Homily for 1st Sunday of Lent
The Book of Genesis gives us a poetic account of the Creation of mankind and the world. It is a fascinating story. The author paints a picture of an idyllic world, a world capable of satisfying the need of primitive man. Our ancestors were blissfully happy there, so long as they didn't eat of the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil. "The day you eat your eyes will be open and you will be like gods" the serpent said to the woman. Of course they did eat of the tree of knowledge, and consequently were cast out from the Garden, an event know in Christian tradition as The Fall. Many have held that the subsequent history of mankind has been the story of our struggle to get back into the Garden of Eden. Eden is our Utopia. As a species, as a race, we are far happier looking back that looking forward. We are by nature nostalgic.
There are some evangelical Christians who will still hold to a literal interpretation of that Genesis story, complete with scheming woman and talking snake. But Eden was once the condition of each and every one of us. Our infancy was our Eden. In infancy we had everything we wanted to eat and drink. It was a complete world, a secure world. We were all naked and blissfully happy, as long as our basic needs were met and our security assured. But then one day we ate of the Tree of Knowledge. We came to consciousness. We grew in self-awareness. We became conscious of our nakedness and as we entered the world of adulthood. We began to develop our critical faculties, together with a demanding conscience. We had left Eden without our even knowing it! That is the burden. That is Original Sin. This was the Fall of Man. We fell out of Eden and into knowledge and self-awareness. This is the very faculty that distinguishes us from the animal kingdom. If you like, the animals are still in Eden, blissfully unaware of the madness of the world.
A temptation that constantly besets us is to return to Eden, to return to infancy. We can strive to do this through drugging or drinking ourselves into oblivion, through pampering ourselves with luxuries, anything at all that will obscure the fact that we have been kicked out of Eden. The journey of Jesus into the desert goes in the exact opposite direction. The desert is a place of temptation and terror. It is described variously as the abode of wild beasts, the destination of scapegoats, the devil's playground. It is place of great loneliness, a place of testing. There the individual is shorn of all social props, deprived of the gimmicks and gadgets that distract us daily. We are thrown back on our own resources, forced to confront our unvarnished selves.
But the desert cannot be avoided. It can be kept at bay for a time, perhaps. The dark desert is as much part of us as our right hand. The wastelands are within. It is within that the metaphorical beasts now roam, it is within that chasms of emptiness open up before us, threatening to devour us. Early this century T.S. Eliot expressed this truth in his "Choruses from 'The Rock'":
"In all my years, one thing does not change.
However you disguise it, this thing does not change:
The perpetual struggle of Good and Evil.
Forgetful, you neglect your shrines and churches;
The men you are in these times deride
What has been done for good, you find explanations
To satisfy the rational and enlightened mind.
Second, you neglect and belittle the desert.
The desert is not remote in the southern tropics.
The desert is not only around the corner.
The desert is squeezed in the tube-train next to you.
The desert is in the heart of your brother."
We neglect and belittle the desert at our peril. We can resort to short-term expedients to still the beasts that roam within. We can anaesthetise them, dope them or distract ourselves from them. Matthew tells us that Jesus was offered such short-term solutions. His hunger could be circumvented by the magician's charm. Stones would be turned into loaves of bread before his eyes. Jesus immediately recognised this as a hollow promise. The human being is not one-dimentional. The hunger of the human being runs much deeper. There is more to man than meets the eye. The promise was in fact a distraction, not a solution.
Having rejected the magician's empty charms, the carrot of power was dangled before him. And, in what surely must be the closest biblical parallel to the satellite dish, Matthew tells us that the Devil, "in a moment of time, showed him all the kingdoms of the world." He promised: "I will give you all this power and the glory of these kingdoms." The trappings of power must have their attraction. But, despite the temptation, Jesus stuck to his own vision of power as service: Man does not live on bread alone. "The Son of man came to serve and not be served."