Sunday, February 10, 2008
Lent 1A
Genesis 2:15-17
Romans 5:12-19
Matthew 4:1-11
THE GIFT OF BEING HUMAN
Beloved people of God, grace and peace to you from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ.
AMEN.
The struggle with temptation began at an early age for me. It came in the form of an apple.
My dad served as intern pastor in 1961-62 at St. John’s Lutheran Church in Fremont, Ohio. I turned four during that year. We lived in an old two story white house on a typical small town Midwestern street. Next to the detached garage was a wonderful climbing tree. It also happened to be an apple tree.
My mother knew it was hopeless to try to keep me out of that tree. But as the apples began to grow on it, she gave me specific instructions: “Marky, don’t eat those green apples; if you do, you are going to get a stomachache.”
Today we have apples that are green when they ripen. These apples on that tree in Fremont, however, turned red when they were ripe.
Well, these apples kept growing, and they looked so good, even though they were still green. No serpent appeared and talked to me, telling me it would be okay to eat one of those apples. But it would not be an exaggeration to say that they became a delight to my eyes.
One day as I sat there in my favorite climbing tree the temptation to take and eat became unbearable. I looked at those nice green apples and said to myself, “Mama says `No’ but they look so good. Mama says `No’ but they look so good. Mama says `No’ but they look so good.” Finally I could not help myself. I snatched an apple, and I took a bite. It was so sour.
One would think I would have figured it out right then. But I took several more bites before I finally admitted this apple was not ready to be eaten. And then my stomach began to hurt—badly.
Now to whom does a typical four year old boy go to when he has a stomachache? Mama. I was in a predicament. Tears were welling up in my eyes, and I wanted my mom to comfort me, but I did not want her to know that I had disobeyed her.
I resolved to sneak into the house and go up to my bedroom and hope the stomachache would go away. Unfortunately I had to go through the kitchen to get to my bedroom. My mom was working at the sink. I was almost past her, when she glanced at me and immediately knew what had transpired. “Oh, Marky, you did not listen to me. You ate one of those green apples. I wish I could take away your stomachache, but I cannot—why don’t you lay on the couch until it goes away.”
That stomachache lasted a long time. As I lay there suffering the natural consequences of my disobedience, I resolved to listen to my mom thereafter, when she told me not to eat something. In that moment it was abundantly clear that she knew more than I did and that she truly had my best interests in mind.
Our Creator has given us the gift of being human. Being a human being is intended to be a blessing, not a curse. To fully enjoy this special gift and to thrive as human beings, we need to live within the limits God has set. From the beginning, however, as the story of Adam and Eve illustrates, human beings have had this tendency to overstep our God-given limits. In doing so we transform the blessing of being human into a curse.
In Genesis 2:16 the Lord God tells Adam, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day you eat of it you shall die.” But Adam and Eve cannot accept even this one limit. They are not satisfied with the gift of being human. Rather than listen to God, they heed the voice of the serpent who assures them that when they eat of the fruit of this tree they will be like God, knowing good and evil.
This temptation to want to be like God, knowing good and evil, has not died. It manifests itself whenever we become too sure of our goodness and the evilness of our enemies. In the 1990’s here in Oregon it manifested itself in the efforts of the Oregon Citizens’ Alliance to reestablish moral absolutes in society. It also manifested itself in the self-righteous inflammatory rhetoric that was used against the Oregon Citizens’ Alliance. It manifests itself whenever we fall into the trap of trying to justify our actions before or after the fact. In our Lutheran tradition that affirms we are justified by God through faith, self-justification is the primary act of disobedience, the height of human arrogance, and a refusal to live within our God-given limits. Self-justification leaves us with more than a sour taste in our mouth and a stomachache. It leaves us in bondage to sin.
God sent Jesus into the world to free us from our sin so that we might enjoy the gift of being human once more, so that we might experience being human as a blessing, not a curse. God did not become human in Jesus so that we might become like God. God became human in Jesus so that we might become fully human. The gift is not for human beings to be God but for human beings to be human beings.
So fully did Jesus share our humanity that he too was subject to temptation. In the story of the temptation of Jesus Satan does his best to lead Jesus astray. Satan wants to divert Jesus from his God-given mission before he even gets started.
The first temptation is to misuse his God-given powers for his own selfish purposes. “If you are the Son of God,” says the tempter, “command these stones to become loaves of bread.” Jesus resists temptation and cites Deuteronomy 8:3, “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Jesus does not deny that human beings have basic physical needs. God promises to provide daily bread for us. But we are nurtured first and foremost as human beings by the word of God. That is why daily meditation on God’s word is so vital to our well-being. It is in heeding God’s word and accepting the limits God prescribes that we are most fully the human beings God intends us to be.
The second temptation for Jesus is to force God to prove that Jesus has a special relationship to God. The devil takes Jesus to the pinnacle of the temple and says to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, `He will command his angels concerning you’ and `On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone’.” Once again Jesus resists temptation and this time quotes Deuteronomy 6:16, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” To put God to the test is an expression of doubt. Perhaps we are not tempted to put God to the test in the dramatic way portrayed in the story of the temptation of Jesus. Nonetheless, every time we succumb to doubt in our relationship to God, every time we wonder if God really loves us, every time we question our status as children of God, we are putting God to the test. Our doubt is a sign of a lack of trust in God. We are most fully human when we live by faith, confident of our relationship to God.
The final temptation of Jesus is to worship someone or something other than God in an effort to gain worldly power. The devil takes him to a very high mountain and shows him all the kingdoms of the world and says to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” Jesus is tempted to make a pact with the devil in order to gain power and might in the world. Jesus responds immediately, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written, `Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’”
History is littered with the destructive consequences of those who have made pacts with the devil to satisfy their lust for power. We may not have lusted for power in the way the most notorious villains in history have. Nevertheless, none of us is immune from misplaced loyalties. In subtle and not so subtle ways we yield to the temptation of misplacing loyalties. In an effort to satisfy selfish desires we give our allegiance to a variety of false gods and idols. Jesus teaches in Matthew 6:21: “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” In Martin Luther’s explanation of the first commandment in the Large Catechism he teaches that whatever our heart clings to is our god.
Jesus successfully resists temptation and persists in fulfilling his God-given mission even unto death on the cross. The devil cannot divert him from his mission.
Our track record as human beings in resisting temptation is a checkered one. Let he or she who has not yielded to temptation be the first to throw a green apple. I marvel at God’s tenacity in bestowing grace upon us. God is intent on helping us thrive as human beings. Again and again God has acted to bless us with the gift of being human. God has reminded us of the limits within which we can enjoy this gift.
As Paul writes in Romans 5:8, “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Through sin spiritual death spread to all. Through the free gift bestowed on us in Jesus Christ grace has abounded. The chief limit we as human beings need to accept in faith if we are to flourish is that we are dependent on the grace of God. That is, we are most fully human when we trust that God knows what is best for us.
In Jesus’ name, AMEN.