Preaching Paradise Lust (And Lost)

It’s hard to describe what an honor it is for Paradise Lust to be mentioned in a sermon.  Pastor Roland P. Perdue, III of the University Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas–that’s right, a preacher in cowboy boots–saw fit to title his sermon last week “Paradise Lust: Searching for the Garden of Eden.”  Here’s a tantalizing excerpt. And if you’d like to hear the audio version, it’s here:

As soon as the man and the woman were kicked out of Eden, the rest of us started looking for it. As soon as Eden became Paradise Lost many of us developed an insatiable hunger, a lust really, for Paradise Found. Our tireless search is chronicled in a new book by Ms. Brook Wilensky-Lanford, the title of which is the title of this sermon.  

She tells us little armies of Eden chasers believe they have found Eden and in the strangest of places. Would you believe the North Pole; Serpent Mound State Memorial, Peebles, Ohio; Santa Clara, California; Independence, Missouri; a valley in Venezuela; Berlin, Germany; China, and, of course, Iraq, Ethiopia, Syria, and Jerusalem among other places?

I have not found it in any of those places. But I continue looking.  Don’t you? Oh, I think you do, for we are here this morning because something about the Garden pulls us on and draws us in. …..

Amen, Austin!