To explain the present, we also need to look at the past. We know that if we live our lives forward, we understand them backward. So to discover why things have turned out the way they have, we make a journey into the past in an effort to uncover the origin of it all. All great cultures and religions have a sacred story that describes the beginning of the world. Most of these stories are a variation on a simple theme: in the beginning, it was good, but then it got worse! To account for the order and disorder of their own world, the ancient storytellers and writers told tales of the beginning. That is genesis, the story of the beginning.

In today’s first reading we hear from the great Hebrew story of Genesis how it all went wrong. At first, it was blissful in the Garden of Eden. Man and woman knew happiness together and no shame as they lived in harmony with nature and the animal kingdom. It was the age of innocence and peace with God, but it did not last. In eating the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve disobey the word of God. Their eyes testify to their new knowledge and lost innocence: ashamed of themselves and afraid of God, their first reaction is to hide parts of themselves from each other and the whole of themselves from God. Cover-up becomes the new way of relating to God and each other.

The writer of Genesis tells us a profound truth about sin and its effects. Because of sin, there is dislocation everywhere; everything becomes askew; nothing is as it was planned to be. It means that we can be open neither to God nor with each other. We spend our time and energy in cover-up. We cannot face God. In the Genesis story, God has to come searching for Adam and Eve. So the first question of God in the Bible is the everlasting one: “Where are you?” And if salvation is a matter of being found by God, the first question is the root of all biblical questions: “Where are you?”

When God finds Adam and Eve, He expels them from the garden into the wasteland. The first human beings are refugees: in the beginning there was exile. Banished from the garden, they must make do in a world where they will have to struggle for survival; a world where human relationships will be fragile; a world where fidelity to God’s word will always be a challenge. Genesis tells us that sin enters the world through disobedience to the word of God. But there is a promise of salvation which leaves room for hope. As Paul tells us in the second reading: as sin entered the world through one man’s disobedience, so salvation enters the world through one man’s obedience. That one man is Jesus of Nazareth.

Jesus comes in the name of God. Like God in the garden of Eden, He comes to look for those who have hidden themselves from God: “I have come to seek out and to save the lost.” Jesus is the one who comes seeking us out, calling our names, knocking on our doors, asking to be let in. He is the quest of God in search of a lost people.

At Easter, we will celebrate the Resurrection, the most important feast in the Christian calendar. Now we begin Lent as a time to ready ourselves for that great feast. We are invited to let God find us where we are. He has the same question to ask each of us: “Where are you?” During this Lent, we can make time to look at where we are in our lives and discover God’s presence anew. We are challenged to make time to listen to His word. We are invited to let Him get close to who we are and how we are.

Traditionally, Lent is a time when we give up some things or take up some things. Whatever we do, it would be a good idea to allow the word of God to get close. The word comes to question who we are; it comes to support the kind of people we could be. We could make a little time— five or ten minutes each day—to let the word form us as it formed Jesus. Let it influence what we say and do. Let the word of God find us so that we can emerge from our hiding places into the peace of His presence.

BACK TO LIST BACK