February 10, 2008
1 Lent, Year A
The Very Rev. Mark B. Pendleton
Dean, Christ Church Cathedral

The Temptations of Paradise and Wilderness

There are recurring dreams that are common to many of us. There is the dream of not being prepared for a big test at school. Years after I have left school I have the same dream of an English exam based on books I have yet to read. There is the dream about being naked in front of a group of people without noticing it – an image apropos to today’s lesson of Adam and Eve as their eyes were opened when they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Then there are the falling dreams. In these dreams I fall – off a ladder, cliff or building – and begin to scream in my sleep with no sound coming out. And then abruptly jolt awake. Growing up, I remember re-telling the urban myth that if you were to fall in a dream and actually reach the ground before waking up -- you would die of a heart attack. This story was usually told alongside ghost stories around bonfires at summer camp.

The Fall is one way to describe what happened in the story in Genesis we heard this morning as we begin the Lenten season. Genesis 3 is actually the second version of creation. The first version – how God created the heavens and the earth, all living creatures, and male and female in God’s image – all in six days and allowing for a seventh day to rest – precedes the familiar story of the Garden of Eden. It is this story of creation that is embedded in our culture. Those who have never read the Bible nor darkened the door of a church have heard of Adam and Eve: how Eve was formed from the rib of Adam, and how the serpent tempted them to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Someone pointed out to me that even the icon of the successful Apple Computer Company – maker of the I-Pod and the I-Phone – is an apple with a bite out of the side: the ultimate forbidden fruit. From the garden we have inherited the idea of the fall of humanity and Original Sin.

Noted author Karen Armstrong in her recent book entitled The Bible: A Biography joins other scholars who blame St. Augustine of the 5th Century for promoting the notion that the sin of Adam continued its march through the human condition even after the redemption of Christ. Augustine’s writings at the time were shaped by the fall of Rome and many of its provinces throughout Northern Africa. The guilt of original sin was transmitted to Adam’s descendents when God was forgotten and men and women reveled in one another. (pg. 126) She writes that “neither the Jews nor the Greek Orthodox have subscribed to this tragic vision.” (p. 127) Yet, we in Western Christianity – the Roman Catholic Church and those churches that grew out of the Reformation – do live with the foreboding imprint of the Fall – how the stain of Adam and Eve still needs to be blotted out.

Temptation is the dominant theme that runs throughout the collect and the lessons for the first Sunday in Lent. The serpent in the garden and Jesus out in the wilderness. We pray: “come quickly to help us who are assaulted by many temptations.” How do we deal with the temptations in our lives? What form do they take? How do they cause us to stray and lead us down a path that makes it harder to find our way back home? And, lastly, how do temptations differ in the paradise of Eden from those of the wilderness?

It is not by chance that temptation found its way into the story of creation at the very beginning. Temptation is unavoidable. Lead us not into temptation, Jesus taught his disciples, but deliver us from evil.

The temptations of the wilderness are straight forward. For Jesus, his forty days and nights being tempted by the devil left him hungry, thirsty, and tired. He was tempted to turn stones into bread so that he could eat. He was tempted to engage in risky behavior, such as throwing himself off of the pinnacle of the temple so that the angels would catch him. We know of the temptations of the wilderness. All that opposes God sometimes comes to us when we are most vulnerable, most alone, tired, angry, depressed, rejected, when the world tells us that we don’t measure up and our life has little meaning. These are some of the voices of the wilderness. The faith that we seek to deepen during the season of Lent is meant to prepare us for the wilderness time that comes to us all. When things do not work out as planned, when people we love disappoint, and when it seems like no one in the world understands how we think and feel. This is why we take time in Lent to pray, to study Scripture -- to build up our faith to see us through the dry times.

Yet isn’t it also true, as we see in the case of Adam and Eve, that temptations are equally strong when we are not tired, hungry and thirsty: call it the temptations of paradise. When we are surrounded by good things, loving families, relative prosperity, blessings, and abundance. When things come easily to us, events fall into place and when good fortune and luck come our way without much of our doing, when the tide is up and with riches all around us -- even though they are not ours. In these times a temptation for many people in our culture today is spending money they do not have on things they do not need. The credit card is the modern day serpent -- whispering in our ear that we can afford that large screen plasma television when we know we can’t. As we watch television and see the lives of the rich and the famous and the beautiful, some are tempted to believe that with a nip here and a tuck there they will finally be beautiful. In a land of abundance, we are tempted by food at our fingertips, and the Internet that can take us anywhere we want to go – we can learn and communicate with people around the world. It can also take us to dark places.

The lessons of paradise and the wilderness are the same. Be careful. Listen to God. Do not forget what God has taught us. You can eat from any tree you want, but not that one. We cannot “have it all” in this life as many advertisers would lead us to believe. We have to make choices and sacrifices. And though we can and will feel lonely at times – especially out in the wilderness -- we are never truly alone. There is nothing in this world we have ever thought, experienced, believed, lived, dreamed and done that is beyond God’s reach of mercy and understanding. In the end, ours is a story not of our falling – but of our rising. Our rising to new life in Christ where we are redeemed, restored and forgiven.