Genesis 2: 15-17, 3: 1-7 (CEB)
Matthew 4: 1-11 (CEB)
I was pleasantly surprised when my 10 year old granddaughter told me her 4th grade class had begun studying Greek mythology. At last I thought, something I know about, because she can run circles around me playing teacher and the only subject she wants to talk about is math, a school subject I loathed. And Elizabeth told me she and all her classmates had to choose their favorite character from Greek mythology. Much to my surprise, Elizabeth chose Pandora! I asked her do you know what Pandora did?” And she told me, “Sure, Pandora let all those evil things out of that box and everything went bad since.”
Well, today we are reading some mythology from the ancient Hebrews in the opening chapters in Genesis. Now the word “mythology” raises a red flag saying, well, if it’s not literally true, it has no value. I strongly disagree with that line of thought. All ancient cultures had a story about a once perfect earth that suddenly went bad. And since most ancient societies were very patriarchal, guess what gender unfairly gets the blame?
Think about the man and woman in this reading from Genesis. The Common English Bible uses the correct terms instead of the usual “Adam” and “Eve” who never existed. The term “adam” really means “human being” and the term “eve” really means “source of life.” Sometime in the ancient past, the human species called homo-sapiens (that is us) around 100,000 years ago, devoured a symbolic fruit that was really an illusion. That we as humans can create a delusional worldview in which we believe the difference between good and evil. However wonderful we humans are, we are not the Ultimate Reality we call “God” in the sense of knowing good and evil with absolute confidence.
We do know good and evil in relation to this or that contemporary value. But we do not know good and evil in relation to God. Rather humans commonly insist on living their lives on the basis of some humanly created values which we judge during the events of our lives. The Genesis story assumes the reverse, that God judges our values for their realism. Taking on the meaning of this story means being open to greater realism, rather than being stuck in the ruts of our own values with which we close off reality.
Now Adolph Hitler would be the perfect example of evil. His government’s extermination of nearly six million Jews was perhaps the worst crime in recorded human history. But in Hitler’s human values the Jewish people were a threat. And the seed of anti-Semitism was already there in Germany. Even Martin Luther, the great Protestant Reformation leader, violently denounced the Jewish people when they refused to join his reformation. And the German architects of the Holocaust used the American treatment of Native Americans in reservations as their idea for concentration camps, but with more insidious results. After all, in the 19th century, most white Americans viewed the Indigenous population as savages. These were white educated people in both the United States, Germany and other places who thought their “knowledge” was directing them to do the correct things.
And there are times in our lives when perhaps it’s happened to us. There is a new awareness we believe is a good thing. And often this is followed by some kind of stumbling, a failure and turning away from God, other people or even ourselves.
With this new consciousness we might see goodness but we also see pain and destruction. We see the places of wholeness and integrity and the places of brokenness and disintegration. We see the truth and the reality of our lives. From that, we know we are a mixture of good and bad. We see our contradictions. That is why life gets complicated.
If we look beyond the failure of homo-sapien species to say “no” many tens of thousands of years ago, to this new consciousness, we have to realize that it did bring self-knowledge. By the same example, if we look beyond Jesus’ saying “no” to the “Devil” or “Satan” figure, and those terms really mean “adversary” in the Aramaic language of Jesus, we can see his 40 day wilderness experience as having brought himself into self-knowledge.
Immediately before Jesus went into the desert, he was baptized. After Jesus' baptism, a voice proclaims, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17). Then Jesus is led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be challenged. But Jesus has the reassurance that not only is he God’s Son, but God loves him very much. So maybe Jesus’ time in the wilderness wasn’t so much about proving or giving something to God as much as it was about Jesus learning and experiencing something about himself, that all God told him was true. The self-knowledge Jesus gained in his 40 day sojourn in the wilderness formed and shaped his public ministry of healing, preaching and teaching.
During this season of Lent, what if we let go of questions about good or bad, right or wrong and instead sought self-knowledge, but not in a narrow, egotistical selfish way. But instead the self-knowledge that is deep and profound, that reveals our truest and most authentic self, that makes us face and examine ourselves and not to make judgments but to seek healing and a new life. The type of self-knowledge that binds us closer to the Ultimate Reality we call “God.”
If we choose the path of self-knowledge, then we need to observe ourselves, be watchful and ask difficult questions. What are the painful and wounded places that cause us to act out in ways that are not good for us or others? What are the patterns and habits that direct and control our lives? Do I truly believe I am a son or daughter of God?
That just might be the start of a very good Holy Lent. It would be a Lent in which our eyes were opened to the truth about ourselves, who we are and what we do. It would be a Lent in which we would rediscover we are truly God’s beloved children in which God is well pleased. It would be a Lent in which we let go of judgements and keeping score. Maybe it could be a Lent that would lead us to a new life with confidence that we are God’s Glory. With that confidence, wonderful things can happen.
Perhaps many of us have never felt as being God’s glory. “The glory of God,” said Irenaeus, a Christian who lived in the 2nd century, “is a human being fully alive.” That is why Jesus is called in the gospels, the true Human One or Son of Man.
Let us be God’s Glory. Today, Tomorrow, now and forever.
AMEN
