By Jim Brenneman, president
Scripture: Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7 (NRSV)
The story of temptation in the Garden of Eden underscores the primal urge to cross preset boundaries and to break free of imposed limitations. The grass always seems greener on the other side of the primordial fence. Here, the temptation to eat the “forbidden fruit” was the temptation to claim to be more god-like than serpent-like, more divine than creature. In a fundamental sense, all temptations are embedded in this archetypal struggle, our desire to unshackle ourselves from the limits of our mere humanity. The ultimate limit for creatures like the serpent and us, of course, is death. It really matters not who is tempting whom in this regard. “You will not die!,” the one creature says to the other. Oh…but…we…will...all…die! A thousand little ones, and one big death.
As to the little deaths. Have you ever felt frustrated because you have been given two equally wonderful choices, losing one by choosing the other? I love Beth and Sharon. I love this career and that one. I want to live in Seattle and Pittsburgh. Psychologist Judith Viorst calls such choices, “necessary losses.” Learning to cope with loss, good losses － even those “good to the eye” able to “make us wise” as the serpent says － can be an exercise in learning to be human, bound by space and time. To choose one, most times, is to die to the other.
The lenten season offers time to acknowledge necessary losses, the little and not so little deaths, we all experience. The lenten season brings us back to Eden, where the primal temptation to defy our human limits remains strong. The lenten season retells the story of Jesus, “tempted in all ways like us,” dying on a cross. A necessary loss, indeed.
But that’s not the end of the story. God restored Adam and Eve, who lived fruitful lives beyond the garden. God restored Jesus, now Christ, through resurrection. And so we pray with them and with assurance, “Restore us, O God. Restore us!”
Scripture: Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7 (NRSV)
The 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.”