Temptation

The story of the Garden of Eden is a perfect story.

The author of this story in Genesis describes a primeval paradise impossible to locate on any map – deliberately so, for “Adam and Eve” represent all human beings. If one could locate the Garden of Eden on a map, people would be tempted to blame humanity’s ills on the people who live in that place today, as though the rest of us were blameless, whereas it is crucial to the story to understand Adam and Eve are universal. It would also be tempting to mount an archeological expedition to look for it, which would also miss the point that the awesome truth in this story is in the story itself. Such an effort would also ignore the conclusion of the story, which declares that the way back to Paradise is blocked by an angel with a flaming sword: the only way for humanity to go is forward.

So, please ignore any tabloid stories about the Garden of Eden, or alleged discoveries of Adam and Eve’s skeletons. What we need to know about that place is in the Bible, and if we want to find Adam and Eve we only need to look – in the mirror.

They are us, and we are them. And in the immortal words of the late, great comic strip star “Pogo”, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

You see, Adam and Eve had it all. Paradise. An abundance of food just for the taking – an all-vegetarian diet, in Paradise there was perfect peace even between species, as well as among people, and between people and God. People talked to the animals, they didn’t eat them. And people talked to and listened to God with respect but without fear, just naturally. And this was a tropical paradise where the two human beings could live without needing clothing either for protection, for warmth or for modesty, for they were as without shame as a toddler on the beach.

The human beings were given authority over all other animals, symbolized by God telling Adam to name the animals. Human beings, in this very “earthy” creation story, were made by God out of the dust of the earth and God’s breath, and without God’s breath in us we return to the dust. Human beings were also created by God to be social creatures, rejoicing in profound companionship with one another as Adam rejoiced in Eve.

And human beings were also created by God with freedom.

We were, and are, given freedom by God to make decisions, including moral choices, including obeying – or disobeying – God. God was willing to take the chance that all human beings would reject God, reject each other and even reject the world so as to destroy it because God would rather be obeyed freely by some people by choice than be obeyed slavishly by all people because their “programming” did not permit them to do otherwise.

So Adam and Eve had freedom. Theologians call it “free will.” And Adam and Eve used their freedom to disobey God.

They had only one commandment to obey. Didn’t even have to take notes. “Don’t eat of that tree over there.” O.K., fine. They had plenty of other, equally attractive options. This is what makes the story of the Garden of Eden “a perfect story”: Adam and Eve had no reason to disobey except disobedience. “No mitigating circumstances, your honor” admits the defense attorney. “They also can’t blame their neighborhood for their behavior, because they were their neighborhood, and they can’t blame their upbringing, because they were brought up by God.”

What would you say if you were Adam and Eve’s defense attorney?

Well, the lack of anyone else to blame didn’t actually stop them. Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the snake, who was the only one to “stand up and take his punishment like a man” except that he couldn’t stand up and he wasn’t a man.

But we’re getting ahead of the story. Eve was tempted to eat of the fruit (it doesn’t say “apple” in the Bible, by the way – and apples don’t grow in tropical climates) because, the snake said, doing so would make her “become like God.” That was the only thing Adam and Eve did not have, so naturally, that was tempting, though of course she could have no idea what that meant. So she ate, and so did

Adam.

And instead of wisdom and power they experienced shame, blame and pain. Shame: suddenly they were embarrassed to be naked, and they hid from God because they were ashamed. Blame: instead of taking responsibility for their actions, they blamed others. Pain: God sentenced them to exile from the Garden of Eden and to experience labor – in every sense of the word – and the pains of normal human experience.

Exile from Paradise, exile from the presence of God, the end of perfect shalom between people, between people and the creation, and between people and God, all because of human beings’ original Sin: “to want to be like God.”

It tempts us still. And I’ll bet the three temptations that Jesus resisted in today’s Gospel readings – the temptation to use his power to do a miracle which only benefited himself, the temptation to use his power to show off, the temptation to seize power on earth by bowing down to Satan – would be mightily tempting to us and to all people.

Limitless wealth, limitless fame and glamour, limitless power – tempting indeed! - although all of Satan’s temptations came, so to speak, with their own “Kryptonite” attached, just as the piece of fruit in the Garden did. Any time human beings try to put ourselves in the place of God the result is disaster.

And millions of relatively little disasters and many large ones threaten humanity daily. Our only hope is not to create super-Christians supposedly able to resist irresistible temptations, but to bow down and give thanks to Jesus Christ, who resisted those temptations to the end and sacrificed himself, taking the punishment due to us and to all human beings because of each and all of our sins.

And because of Christ’s sacrifice we are set free from the burden of our sins and can participate in making the world new with God.

Thirty-five years ago, the rock band “Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young” sang “And we’ve got to get back to the Garden.” But the way to the Garden, to Paradise, is not through Woodstock but through the Garden of Gethsemane and over the Mount of Calvary. That hard road is the road to perfect peace among all people, between people and the Creation, and between people and God, as a result of God’s initiative and sacrifice.

His pain, our gain.

By God’s amazing grace, we can be saved.

(The Rev.) Francis A. Hubbard

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church