The Rev. Rob Fisher

St. Dunstan’s Church, Carmel Valley

Lent I

Texts: Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7; Psalm 32; Romans 5:12-19;
Matthew 4:1-11

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit – Amen.

Food and spirituality have an interesting relationship.

In this time of the year, many people are thinking about food in terms of a Lenten discipline—for example, choosing to not eat sweets.

In doing so, there is intentionality given to something that could not be more primal and fundamental: what we choose to put into our bodies.

And even if we are not taking on a dietary discipline this year, we all make important choices about food every day.  We have all kinds of foods—good and bad—at our fingertips.  We have choices to make.

So perhaps it is not too far off for us to imagine the experience of Adam and Eve in the garden.  God tells them one thing and one thing only that they must not do—this one thing that is perhaps the most famous dietary restriction in the history of the world: Do not eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Did you notice, by the way, nowhere does it say “apple”?  Apparently it was Milton who introduced that idea.

What’s the big deal about eating some fruit from a certain tree?  Why did God choose this strange commandment, and why did it matter that it was broken?

One possible attempt at an answer comes from a Newsweek article that has been getting a lot of traction lately.  There is a picture on the cover of the magazine of a person with his head in a block of ice!  The point of the article is that brain researchers have discovered that we are suffering today from information overload.  Too much knowledge has actually brought on paralysis.  It has made decision-making more difficult.

People who are constantly plugged in to emails, text messages, and Internet surfing are drinking from a fire hose of information, and it is causing the brain to function in an altered way.

Happily, we can correct this problem by giving ourselves a Sabbath time to process, a time of rest for minds, where we let our subconscious help us come to good decisions—rather than our overwrought conscious.

In other words, according to the brain experts, there is wisdom in the phrase, “You should sleep on it.

Perhaps by this commandment, God was saying that all the knowledge of the universe is not really for us.  It is too much for us, because we are not on the level of God.

Another angle is that it was simply God’s prerogative to set whatever limits he wanted—like a parent—and this was the limit he chose.  And his children broke his trust.

By eating the fruit, they showed themselves to be untrustworthy.  God had only one rule, and it took them almost no time to argue their way around it, with the help of a serpent of course.

It wasn’t about the fruit.  It was about trust and relationship—which were broken by their behavior.

A third view, and probably the most important one, is that by eating of the fruit of this tree, they were trying to gain the knowledge that is God’s, and therefore they were placing themselves in the role of God—making gods of themselves—and destroying the order that should be, in which God alone is God and we are God’s children.

This is only the first instance in history of mankind trying to be God.

All three of these views point to the virtue of humility.

Being humble is not the same as having low self-esteem.  Being humble you may certainly have esteem for yourself—and we all should—but if you are humble your esteem is not limited to yourself.

When we are humble, we are generous.

We are big enough to submit ourselves before true greatness.

If we fail to be humble, we will be truly limited—never knowing anything greater than ourselves.

***

All of this is circling around the question of What is the meaning of sin?

Sin is not a popular theme for preaching anymore.

Originally, the term is an archery term.  To sin, in archery, is to miss the bull’s eye.  Sin itself is that space between where the arrow landed and where it was meant to be.

Sin in archery is marked by space—by a distance between.

Likewise, sin is the distance between where we are, and where we would be if our lives were in harmonious sync with God.

Sin is what comes between us and God.  It is what blocks us from God.

Whether it be a veil or a fig leaf, it estranges us.

As the earth eclipses the light of the sun and prevents the moon from shining, sin blocks the glory of God from our lives and keeps us in darkness.

***

It is easy to simply fall back on the flatfooted message we’ve all heard from religion: Don’t be bad!  Don’t sin!

But this is not a zero sum game.  Nor is it a checklist, though some religions make it look like it is.

In actuality, it is not a give-and-take exchange, where something bad for you is good for God.  Rather, we all win or lose together.

Because really, it’s about relationship.

If you let estrangement come between you and God—both you and God suffer.  If you let love fill the space, it is good for everyone involved.

That is why goodness is not the answer to sin.  Love is.

***

Sam Portaro—the Episcopal chaplain to the University of Chicago, and a beautiful writer—describes what it is like to be in relationship with God.  In his words, it is a real relationship with ebbs and flows, just like any other.

Portaro says, “Sometimes I’m the romantic and God’s the pragmatist, rubbing my nose in the nasty stuff of life I’d rather deny, or at least decorate.  And sometimes our roles are reversed; I’m mired up to my neck in the stuff of this world and God’s painting frescoes on the ceiling I just know is about to cave in on me.”

***

The cure for sin comes only through healing our relationship with God, and this is precisely where the good news is.

The heart of all that we understand as Christians is that Christ came not to punish us for our sin, but to heal it with mercy.

He came to stand directly in the middle of that distance—that space between us and God—and to fill it with himself.  He overcame sin to make our relationship right again.

God has taken the biggest step towards us.

And now it is our turn now to turn to return the favor.

—Amen.