Genesis 2; Rom. 5:12-19; Matthew 4:1-11                                                Susan J. Barnes

Lent 1A; Feb. 13, 2005                                                                     St. Matthew’s, Austin

At the end of our reading from Romans, St. Paul contrasted the disobedience of Adam in the fall with the obedience of Jesus on the cross.    I’d like to make a different contrast from the same pairing in today’s sermon—contrasting the stories we’ve just heard of Adam’s and Eve’s temptation, with Jesus’ temptation.    It is stark contrast, indeed—and I would like to interpret it in terms of their respective places on the spiritual journey.   Adam and Eve were at the earliest stage of human spiritual consciousness;   while, in his temptation, Jesus represented the most highly evolved state of spiritual maturity.  

From the point of view of spiritual awareness, Adam and Eve didn’t have a chance in their match against the serpent.   Just think about it.    Nothing in their experience had prepared them for that encounter. 

The world had just come into being.   Adam and Eve were the only people on earth.   They knew nothing about anything.    They lived in paradise, but that was all that they knew: Paradise, where everything was provided for them.  In every sense they were babe—babes in the Garden.

Yes, we say, but God TOLD them not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil or else they would die.   But what did they know about death?    What, for that matter, did they know about knowledge or about good or evil.   What did they know about life?   They were the original naives—totally innocent.    They had never known anything but good.   Nobody but God had ever spoken to them.   So how could they possibly resist the seductive words of the serpent, or the temptation to eat something that was a delight to the eye?

Every person, every living creature, has to learn from experience.   Let’s face it: we mostly learn by making mistakes.   As tiny people, we are told not to touch something: it will burn, it will break.    How many of us learn what that means without being burned?  Without breaking something?     We learn painful lessons when things that we love are lost, broken, destroyed by our own fault.   We learn that our actions have consequences.  We learn that we have been in paradise--when paradise is lost.   That process of learning is called growing up.

The story of Adam and Eve is a marvelous myth that conveys many, many truths of human existence.   The central, tragic truth is that we are separated from God by the actions of our own will.   There’s another way of seeing that truth: in being banished from Paradise, Adam and Eve became mortal; they had to grow up.     That’s the way that Michelangelo depicted it, dramatically on the Sistine Chapel ceiling.   In the scene of the Temptation, Adam and Eve have youthful, adolescent bodies, innocent faces; but in the next scene, the Expulsion from Paradise, their bodies are mature, their faces haggard with age and grief.

Regardless of their physical age, Adam and Eve were spiritual newborns.   As such, they were easy game for the Tempter.   They were like the wild monkeys that get caught because they put their hands in a trap baited with a shiny object.   The opening in the trap is big enough for the monkey’s paw to go in and to come out—provided the paw is flexible.    But the monkey reaches in and clings to the shiny object.   All he needs to do to get free is to let go; but he holds on and is trapped by his own closed fist.     Adam and Eve were like that monkey.   They fell right away for the simplest trick—take a bite of this shiny, delicious treat.    They did it because they had no spiritual consciousness.   They had no real relationship with God.   God simply provided everything for them.  And having never known deprivation, having had free reign in Paradise, they did not think of denying themselves the tempting treat when it was offered.     I recognize myself all too easily in that story.

How different from Adam and Eve were Jesus’ origins.   How different was Jesus’ relationship to God.  How different, then, is the story and the outcome of Jesus’ temptation.

Unlike his mythical progenitors, Jesus came into a fallen world—and he knew it.   He was born into a world of poverty, oppression, and injustice.   He was also born into an ancient, rich spiritual tradition—the Jewish faith.   Through the Jewish scriptures, Jesus was taught that he had been created by a loving God.  In Genesis, he learned about good and evil; that human beings were separated from God by their own will.    He learned that actions and choices have consequences—both material and spiritual.    Through his study of those scriptures and his own relationship with God, he came to believe and to proclaim that all that God required of humankind could be covered in two commandments: love God and love one another.

            The time came when Jesus sought to commit himself to God at a deeper level.   He was baptized by John in the river Jordan.   There he heard God’s voice affirming him as God’s beloved.   Many among us might have stopped right there— sometimes I think I have.    But Jesus moved forward in his spiritual journey.   He went into the desert for forty days and forty nights.    This was the turning point in Jesus’ spiritual life.   This was the refiner’s fire.   For six weeks he lived in utter material deprivation.   He stripped himself of all human company, of all human safety, of all human comforts.    During that time, he put himself totally in God’s hands; he dwelt in God’s love and care.    He emerged from that time—famished, the gospel says--but clearly fit for his encounter with Satan.   

Temptations offered to Jesus may seem different from that offered to Adam and Eve.    But they’re really the same. Each is the temptation that underlies all others: to turn our back on God, to claim God’s power for our own.   This is the sin of idolatry.   To Adam and Eve the serpent says, “your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”   They bit.   Jesus resisted: he recognized the hidden agenda in the first two temptations: perform cheap miracles, show that you, too, can be like God, abuse the holy power that God has given you.    On the third temptation the devil showed his hand, offering Jesus “the kingdoms of the world and their splendor,” if Jesus would only worship him.    Jesus hurled the first commandment at the tempter.   “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.”

I know something about the real-life temptations of material greed, glamour, worldly recognition, and power over others—the temptations to idolatry that surround us all.    And I know that the only hope of defeating them lies with God.    That is why, in this holy season of Lent, I want to make this point.   It is extremely important for us not to confuse self discipline with self-offering.    Let me say that again.  Let me explain.   We have to know the difference between making small sacrifices for the sake of discipline (like giving something up), and offering ourselves to God in the way that Jesus did—day in and day out, our whole lives long.   Only that discipline will forge the kind of our relationship with God we need.   The relationship that can enable us to see moral issues clearly, to recognize the trap around the glittering objects we want to reach for.  Only that relationship can give us the compassion, can let us see beyond our self-interest so that we resist the temptation to abuse our power as individuals and as a people.

Jesus showed us the way.  Having spent his time in the wilderness, having grown uniquely in the knowledge and love of God, Jesus had distanced himself from material comfort, and from the empty illusions of worldly glory and power.    He knew that God was God and that he was not.   He knew who he was in God.   He knew that God was all that he needed.   That knowledge enabled him to withstand the time of trial.    Jesus’ model served Nelson Mandela in our own time, as Mandela endured this kind of spiritual trial and won the victory.   His long imprisonment in Apartheid South Africa did not break him, but rather made him into a spiritual giant.

Jesus came to the cross at the end of an heroic spiritual journey that spanned many years—and included many times of temptation.   His obedience at the Crucifixion was possible because he was completely confident, utterly secure, in his relationship with God.  He did not know then--nor do we today for ourselves—what lay ahead, what awaited him after death.   But he knew from years of contemplative practice and godly action that he could put his whole trust in God.     Jesus knew in the hour of his ultimate trial that the God who had been his companion and his strength throughout his earthly life would not fail him—ever.   The example of that relationship, of that trust, of that faith, is an enormous part of Jesus’ legacy to us.

Thanks be to God.