First Sunday in Lent

February 10, 2008

Sermon by Pastor John Marboe

The Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew. (Matthew 4:1-11)

Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” But Jesus answered, “It is written,

‘One does not live by bread alone,

but by every word that comes from the

mouth of God.’”

Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written,

‘He will command his angels concerning you,’

and ‘On their hands they will bear you up,

so that you will not dash your foot against

a stone.’”

Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written,

‘Worship the Lord your God,

and serve only him.’”

Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.

The Gospel of the Lord.

I want to begin this morning by looking at that famous and favorite story from the Book of Genesis that Ralph read first, the story of Adam and Eve in the garden and their expulsion from it. And I want to say that, although it’s one of our favorite sayings, which is largely true, that “the devil is in the details,” that in this story the devil is not in the details. The devil is not in the details of this story. It is, of course, one of the most famous stories in the history of the world; and, as a result, we can’t help but read this story in light of the history of interpretation of it. It is in the history of the interpretation of this story that the devil becomes part of it. But the story itself has no devil.

Today, what I would like to do is notice what else is not in the story that is commonly believed to be there; not that all these interpretations are wrong, but so that we might see something perhaps new in this very, very old story. I want to ask us to let go this morning, at least momentarily, of what most of us have learned about this story: that there is a devil, that the woman is somehow more culpable than the man, that the punishment for the transgression is death, and that it’s a story about how evil comes into the world. I want us to let go, if we can, of those things for a moment.

First of all, there is no devil in this story. It’s not in the text. The tempter is a snake, a talking snake. In the ancient world, snakes, even talking snakes, were not uncommon. They were not thought of as purely evil—dangerous, yes; crafty, yes; connected with death, yes—but also connected, even more commonly, with wisdom, with healing, and with vitality. The snake in this story is not evil, like the devil, but is rather ambiguous. For one thing, he tells the truth; the devil tells the truth. The devil says to the woman, “If you eat of this tree, you will not die, but your eyes will be opened, and you will know good from evil.” And that, indeed, is what happens. They become wise in this story, but their wisdom comes also with pain and loss. No, the snake is not evil, but ambiguous. The snake initiates the man and the woman into a life beyond innocence.

The second point that is not present in the text itself is that “it’s the woman’s fault.” It’s not hard to imagine, given the history of Christian theology—largely done by men, and largely done by celibate men—that the woman in the story becomes the temptress. This negative view of women as both the weaker sex and more susceptible to evil is not supported by the story.

When God realizes that something has changed, that something has happened and doesn’t yet know what it is, God confronts Adam, saying, “What have you done?” And Adam points to the woman and says, “You know, the woman you made gave me the fruit, and I ate.” And then God turns to the woman and says, “Well, what have you done?” And the woman points at the snake and says, “The snake bid me eat, and I ate.”

But God holds them all responsible together. No one in this story is more guilty or more responsible than anyone else. If one were going to make the case that someone in the story was more culpable, you would have to say it was Adam, because God gave the command originally to Adam, before Eve had been created. It was to Adam that the commandment came. She must have learned it from Adam. Now, I would like to ask the women present, who either presently or have lived with men, whether he always gets this story straight. No, I would say Adam is, if anyone, more culpable in this story than Eve.

Another point that I would like us to at least question for a moment is that the punishment that comes to them for the transgression is death. In fact, death was the threatened punishment, but it doesn’t happen.

What do we make of the fact that God threatens Adam with death? “If you eat from this one tree, on that day you will die.” That’s what it says. And it doesn’t happen. While the serpent says, “You won’t die. Your eyes will be opened and you will become like God, knowing good from evil.” And that, indeed, does happen. What do we make of that? Well, you could say, I suppose, that there was a kind of spiritual death that occurred when they ate of the tree. But I think there is something else. God is a brand-new parent in this story. God is a new parent who, arguably, if you read the text carefully, is learning how to be a parent, every bit as much as the man and the woman are learning how to be human in the world.

I wonder how many parents here have ever made an idle threat to their children. I remember in a car trip, three kids sitting in the back seat—we were getting a little bit out of control—and I remember my father stopping the car on the side of the interstate and saying to us, “How would you like to walk home?” It was winter; we were about 60 miles from home. I think it was an idle threat.

It’s long been held that this story explains how evil came into the world. But it doesn’t exactly. Adam and Eve don’t lose perfection or goodness. What they lose is innocence. It’s long been believed and taught that this story establishes the idea of inherited guilt; that because Adam and Eve sinned, every baby born is a sinner, deserving not only to die but to be eternally damned. It’s on this basis that Christians have long considered that everyone who is not a baptized and believing Christian is estranged from God and damned to hell. Yet, the text itself does not support that interpretation. It’s not so much about original sin as it is about original innocence and about how Adam and Eve, and therefore all people, are created in goodness and in harmony with their creator and with creation. But innocence, that original innocence, is inevitably lost.

I was with a group of parents not too long ago, and one of the parents present was telling about the first lie that their young child had told; and it was painful for that parent. You could see the pain in their face as they told the story about this first lie that the child had told. Apparently, it wasn’t a very good lie; it was pretty obvious that it was a lie. But the other parents, who were older parents, looked and responded with compassion and understanding, and even a little humor about it.

Everybody is born in innocence, but that innocence is inevitably lost. And lost innocence is not so much evil as it is ambiguous. Yes, there is punishment; yes, there is pain; yes, evil comes. In the very next section of this story of Genesis is the murder of Abel by Cain. But also with that loss of innocence come wisdom, and understanding, and growth. Their eyes are opened. They have gained discernment concerning good and evil. It’s not just a story about how our most ancient ancestors lost paradise. It’s about how we lose paradise, how everybody, every child, loses paradise.

One of my teachers, when she became a grandmother, tells of being with her daughter and the newborn baby, and the new mother had to leave to do something, leave the baby alone for a moment, and the baby cried. And she said, “You know, for the first time, like I couldn’t do when I was the mother, I heard the pain in that cry, the intense, intense pain of separation, the feeling of separation from one’s mother.

Growing up is painful. Becoming wise involves suffering. This story is the loss of paradise. It should not be used to make the human race out to be more evil than it is. Certainly not as an explanation why everybody else, besides good Christians like us, go to hell. When Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden, they are not cut off from God. God continues to relate to them, to care for them, even makes clothing for them, and care for their children as well. It’s just that life outside the garden became harder, more painful, and more complicated. And that original closeness with God, that harmony with creation that they once enjoyed, they no longer had in the same way. The story of Adam and Eve and of their temptation is about coming to know good and evil.

Fast forward to the story of Jesus’ temptation. That story is a different story, similar but different. That story is about what is to be done with the knowledge of good and evil. In that story, there is a devil. In the story of Jesus’ temptation, there is a devil, and that devil is evil incarnate. Here, the temptations are powerful, but they are not inevitable. If Adam and Eve in some way represent all of us in the loss of innocence, so Christ in some way represents all of us in the face of evil. This is what Paul says in Romans as well.

Look at what Jesus faces by way of temptation: temptation to provision, temptation to protection, and temptation to power. Are these not the three reasons that we will kill? Are these not why we make war, steal, lie, cheat; why we promote or ignore evil? Provision—making sure we have enough, and more; protection—our security, our safety; and power—securing the means to have or to get what we want.

It’s not hard, if we think honestly for two seconds, to image what we might be capable of, or have been capable of, if our provision, our security, our safety, and our access to power are either denied or threatened. What are we willing to do, to say, to think, or to avoid, or to think about, or to avoid thinking about, or doing anything about? What are we willing to do, say, or think, when evil is good for my provision, my protection, or my power?

Jesus resisted the temptation for your sake and for my sake, and for the sake of all. To lose our innocence is inevitable. It is simply to be a child of Adam and Eve, which we all are. The question is, that since we are also children of Christ, will his resistance to the evil at work in the world also be ours?

Amen.