2025.06.29 | Back to the Garden
“Back to the Garden”
A sermon preached at Eden United Church of Christ
in Hayward, California,
on Sunday, June 29, 2025,
by the Rev. Brenda Loreman.
Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
Scripture: Genesis 1:30-31a & Genesis 2:8-9
Copyright © 2025 by Brenda Loreman
If you were to read a different English translation of the Bible, other than the New Revised Standard Version that we usually use here at Eden Church, you might be a little puzzled when you read Paul’s words about the fruits of the Spirit from Chapter 5 of Galatians. In many translations—including the Spanish version we read—the translators use the word “goodness” or, in Spanish, bondad, to translate the Greek word agathosune that Paul uses, while the NRSV uses the word, “generosity.”
I’m not exactly sure why the translators made this interpretive choice, but I can make some guesses. It might be because this particular word, agathosune, is used rarely in the New Testament, and the editors wanted to distinguish it from the other words that are used to denote “goodness.” Also, in English, we use the word “good” A LOT. “That was a good movie last night.” “Eating vegetables is good for your health.” “My mother always warned me to be good.” Each of these uses of the word “good” has a slightly different meaning—and yet none of them really comes close to what Paul means in Galatians.
For Paul, goodness is not passive, but active. It’s beneficial to others. It’s not so much about being good, but about doing good. And in this way, the word “generosity” really does come closer to capturing the spirit of agathosune than “goodness” does.
When I think about the kind of active goodness or generosity that Paul is talking about here, I go all the way back to the beginning of the Bible and the accounts of God’s goodness and generosity in the stories of creation. From the beginning, God created a planet filled with abundance and goodness. Every creature—human or more-than-human—was provided with everything needed for thriving and flourishing:
“And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the air and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.”
“And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the [human] whom he had formed. Out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”
The trees of the garden remind us that we are called to live in alignment with God’s goodness and generosity by tending to the garden planet we have been given, and by reflecting that goodness and generosity in our behavior with our fellow creatures—humans and otherwise. The trees of the garden remind us, and the facts of science affirm that we are not separate from each other and the trees and the creatures and the planet, but are all connected by the elements that make up our bodies and the ground we walk on and the air we breathe. The trees of the garden remind us that we are, as the great poet Joni Mitchell reminds us, “we are stardust, we are golden. We are billion-year-old carbon. And we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.”
Going back to the garden means remembering that God’s gift of abundance is meant for all, not just a few. It means remembering that the garden is sufficiently abundant for ALL to have enough. And it means returning to that spirit of generosity that is our birthright from our Creator. May it be so. Amen.