Liberation from Temptation
Davey Gerhard
The First Sunday in Lent, February 26, 2023
Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7 • Romans 5:12-19 • Matthew 4:1-11
Our story starts today way back in our narrative - the story of Creation, more pointedly, the story of the Fall of humanity. While the rest of you have been enjoying Mardi Gras, I’ve been wrapping my head around temptation. It calls to mind the lyrics of an old rhyme and Christmas Carol.
Blessed be the time
That Apple taken was
Therefore we moun singen
Deo Gratias
Some of you might recognize those lyrics from the end of a carol we often sing at Christmas, in fact we have sung it here in years’ past, Adam lay y’bounden. The text is assumed to have been a popular song from wandering minstrels dating from the Fifthteenth Century, and it describes the Fall of Humanity.
But rather than leave us in gloom and loss, it borrows from the great theologian, Thomas Aquinas and his concept of “Felix culpa,” or Happy Fault. For those of you who will attend the Great Vigil this year, you’ll hear this concept again when we sing in the Exsultet “O Happy Fault, oh necessary sin of Adam...” The concept is paradoxical in nature as it looks at the fortunate consequences of an unfortunate event, which would never have been possible without the unfortunate event in the first place.
The Christmas carol goes on to say “Nay had the apple taken been, nay had never our Lady a- been heaven’s Queen” So, to follow this logic, because of the introduction of sin into the world, all kinds of great things happen: God’s ongoing action of salvation, Mary, even the need for a Jesus who will redeem us and call us back. For, indeed, if we had never wandered away, what need would we have for a shepherd?
This concept is strange to us who have been living for a few thousand years with the story of Eden. But the essential truth is, were it not for the plot twist in the Garden of Eden, none of the rest of this story would have ever been told. How much could be written about walking around in a garden all day for eternity eating delicious fruit? It would have been a short story.
When I was a boy I was grounded, one of many times in my childhood, for having broken covenant with my family. This time had to do with having left the house on my bike and not being where I had told my mom I would be. As boys might do on bikes, they ride other places, and so it was with me.
My punishment on a sunny summer day was that my mom drew a line with chalk toward the bottom of the driveway. I was not to cross this line. Now, she had said nothing about inviting other people to cross the line into our yard, so this was my first tactic. I saw some kids way down the street playing in their yard, and called to them to come down and rescue me, but they didn’t hear me, and so I remained alone.
We had a lovely yard - front and back, a swimming pool, a sandbox, plenty of things I could have done, and my mother hadn’t seen fit to foist yardwork or other chores as a part of my punishment. I could have done anything that day and had a good time doing it, but I was really bothered by what I couldn’t do - cross that darn line!
So, I decided to spruce up the curb appeal of our house, specifically focusing on any dirt or debris that might have been on the driveway. I got out the hose, and sprayed, cleaning the pavement. And when I finished, and wound the hose back up near the spigot, what did I notice? There was no longer a line at the end of the driveway! In my mind it seemed completely reasonable to run down the street, there being no line in my way, and join my friends who were jumping through their sprinkler. My mother did not share my logic, and when I returned home, the yard was no longer my playground that day, rather I was confined to my room for the rest of the afternoon.
The story of how I came to write my declaration of independence at the affront to my personal liberty will have to wait for another sermon on another day, but at its heart was this essential emotion: when denied the thing I wanted, all other freedoms seemed missing. In the words of Sartre “anything but full autonomy for the individual is a total loss of freedom.”
Before we leave our exploration of freedom and sin, let’s take a look at the most intriguing seduction offered by the serpent: that of being like God. Many have wondered and worried about this. Would the same God who makes humanity in God’s image, punish humanity for wanting to be like God?
My theological dive into sin and temptation has landed me where it usually does: Jurgen Moltmann. In a lecture given in his introductory class to theology, he said “Original Sin is the presumption to be like God and the sloth not to be like God’s image on Earth.” He goes on to say: “Presumption and resignation are the roots of all our actual sins. To put it another way: the sin against the first commandment is the source of all the other sins against the other commandments of God. It is presumption not to acknowledge the Lordship of God. It is resignation not to enter into the "exodus out of Egypt" and to refuse the freedom God has given us.”
So here we are, on the first Sunday in Lent grappling with temptation, and Original Sin. We have just crossed through the season of Epiphany, where, at the Baptism of Jesus, the Divine spoke out of heaven: “This is my beloved, in whom I am well-pleased.” And Epiphany ended last week with the Transfiguration, where these words are echoed again. Bookended by the belovedness of Jesus, we experienced his manifestation and ministry to us.
Now we are pulled back, to the verse that follows the Baptism of Jesus and God’s loving declaration for God’s son, and the driving of Jesus into the wilderness.
Temptation. It is more than something that is simply alluring, or appealing. It preys upon our desire, our impulse, our inadequacies. Even the word I used, “to prey upon” denotes how we personify and characterize temptation as something poised, ready, sinister, slinking, waiting for us. Luther uses an unexpected word Anfechtung to describe his experience of temptation instead of the word Versuchung. Anfechtung is often translated as challenge, but to Luther it denoted torment, pain, pressure to fall into something. It is how he described his own life before he found peace in the redemptive act of Jesus.
This kicks temptation up a notch - the denial of something that torments us is so serious, it finally seems worthy of mention in the Lord’s Prayer. Lead us not into temptation, is not just a simple prayer to avoid a trap, rather it is a profound plea to guide us through an idea, a relationship, a situation that is so powerful it agonizes us.
To answer Luther’s angst, I return to Moltmann’s freedom. After a year of studying with Moltmann in Tübingen, Germany, I came to know him as one who preaches liberation theology. We often think of Liberation Theology as beginning in Latin America with Gustavo Gutierrez and Oscar Romero, and certainly that is where it is most clearly enacted on a wide scale, but I think Moltmann has something to say about this, too. To Moltmann, the traditional teaching of Original Sin was a one-sided definition that preserved societal and political powers in the Church, rather than lifting up the promise of humanity.
“Temptation then consists not so much in the titanic desire to be like God,” Moltmann writes, “but in weakness, timidity, weariness, and in not wanting to be like God or to be what God requires of us. God has exalted [humanity] and given us the prospect of a life that is open and free, but humanity hangs back and lets itself down.”
And so here we are, in the wilderness with Jesus and Satan. We have heard today’s Gospel read so often that we might miss the power of it. We are hearing the account of an epic battle: This is Sparta against Troy; The Federation against the Borg; God against Satan. Jesus wins this battle not because Satan isn’t a worthy adversary, but because Satan’s approach to Hebrew Scripture is flawed.
Now Satan knows the Scripture - and uses it to try to trap Jesus. But Satan forgets one of the essential hermeneutics of the Word - or the rules that govern how Scripture is interpreted - that is, Scripture interprets Scripture, and cannot be set against itself. Imagine a scene of hellfire preaching in which the preacher lobs cherry-picked verses as grenades into an argument. In trying to trap Jesus, Satan forgets that the whole body of Hebrew Scripture indicates love, promise, covenant, steadfastness, and therefore any argument posed will go down in flames.
When Satan offers Jesus bread, a surely-welcomed need after forty days of denial, all Jesus has to do is say “It is written ...” and Satan is already on the back foot. “Man should not live by bread alone,” Jesus says, as if to say, of course I would like bread, but it is not meant to be right now.
Undaunted, Satan switches tactics and uses Scripture to tempt Jesus with a test of power. It is as if Satan is saying, You keep quoting Scripture, let’s see if you really trust it when it says you couldn’t possibly hurt yourself by throwing yourself off this high building. And Jesus puts him down by refusing to engage.
Undeterred, Satan tries again, offering all the power Jesus could desire if Jesus would but worship him. And again, Jesus relies on the Word again: “it is written, worship only the Lord.” Score another one for JC.
In each of these, Jesus resists the temptation to be like God, and instead does the harder work of being God’s action on Earth.
That is the liberation of humanity. When confronted with temptation, with injustice, with systemic evil, we do not need to be like God; rather we must engage the more important work to reveal the God in ourselves to others, to lead them as we are led, to heal them as we are healed. In doing so we save more than ourselves, we liberate the world.
Amen.