Neill Morgan

Sermon Delivered February 10, 2008

Genesis 2:15 – 17, 3:1-7

¹⁵The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.

¹⁶And the Lord God commanded the man, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; ¹⁷but 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.”

3Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?” ²The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; ³but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’“ ⁴But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die; ⁵for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

⁶So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. ⁷Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.

Matthew 4:1-11

4Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. ²He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. ³The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” ⁴But he answered, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” ⁵Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, ⁶saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’” ⁷Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” ⁸Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; ⁹and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” ¹⁰Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’” ¹¹Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.

Open My Eyes

Southern writer Lewis Grizzard said it best:  The story of Adam and Eve is the story of humans discovering the difference between naked and nekkid.  Naked means you don’t have any clothes on.  Nekkid means you don’t have any clothes on and you’re up to somethin’.

The eye-opening experience of Adam and Eve appears in almost every illustrated children’s Bible; it claims its rightful place as one of the first stories we tell the children in our Preschool Chapel program.  It weaves its way into popular culture in novels, movies, and stand-up comedy routines.

It’s echoes return throughout the New Testament as Jesus faces the Adversary in his own temptation, and as the Apostle Paul explores the nature of sin, grace, and redemption.

We refer to this story as “the Fall.”  That phrase, however, never appears in the story itself.  The idea that this story relates the Fall, that is, the transformation of human beings from immortal to mortal, or from sinless to sinful, comes from later reflection on the story.  The original story of Adam and Eve and God and the serpent reveals layers of meaning far richer than the simple children’s story we skim over each time we decide again to read the Bible from beginning to end.

The Fall, we find, is not so much a falling down as it is a falling out.

The contradictions alert us to the fact that something deeper is going on here.

God tells the man, “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.”

The Serpent says, “You will not die; ⁵for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

They eat of the tree.  It turns out they don’t die on that day, as God had warned the man.  Instead, their eyes are opened to good and evil, just as the Serpent had promised.

As the kids would say, “What’s up with that?”

What’s up with this is that God has spoken a Truth with a capital “T” that is deeper than the literalism of the Serpent.  Adam and Eve continued to live past the day on which they ate of the fruit; but, the life they had known before was over.  They died to the past.  They awoke to the future.  Their eyes were opened and they recognized their sin; therefore, they became responsible.  The past was finished and gone.  A new life had begun.

As one scholar writes, it is not that they were transformed from sinless to sinful.  The writer says God looked at his creation of human beings and said they were good.  He didn’t say they were perfect.

The transformation, instead, is from ignorance to knowledge, from trust to mistrust.

Freitheim:

The serpent responds precisely at the point of this anxiety: you will not die, or (perhaps more accurately) you will not certainly die, for God knows more about this than you’ve been told. This is more subtle than a simple contradiction of what God has said. In 3:22, God recognizes that, even though they have eaten, they would not die, if they eat of the tree of life.

The serpent speaks a word about death that has the potential of being true; its saying they will become like God in knowing good and evil proves to be true.  The serpent’s key phrase is “God knows.” God has not told them the full truth about the matter; God has kept something back, at least in the initial conversation. In this, the serpent is not

a deceiver but a truth-teller. The serpent may not tell the whole truth, but neither so far has God, and it is not clear that the serpent knows the whole truth. The heart of what has become a genuine temptation has to do, not with deception, but with what the humans will do with the truth, particularly the truth about God. At its deepest level the issue of knowledge becomes an issue of trust. Can they trust God while pursuing the truth about God? Can they trust that God has their best interests at heart even though the knowledge they presently have comes up short of the full truth?

The humans are left to draw their own conclusions. To whom or what will they turn?

Rather than turn to God to take up the issue with God, the humans silently—and the lack of communication speaks volumes—turn to the possibilities the tree presents. The text does not suggest it is wrong to pursue knowledge about God; the issue is the way in which it is gained: the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Eating of the tree does lead to new knowledge, but because humans do not turn to God, but relate only to that which has been created, they are left to cope with the new knowledge from within a perspective no longer provided by a trusting relationship with God.  The primal sin is thus not disobedience, pride, rebellion, or violence, or even the desire to become like God; each is symptomatic of a more fundamental problem of trust. There is no storming of the heavens language here, no desire to take over the divine realm or run the universe, no declaration of independence and no celebration of a new-found autonomy. And that,

of course, may be precisely the point. Temptation and sin are often quiet, seemingly innocent realities, associated with that which seems far removed from obvious sins. Mistrust is never initially visible.[1]

Contrast this story with the story of Jesus facing the Adversary in the wilderness.  All the temptations that Satan puts before Jesus may be factual – but, nevertheless, they are deceptive.  The Deceiver uses facts in his attempt to throw Jesus off his calling.  The fact is, if Jesus were to turn stones into bread, he could satisfy his hunger and feed the hungry multitudes.  The fact is, if he threw himself from the pinnacle of the temple, he would provide the kind of spectacular miracle that would get the people’s attention.  The fact is, if he bowed down to the Deceiver, the Adversary, Satan, he could have spent his earthly life ruling over the Kingdoms of the world.

The difference between the first human couple and Jesus is that Jesus is clear about his calling.  He is not distracted by the temptations to live for self-glorification.  He trusts in the Father.  Therefore, he can self-define rather than allow someone else to define his mission and ministry.

The task of self-defining continues to challenge both the Church and each of us as individuals.

The task of self-defining is, first of all, the task of opening our eyes to Jesus Christ.  We can only become more Christ-like when we know who Christ is, what he taught, and what he did.  That’s why we Protestant Christians have always put so much emphasis on Bible study.  Self-defining, as Christians, requires that we clarify our sense of who Christ is.

Second, self-defining requires that we open our eyes to the truth about who we are.  Unless we face the truth about our own sin, our own falling short, our inability to do what is good on our own, we will deceive ourselves.

Finally, the task of self-defining requires opening our eyes to the gifts God has give us and the ministry God has set before us.

Between my second and third year of seminary, I served as an intern at University Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas.  While I was there, I was privileged to witness the kind of self-defining of a congregation that I’m talking about.

Campus ministry, in the sixties and seventies, had largely migrated away from congregations and into campus organizations from Campus Crusade, Intervarsity, and our own denomination’s participation in United Campus Ministry.  As that process progressed, University Church gradually let go of its old model of campus ministry and turned it over to others.  While the United Campus ministry had its strengths, it never really took off on the University of Texas campus.  And, the less involved in University student, faculty, and staff ministry University Church became, the more it drifted.  All was pleasant, but there wasn’t much to grab hold of.  It wasn’t clear what we were going to do together.

And then, the pastor, Tom Farmer, preached a sermon in which he spoke the truth.  He said, “When we gave up University ministry, we cut the heart out of our mission.  If we’re not called to present the Gospel of Jesus Christ to and with the students, faculty, and staff of U.T., then what are we doing here one block from the University of Texas?”

It was a turning point.  It’s not that the veil suddenly lifted and everything suddenly became clear for everyone and all the members got on board.  There was, in fact, some resistance to the idea of fully engaging with the students of the early eighties.  They were different, apathetic, self-absorbed, and spiritually adrift.

Student ministry was expensive and the return on investment was not so evident.

But, over the next few years, that congregation claimed its mission, repented of its two decades of distraction, and though it has been a struggle, it has been moving forward in its discipleship of Jesus Christ ever since.

This season of Lent, of self-reflection, repentance, and commitment offers a time for each of us, in prayer and study, in fellowship and service, to clarify who we are and what we are called to do.

This season of Lent also offers us a congregation the same opportunity.  If someone asks you, “What’s Covenant Presbyterian Church about?  What do you believe and what do you do based on that belief?” I wonder how clearly we could answer.

That’s a theme, clarity of Christian faith, belief, values, and mission, that you will hear from this pulpit throughout this year in our journey together.  As Jesus in the wilderness pushed away all the temptations of the world that would distract him from who he is and what he is called to do, so let us reach for such clarity.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.