West of Eden
Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7; Matthew 4:1-11

February 17, 2002

There are some among you who might label your erstwhile physical education teacher as Satan. I certainly don't remember his Christian name. The undergraduate course in boating and canoeing concluded a late fall day as the lake, beginning its transition to freeze over, forced us indoors to the huge natatorium and Olympic-sized swimming complex at my college. The class was focused on life-saving techniques, especially what to do if you get dumped out of your boat or canoe into the drink.

We were required to wear old jeans over our swim suits that day so we could simulate the problems of a boating accident. That nameless teacher led us up a high mountain to start - that is, up the stairway to the top of the 10 metre tower diving platform. He invited us to jump off the tower into the pool below.

I first thought that unless I was Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid trapped by the lawmen at the precipice of a cliff way above the roaring river, I would not be jumping out of a boat 33 feet up in the air. My second thought was a simple, very strong thought that this was something I just did not want to do. I said quite clearly, "No!" So clearly, he finally let myself and a couple of other recruits to jump off the one metre spring board, 30 feet below.

This was not a temptation. The P.E. instructor did not promise an A in the course for such a jump - though I did only earn a B - though the thought did occur to me. I knew I could do it, that I would survive the fall, intellectually. The couple of spiritual deaths on the way down did not appeal to me, so there was no temptation on my part to bravado. I was sufficiently assured of my own masculinity that I was not afraid to appear chicken or squeamish before the others, including the women, all of whom jumped off the tower.

So much attention is given to temptation that I believe we have missed the point of these famous stories of Adam and Eve in the Garden and Jesus in the wilderness. The problem is not being tempted to do something illegal or immoral - both the original couple and Jesus were first tempted to eat - but to become someone else.

Adam and Eve wanted to be like God, as powerful as God. They had everything in the Garden, there was nothing lacking. Nothing except excitement and stimulation, which seems to be a basic human drive. Were the perfect couple susceptible to boredom? At the very least, they seemed not to be satisfied with being merely human as it was then constituted.

Eating from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, as God had warned, changed everything. To know everything good is daunting, an intellectual and emotional overload. That's why we learn constantly, one fact or insight at a time, over a lifetime. We are not a computer into which one can download large files of information in a few minutes.

But to know all evil can destroy you. Evil distorts the creation and makes good into evil and evil into good. By the time they had reached the apple's core, our couple perceived the world differently, but not with God's eyes. To demonstrate the change, Adam and Eve proceeded to invent nakedness.

Sewing leaves together and hiding in shame from the God who sees all, they did not have the right stuff to be God and that by daring to assume divinity they had betrayed themselves as creatures who did not understand their relationship to God.

The desire of all too many of us is to become Superman or Superwoman, to accomplish more physically, emotionally, intellectually, even spiritually than we are capable. Working harder is our human solution to most inadequacies. We want all the powers of God. Few Protestants have a real grasp of grace, the life God has granted us freely. Therefore, we would have problems living in Eden for very long: it would be too boring; there would be no goals.

Today is not part of Lent. There are 40 days to the season, emulating Jesus' fasting in the wilderness to prepare himself for his ministry. Sundays are feast days and are not counted in that number. Nevertheless, Jesus' time in the wilderness is intended to reflect and play off a number of Old Testament stories.

Instead of the luxurious Garden, this time it is a sparsely vegetated wilderness many kilometres west of Eden. The character with many names and faces, Satan, is apparently present to provide the dialogue in both situations. Forty days, however, is the duration of Moses' stint on Mount Sinai in the Book of Exodus, conversing with God about the future direction of Israel, God's people.

Fig leaves or no, there has never been any hiding from the readers of the Gospels that Jesus is somehow God. How exactly, we still struggle, but he is the Word made flesh. So Jesus encounters Satan being fully human and fully divine, yet how he responds is in a puzzlingly opposite manner from Adam and Eve.

No bread from stones for Jesus. Like the Israelites in the wilderness who doubted God's providence, Satan urged Jesus to satisfy his own hunger first. But he would wait on the bread from heaven. Jesus is dependent on God, not on bread for life.

No jumping from tower platforms either. Jesus would test the reliability of God or see if God is faithful. Satan's temptation was not to demonstrate faith in God's providence, but to reveal a lack of faith.

And there would be no rightful for Jesus as Lord of the earth. At least not now. In time, we Christians would grant Jesus the Lordship of all creation, but with no price of worshipping a god who is false. False worship results in false triumph. Jesus would persist and arrive at the right destination, the Promised Land of the Cross, by trusting in God.

What an odd, funny story: we human beings want to be God, but can't. Jesus is God, but won't. He is willing to wait on the grace of God to carry him home. There is the imitation of Christ - not in resisting temptations and bad things, but in living fully as a human being in the embrace of God's grace.

"Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him." They did come and did all that Satan had promised. They do come, but we usually have already left the scene, working harder, meeting our goals. Let us wait with grace so the angels do not find an empty spot where we should have been waiting.

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