Untempting
Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7; Matthew 4:1-11

February 13, 2005

Parents of very young children know that they cannot be tempted. We socialize them into temptation. A young child’s self-awareness is not developed enough so that he or she is not yet conscious of a choice between good and less good or even harmful things and actions. An infant will touch, eat, look at almost anything, not because it is tempting, but simply because it is there. The child is still living in the Garden of Eden.

Some Christian traditions identify Adam and Eve in Eden as children. They were naked and did not know it, and were not ashamed. There was nothing to be tempted by, not even the idea of temptation had germinated in their brains.

The story of the Garden of Eden virtually begins and ends with temptation - there are very few other details written. Our collective imaginations have supplied almost all we think we know. Is it surprising from the perspective of a church -- a living community trying to recreate Eden -- that it’s all about eating?

Adam, it is usually forgotten, was assigned to till the soil, but everything else was in the trees. It’s all there to eat, except for the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Talk about brain food; I guess that tree qualified as soul food.

Adam and Eve were not alone and the serpent proved to be a willing conversational partner. The serpent is frequently identified with Satan or the devil, but that is our weak way out. We have never needed Satan to get into trouble. The serpent, in fact, was a deep and critical thinker, and he helped Eve and then Adam to think this one out. He or she did not tempt Eve; he just explored the situation. When you eat it, you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

Eve had never thought that way before, so she took the fruit - apple or pear according to the Syrians - and ate. The serpent did not give it to her, but maybe he initiated the first communion service.

When you get down to it, the serpent was nearer the reality. Adam and Eve did not die, at least right away, though now it was certain they would die. Their eyes were opened and they knew that there was a good and an evil. That knowledge strangely invented the idea that they were naked. When ideas like that come into your head, thank God, there are fig leaves. How big are fig leaves?

The first temptation had nothing to do with sex. I really imagine how anyone could read that into the dialogue in Genesis 3, for they wanted to be like God. As Barbara Brown Taylor has observed, being human had become boring, a form of condemnation, a curse. They wanted to cross the boundary line and become God. It was a temptation to become too much.

We have often attempted to follow suit, but no one has really succeeded. Temptation muddles up your thinking and ideas.

Fortunately, there is another story of temptation, that of Jesus’ in the wilderness. The wilderness is the anti-type of the Garden. There was nothing human in it, while, we imagine, there was everything and anything in Eden. God was in both places, however.

This time there was no mistaking what was happening: the one who confronted Jesus is called the Tempter, and he presented some interesting ideas. Jesus could be a saviour of humanity, a reliever of the pain and hunger of nations, a manager of all the kingdoms of this globe, a superhuman, if you will. A few of us would still like that option. But Jesus preferred to stay on the human side of the boundary, and as a result found being human to be a blessing, not a curse. That’s why Jesus enables us to live beyond temptations to be something we are not. After all, when Adam tried to be God, he ended being something of a loser as a human being and we have suffered ever since. Jesus remained human and became known as the Son of God.

That still does not solve our ongoing dilemmas about how to resist temptations or transform them into blessings, or whatever it is we are supposed to do with temptations. You and I are blessed when we are no longer challenged or tempted by certain desires or illusions. Yet there is always some thing that nags you in the back of our souls, no matter how saintly you may become. Be thankful for temptation, because it is the intimate and inevitable part of being human, and frankly you and I have no other option than to be human.

Andre Alexis has written a series of short stories on the Ten Commandments, which he reads on the Sunday afternoon “Tapestry” program on CBC Radio. The one last week on adultery was remarkably authentic, even if it were fictional.

A woman had been happily married for 27 years until an idea got a hold of her and would not let her go. She believed she had fallen in love with the son of her neighbour, a young 20- something, if that. She loved her husband dearly, it wasn’t that she was dissatisfied or disappointed in him, so her attraction to the young man bothered her deeply. Yet it was a love that would not let her go.

So she tried every trick in the book to talk to the young man and learn more about him, and just to be in his presence. He was no thrill. She couldn’t get much stimulating conversation out of him, in fact, not much conversation at all. But she persisted and her attraction to him got worse and more painful.

Finally, she told her husband about it all, expecting the worse. Instead, he took a deep breath and offered to move out of the house for one month to let her work out this dilemma and make up her mind. He did move out, so she finally decided she had to move the process along. The stakes were now pretty high. She was somehow able to invite the young man over for tea to her house, and there he was in her living room. Dirty t-shirt, not much cleaner jeans, no improvement in his intellectual aptitude, and suddenly she was not attracted to him at all. Not in the slightest, temptation had evaporated. The person she desired was her husband. After politely getting the neighbour’s son out of her house, she joyfully called up her husband and told him what had happened and please, please, come home.

He did, and they had a wonderful time for a few months until she admitted that she actually had never had any sexual relations with that neighbour’s boy, not even a kiss. The husband was now terribly upset: his magnanimous sacrifice was all in vain. It was for nothing, nothing but for an idea that had captured her mind and soul. It took a lot of counseling over the next few years for the couple to work their relationship.

That is, nevertheless, authentic, true blue temptation. It comes in the shape of an idea posed casually to you, over the fence by a neighbour as it were, that makes you believe you can be some one entirely different and better. Temptations always come with strings attached, and while they promise a simpler life ahead, they always make everything you think about and every relationship you share unbelievably complicated and messed up. Those strings tie you up so that you are less than who you were when you started out.

It is really never boring being a human being, even if you cannot leap tall buildings in a single bound or feed a people empty with famine or love the most attractive person in the world. Being God is never much fun, especially since you don’t have all the skills, knowledge, and wisdom that God has. Just stick with being human to your fullest capacity and you will find a lot less to be tempted about. And remember that there was a man Jesus who desperately wanted to remain fully human and showed us how to resist the temptations to be anything but.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan