Download 1_Lent,_A,_Mar._13,_2011 - The Church of the Epiphany

1 Lent, A, Mar. 13, 2011
The Church of the Epiphany – Glenburn
The Rev. Craig C. Sweeney
Soli Deo Gloria
On the surface, this morning’s lessons make a simple
point: you better not give in to temptation! However, it’s
not really that simple – otherwise I wouldn’t be able to
earn my keep. We preachers are supposed to take a
piece of Scripture and make it simple to understand. I
suspect that often we just make it more confusing.
Which brings up another point. I am fond of saying
that one doesn’t need a Phd in theology to figure out
God’s intentions, that surely God did not intend for all of
this to be so complicated. And I am convinced that is
correct. Perhaps it is God that is complicated after all…
Take the second creation story from Genesis this
morning. The next time someone argues with you about
the Bible being literally true, ask them which of the two
creation stories is the right one. We of the Anglican
tradition have never taken Scripture literally. One
bishop rightly said, ‘I take scripture far too seriously to
take it literally.’
This is the Adam and Eve story is what I like to
think of as the ‘camp fire’ version of creation. Imagine
3000 years ago as the shepherds sat around their
evening fire and the youngsters asked the grandparents
those basic questions all kids eventually ask. Like, ‘why
are some of us girls and some of us boys? Or, ‘where did
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all of those stars come from?’ ‘Why are some people
good and some bad?’
And over the centuries the Jewish people developed
this wonderful narrative of God creating Adam (which in
Hebrew means ‘humankind’) from the earth and putting
him in the garden, of Adam being lonely, of God making
animals to be his companions, and finally of God taking
one of Adam’s ribs and fashioning a woman from it. This
makes Adam joyous. Now he has someone he can talk to.
Thus the existence of men and women.
So, what about sin and evil? Well, grandpa goes on,
it was like this. There was this snake… Note that
Genesis says nothing about the snake being the devil, it
simply notes that the snake is the most wily of the
creatures. And the snake sidles up to Eve (he wasn’t
banished to slithering till later) and asks her why they
aren’t eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil. She tells the snake that God expressly
forbade it for if they eat from it they will die.
‘Nonsense!’ says the snake. ‘If you eat that fruit,
you will be like God himself and know everything!’ Eve
notes that the fruit looks good and tries it, along with
Adam. And please note that Adam was standing there all
along and could have stopped her – she is no more guilty
than he is in this story.
We all know what happens – they eat it and suddenly
they know that they are naked and they cover
themselves. When God comes to visit them, they are
ashamed and hide from him.
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This event is referred to as ‘The Fall,’ that is that
humankind falls from grace in to sin. Humankind chose
sin – disobedience to God’s commands – and has been
subject to death ever since. Somehow, we are all
infected with this ‘original sin’ and this is why we need to
be reconciled with God, to be saved.
I don’t buy it, but this isn’t the place to get into my
understanding of it all. But this much is true – much of
our sinfulness stems from our ingrained desire to be
gods. We want to be in control, to have the power to do
whatever we like, to have whatever we want. It is this
striving for god-like characteristics that makes it so
difficult to love others as much as we love ourselves.
For the fact is that we don’t want to be obedient to
God’s commands, we want to be free to do whatever we
want to do. And that means loving ourselves more than
we love anyone else, even God. It is no accident that the
very first of the 10 Commandments is that we will love no
other god before the true God, and God is speaking to
our desire to be gods more than anything else.
So this wonderful myth of creation is not simply
about not succumbing to temptation, it is about being
obedient to God’s commands. And God warned Adam and
Eve that if they ate of that fruit, the knowledge of
everything, they would die. And, die they did. They died
to innocence and they died to a future where God
provided them everything they needed. God expels them
from Eden, paradise, and condemns them to a life of
sweat and toil, a life where the memories of paradise
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endlessly taunt us and tempt us in the face of our very
visible rebellion.
The Fall is the foundation of theology as I said. And
St. Paul, or whoever wrote Romans, refers to it in our
Epistle this morning. He speaks of Adam’s sin as the
reason for our having to die. And from this statement of
his belief in original sin, he derives the conclusion that in
Jesus’ death and resurrection, all of this is reversed.
‘…just as one man’s [sins] led to condemnation for all,
so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification
and life for all. For just as by the one man’s disobedience
the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s
obedience the many will be made righteous.’ The ‘one
man’ who sinned was Adam; the one man who was
righteous was Jesus.
The key word in this is ‘obedience.’ Jesus was
obedient to God where as Adam (which means all of us)
was not, and is not. Paul argues that through Jesus’
obedience to God’s commands, we are granted
justification (a good relationship with God) and freedom
from death itself. In short, Jesus undoes Adam and
Eve’s disobedience. And I think that is correct. So let’s
look at Jesus’ obedience.
The story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness is
always the first gospel of Lent. It is recounted in
Matthew, Luke and Mark, with varying degrees of detail.
It occurs in each case immediately after Jesus’ baptism
in the river Jordan. I think Jesus was stunned by the
opening of the heavens and God’s voice declaring him to
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be God’s son, the beloved. Scripture tells us that Jesus
is either ‘led’ or ‘driven’ by the Spirit to go off into the
wilderness to fast and pray. Surely Jesus was confused
and needed time alone to come to grips with just what
this all meant, just what he was to do, just who he was.
It is possible to fast for 40 days and live on water
alone, but it is more likely that he fasted as the Arabs
do, eating nothing between sun-up and sundown. Even
that would have been a challenge, for there would be
little to eat out in the desert in any case. In this fasting,
one becomes slightly delirious and one’s mind is free to
wander and to think deeply and freely. This is why the
Bible calls people to fasting and prayer so often.
After the fast, Jesus is, of course famished. We
don’t know what conclusions Jesus came to in the course
of his fast, but we can get a fair glimpse of them in his
response to these three temptations. We are told that
satan came to tempt him. In Hebrew scripture, all that
Jesus would know, satan is the ‘accuser’, the prosecuting
attorney in God’s heavenly court. There was no notion
then of satan as the evil incarnate devil as we think.
So the ‘accuser,’ the ‘tempter’ accosts Jesus. It is
easier for me to understand this if I think of the
tempter as simply being my own ego, and I think the fully
human Jesus had to deal with the same thing.
He has been revealed to be God’s son, God’s
presence on earth. What would God do here on earth?
And how would he, Jesus, live into that? Hunger is the
first thing he thinks of, naturally, coming off his fast.
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But the reality is that he has grown up seeing hungry
people all around him every day. Surely God would figure
out how to feed his people? How about turning rocks into
bread – that would solve the hunger problem.
But that doesn’t solve the true problem, people
whose stomach’s are full are still evil. Only the word of
God will fix that.
Should he go jump off of the Temple and be saved
by angels? That would get the attention of the religious
hierarchy and surely then would then listen to him. But
that would be manipulating God, putting God to the test
and that would also be manipulating God’s children,
forcing them to believe. A terrible example of pride.
But surely, if he is God’s son, he could simply take
over the world, establish a theocracy, be the world’s
ruler. That would let God be in charge after all and with
Jesus as the ultimate king, he could order things to be
right.
But that would mean people would worship him,
Jesus, and not God. Not only that, it would take away
their free will. No, God will not force us to love him.
No, in obedience to God’s will, Jesus will use only
love, will teach only love, will live only love to get God’s
message across. He will not succumb to the vanity of his
human ego, but will be obedient to God’s will.
God is simple, but he isn’t the God we think we want.
We want a God who will take care of our desires and fix
things. God simply wants us to love each other. Can we?
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