Offered by Father Matthew Dallman for the Parish of Tazewell County on the First Sunday in Lent, Year A, 2017.
The key moment in the episode in the Garden of Eden where Eve (and I think Adam as well) were with the serpent has do to with choice. What will Eve, speaking for Adam, choose? She starts out as God would have them be, repeating more or less perfectly the command God had given them: “You may freely eat of the every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.” Notice that God could have not created this tree in the first place. He could have put it somewhere else entirely. But God chose not to.
So let us see that in the nature of reality, in the very order of creation, and in such order whereby humans are actively listening to Him—for we can and should understand Adam and Eve as being called by God and in all situations save one obedient to Him—God in the nature of creation has knowingly placed objects that tempt us. He intentionally puts things in our lives that He knows full well the sign to “keep out” can be a trigger to “go towards.”
And think of all that tempts us. Yes, food, financial wealth, showy clothes, cars and houses—these are included of course. Celebrity, fame, attention—these are temptations. But being in control is also a temptation. Thinking we can lift ourselves up by our own bootstraps is a temptation. Or thinking other people can do that. Indifference to poverty is a temptation. Actually indifference itself is a temptation, for all things are interrelated as has been shown in several disciplines of science.
And there is the temptation to deny that we are hurt when we actually are wounded. I do not mean physically wounded or hurt such as when we are sick or our body is not working correctly, but rather emotionally and psychologically hurt and wounded from a person taking advantage of us. I am talking about an instance of being verbally abused, of being psychologically abused; being humiliated, laughed at, deeply embarrassed, exploited for some one else’s gain. And on and on, including the truly evil situations such as rape and molestation.
From the most tragic such as those to the comparatively less tragic but still incapacitating instances such as being humiliated—we are tempted at some point to acknowledge the wound, but not to acknowledge it fully. We get partway into the process of healing and then it starts to feel too difficult to continue to confront at its roots, so we are tempted to just say, “I’m fine, I’m fine.” We begin to “just live with it” before it has brought fully to the light of day. By living it with, I mean, trying to forget it.
Brothers and sisters, our Lord Jesus Christ actively chose to confront the Devil in the wilderness so that we would always have confidence to do the same with our temptations. Christ declared war, sought out Satan, and laid a trap for him. Jesus, being God, and now fully knowing of His divinity—recall that the confrontation with the Devil in the wilderness happens just after Jesus emerged from the River Jordan hearing His Father and feeling the Holy Spirit anoint Him—fully knowing His divinity, He fought the Devil on our behalf. By His will, he choose a full-frontal attack in a cosmic campaign against temptation.
Christ has won the battle for us, in the wilderness. And because He won, He is our weapon, His are our arms, He is our power. However wounded we are when we confront our temptations—which can only be approached, understood, and healed in prayer—we must always win because Christ has already won.
We too must live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. We too must not tempt the Lord our God. And we too must worship the Lord our God and only Him shall we serve. God knows we will be tempted, and will never stop being tempted. He wants us to know in our hearts and in our lives that the victory is already won—so that when we confront the depths of our wounds, we know our loving God wants nothing else but to give us the joy of His saving help again and sustain us with His bountiful spirit. Amen.
The cover image “Temptations of Christ” is licensed under CC BY 2.0 / Cropped from original.