Lent 1(A) + Empty-Full+ 3.9.14

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blog.beafranciscan.org
M. Campbell-Langdell
All Santos, Oxnard
(Gen. 2:15–17; 3:1–7, Ps. 32, Rom. 5:12–19, Mat. 4:1–11)
Then I acknowledged my sin to you, *
and did not conceal my guilt (Ps. 32:5).
A couple of weeks ago the youth group was playing a game called the “blame game. We each had our workbooks out, standing in a circle, and we were trying to toss hacky sacks to the left simultaneously without dropping them. Of course, some uncoordinated folk like me inevitably dropped the hacky sacks and at the end Jade, our youth minister, pointed out the times that folks blamed others or if they kept silent, or if they took responsibility for their mistakes.
This was a way of talking about the story of Adam and Eve, and particularly what happens after this moment that we visit in the Genesis reading today. We see Adam blame Eve. We see Eve blame the serpent. The blame game is actively in play.  And in this moment we also see one of the first moments that humans drew away from God.[1]
The readings from scripture today deal with this distance from God that we humans have accumulated as well as the fact that Christ came to show us a way to be re-unified with the Holy One. The Book of Common Prayer says that “sin is the seeking of our own will instead of the will of God, thus distorting our relationship with God, with other people, and with all creation (BCP p. 848).” The truth is that since the time of Adam and Eve, it has been all too easy for us humans to point the finger, and it has been all too easy for us to put our will in place of God’s will.
It is very interesting that the Greek work for desert here in the gospel of St. Matthew is “eremos” and it can mean “abandonment.”[2] This makes sense to me that Jesus has to abandon the human sense of self, because when I think about when I feel I go astray, it is always the times when I am too full of myself and my ideas. We need to abandon our pre-conceptions and be open to the mind of God.
Jesus enters in the wilderness a place of emptiness, and then he becomes literally empty, hungry. And along comes the devil, who is also called the tempter. And what is his temptation, but to draw Jesus into things that aggrandize Jesus the man rather than God. One commentator points out that the temptations that Jesus encounters really line up with the same temptations that Adam and Eve face.[3]  She notes something very interesting, quoting T.S. Eliot in Murder in the Cathedral: “the last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason.”[4] And that is so true with the worst temptations, I think.
Now, an aside before I continue. I don’t intend to play the “blame game” today. I will refer to Adam and Eve, but not to judge or blame them as I think they represent who we are and what we may try to avoid. I think that Jesus simply shows us a better way.
So the interesting thing is that the temptations faced by Adam and Eve and Jesus in themselves were not entirely bad, they only became dangerous when they replaced reliance on God with reliance entirely on oneself  or building up of oneself.
The first temptation is to seek personal security above all.
Eve sees that the fruit of the tree will bring not only a tasty snack but understanding, and understanding is good, but it doesn’t compete with being open to the knowledge that God wants to share with us.
The devil, seeing that Jesus is starving, suggests he uses his gifts as Son of God to make bread from stones. We see later that Jesus is not above using miraculous signs to make bread, but to do it just for himself would turn his gifts into a magic trick. And that just cheapens the whole deal.
The second temptation is to seek proof of God and to put God to the test thereby.
Eve both seeks proof of God in seeking the knowledge that only God has but she also pushes God’s limits like any good toddler by seeing if God will really act on the limits God has set for Adam and for her.
The devil pushes Jesus to leap off the temple mount, turning proof of God into a kind of spectacle for the masses. And Jesus really won’t have that, putting God to the test. In fact, Jesus will later give his life for us rather than be spared.
The third temptation is to seek one’s destiny above all else, think of it as “to thine ownself be true” on overdrive. Again, seeking our destiny in and of itself is not a bad idea, but the concept is to put that in place of following God distorts the benefits of such drive.
Eve seeks her destiny in seeking to share the mind of God in eating of the apple.
The devil tempts Jesus with the idea that he can have all the honor and power in the world. And yet Jesus knows that there is something better in store than that.
How does Jesus know that to put his personal security, his human desire for a proof of God and his search for his destiny in first place is misguided?
Well, Jesus is the Word of God, filled with the wisdom of scripture, and this just pours out of him each time he is challenged by the devil. Each temptation to put his human will in place of God’s will is another opportunity to put God back in first place.
Jesus shows us the right way to respond, strong in the Word of God and strong in relationship to him, as the Word of God incarnate.
As I mentioned earlier, it is all too natural for us as humans to place our will in front of God’s will for us, so the challenge each Lent is to re-correct our spiritual alignment and to weed out the sin in our lives as we strive to reconnect with God.  How can we respond to the temptations in our lives?
One way is to enter the desert. And by this I mean to enter a place of abandonment of all that separates us from God. We need to lay aside prejudice and be open to the mind of God. But as Jesus says elsewhere in the Gospel, an empty house quickly gets filled with bad influences if it isn’t filled with good things. So we must also delve into and gorge on scripture, fill ourselves to the brim with the knowledge that God truly desires to share with us. We must also be filled with a renewed relationship with the Word of God incarnate, Jesus Christ.
May this season of Lent be a time of emptying of all that separates you from God, and of filling you with the Word of God, with God’s wisdom, and God’s love as you renew your relationship with Jesus.



[1] David M. Carr, “Footnotes to Genesis” Oxford Annotated Study Bible.
[2] Christine Valters Paintner, “A Different Kind of Fast,” Abbey of the Arts email, Mar 3, 2014.
[3] Maggi Dawn, “Reflections on the lectionary: March 9, 2014,” Christian Century, March 5, 2014, 20.
[4] Ibid.

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