“Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.”

— Genesis 3:7

The best one-liner I’ve ever heard about this periscope is this: the truth of these verses isn’t derived from whether or not it happened but that it happens, all the time. It happens repeatedly that we are trusting and naive, playful and innocent, until one day we are deceived by someone craftier than we are. Once we are deceived, shame enters our lives and we know our vulnerability. We wear our wounds and often act out of our wounds, in turn wounding others. The most devastating line in this story comes after the RCL lection for this week, when God asks the human, “who told you you were naked?” I hear God’s voice with such disappointment, not necessarily with the ish and the ishah, but with the situation. God desired so much more for them: wholeness, communion, side-by-side partnership. But now there is shame. Now there is fear. Now there is mistrust. Since God is already anthropomorphized in this text, I feel permitted to imagine God sighing, divine shoulders slumping, asking gently, “Who told you?” I think our wounds break God’s heart. Many theories of atonement emphasize God’s anger or wounded honor in response to sin but I am drawn more to the image of God who co-suffers, who enters into our pain and bears it with us. The woman and the man made choices, AND they were deceived. Hurt. Harmed. And this story continues, every day, in countless ways. Thanks be to God, who has come in the flesh, not to stand apart from our wounds, but to enter them, to live them, and to heal them.