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Genesis 3:8
8 They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

Luke 24:13-15
13 Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, 14 and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. 15 While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and walked with them.

Ephesians 5:2
5 1 Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, 2 and walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

I have to begin by acknowledging my SPU colleague Cara Wall-Scheffler (Prof. of Biology) who gave a lecture this spring on a theology of walking. She pointed out something I had never considered before – that when God goes to meet Eve and Adam after they have eaten the forbidden fruit, God comes “walking.” For humans, walking is such a normal thing – literally the first thing I do every day as I get out of bed in the morning. I walk without consciously thinking of how to put one foot in front of the other, how to keep my balance, how to move my arms… I know how to walk so well that I’m generally oblivious to all the work my body is doing just so I can move.

But today I want us to take the time to think about walking, specifically about God walking because for God to walk is not an obviously normal – and certainly not a necessary – way to move. If walking is quintessentially human nature, then perhaps God choosing to walk reveals something essential about God’s nature. For God, in the Garden of Eden in that moment, walking to meet Eve and Adam was a conscious choice for how to approach frightened humans in their most vulnerable moment.

God specifically had warned them that if they ate the forbidden fruit on that very “day you shall die” (Gen. 2:17).

So, Eve and Adam must have been terrified, convinced that their short lives were about to end with God their Creator become God their Executioner. No wonder they hid. But God approaches them “walking.” And not in a “sneaking up on them” kind of way to catch them by surprise. No. God comes walking and making normal human walking sounds. Was God whistling or was God talking to themselves? Or just crunching leaves underfoot so Eve and Adam would hear God coming well before there was anyone to see?

Why would God do this? After all God can move however God wants. Presumably there are infinite ways by which God can navigate the spaces of the universe. In fact, God doesn’t even have to “move” in a human sense because God is “everywhere present…”

Once my colleague pointed it out, it actually seems quite striking that God comes walking. Especially since up to this point in the Biblical story – Genesis 1 and 2 – God only “appears” as a voice. A disembodied voice that speaks creation into existence. This is a Cosmic God. A God of pure supernatural power and authority who is infinitely beyond the constraints of physical movement or of a physical body.

This Cosmic God speaks a word and chaos becomes order. Speaks a word and light arcs across the universe at 186,000 miles a second (671 million miles per hour) and then that original light, after racing across the unimaginable expanse of the universe, reaches the limits of Creation…God is already there waiting. The God of Genesis 1 and 2 is not a God with legs that walk at a normal human walking pace of 3 miles an hour.

But in Genesis 3, when Eve and Adam are terrified, God comes walking…and they do not die (at least not on that day). As a human descendant of Eve and Adam, I cannot imagine a more gentle way for God to approach them. Not in a clap of thunder or bolt of lightning from a black cloud. Not in
a voice that shakes the foundations of the earth beneath their feet. No. God comes to them in an utterly human (humane?) form at 3 miles an hour.
God approaches – and knowing exactly where they are – still asks “Where are you?”

No accusation. No anger. Just an invitation to come out of hiding so they can talk through what has happened and what will come as a consequence.
Could this have been any more different than what they expected of God? What we expect of God? Not immediate execution by a Cosmic Judge but an invitation to a conversation with a God who walks like them?

What comes from the conversation they have often is referred to as “the curse,” but here too I have often failed to pay attention to the actual details of what is in the text, my mind easily reading through the lens of interpretations I’ve been taught.

Yes, there is a curse. In fact, God curses twice, but neither curse is of Eve or of Adam. God curses the snake (Gen. 3:14) and God curses the ground (Gen. 3:17) but God does not curse God’s children created in God’s own image. God does warn them that because of the curse of the snake and the curse of the ground their lives will be harder than what they have known in the Garden. Eve will experience pain in childbirth and Adam will have to labor by the sweat of his brow…

I’ve been taught to think of these as curses. but are they? The Genesis text does not refer to them as curses. Do we experience them as curses?
When I think about the greatest of joys of my life – ironically, surprisingly – they come precisely from these two human activities – having children and meaningful work. How empty my life would be without family and work. When I reflect on this, it seems that while these human activities do come with their share of pain, they have been far more blessing than curse. Family and work have been good for me. Even the pain in them has been good for me.
The God in Genesis 3, then, is very different from the stereotypes I was taught of the

“Old Testament God.”
This is a God, who long before the arrival of Jesus, comes in human form. This is a God who goes out looking for lost (hidden) children long before Jesus tells the story of the Father who goes out looking for his “prodigal” child. This is a God who seems far more interested in blessing than in cursing. Maybe this is a God who is so good that even God’s cursing is a blessing? And this is not a one-off, an aberration, for this is the God who does come to us as
Jesus.

Like Eve and Adam, we humans were so afraid of meeting God that the Angels have to keep saying “fear not” – don’t be afraid; this is a God coming in human form, in the most gentle, unthreatening way – as a baby, who you will have to teach to toddle and then to walk, so that He can spend his life walking with you. This God is not coming to harm you but to bless you – to give your soul what it needs. From the Gospels, it seems that Jesus moved around his world primarily by walking. Sometimes he doesn’t even bother with boats but just walks across a lake.

He does ride a donkey into Jerusalem…and lets the donkey do the walking for him but I’m guessing the donkey wasn’t going much faster than 3 miles an hour. Even after His resurrection in His resurrected body, Jesus comes walking. As his disciples flee Jerusalem in fear after the crucifixion, Jesus approaches them at a walking pace and talks to them as they walk along – walking and talking at 3 miles an hour.

What does it reveal to us about God that God chooses to slow down to our pace – to fall into sync with our human rhythm? Marian and I love to go on walks and hikes and after over 40 years of walking together, without conscious thought we walk together at a single pace. I don’t know if I slow down or speed up to stay beside Marian. We have simply learned to walk together at “our” pace.

I think God does that with us. God walks at our pace…so we can talk. In Eph. 5:2, Paul advises us to “walk in love, as Christ loved us…” When reading this verse, I’ve always focused on the word “love” – and thought Paul was just telling us to be as loving as Jesus is. And while I think that is true, now that I’m paying attention to the word “walking”, I think that Paul chose the verb “walk” for a reason. Maybe walking is how I am to love. Maybe to walk in love means to choose to walk at another person’s pace rather than my own. To commit to staying alongside them even if it means going faster or slower than I
would want. Maybe I cannot love well if I’ve stopped moving or if I decide to race ahead…

And then I wonder…am I walking at God’s pace? Have I stopped and lost sight of God or have I moved so fast that I can no longer hear God’s voice in the distance behind me as I race through life?

If I am not in sync with God, it most likely because God is walking and I am stuck/stopped or speeding ahead. Maybe like me, you too are intrigued by this vision of a “walking God.” But I also can imagine you asking what relevance this has for our specific time. I can imagine this because I’ve been asking myself the same question. And here’s what I’ve been considering…

In the Garden, Eve and Adam faced a crisis. The world as they knew it seemed to be ending and their world’s end would be their own ending. I think the human temptations they faced in that moment were 1) to keep their heads down and hope the crisis somehow passed them by or 2) engage in frantic activity trying to “fix” the mess they had made. I’m guessing they chose the first option – hiding – because they couldn’t come up with any reasonable way to fix what was broken.

So, instead of racing ahead trying to fix the problem themselves, they chose to lie low. Have you been tempted by either of those options lately? Do we lean into our Mennonite “quiet in the land” mode and hope the storm misses us somehow? Or do we launch into “Anabaptist activism,” hoping we can find a solution if only we work hard enough?

Is it possible that God is asking neither of us? Is it possible that neither stopping or running is what will be most productive? Is walking, maybe, the right pace for us? It turns out that humans were not created to be immobile. Sitting all day creates back problems. Lying down all day causes bed sores. We were created for motion. And yet running all day, everyday isn’t sustainable either…but walking is. Foragers can walk long distances day after day. Humans can walk all day if necessary and get up and do it again and again.

Walking is sustainable and when we walk, perhaps we will find that God is walking alongside us and that God’s opening a conversation that will turn out to be about blessing rather than curse. When God went walking with Eve and Adam, God offered a way to fix the destruction that they had provoked. God would not fix the problem alone but offered to work with Eve and Adam to put a new world back together. It would not happen quickly – no running – but it would happen in “good” time. Eve and Adam – and their descendants – would work and they would have families – at a walking pace – and in good time they would have a child that would begin the repairs.

They just needed to persevere – to walk at a pace they could sustain and that kept them in God’s company. Is that what God is asking of us today?
Our world seems ripe for condemnation. So much is going wrong. It seems we have messed up the beautiful garden God created for us. We need saving, but like Eve and Adam we fear God’s displeasure and are tempted to either hide or run. God comes to us walking. God approaches in human form, not to condemn but to bless by walking with us even if it must be through “the valley of the shadow of death.” And there is the promise in that Psalm that one day our walking will lead us to the “house of the Lord” where we will dwell forever (Psalm 23:6).

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