Nighttime Calls

I keep my cell phone with me almost all the time. I'm not really happy about that, and, as I wrote a few months ago, I'm working on leaving it behind more often. When I am honest with myself, I admit that I primarily keep my cell phone close by because I enjoy being able to look at the news, check e-mail, or browse Facebook anytime I want. But there are pastoral reasons for me to stay in touch, too. My cell phone is the way parishioners contact me in a pastoral emergency. I give my cell phone number out freely, and, if you call the church office and get my voice mail, the message will tell you that, "If you need to reach me more immediately, you may try my cell phone..." and then it gives the number.

In a decade or so of ordained ministry, my phone has rung in the middle of the night with a true pastoral emergency fewer than a dozen times. And, every time it has, it has been a privilege to answer the phone. There is no place I would rather be than at your bedside or in your hospital room when you need someone to hold you, pray for you, and cry with you. Although it has probably happened, I cannot remember a single time when someone has called me in the middle of the night with something less than a true emergency. Thankfully, people seem to know that 2:30am is not the time to bother someone who has four children because they want to ask what time the midweek service is or because they want me to know that their power bill is past due. The true middle of the night seems off-limits for those kind of inquiries, but that isn't true for earlier in the evening.

My phone rings a surprising amount between 8pm and 11pm. Maybe cell phones and the ability to call one person in a household instead of the entire house (or, back when there were "party lines" a whole string of houses) has shifted what is decent, but not that long ago it was considered rude to call someone after 8pm. When my phone rings at 10:30pm, Elizabeth and I give each other a look because we know this will either be really important or really not important. For some reason, there doesn't seem to be any middle ground at half-past ten. Sometimes it's someone with a recent hospital admission or a death, but, more often than I'd like to admit, it's someone with the sort of question or issue that should wait until the morning. Thankfully, caller ID and voicemail help me sift through the calls that can and cannot wait, but, still, to reach out to one's pastor after the sun goes down usually means someone is desperate even if the situation isn't as bad as it seems.

In John 3, Nicodemus comes to Jesus "by night," which is to say "under the cover of darkness." The text doesn't necessarily tell us that he was hiding from something, but, since John goes out of his way to tell us that he was "a leader of the Jews," it may be safe to assume he didn't want to be seen by his peers. Or maybe, like the people who call me, something urgent was going on. But, as my father would say, nothing good happens at night. In that culture, people didn't make house calls at night. There weren't street lights. A knock on the door after dark was never casual--always urgent. Nicodemus, therefore, has something that cannot wait until a more reasonable hour.

I like to imagine that Jesus stood there inside the door with his arms folded across his chest, waiting on Nicodemus to explain why he was calling on him at night. We don't know what was communicated without words, but we do know that, by the time Nicodemus spoke, he still didn't quite have his thoughts together: "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God." Flattery is probably a good way to begin, but what is he really getting at? Why has he bothered Jesus at night? Jesus knows what's in his heart--that this man is looking for answers--and he responds, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above."

In the conversation that follows, there's a lot said about this "being born from above." It's as if Jesus hit on something Nicodemus was wondering before Nicodemus even realized it. Like most nighttime inquiries, the conversation doesn't end with any clear resolution. If you read through chapter 3, you'll see that Jesus offers a gentle pastoral rebuke: "But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God." I like to think of that as Jesus' way of saying, "Why don't you call me in the morning when we've both had time to think about it." Still, even though the conversation does not reach a clear conclusion, we know that, later on in 7:50, Nicodemus sticks up for Jesus, reminding the leaders that guilt is only assigned after a fair hearing. Then again at the end of Jesus' life (chapter 19), Nicodemus, whom John reminds us had gone to Jesus at night, is the one who buys the oils and spices to anoint Jesus' lifeless body. In other words, the nighttime call may not have brought resolution, but it was an important encounter that bore considerable fruit as the story progressed.

What do we bring to Jesus at night? Sleepless, anxious, agitated, desperate--what do we knock on Jesus' door to say? Is there something gnawing at us? What is Jesus' response? Sometimes knocking on the door is enough to get things started.

Right, Wrong, or Jesus?

March 5, 2017 – The First Sunday in Lent

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7; Romans 5:12-19; Matthew 4:1-11

© 2017 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon can be heard here.

 

When the tempter comes and whispers in your ear, what does he say?

Some of you will remember a story I told a few years ago about the time I was supposed to read this morning’s gospel lesson at St. John’s College in Cambridge, England, where I went to seminary. I was a first-year student, and the church where I did the practical part of my training was another St. John’s, a formal, even stuffy, sort of place where every word, every note, and every gesture were carefully chosen. In fact, at the main service, the gospel lesson wasn’t even read; it was chanted, and it was going to be my job to sing this text in front of everyone.

When word got out that I was the one who would chant the story of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness, students started coming up to me to tell me how I was supposed to sing it. They weren’t worried that I might get the words or even the notes wrong. And they weren’t even worried about my accent—that my southern drawl would give away my American origins. Instead, they wanted to be sure that I sang it the way that it had always been sung in that place—or at least the way that it had been sung for as long as anyone could remember. Before it was my turn, the Dean had always chanted the part of the tempter with a “malevolent tone.” That was the term that a half of a dozen concerned students invariably used—“malevolent”—to describe the way that I was supposed to sing the devil’s words.

But I didn’t want to sing it like that. I was nervous enough about singing anything in front of the entire congregation, and I certainly didn’t want to worry about the tone with which I conveyed the devil’s evil personality. I spent days thinking about this lesson in ways that I had never before thought about a passage from the bible. “What does the devil sound like?” I asked myself. “When he comes and speaks to me, what sort of voice does he use?” Well, I didn’t use a malevolent tone to sing the part of the tempter. Instead, I broke off in mid-chant and used a husky stage whisper to convey what I thought temptation itself sounds like. Initially, I was pleased with my decision, but, before I could even finish the devil’s first line, a titter broke out among the choristers. Soon, snorts and chortles began to ripple through the choir, and, by the end of the lesson, full-on laughter had spread to other members of the congregation. I was red-faced with embarrassment and swore I would never do anything like that again.

But I can still hear the devil when he whispers to me, and he sounds a lot like my own voice. It’s the voice that stays inside my head all the time, trying to convince me that what I know is wrong isn’t actually wrong at all. And that’s the toughest thing about temptation: it feels so good, so right, that we allow ourselves to forget that there is a difference between right and wrong. After all, when you think about it, we aren’t tempted by bad things but by good things that are out of place or out of proportion. And that’s the truth we meet in this wilderness encounter between Jesus and the great tempter.

After forty days of fasting, Jesus understandably is famished. And what does the tempter say to him? “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” Where’s the harm in that? What’s wrong with a hungry man eating some bread? If you had the power to transform a lump of stone into a loaf of bread, wouldn’t you do it? I would. You could feed the whole world like that. What’s wrong with making sure that hungry people get enough food? Well, the problem, of course, is with the one who is asking. The devil isn’t interested in satisfying Jesus’ hunger pains but in getting the Son of God to use his power in a misdirected way. “If you are the Son of God…” the devil says. If? If you really are, then do it; prove it; show me. There’s nothing wrong with having enough bread to eat, but there’s something dangerously wrong with identifying the source of that bread as something other than God.

“If you are the Son of God,” the devil says a second time, “throw yourself down [from the pinnacle of the temple,] for it is written that God will command his angels to bear you up so that you will not even dash your foot against a stone.” The bible really does say that. In Psalm 91 it says that God will command angels to catch the one who trusts in the Lord and bear him up so that not even his foot will strike a stone. Isn’t trusting in God a good thing? Wouldn’t we—shouldn’t we—all want the kind of faith that would lead us to trust in God enough to commit our whole selves to him—even in the literal sense to put our lives in his hands? But, like Jesus, we can see the problem with this scenario. It isn’t that we aren’t supposed to trust God with our very lives but that we aren’t supposed to define that trust—that faith—in such a narrow, shallow way as to throw ourselves off a bridge and demand that God catch us. That isn’t a show of faith. It’s a show of selfishness. And Jesus reminds us of the importance of recognizing the difference.

By the time the devil gets to his third temptation, we all know what’s going on. This time he shows Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and offers them to him if he will simply fall down and worship him. I wish that temptation were always that easy to spot, but the devil never really shows up and offers us wealth or power or fame quite like that. The tempter is far more subtle and crafty. He hides the strings by tempting a hungry man to steal a loaf of bread or a desperate woman to jump off a bridge or a CEO to cut corners to get that bonus and pay for his kid’s college tuition while making his shareholders happy. But don’t we fall down to worship Satan when we convince ourselves that we deserve that good thing at any cost? Aren’t we accepting the same offer when we allow the good things in this life like money and food and happiness to become the end to which we aspire through any means?

We are sinners, the bible teaches us, but what does that mean? It means that we cannot be trusted to see the truth when it matters. We are too easily deceived by our own voice—our own desire. Try convincing an alcoholic that the pain of sobriety is better than the pain of drunkenness. Try convincing an adulterer that the happiness he seeks will never be found until he goes home and confronts what is missing in his marriage. The truth is easy to see until we become vulnerable to our own rationalization. That’s when the devil shows up and convinces us that the good we seek is more important than the path we take to get there. And the devil sounds a lot like us.

But thanks be to God that Jesus goes into the wilderness not only to withstand temptation but to confront the tempter on our behalf. He is not only the Son of God. He is also the son of Mary. He is fully human and, thus, fully susceptible to the tempter’s schemes, yet the divinity within him wins the battle that we cannot win. Because he is God himself, Jesus does what we cannot do, yet he does not reserve that victory for himself. He shares it freely with anyone who comes to him for help. When we come and acknowledge our need for his help, which is to say when we confess our sin, Jesus gives us that which we cannot achieve on our own. He makes us good. He makes us strong. Little by little, day by day, our susceptibilities are changed into strengths. And he gives us the Holy Spirit so that we might be reminded continually of our need for his help.

This Lenten journey into the wilderness is not merely forty days during which we try to resist temptation and confess to God when we fail. They are not forty days of trial but forty days of renewal. We are renewed in them because we do not head out into the wilderness on our own. We are not alone; Jesus is with us. As we walk beside him on this journey to the cross, his strength becomes our strength. We cling not to our own abilities but to his. Lent is a time when we head out into the wilderness to be reminded that we cannot succeed on our own and, just as importantly, to remember that, because of Jesus, we do not have to.

Adam: Sin's Patient Zero

The things we teach our children stick with them--with us--for a lifetime. That's what of the reasons I like the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd program since it begins by teaching our youngest children that they belong to Jesus Christ just as sheep who belong to the Good Shepherd--the one who lays down his life for the sheep. The ways we talk to children about God and death and love and the Bible and sin are seeds that sometimes don't grow up for decades. Whether in the priest's office or on the therapist's couch, we often realize much later how those childhood lessons have shaped us.

Pedagogically speaking, one of the easiest lessons to teach our children is how to behave. We punish for bad behavior and/or reward for good behavior, and, thus, our children learn the difference. But teaching our children how to behave is not the same thing as teaching them about sin, which is far more complex and difficult, but, for some reason, the much more difficult lesson gets thrown in with the simpler one, and we all grow up thinking that sin is the bad things I do. It's not.

Sin is not our misdeeds. Our misdeed are a product of sin, but equating sin with our bad behavior is like equating pregnancy with morning sickness or the flu with a fever or a broken heart with tears. All of those things are causally related--the former causing the latter--but they aren't the same thing. The flu causes fever, but fever isn't the flu. We use the word "sins" to describe those things we do wrong--"things done and left undone"--but they are symptoms--products--of a deeper problem. That problem is sin. We are sinners. We are plagued by sin. Sin is the sickness that causes lust, greed, anger, hatred, and gluttony. Avoiding those "sins" is a good thing, but simply expunging them from our life does not fix the problem any more than Advil cures the flu. It may make the symptoms harder to spot, but the flu is the flu. And sin is sin.

Paul's great exposition on sin, known as his Letter to the Romans, from which we read this Sunday, shows us this truth. "As sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned," Paul writes of Adam's fall and the introduction of sin into the world. Adam is the Patient Zero for the disease known as sin. As told in Genesis, Adam (Eve, too) is the one who instigated this fall from grace--this sickness, this status of out-of-sync-ness with God's will. Remember that as the first human Adam is not only literally the cause of sin's introduction to the world but also a description of human nature itself as imperfect, as sinful. As Paul describes it, sin spreads throughout the human race because "all have sinned," which is to say that everyone has the symptoms. Everyone is infected.

And that's why Jesus' story is so beautiful and complex. Although the gift that Jesus brings us--a new life of forgiveness, redemption, and salvation from (cure for) sin--transforms the human race just as sin did, his gift is not like the sin that Adam brought. Paul writes, "For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brings justification." Sin isn't simply the many trespasses. Sin is the one trespass. Sin enters the world and becomes (always was?) part of human nature. Regardless of the many "sins," regardless of whether we show symptoms, all are broken, all carry the sickness. Again, remember that our brokenness is not the misdeeds we do but the fact that we're flawed at all. Jesus, on the other hand, has the power to reverse that otherwise irreversible trend because, unlike the one sin that led to many "sins" and brought condemnation to all, Jesus' one gift brings one life to everyone. It does not spread like a sickness. It spreads like a cure. With Adam, one leads to many, but, with Jesus, one leads to one.

There is power and hope in confronting the reality of sin as a sickness just as there is benefit to confronting an illness as more than a collection of symptoms. It's not a bad idea to treat the symptoms, but it won't cure you. In this case, Jesus is a cure. It's complicated, though, and another post needs to be devoted to the concept that, despite being cured, we still carry traces of that sickness throughout this life. Lent, of course, being a good time to address that reality. But this Sunday, as we hear from Paul, we have the opportunity to be honest about sin--honest about what it is that ails us and what it takes to be cured.

Led or Driven?

Last week, I went to a gathering of clergy mentors at Sewanee, and, as part of our work, we spent time with first-year seminarians meditating on one of the lessons for this Sunday. Our group chose the gospel lesson (Matthew 4:1-11), and I had the privilege of hearing observations I never would have or could have made on my own.

One participant (I can't remember who) noted that Matthew tells of Jesus being led by the Spirit into the wilderness where he was tempted for forty days. Mark, on the other hand, tells us that Jesus was driven by the Spirit. This colleague then remarked how our Lenten journey, like that of Matthew's Jesus, is one of choice not compulsion. It turns out that Luke also tells of Jesus being led by the Spirit, so, perhaps the distinction belongs more to Mark than the others, but it got me thinking about Jesus' time in the wilderness. He was led there. He went there freely--not because God made him, not because it was expected of him, not because he had to, but because he was led there.

What about us? Are we being led into a wilderness journey, or are we being driven there? And I don't just mean during Lent. Many of us are in the wilderness all the time. Some of us are there by choice, and some of us have been driven there. Whether we're driven there by the Spirit or by a demon is another question.

In Lent 1, it's easy to focus on the wilderness as a place of temptation, and, for sure, it is. But wilderness--as a colleague that day in Sewanee pointed out--is also an opportunity for renewal. Some of us like being in the woods by ourselves for a few days. Some of us benefit from struggle, from having to piece our lives together day after day. Some of us are in that same wilderness but not by choice. The struggle is real, but we'd just assume leave it behind. I wonder, though, whether we might claim a voluntary expedition into wilderness this Lent whether we're being driven or led there on a daily basis.

Choose wilderness. Choose struggle. Choose to wrestle with who you are and who God has made you to be. Choose to expose yourself to temptation, but don't forget to cling to God's word and the Holy Spirit as the armament you need to withstand it. Choose to think of this journey as a choice--perhaps even if you're not the one making it. There is opportunity for renewal regardless of the source of our struggle, but our perspective has the power to open up that opportunity or close it. Choose Lent and let the Spirit of God lead you daily.

Mortality Alert!

This post is also the cover article in this week's newsletter for St. John's Episcopal Church, Decatur. To read the rest of the newsletter and learn about St. John's, click here.

Some people think that mainline church attendance is declining because most denominations have failed to keep up with changes in culture. They suppose that old-fashioned expressions of Christianity like Sunday-morning worship, traditional hymns, and sermons preached from a pulpit are not getting through to those who prefer their spirituality in on-demand sound bites that can be easily digested by smart-phone-holding, pajama-wearing individuals who prefer to encounter the sacred from the comfort of their living room. And, if the medium is not the reason why churches have failed to attract a contemporary audience, then the message must be. Who wants to hear some hypocrite talk about sin and redemption when the secret to a life well lived can be found in the latest post on Facebook or Pinterest? To them I say, “Fiddlesticks!”

What time of year does church attendance swell to its peak? More than at any other time, we pack the pews during Lent—that season when we say and do some dreadfully old-fashioned things. This is the season when we allow religious traditions to interfere with our regularly scheduled programming by giving up chocolate or alcohol or swearing. Lent is when we start each Sunday by reciting the Ten Commandments as we kneel in penitence. Throughout these forty days, we hear over and over again that we are sinners in need of redemption. In perhaps the least attractive way imaginable, we smear ashes on our foreheads as a reminder that we are mortal—that the clock is ticking, that all of us will die, that eventually our bodies will become dust. And what is the response? More people come to church.

Why is that? Why is a world that seeks solace in every death-defying measure imaginable attracted to an institution that proclaims universal mortality in unabashed terms? Why does a culture saturated with age-defying makeup, gray-hiding tints, wrinkle-smoothing Botox, and hardly noticeable surgical scars rush to hear again the news that one day this life will end? I believe that people come back to church during Lent for the same reason that the church still has a pulse, and I believe that the thing that attracts them at this time of year is also the key to the church’s future: something worth believing in.

Yes, the institutional church is facing some considerable challenges, and I give thanks to God for them. For too long, the world received its religion by fiat or by presumption. Although a lively faith has always been manifest within the particularly fervent, even the spiritually anemic went to church because, until recently, everyone did. What else was there to do on Sunday mornings? How else was one to climb the social ladder? A society governed by the church gave us no other options. Nowadays, however, those assumptions have faded, and the church is forced to grapple with reality. Now preachers must compete with soccer tournaments and midmorning jogs through the park and champagne brunches, and I, for one, welcome the challenge. Why? Because I believe that the church, as the authentic and indispensable custodian of the good news of Jesus Christ, has something that no other institution possesses, and I believe that these challenges will help us refocus our message on what matters: hope in the face of reality.

We are at our best during Lent not because people enjoy feeling miserable but because, during this season of penitence, we speak the truth. In a world of Photoshopped images and manufactured realities that are, at their core, designed to escape the unavoidable, the church still speaks the truth. We are all going to die. We are not masters of our own fate. We cannot create perfection. But we know the only answer to the otherwise unanswerable dilemma of human existence. In the person of Jesus Christ, we have experienced life beyond death, hope beyond despair, and perfection beyond failure. The world offers transient comfort through the empty promise of escape, but the church promises unshakable hope even in the face of death. No one else takes reality that seriously. No one else offers a hope like that.

Of course, Lent is not the only time of year when the church has the opportunity to preach the truth, and I suspect that the churches that are growing despite the overall trend are those that offer a message worth believing in all the time. May that be true of our church. May that be true of the entire church. May our experience this Lent remind us that God alone has the power to save us and that Jesus Christ is our hope even in the face of death.

Testing Jesus; Testing Us

Audio of this sermon can be heard here.

In today's daily Eucharistic lectionary, we find ourselves in Mark 12, when the tension between Jesus and the religious authorities of his day is approaching its breaking point. They aren't just offended by what he says and does. They're actively looking for a way to get him in trouble with the Roman authorities. Mark lets us know in the editorial insertions to today's encounter that "they sent to him some Pharisees and Herodians to trap him in what he said." Even without these editor's notes, the way that they phrase their question was a dead giveaway: "Teacher, we know that you are sincere and show deference to no one..." Yeah, right. Preachers then and preachers now know that flattery like that usually leads to trouble.

Eventually, Jesus' testers got to their real question: "Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not? Should we pay them, or not?" Perhaps you remember that this was a thorny issue on many sides. First, no one likes paying taxes--then or now--but, more than that, paying taxes to the Roman Empire meant supporting the very occupying army that was interfering with the God-appointed destiny of the Jewish people. One could not pay taxes to the Emperor without undermining God's Law, God's Word, and God's will. Throw on top of that the fact that the Jewish Law forbids graven images--any likeness of anyone or anything cast out of metal--and we see just how controversial these taxes were. To hold a Roman coin was to place a violation of Commandment #3 into the palm of your hand. So to say that this question came to Jesus as a ticking time bomb isn't really an understatement.

I bet you remember what Jesus said to them even before you read it in Mark 12: "Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God’s." In that clever response, Jesus uses the very coin--the very expression of ungodliness, the very source of contention--as the tool to teach them what to do. We're told that they were "utterly amazed at him," genuinely stunned at his response. It is a pretty profound teaching. Jesus strips away all of the controversy and just lays it out there in a common-sense, hard-to-dispute way. As such, he welcomes the multi-faceted, multi-valiant nature of human life. We're all sorts of things all the time, and sometimes those things are in conflict.

But part of me wants to ask Jesus what he would have said if he had been approached by some genuine, earnest disciples instead of the "hypocrites" that Mark tells us came to him. Notice how Mark shapes the encounter before Jesus opens his mouth: "But, knowing their hypocrisy, he said to them, 'Bring me a denarius and let me see it.'" Partly, Mark wants to preserve for us an understanding that Jesus knew what he was getting into--that he recognized the trouble that was ahead of him. But I feel an instinct to take Mark's words at surface value. Jesus' words are in direct response to their hypocrisy. I don't mean to suggest that he did not mean them, but I wonder whether he would speak more freely, clearly about this dual-mindedness if he were not being pressed by some opponents.

What is Jesus' overall teaching on the intersection of our religious and political identities? Does he encourage us to encapsulate and separate each from the other? I don't think so. Over and over, Jesus leads his disciples to a deeper, fuller, more confrontational engagement of public life. In the last several Sundays, as we've heard from the Sermon on the Mount, we have been reminded that our religious identity places great demands on our common life. For example, we cannot divorce simple because divorce is legal--to do so denies the two-become-one-flesh-ment of marriage. So what, then? What does Jesus really mean when he tells us "give to the emperor the things that are the emperors and to God the things that are God's?"

Doesn't everything belong to God? Isn't God the one who sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous? Isn't God's vision for the world a reality when all peoples are drawn to God? Isn't peace and prosperity for all people God's business? Even the denarius, with its graven image, belongs to God. Paying taxes to Caesar, therefore, may be a requirement of the law, and Jesus may encourage his followers to be obedient to the civil authorities, but there is an element of subterfuge at work here. When Jesus says, "Give to Caesar...," he is toeing the line of legality but, at the same time, questioning the real authority of the one who falsely claims divine power.

We cannot live forever in two different, opposed worlds. We don't like it when our preacher gets political. We don't like it when we hear politics in the pulpit. We don't like it when we start praying for an end to gun violence in direct response to the police shootings. We don't like it when presidents or governors or attorneys general or legislators are called out for promoting policies that fly in the face of the gospel. Whether it's three-strikes-and-you're-out prison sentences or preemptive military action or open-carry laws or mass deportations of illegal immigrants or closing the border to refugees, the emperors of this land have a history of passing laws that are antithetical to the word and will and law of God. And what will we do about it? Send in our 1040 to the IRS, place our hand over our heart and say the Pledge of Allegiance, rise to sing the Star Spangled Banner with gusto? Yes, we will do all of those things, but we will not pretend that half of us belongs to our country while the other half belongs to God. A house divided against itself cannot stand. Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, but remember that it all belongs to God, even you--your voice, your money, your loyalty, your prayers, your heart, your time. If the whole of you is not active in God's work, you're betraying the one who calls you his child.

Looking for Sin?

Whenever I read the story of the Fall in Genesis 2 & 3, there's a line that catches my attention and changes the way I read the rest of the story: "Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made." On the one hand, that gives the story a bit of a fanciful feel. As far as I can tell, none of the other animals spoke to Adam or Eve, but a talking snake makes me feel like I'm in a cartoon. But, on the other hand, the editor's introduction of the serpent as the craftiest wild animal that God had made helps me read its interaction with Eve with heightened attention to his techniques.

With that peculiar introduction in mind, we read that the serpent said to the woman, "Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?" Oooh! Listen to that treachery. That serpent knew perfectly well what God had said to Adam and Eve, but it asks the question to expose a crack in the wall. Did God tell you not to eat from any tree in the garden? "No," Eve replied, "God said we could eat of any tree except the one in the middle of the garden, which, if we even touch it, will kill us." Notice how the serpent gets the woman to name the temptation. He doesn't even give voice to it. That would be too obvious--too easy to spot and dismiss. Instead, the serpent begins by helping the woman see the boundaries and begin to question them.

The crafty serpent continues, "You will not die! God knows that if you eat of it you will be like God, knowing good and evil." And the trap is set. The serpent bids the woman farewell and slithers off into the high grass to watch the woman walk right into it. On her own, unable to let the distinction fade away, unable to let go of the serpent's words and the thoughts it awoke in her, Eve goes to the tree and examines the fruit. "It looks good to eat. I see no reason not to eat it other than the rule God made. It's a silly rule anyway. God just wants to keep us in the dark. God wants to control us. God shouldn't have made that rule. God is selfish to do it. God just wants to keep all of the good things to himself. I won't listen to that. I won't stand for it. I will stand up for what's right--for the gift of eye-opening for everyone. We were made in God's image. It isn't fair for God to hide the fullness of God's image from us. Give me that fruit. Let's see what it tastes like."

Sin rarely comes looking for us, but it always seems close at hand when we start looking for it. The story of humanity's fall is a beautifully crafted account of human nature. The serpent's role is so familiar to all of us--not because it is a talking snake but because temptation is always so small, so slight, so subtle. Temptation preys upon the weakness inside of us. It convinces us that we are immune to its effects--that we are master of our nature, when, in fact, we are enslaved by it. As we enter the season of Lent and journey into the purifying, trying wilderness, may we hold fast to the one who perfects our nature. May Jesus Christ give us the strength to journey through this life so that we might come to our perfection in him.