…the unsealer of the forbidden tree’, responsible for God casting humanity out of the Garden of Eden.

The consequences of those misunderstandings of Eve, and of women in general, resulted in actions like the Inquisition which drew on the Genesis story and used that story as the scriptural basis to persecute women as witches. During the time of the Inquisition, thousands of women were executed because of those biblical misunderstandings of Eve. And our reformation heroes, Luther and Calvin perpetuated those misunderstandings in their teachings and preaching and you can still find many of those misunderstandings in churches today.
For centuries it has been taught that Eve was weak, seductive, inferior, and evil, and that all women carry those traits. It has been said that the story of Eve in the book of Genesis has had a more profoundly negative impact on women throughout history than any other biblical story. So the story of Eve is a great place to begin our exploration of the stories of the women of the bible, to strip away what we think we know and to search for meaning in our time.

To start with what may be obvious to all, this is not a story that relates a historical fact, it is a myth that is intended to be symbolic. Also worth noting is that there are two creation myths in our bible. There is Genesis 1, the story of God creating in six days and calling it good, and this story of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden. There are two different stories, probably written by two different authors at two different times in Israel’s history. The writer of this story, like the other creation story we have, is trying to tell the story of the relationship between God and humankind and how our story began.

So let’s return to this story! Now, we just heard a small part of Eve’s story this morning and remember so much of the understanding of Eve’s story is not biblical but comes from interpretations of the story itself through the centuries. Here’s the main details of the story of Eve in Genesis…. God created Adam in God’s own image. When Adam became lonely, God pulled out one of Adam’s ribs and used it to create Eve, Adam’s perfect companion, again in God’s image. Adam and Eve lived in Eden, a lush and abundant garden containing everything they could possibly need.

Now in that garden, the trees were fruitful, and they could eat from all of them, except one: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Without really saying why, God simply tells the two humans that its fruit is off limits. And so Adam and Eve lived happily, until a serpent charmed Eve into taking a bite of that forbidden fruit. When Adam comes over, Eve in turn offers the fruit to him. With those two consensual bites (there is no trickery in the story, just the simple act of sharing fruit), Adam and Eve break the one rule that God had asked of them and banishes them from Eden and their descendants are cursed with mortality, hard work, and painful childbearing.
And again, this is one of two versions of the creation myth that we have in the bible. And remember that this version still being used to define the roles of women and men in life, marriage, and the church. So what does this version of creation not say? Despite what we may have heard all of our lives, this text does not say that women are secondary or inferior or the cause of sin. Instead, this story tells us that we were all created in God’s image, men, and women created in God’s image. This story reminds us that we are all, women and men, the revelation of the divine.

And this story does not say that because of the actions that both Eve and Adam took, that of humanity was forever separated from God, requiring the blood sacrifice of Jesus. This story does not say that. This story acknowledges that we are not yet what God dreams us to be, that all genders have the divine spark of goodness, and all genders have the call to live into the dream of what God desires for us, to flourish, to care, to connect to love.

And this story reminds us of God’s desire to be in relationship with all, women, and men. God desires that relationship in the good times and the bad. Eve’s story is a complex story, lived out in relationship with her God and her partner and her family, through good times and bad. Her story is one of divine revelation, intimacy and partnering with a loved one, curiosity, pain, heartbreak, and change. All done in relationship with her partner and with her God.

One of my favorite biblical authors, Bruce Feiler, wrote a book about Adam and Eve where he describes them as the greatest love story of all time. He looks at this story of Adam and Eve both in the Garden and after and sees a story of two people, learning to be together, learning to live as one. He thinks this story of Adam and Eve not as a ‘happily ever after love story’ but instead a real gritty sort of love story with highs and lows, passion, and pain and to quote him, a story where at the end, ‘what will endure of their union is their togetherness. What will survive of them is love’.

I love that way of looking at this story. I adore seeing a love story, of Adan and Eve and of God and Eve, a story of relationship and love enduring, love surviving. I think that is a wonderful legacy for Eve to leave us with as we continue our study of the women of the bible we will meet over the next months. Eve, the first mother, image bearer of God, showing us how love endures and survives. That is a legacy worth noting. That is a legacy worth lifting up. That is a story worth celebrating.

Amen