2/10/08 - A Bite To Eat

A Bite To Eat

February 10, 2008 Lent 1 A

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7 Psalm 32

Romans 5:12-19 St. Matthew 4:1-11

Walt Disney had the wonderful ability to take a story, add his magic, and come up with a completely new story. Sometimes the stories are difficult to track down, other times they are a bit easier. For instance. If you start with the story of Jonah, add the Disney magic, you come out with the story of?Pinocchio. If you take the story of the Fall in the Garden of Eden, add the Disney magic, you come up with?Snow White and The Seven Dwarves. Let's look at the story of the Fall, and see where that leads us this morning as we look at the readings for the first Sunday in Lent.

If we are to understand the saving significance of Christ's death and resurrection, the most important presupposition is that human beings are God's creation and yet are fallen creatures. Something has gone wrong. Humanity is not what God intended it to be.

These two great theological truths?creation and the fall?are expressed in Genesis 2 and 3 in the terms of the story of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden and their eating the forbidden fruit at the serpent's behest.

Chapter 2 depicts man and woman more at the center of creation: God makes man and woman, puts them in the garden, and then surrounds them with all the things they need.

The theological meaning is clear: human beings occupy a distinctive place in God's creation.

The Hebrew word for "man" is adam. Even if the author intended this as a proper name for an individual first man, "Adam" stands for Everyman.

Today, of course, it is difficult to take Adam as an actual historical individual; it is easier to understand him as the personification of Everyman. Adam's story is the story of us all.

Nor should we press the role of Eve too much, as has often been done in the past (see, for example, 1 Timothy 2:13-14) and make woman more responsible than man for the entry of sin into the world. After all, Paul in Romans 5 says nothing about Eve and blames it all on Adam. Man and woman are jointly responsible for their fallen condition.

The ancient story in Genesis shows profound theological insight. Its basic message is that human beings cannot blame God or an evil fate for their plight?they are directly responsible for it themselves. Yielding to the temptation in taking a bite to eat, sealed their fate, and bound them in sin.

In the Garden, not really being hungry plus temptation leads to sin. A bite to eat leads not to life, but death. The Gospel lesson tells a different story.

This pericope follows after Jesus' baptism. Filled with the Spirit of God, the same Spirit that made the first humans human, Jesus is led into the wilderness. He is there long enough to become hungry. In that state of hunger, the Tempter comes to him, as he came to the first humans. Jesus resists the temptation to take a bite to eat, even though he is hungry. In the wilderness, really being hungry plus resisting temptation leads to obedience to God, and ultimately victory over sin. When Adam yielded to temptation, he established a pattern that led to sin and death. Christ overcame temptation, remained obedient, and so established a new way of life.

The difficult reading from Romans hinges on verse 14, "Adam . . . is the type of the one who was to come."

St. Paul employs a technique of interpretation called typology, which was used by early Christians partly to resolve this crisis: if Christ is now the fullness of revelation, why do we need the Old Testament?

Typology is a kind of interpretation in which earlier persons, things, or events (usually from the OT) are taken to foreshadow later persons, things, or events (usually from the NT).

For example, Noah's flood washed away wickedness and saved Noah and his family. St. Peter says this foreshadows baptism, which washes away sin and saves those who are baptized (1 Peter 3:20-21).

Similarly, manna was the mysterious "bread from heaven" (Exod 16:4; Ps 105:10) with which God fed the Israelites in the desert. John's Gospel sees this as a "type" of the heavenly bread that is Jesus (John 6:51).

The OT contains hidden meanings and latent revelation that come to light only in the NT. Through typology, the OT prepares the way for the NT.

In Romans, Paul sees the "first Adam" as a "type" or foreshadowing of Christ. Paul begins by establishing a basic equivalence between Adam and Christ: both are the "first" or the "beginning" of different eras. Adam stands at the beginning of the first creation; Christ is the beginning of a new creation.

While typology usually stresses common elements, Paul stresses differences. Reading this passage from Romans carefully, we notice these contrasts between what Adam and Christ bring:

Sin entered the world through the disobedience of Adam. The story of that original temptation in the garden, where sin got its foothold in this world is told in the first reading. But whereas Adam succumbed to temptation, Jesus successfully resisted the tempting of the devil.

Adam and Eve, we are told, had almost everything. The only drawback was the fact that they were creatures of limit. They were good, but not God. They could have the fruit of every tree except the tree of limits, the tree of creatureliness. It was their creaturehood that made them susceptible to the Lie.

Enter the serpent, that cunning beast, that lord of lies, who taunted their obedience and reliance on God. "Not any of the trees? ? Do you not want to live forever?"

Oh, the attraction of having no limits. To be God. To be self-sufficient, self-made. The pretense was attractive, desirable. The ruse looked so wise.

Thus sin entered the world, St. Paul writes, through one act: the lie of self-sufficiency. That was the offense. And it would be righted by one act as well: a life of utter truth. That was the gift.

The temptations the devil fed to Jesus were nothing other than delusions we all dream of in our longing for radical independence.

The sin of the first humans was to reject the condition of humanness: splendid creatures, yet nonetheless dependent on God.

The gift of the new Adam was a total acceptance of humanness, an entering so deeply into our limits, and even into the effects of our sin, that there would be no other reality to his consciousness than abandonment to the will of the one who sent him.

So what's left for us, we who are neither God nor savior? Well, to receive the truth is a great and difficult thing. That is why true confession is part of every service of worship. If we acknowledge the simple truth of our limits and our sins before God and Christ's people, we reverse the offense of Eden and enter the gift of Calvary.

In acknowledging the lies of our own egotisms, of the great injustices of the world, of the excesses in appetite, of the woundings in relationship, of all the mean divisions in the church, we drop once again the heavy mask of deception. It falls from our faces, revealing our need.

We are sinners, dear friends. If we do not know that, we suffer a poverty of self-knowledge. But if we yield to the truth, not only that we are creatures, but that we are in sore need of redemption, we are newly free, open to love.

We can take a bite to eat from the Father of Lies and continue in sin, or we can take a bit to eat from the life of our Lord and Savior and live.

We reverse the big lie of Eden as we embrace the big truth of Gethsemane, now able to say with the one who graced our fallen state, "Into your hands I commend my spirit."