Mar 10 | Naked, and Unashamed: Lent Journal #3

One of my school assignments is to put together a Lenten worship schedule. I find this sort of thing tremendously fun, and it also gave me the chance to read ahead and think about the Scriptural stories we will hear throughout the season.

The first Sunday’s reading is from Genesis: the story of the fall. There’s a heckuva lot of baggage in that story, so I’m going to focus on just one concept: nakedness.

“And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.” (Genesis 2:25)

Like infants and young toddlers, Adam, and Eve wander naked through the Garden, unhampered by any sense of shame. Isn’t it something, to think that most of us have never been as free or unashamed as we were before we could speak? It is only after several years have passed that we are taught to cover up. Most of us, though, come to clothes less traumatically than Adam and Eve. I can’t help but wonder: were we meant to be naked for ever, or, like Ellen Clark-King has mused, were we meant to come to adulthood but more carefully, more appropriately, more lovingly, alongside God instead of blundering on ahead, as children tend to do? Is one of the symptoms of our new separateness this sense of shame? Is shame something God gave us, or does it come from our own isolation, our own difference, from the unashamed creatures around us?

Naked is also a way to describe vulnerability. We so often focus on the desire to “be like God” that we miss the bleakly amusing fact that Adam and Eve hide when they hear God walking in the Garden. For creatures that have become “like God” they don’t seem very confident! The unfortunate cultural subtext infantilizes Adam and Eve, supposing that they hide because they are “guilty,” like kids caught in the cookie jar or the dog in the garbage. This isn’t wholeheartedly supported by the text, though. The man explains to God (who enigmatically, exquisitely asks, “Where are you?”):

“I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.” (Genesis 3:10)

Is it really too fanciful to suggest that alongside Adam’s guilt burned a new fear of appearing vulnerable in front of One who had once been fully trusted? Is the act of disobedience any more “sinful” or “shameful” than the fear of appearing vulnerable in front of one who should be welcomed, loved, and willingly obeyed rather than evaluated in terms of threat and fear?

When we look at Jesus in the desert, vulnerable to hunger and temptation, or on the Cross, vulnerable to the deepest fear and despair, and yet (in the ancient world’s economy of shame) shaming Satan through his display of such nakedness, we can affirm with Paul that he is a new Adam.

My question is this: As the Church is called again to walk the pilgrim path of Lent, how is she called to be naked, vulnerable, and unashamed?

How are we?

-Clarity