Lent I                                                  The Rev'd David C. Cobb Genesis 2:4-3:7                                   Great Litany & Solemn Mass Romans 5:12-19                                  February 10, 2008

Matthew 4:1-11

The trouble began in the conversation. "Did God say.?"-the tempter asks - and Eve, perhaps the first theologian, attempts to explain what God had said. "Did God say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden'?" And in her answer, Eve pushes farther than God did-'you shall not eat of the tree in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die'.

We are bound to ask, like a child being told not to eat cookies before
dinner, "why" Why would one tree be off limits, and what was this knowledge that was so deadly? What was it God commanded when he commanded that they leave the one tree alone?

The religious impulse has always sensed that there is a part of the whole that needs to be left alone-the first born of the flock, the tithe of our income, one day of the week, the holy of holies, there is something that we recognize as not ours-and that reminds us that the rest is ours by God's gift, not by our own effort or cleverness. Leave the tree, because God said leave the tree and so that you recognize what a delight and joy all the other trees really are.

Its hard to argue for the knowledge that God would deny us-curiosity, the impulse to explore, dissect, examine and research is at the heart of human reason-God's own creation. But we are mortal and our vision is limited; we might know the answers to more questions than any other generation-or at least know how to Google for the answer-but our knowledge still has its limits, we can not presume to omniscience or live as if it were our? Humility, no matter how much we know, is never far from the truth. As sign of our contingent lives, as sign of our limited knowledge-for whatever reason, God said not to eat the fruit of that one tree.

Eve got it wrong. And she acted on her confusion. All it took was for her to push past God's own commands-not just eat, but touch it and you will die. And when the Tempter says, no, that's not right-well, he was right in a way, that was not what God had said. . And there Eve lost her grasp on what God had said. What she proposed as God's command, wasn't God's command. And when she realized there was something wrong with what she had said, she lost the truth she did hold. It might be good, a delight, and much to be desired-still, she had no business eating the fruit of that tree- even more, she had no business ignoring God as her own answers to the tempter's question tangled her mind and spirit. Distort God's commands, and fail to
seek the truth in the face of your own confusion, and suddenly you're ready to start picking the forbidden fruit. And so, sin, and with it death, enters the world and God's good creation begins to fall apart.

Kenneth Leech wrote this about sin: "To be in a state of sin is to be
separated-from God, from others, and from oneself. Through sin, the face of God is obscured, so sin is a false image of God, idolatry." (True Prayer: An Invitation to Christian Spirituality, p. 126)

The way the story unfolds in Genesis, our first parents went from a state of intimate and easy companionship with God-into this confusion, that leads to direct disobedience, and then to furtive efforts to hide in the garden and shame burdened efforts to blame someone else- -"What have you done?" God asks, and Adam points at Eve and reminds God that she was God's idea, and Eve points at the serpent, who slips away, the intent to disrupt God's creation accomplished.

The face of God is obscured when we are unable to live faithful to what we have known of God's call We turn against God to push past it-either to make something more rigorous, or to hide ourselves from God's call. The face of God is obscured, our actions are directed by fear, distorted by shame and we lash out at those who stand around us. Death, indeed. And the garden becomes a wilderness and the Law-along with prophets, the efforts we make to reach out towards God are partial and uncertain.

And then there is this man walking along in the wilderness that replaces God's good Eden. Days before at the River Jordan, the voice of God sounded as he came up out of the waters- Thou art my son, the beloved. And in that voice he knew himself and began to grasp the work that lay before him. Mark's account of the temptation omits the questions, but catches the drama-as the Spirit immediately drives Jesus into the Wilderness-with no time to catch his breath and with a compulsion that is just short of violent-the Spirit of God places the Incarnate Word in this empty and silent place, in this barren and dry land. What ever the Gospel writers want us to know about Jesus, as they describe his birth and baptism-they want us to see his human face-haggard and blistered now. They want us to know that, like us-he faces questions.

Only a psychopath is tempted to blatant evil. For the rest of us, it is
this confusion and uncertainty, this weighing of what God said, of who we are, and of the options before us. The weight of temptation comes as we resist it today, and face it again tomorrow. The pain of temptation comes, as the cruel word or thoughtless act, or degrading pleasure - the dishonest wealth or the forged accomplishment-- seems to answer some honest longing or need within us. When it looks like we could do something that will stop our own pain or accomplish something we think is worthwhile, even if it breaks against what we know God asks of us-then we are standing in the garden that we might lose, we are walking the dangerous wilderness paths.

If sin begins in a distortion, in idolatry-it is Christ's life, death and
resurrection-the cross and the living presence of Christ in the sacraments of grace that heals and restores. There is truth-there in the cross and in all the path Jesus follows towards it- and in all that flows from it-there is what God has said. .

Jesus stood down the tempter's questions-even when they came wrapped in Bible verses. He stood, like us, in world where stones are stones and bread requires the process of nature ,the work of farmer, miller, and baker, and the interchange of human community. He stood like us in faith-not pressing God into something manageable and predictable. From a high mountain, the Tempter shows him the kingdoms and their glory-he will see that and more-from the mountain of Calvary-and his mercy will claim nothing less than the whole world. Paul sees it as nothing less than an new humanity built up out of Jesus' obedience, reaching through the entire human family. The abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness-all set loose to do their work by Jesus' relentless resistance to the distortions and idols we make in place of God. No matter how confused we have become-now we hear God, who speaks so eloquently.

Jesus' conversation with the Tempter turns on what God had said. Maybe your temptations seem to be about something else-but dig deeper, and it is about the nature of God and where you stand with God. IF you want to face temptation without adding to the worlds disaster and extending it's misery-it is going to require being clear on what God really said. So listen, and watch-there is one Word- When temptation begins, "Did God say?" the one answer is this-God said Jesus.