Eyes Open
Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7; Matthew 4:1-11
March 13, 2011
We may be the first Western generation to think kindly of the wilderness. Various societies and government agencies are legion working tirelessly to preserve wildernesses as wildernesses. “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot” is the anthem that such crusaders work to prevent. We need wildernesses for survival, places that accomplish nothing for us except to maintain a planet.
That’s the logic, and although many of its proponents do not see their arguments being religious in the slightest, they are still firmly rooted in essentially spiritual ground. Wilderness and Paradise are, at the least, first cousins in the Biblical narrative; at times they are identical twins.
Once again entering the wilderness of Lent, enduring the 40 days of Jesus’ solitude and inevitable temptation, we grit our teeth and try to make it through as best as we can. Lent is the only negative season in the Christian year, concluding with the arrest, trial, crucifixion and burial of Jesus, and does not end with a bang, but a whimper on the silent emptiness of Holy Saturday when nothing happens, all is dead – hope as well as life. Look around at all those new churches that specialize in reaching out to “seekers” – people who have never been part of a church before – most of them avoid Lent. Lent does not convert many people to a Christian life. Lent is a learned experience, an acquired taste that is awfully hard to translate to people who yearn to be spiritual, but not really religious.
Wandering in the wilderness is a favourite pastime of many Christians and many churches. It does not take much spiritual skill to wander around for only forty days plus six Sundays when we’ve been doing it most of our life. None of the Gospel accounts mentions how Jesus spent his time until the end of his forty days. Did he engage in an organized prayer life, did he have personal goals to fulfill, or did he just wander and let God talk to him when God wanted to talk? Jesus never talked about it, but I think it was a mixture of all of the above. Being fully human, he wanted to prepare himself for his ministry ahead, but organization never seemed to catch up to him. He just wandered around and that aimlessness depressed him and that’s where the Tempter entered to take advantage of his doubts and hesitancy. If Jesus had been organized, I am not sure it would do us much good, for it is always hard to match up with a man who was also fully God.
The Israelites and Moses took forty years of wandering to get from Egypt to the freedom of the Promised Land. If Moses had been the right kind of leader, the Israelites might have made the trip in four months. Thank God, Moses and company were not good planners. If they had made it to Canaan quickly they would have been still carrying the slavery of Egypt on their backs and in their souls. The group that finally made it across the Jordan had had slavery worn right out of them. We aren’t much different, for through our 39-plus years of retracing the same old Lenten paths in the wilderness, we too are trying to throw off the yokes of slavery we have duly accumulated. Are we free yet?
The Garden of Eden seems to be the opposite of the wilderness, the lush oasis in contrast to the sultry scrub brush barrenness of a region where only animals and demons are supposed to roam. Adam and Eve were commissioned to till the ground in Eden, to bring under control the chaotic jungle of growth of this holy place, to make it into a garden with some order and structure about it. What happened to the Garden after the two were banished is never mentioned; it must have just grown over into someplace indistinguishable from other wild landscapes. There is strong symbolism as the wet-behind-the-ears baptized Jesus goes out into the unordered wilderness, a Garden of Eden wasted away. Both locales involve temptation, but when Jesus leaves, there is a new set of possibilities for human beings to follow. There is no report whether the desert bloomed upon Jesus’ departure, but Isaiah proclaimed that is what God will do when things get back to normal.
When things were normal in the Garden, the serpent raised the impossible question, “What if you did things differently than God, abnormally according to God’s standards, wouldn’t that make you like God? You can be God, and what’s the first God gonna do about it?” Eve and then Adam had never thought about it that way, so they ate a fruit from the wrong tree and they didn’t die. But it was too much information and their eyes were opened and they knew that they were naked. The church has frequently tried to reduce the fundamental human problem down to sexuality, but when you try to usurp God you mess up the whole works.
At the end of his forty days in the burnt-out Eden, Jesus encounters an even bolder adversary who first suggests through good Biblical citation and logic that Jesus too might think differently and become the real God. There’s always an angle, as we veterans of telemarketing phone calls should know, and the Tempter now insists that Jesus can rule the entire world if Jesus just will worship him. The phrase isn’t in the text, but for certain Jesus’ eyes were opened and he recognized the game. Whenever a human being – which Jesus fully was – attempts to become God, he or she inevitably ends up worshiping a false god. He was being offered a fresh fig and he turned it down, he wasn’t hungry for that. The devil left him and angels came by to minister to him. Eden bloomed again.
Being fully human, you and I keep coming back to the entrance of the wilderness, an Eden used-to-be. Like the Israelites we keep losing or forgetting our way and have to start over again, wandering at least until Easter. And that’s not bad, because by wandering we figure out eventually that we are not God – and most of us inevitably have to figure that out at least once! – and that’s when we start asking and figuring out the important questions. Who am I? If I am not God, where is God leading me? Along with whom am I being led, which of all the other people around me is the ‘We’ that defines me?
If you can keep wandering, asking and answering these questions, a more tempting question or two will emerge, inquiring about how we intend to go about being Christian and a Christian church in this particular place. Which kind of fruit do you really want to eat?
Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan