First Sunday of Lent - Cycle A 2019-2020

Genesis 2:7-9; 3:1-7 | Romans 5:12-19 or 5:12, 17-19 | Matthew 4:1-11

Grant, Almighty God, that our yearly observance of this holy season we may grow in understanding of the riches hidden in Christ and pursue their effects, and we ask this  through Christ our Lord, amen.

We begin perhaps the most important season of reflection in the Catholic Church or all churches, and one of the things about this season is it is loaded with information.  The readings are considered to be the heart of the Christian message, because these were the readings that were read and studied before one would enter the church on Easter.  So cycle A, which we’re in now, has the most ancient readings.  They’ve been read for almost 2,000 years in liturgies preparing for an understanding coming to our heart of who God is and who we are.  One of the things that I’ve learned about scripture that makes it so fascinating to me, a lot of times people think, “Well, everything in scripture is true.  That means it must have actually, historically happened.”  Well, that is not the truth of the gospel.  Some of the stories did happen.  Some did not, but the point is, whether they were historical or not is not the essence of the message.  The message is a truth that is hidden in the meaning of all the parts of that story.  So it really doesn’t make any difference whether these things happened exactly the way they’re told, but I just think it’s a non-issue for me.  I just consider it all happened.  It’s all there for me.  It’s all there for me to understand what it means.  Historical issue is secondary, particularly in the Old Testament, but in this most important first set of readings, we hear something that is the essential thing, I think, that one needs to have in their hearts as far as an understanding of what this relationship with God is like and who we are with him.    

The interesting thing about this story of Adam and Eve is how it’s been interpreted over the years, and it has been for me, at least as I was growing up in the ‘40s and ‘50s — I was told that Adam really kind of messed up God’s plan.  We were supposed to live forever and be pure and innocent the rest of our lives, and it was going to be beautiful.  And then this human comes along, and then God’s plan is shot down because of his free will.  Well, that doesn’t make sense to me, that God would plan this whole thing and then have something happen that was unexpected.  The phrase you hear often in this first reading, rather in the gospel, is “as it is written.”  I love that.  Accept life as it is written — truth, truth.  So what I want you to understand in this first reading is really important, because it’s an understanding of the nature of humanity and the nature of divinity.  And that’s the two things I want you to think about when you’re listening to this story.  What is humanity, and what is divinity?  Now, the interesting thing that we learn from this story about divinity is it’s a loving force that creates beauty, richness, fullness and longs for creatures to participate in those things and to delight in them.  He wants people to be filled with joy and pleasure and enthusiasm for the life that God has created for them.  And so we have in this story, Adam and Eve in this beautiful place, and then something enters into the story.  It’s evil, and evil is part of the plan of God.  If we think evil should go away and not be here anymore, we’ll misunderstand the purpose of evil.  It has a purpose.  It is here for us.  Its power to destroy has been destroyed by God, but initially that power overcame the power of God’s intervention in our lives by joining us.  So we were more vulnerable before Christ by living under the old Adam.  The new Adam hadn’t yet appeared, so we were weaker in a sense, more separate from God. 

If you look at this story, you’re going to hear clearly that, as they were given all these beautiful things — and they were naïve, and they were young, and they were unconscious in so many ways, not anything like we are today — a lie comes along.  And the lie seems so attractive.  The serpent is there.  God has already said, “Here.  Everything here is for you, except be careful of those trees in the middle of the garden, especially the one of good and evil.”  And what is the tree of good and evil?  It is feeding the ego, that part of humanity that’s so powerful and so important, and awakening it to its desire to achieve things, to be important, to be successful, all those things, a lower level of consciousness.  It’s all about me.  Adam and Eve are tested by saying, “This tree that you’re not supposed to eat of, this tree of knowing everything is really a good thing, and God really didn’t mean that it would harm you.  He meant that you would become like him.”  Well, any child, when you tell them they can be wonderful and good like their beautiful mom or beautiful dad or whatever, of course you want to do that.  Be like God?  I’m sure he’d like that.  They just didn’t have any real wisdom or experience.  So they bought the lie, and when they bought the lie, the interesting thing was something shifted immediately within them.  It’s like the first time we see in human nature something that’s really fascinating: shame.  When they did it, they didn’t sit back and say, “Uh-oh, we’ve got to keep this from God, because if he finds out, he’s going to be upset.  So we’ll lie to him too and say we really didn’t need it.”  They couldn’t go against their nature.  What happened was they felt bad. They knew somehow intuitively inside of them there was something wrong with what they did.  There was a mistake made.  That’s the most beautiful thing about human beings, this kind of inner voice, this conscience that we have that somehow knows, “No, that was wrong.”  And somehow this thing we chose, which was to become independent and autonomous of God and each other, it’s got a negative side to it, and I feel like I’m not enough.  Well, think of it.  You want to be like God, and you can’t.  And so something deep inside of you says, “No, I can’t be like God.  I can’t be perfect.”  So they cover themselves.  They sewed fig leaves together, and the words that God spoke to human beings, which I love, is not, “What the heck did you do,” but “Where are you?  Why are you separating from me?”  So imagine the sin of Adam and Eve is a sin of choosing to be separated from God.  

Now there’s a new Adam that comes along, and we’re told that this new Adam will overcome anything negative that was in that sin of Adam and Eve and that it would be completely obliterated in terms of their needing to be ashamed of anything.  It’ll be transformed, written off, forgiven, no longer applicable to anything, and so we have, in this story of the new Adam, what the new Adam is capable of that the old Adam couldn’t do.  And that was this: the new Adam was filled with divinity, this marvelous, incredible thing that God from the beginning desired to share with us, his very person inside of us.  That’s the thing that these stories are about, about the entrance into human beings of divinity, which is the only thing that is necessary for them to be everything that God calls them to be, and they’ll be like God but not perfect like God is perfect but perfectly themselves.  They’re perfectly human, perfectly yourself, and think of it.  That’s the intention of redemption, to open your eyes to see that there is something wonderful given to you that you can share in, and sharing in it changes everything.  You’ll be like God but not autonomously like God but like God, because God lives inside of you.  It’s beautiful.  

So let’s look at the temptations of Jesus, because, let’s say, the temptation of the first Adam and Eve was simply to want to be perfect, to want to be like God, to want to be effective, super, super good, whatever, if they knew what that meant.  Here comes Jesus, and now Satan is going to do the same trick he did on Adam and Eve, only he’s going to do it to somebody who is so much more conscious, so much more aware of who he is, what he’s here for, who God is inside of him.  The devil gets absolutely nowhere with Jesus, but you want to look at those three temptations, because they are the most important thing to understand, in terms of what it is we are supposed to be doing now to oppose that egocentric, separate from God creature that lives deep down inside of us called just pure humanity.  It’s not evil.  It’s just self-centered.  It can’t help it.  That’s what it’s here for, to survive, to reproduce.  So what are the three temptations?  Well, I want you to see if you can do this with me.  Think of three virtues that these temptations are going to reveal that are a gift to you and to me from divinity: truth, trust and wisdom.  Obviously, Adam and Eve chose a lie over truth, and somehow they chose to be as strong and as autonomous as they could be to handle everything, to know what to do.  And they also were stupid.  Maybe I shouldn’t say that, but they didn’t have much wisdom.  In fact, that’s the thing I love about Eve in the story.  She saw this tree of knowing.  She was right on.  Knowing has something to do with wisdom.  There’s a wisdom we have to know, and she was right on.  Adam was not as sensitive to wisdom as the masculine is not as sensitive to wisdom as the feminine, and it’s good to think about Adam and Eve not so much as two creatures.  They were two creatures, but also it’s the masculine/feminine part of humanity.

So let’s go back to the temptations of Jesus.  First one, turn the stone into bread.  Be comfortable.  Use your talent, use your gifts to always make life easier, not a heavy burden but something that feels good, smells good.  Nothing like fresh bread and butter when you’re hungry.  Be comfortable.  That’s your — seek comfort, and Jesus said, “No, no.  You’re not here to seek comfort.  You’re here to seek truth, every word that comes from my father.”  The second temptation: jump off the top of the parapet and see if God will catch you.  That’s just the thing about doubt.  We have to trust.  We have to not want life to be simply easy, and we have to trust that there’s a God with a plan and everything, and he is going to take care of us.  That’s essential, and the last one is when the devil said, “Look.  Look at the wisdom you have and the magnetism.  You could be so successful in the world, and the world’s all about taking care of yourself and getting as much out of people as you can.  That’s the wisdom of the world.”  And he said, “No, I don’t have anything to do with that.  No, that’s your world.  That’s the world of lies and half-truths and not the world of wisdom.”  Wisdom is that knowing what human nature is designed for, how God intends to partner with us so that we can make everything work together for the good, for ourselves, for everyone else.  It’s such a beautiful plan, and anything we might have as a residue of thinking, “No, there’s something wrong with us. There’s something evil.  We have this original sin.”  Well, be careful, because that original sin has been obliterated by redemption.  You’ve got someone there who you can absolutely trust, and you’ve got someone there who is going to put you in touch with the truth.  You’ve got someone there every single moment.  It’s going to keep you from making stupid, shortsighted decisions to do something that can never produce what it promises.  That’s wisdom.  What a gift, and I think we spend too much time worrying about this original fault.  And we still think we’re stuck in it, and we’re not.  That’s the beauty of redemption.  That’s the beauty of the Easter story.  All of that in the words of scripture today has been destroyed and written off.  Now we are creatures filled with divinity and the potential for incredible goodness, not because we’ve achieved it ourselves, but because it’s been given to us, dwells in us, flows through us and enlightens the world. 

Father, we are burdened with shame.  So often we’ve been told by those who long for us to be better that who we are is not enough, that we’re so far from missing the mark, but you’re telling us in this moment of seeking truth, of seeking you, of being desirous of the life you’ve poured into us and wanting to receive it, that that’s what takes away shame.  That’s what takes away anything that robs us of a close union with you.  So bless us.  Helps us always know you are with us.  No matter who we are, where we are and how far we drift, your love never, ever is changed by our actions, because it has been given in a new form that is so life-giving, redemption.  And we ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.