Sermon for the Invocavit Sunday - Gen 3

 

The Exposed Truth: Cursed and Called in the Dust

Text: Genesis 3:1-19 (20-24)

Liebe Gemeinde, Familie, Broers en Susters.

We gather this morning in the shadow of a very old, very familiar story. The story of a garden, a fruit, and a fall. But before we dismiss it as a children's Sunday School tale, we must recognize that Genesis 3 is not primarily a story about the past. It is a mirror. It is a diagnostic tool held up to the human heart—and to the heart of our nation.

Here, in this room, we have a unique vantage point. We are German and Afrikaans. Our histories are intertwined—through language, through theology, through the complex and often painful story of this land. We know something about building beautiful gardens, about cultivating order, about striving for success. And we also know something about the "Serpent." We know what it is like to be told, "Did God really say?"—to question the boundaries God has set, and to reach for a knowledge and a power that was never meant to be ours.

(Part I: The Anatomy of Temptation – The Lie We Still Believe)

Let us look closely at the temptation. The Serpent is not a grotesque monster; he is subtle, beautiful, and persuasive. He does not begin by denying God outright. He begins by sowing a tiny seed of doubt: "Did God actually say...?"

This is the first crack in the foundation of trust. The Serpent twists God's generous command—"You may surely eat of every tree of the garden" (Genesis 2:16)—into a picture of a stingy, restrictive God. "He is holding out on you," the whisper suggests. "If you really want to be like Him, to be wise, to be in control... you must take matters into your own hands."

This temptation is the engine of history, isn't it? It is the temptation to be our own gods. To define good and evil for ourselves, rather than trusting the definition of our Creator. And we, as two communities with a deep cultural memory of hard work, (Ordnung and orde), are particularly susceptible. We believe that if we just build the right structures, pass the right laws, work hard enough, we can create our own paradise. We can be masters of our own fate.

But the fruit of that self-deification is always the same: shame and hiding.
Their eyes are opened, but not to glorious wisdom. They are opened to nakedness, to vulnerability, to fear. And what do they do? They sew fig leaves—a frantic, human attempt to cover themselves. And then, when they hear the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden, the God who created them, who loved them, who gave them everything... they hide.

This is the great tragedy of sin. It does not make us powerful; it makes us fugitives. It severs the relationship for which we were made.

(Part II: The South African Context – Nakedness and Hiding)

My brothers and sisters, can we not see our own national story here? For generations, we built a garden. We called it "separate development." We believed we were creating order, protecting culture, being wise stewards. But the Serpent's lie was at the heart of it. The lie that one group could define good and evil for another. The lie that we could be like God, deciding who was worthy and who was not.

And when the fruit was eaten—when the injustice became undeniable, when the world's eyes were opened—what was the result? Nakedness. Fear. The fragile foundations of our society were exposed. We were not as strong, as righteous, or as orderly as we believed.

And how did we respond? For some, it was a frantic sewing of fig leaves—trying to justify the past, to cover the shame with arguments and narratives that protected our own image. For others, it was hiding. Hiding in the lager of our own language group, our own culture, our own pain, afraid to come out into the light of a new, unfamiliar South Africa.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was a moment when the voice of God walked in the garden and said, "Where are you?" It was an invitation to stop hiding, to stop sewing fig leaves, and to come into the open. But the shame was, and is, so deep. The blame-shifting we learned from Adam and Eve is our mother tongue. "The woman you gave me..." Adam says, blaming both God and his partner. "The volk you gave me..." we whisper, blaming the system, the past, or the other group for our current discomfort.

(Part III: The Lutheran Lens – The Theology of the Cross in the Curse)

But here is where our Lutheran theology becomes not just a doctrine, but a lifeline. We are a people of the Theologia Crucis, the Theology of the Cross. This theology teaches us that God is most profoundly revealed not in power and glory, but in weakness and suffering. And we see a strange, painful glimpse of this in the curse itself.

God does not destroy them. He comes looking for them. He does not abandon them in their shame. He speaks. And His words are a diagnosis of the broken world we have chosen.

To the woman: pain in childbirth, struggle in relationship.
To the man: a cursed ground, thorns and thistles, the futility of toil.
To the Serpent: the first promise of the Gospel—the Protevangelium. "He [the seed of the woman] shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel."

This is not just punishment; it is a description of life apart from God. The world we have made for ourselves is a world of thorns. We work so hard—we Germans with our Fleiß, we Afrikaners with our deursettingsvermoë—and yet, the ground fights back. The economy is unpredictable. Relationships fracture. Our best efforts yield frustration. We see the thorns in our beautiful gardens.

But God does not leave us in our fig leaves. The most beautiful, tender, and deeply theological verse in this entire passage is verse 21: "And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them."

An animal had to die. Blood was shed to cover their shame. Their pathetic, self-made fig leaves were replaced with a divine covering, purchased at the cost of a life. This is the first sacrifice. This is the first whisper of the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. This is our theology: we cannot cover our own shame, whether it is personal guilt or the collective shame of our history. We cannot sew enough fig leaves of good works, political correctness, or cultural achievement. Only God can clothe us. And He does so through the shedding of blood—ultimately, the blood of His own Son on a cross, a cross that grew from the very wood of a tree, a tree of curse that became the tree of life for us.

(Part IV: Driven Out, But Not Abandoned)

Finally, Adam and Eve are driven from the Garden. They are barred from the Tree of Life. This seems harsh. But in His mercy, God prevents them from living forever in a state of sin and brokenness. The exile from Eden is an act of severe mercy. It is the beginning of the long journey back to the true Tree of Life, which stands not in a perfect garden, but on a barren hill called Golgotha.

We, as a nation, have been driven from our gardens too. The garden of apartheid is closed to us, and the angel with the flaming sword guards its entrance. We cannot go back. We should not want to go back. Our task is not to mourn the lost garden, but to live as people of the promise in the "east of Eden"—in the world of thorns, hard work, and fractured relationships.

(Conclusion)

So, what does it mean for this congregation, this union of German and Afrikaans believers, to live east of Eden, in South Africa today?

It means we stop hiding. It means we stop blaming. It means we stop trying to clothe ourselves with our own righteousness, our own culture, our own history. It means we come, naked and ashamed, and allow God to clothe us in the righteousness of Christ.

It means we look at the "thorns and thistles" of our nation—the poverty, the inequality, the racial tension—not with despair, but with the honest eyes of the Theology of the Cross. This is the world we made. But it is also the world God entered in Jesus Christ. He wore a crown of thorns, thorns that were the fruit of our sin, to redeem the cursed ground.

It means we live as people of the Protevangelium. We live in the hope that the serpent's head is crushed. The power of the lie is broken, even if its poison still lingers. The final victory belongs to the Seed of the Woman, Jesus Christ.

We leave this place not to return to Eden, but to follow the crucified and risen Lord into the world. We go with our shame covered, not by fig leaves, but by His grace. We go with our eyes open, not to the "knowledge of good and evil" that leads to death, but to the knowledge of the Gospel that leads to life.

And we go together. German and Afrikaans. One in our confession of sin. One in our need for a covering. And one in our hope.

Danke sei Gott. Aan God al die eer. Amen.