He Made Them Garments

A Reflection by Holli Morrow

When Adam and Eve sinned, God felt it. He entered the Garden with full and complete knowledge, yet he called out, “Where are you?” Adam, hunched over, covered with leaves hastily stitched together, emerged, eyes downcast.

“I heard you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”

I picture God in the moments after Adam and Eve have fallen: the ultimate betrayal, the ultimate disappointment. I wonder if God considered wiping them out, and creating something fresh. For me, there’s a large pause in the story — where God took all of what was to come into account and decided whether humanity was worth it. He paused to make a plan of redemption and great sacrifice.

Then Genesis says, “The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.” Garments of skin require animals to be killed, skinned, and hung to dry. They require stitching and design. They require time and effort and sacrifice. I imagine this one part of the story took many days. Adam and Eve being kicked out of Eden didn’t take a few minutes. God came up with a new plan, and he closed Eden with a heavy heart, knowing that he must protect his people from themselves; from the fear of death that would eventually lead them to eat from the Tree of Life and become immortal.

God had made them naked — he had created them to be fearless, vulnerable only to him — but they had opened themselves up to be vulnerable to much more. But he loved them so much that he acknowledged their fear as something real and helped them cover themselves so they would not be afraid anymore, even though he had wanted more for them.

Heaven and earth were heavy with sadness. Sin reigned the earth, and God was disgusted that Adam and Eve’s heart of fear, covering up, and deceit was inherited by all their sons and daughters. The world could not redeem itself; so, Jesus said:

“I will go. I will take on the flesh of man, and I will be their sacrifice to you, O God.” So He moved into the womb of a young peasant girl. A girl with no power or status or anything to offer the Son of God, but one whose heart was not afraid.

Father and Son both modeled what it looks like to move into places that are dirtier and less holy than they are. Creation has been threatened by fear, but God set a precedent: “no places are dispensable or unimportant” (Crouch). Just because a person has been further entrenched in the lie that when we are afraid we must hide, does not make them un-savable, or not worth investing in. God calls us to move into the neighborhoods comprised entirely of these people, because sin breaks God’s heart, but doesn’t end the story.

What fascinates me the most about Jesus’ life on earth was that he knew that he would be killed by his community, but he still invested in it. Jesus understood that when the world sees the light, it is afraid, so it hides. It is the curse of a heart seduced by Satan to see and hear love, but still choose to hide because the darkness promises that ultimately it will be more safe. I am afraid to stand in the light because the parts of me that are dark will be exposed. But Jesus was born as a baby to a little girl in Bethlehem, surrounded by peasant people, lived a life as a carpenter, and died a criminal’s death not to further expose the darkness, or prove to his Father that humans would always be bad. He moved into the womb of a peasant and died hanging next to a thief to prove that love wins, and that darkness will never threaten, and has never threatened, that victory. No person or place is too far removed from God that he will deem it unworthy of him.

So, when I first heard of the Word becoming flesh and moving into the neighborhood, I assumed ‘the neighborhood’ was comprised of people markedly ‘worse’ than me; people who made the obviously bad decisions and weren’t trying to hide it. But I’m reminded again that God’s heart has always been moved by the man or woman cowering in fear, afraid to step into the light and face their own badness. I think I just forgot that when the badness is exposed, it’s also expunged. It might always be hard for me to accept that I’m good, and I’m redeemed, but for now I’m letting myself be moved by God stitching Adam and Eve garments. And maybe, just maybe, if I can accept the Trinity’s commitment to moving into places lower than them, I can believe it’s for me too.

There’s one more thing that pulls me back to the Creation and Fall narrative — God’s commitment to his creation. When things I’ve (tentatively) created go awry, my instinct is to abandon. It’s either feels like a humiliating reflection of my inability, or I realize my creation is far too time-consuming in ways I didn’t anticipate. The Lord, however, began to write a different narrative; one that incorporated the idiosyncrasies of humanity, but stuck by his original assessment that humanity was very good. There is power in creation, but even more so in its redemption. I am saved and redeemed because of my creator took the time to revise and reimagine. And that’s what I think moving into the neighborhood means — reimagining a new future and new reality for the parts of creation that are too afraid to imagine for themselves.