A Sermon from the First Church….       

A sermon offered by the Rev. Ian F. “Jack” Steeves in the public worship of the First Congregational Church of Scarborough, Maine on Sunday, February 10, 2008 (First Sunday in Lent).  The principal readings were Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7; Psalm 32; and Matthew 4:1-11. 
 

“…For dust you are and to dust you will return” (Genesis 3:19). 

“Don’t Leave It to the Snake!” 

I begin with a piece of dialogue from Antoine de St. Exupery’s “Little Prince.”  The setting is the African desert; a little prince has come to earth and encountered a golden snake. 

“What planet is this on which I have come down?” asked the little prince. 

      “This is the Earth; this is Africa,” the snake answered. 

“Ah, Then there are no people on the Earth?” 

      “This is the desert.  There are no people in the desert.

            The Earth is large,” said the snake. 

“Where are the men…?  It is a little lonely in the desert….” 

      “It is also lonely among men,” the snake said. 

The little prince gazed at him for a long time.

      “You are a funny animal,” he said at last.

            You are no thicker than a finger….” 

      “But I am more powerful than the finger of a king….

      Whomever, I touch, I send back to the earth from whence he came.” 

      The snake spoke again.  “But you are innocent and true,

      and you come from a star….” 

The little prince made no reply. 

      “You move me to pity…” the snake said.  “I can help you, some,

      if you grow too homesick for your own planet.  I can….” 

“Oh!  I understand you very well,” said the little prince.

      But why do you always speak in riddles?” 

      “I solve them all,” said the snake. 

And they were both silent…. 

Say, what you will, the Snake knows his purpose in the scheme of things, as does his serpent ancestor in the Garden of Eden. 

Last Thursday evening, some of us began Lent with hymns, prayers, and a sooty forehead; and we were reminded that we are dust and to dust we shall return.  The worship service was not meant to depress or frighten us, but simply to remind us who we are: human beings, finite mortals, not angels, and not God. 

Add this morning’s reading from Genesis and we are taken back to our biblical roots – not only to that little pile of dust in the garden of Eden where our story began, but also to that Big Mistake, in Genesis 3, made by the mythical parents of us all.  We recall the mistake Adam and Eve made before they had really gotten a handle on being human. 

God said, “Don’t eat the fruit!” They ate the fruit, and the rest is history. 

We should add, that Jonathan Edwards, our first American Congregationalist theologian, said, God cried, when God found out what Adam and Eve had done. 

Our first parents might have been immortal.  They might have lived in the Garden for ever.  They did not; their curiosity got the best of them.  God tested them, they flunked.  They were expelled from Eden.  God said, “You are dust and to dust you shall return.”

That is the sentence God pronounced.  Theologically, we have inherited it, along with their curiosity. 

Fortunately, Adam and Eve are not our only ancestors.  We have another who claimed us as brothers and sisters, and we heard a portion of his story read this morning. 

He was led by the Spirit, not by a snake, not into a garden, but into the Wilderness.  He was tested – three times – he passed with flying colors.  He was, however, very tired and very hungry. 

Jesus’ test was much harder than the test of Adam and Eve.  There was nothing as clear-cut as a tree to stay away from, and no specific instructions from God about what or what not to do in the Wilderness, but Jesus managed to say no to three temptations.  He came out of the desert as he had gone in – the much loved Son of God. 

God drew a line in the Garden of Eden and said, “Human beings on this side, God over on the other side.  Tree of life is on your side, tree of knowledge of good and evil is on my side.  Stay where you are, if you know what is good for you.” 

God had given Adam and Eve, human brains to think with and a serpent, a snake, to talk things over with.  The fruit on the other tree sure looked good!  The snake suggested that God had forbidden them because God did not want them to be as smart as God was.  The snake said, “You will not die!”  The couple trusted their faulty logic and the whisperings of the serpent over God’s command, and the next thing they knew they were looking for a new place to live. 

The Gospel reading has a very different ending.  It is very scary at the beginning.  Jesus and the Devil are engaged in a little dialogue, a verbal dual with the Devil quoting scripture like a preacher.  (Watch out for tall strangers who come drifting into your town and know their Bible, or at least carry one.  They may be up to no good.)  

Jesus’ person, his purpose, and his loyalty were all at stake.  Would he remain faithful to God or would he fall for the Devil’s interesting, if not totally innocent, suggestions? 

In both stories, there was a choice to be made.  In both stories, there was a line that must not be crossed.  Adam and Eve crossed their line.  Jesus did not cross his line. 

Jesus could play God, or he could remain human.  He could fly in the air, or turn the desert into a home bakery or he could keep his feet on the ground and live as hungry and tired as anyone would live after a forty day fast. 

Three times he was tempted and three times he said no.  He refused to cross over the line God had drawn.  For the time being, the devil was defeated. 

In Lent, we pray in a personal manner, some fast and simplify their lives, and still others serve others.  We can be tempted to cross over our line.  These stories, however, are not about being good human beings.  They are about not being human at all.  In both stories, there is the possibility of playing God. 

Adam and Eve were tempted by listening to the snake, to step over the line, and play God.  It was a chance to break out of their dependence on God and know both good and evil for themselves.  In Jesus’ case, it was the chance to feed every hunger, to be superman, to control all nations of the earth.  Jesus was tempted to give up his humanity.  Note: God did not offer the temptations to Jesus; Satan offered them with strings attached.  “If you are the Son of God,” tell these stones, throw yourself down, bow down and worship me.  Jesus was not about to do the Tempter’s bidding. 

Whereas Adam and Eve stepped over the line and found humanity a curse, Jesus stayed behind his line and made humanity a blessing.  Two trespassed; the Third stayed put.  Adam and Eve tried to be God; Jesus was content to be human. 

All three are alive and well in all of us.   You can feel them tugging at you most days of your life.  Adam and Eve are ours.  Jesus is ours, too.  We have both sets of spiritual genes in us.  They are all kin.  When the Adam and Eve in us is powerfully tempted to play the Almighty, the Jesus in us is more powerfully able and willing to remain human, offering to keep us company on our own side of the line. 

Jesus shows us, again and again, that the way to discover the “image of God” within us is not to curse our humanity but to bless it, and to enter into life as fully as we dare, as long as we can, on this side of Eden, where the God who made us from the dust of the earth offers to breathe life into us again and again. 

If we are to be Men and Women of Faith, then person and purpose must come together.  They did for Jesus in His time in the Wilderness.  He comes out of the desert, as they use to say, “having been sorely tempted but without sin.”  He knows who he is and what he has to do. 

As an old preacher once told his grandson, “Everyone has two birthdays.  One is the day on which you are born.  The second is the day or the night on which you finally discover “why” you were born!