Work is Holy

Often when we think of the creation narrative and garden of Eden, we think of the poetic words that open the book of Genesis. “In the beginning, God created…”

In Our Hands by Rev. Lauren Wright Pittman

Our minds then turn to the orderly 6-day account of creation where God speaks and creates something new each day. The sun and the moon, the waters and the land, the plants and the trees, the animals of the land and water and air. Creation culminates on the 6th day when God creates humans, man and woman. And then God rests on the seventh day.

From there, we typically jump straight ahead to Genesis 3, the story we know as the Fall. But nestled between those two stories is a second creation account.

In this account, humans are brought forth from the dust of the ground, and then, “the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man 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.”

Having given humans a place in the garden, God then gives them the responsibility to “till and keep” the garden.

The original verb has the general meaning of “work,” “serve,” or “labor.” It’s why other translations of God’s instructions include to work it, to farm it, or to cultivate it.

Those translations fail to capture the full picture of God’s instructions. Professor Theodore Hiebert observes that Genesis 2 pictures the human’s role not as ruler but as groundskeeper or tenant farmer.

Tenant farming isn’t a practice familiar to most of us, but a tenant farmer is someone who resides on land owned by a landowner. In a tenant farmer agreement, the landowner contributes their land and probably some capital, and the tenant farmer contributes their labor, alongside some capital as well. The tenant farmer then lives on and cares for a piece of land that belongs to someone else. But the tenant farmer also has a buy-in, you’re not a slave working only to survive and fulfill the demands of the landowner, but you benefit from your work. You receive the fruit of your labor.

When God tells humans to till and to keep the land, it’s not just about maintaining what God created, the work of tilling and keeping the land is itself a holy act. A responsibility, you might note, given to humans before the Fall of Genesis 3.

If we skip Genesis 2, we get this idea that work only began after the Fall. Work then becomes a punishment, a consequence of human’s failure to obey.

But work was present in the garden; work was part of the story of creation. Work is holy. Work is an opportunity to encounter God right where we are.

Grace and peace,

Kimmy