On this, the first Sunday of Lent, we have readings about temptation. Temptation usually concerns our desire for power and freedom and almost always is motivated by anxiety and fear. We want to ensure that we are in control of everything that happens to us.

In the Gospel, we read about Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness following his baptism. In Genesis we heard the story about the snake tempting Eve, who tempted Adam who ate the apple. The difference between the two readings is that Adam and Eve give into temptation; Jesus does not.

The Genesis stories were written to exemplify the deep truths about how creative and purpose-filled God’s acts were, and are. That God’s willingness to consult and share power, and our human responses, sometimes lead to messy and less-than –desirable outcomes and to recognize that everything does not always turn out as God planned. Yet, through it all, God remains a faithful, covenant-making, covenant keeping God.

Some of you may have read ‘Miss Garnet’s Angel’ , a story within a story featuring the book of Tobit. Salley Vickers’s third novel “Mr Golightly’s Holiday’ once again a story within a story but this time the book of Job. The Church Times described it last week as ‘A delightful Divine Comedy’

The book is about God assuming the character of Mr Golightly, described in the book as’ a cheerful buffer in a faded tweed jacket, old and wise enough to know his limitations, who has just learned to use email.’ He is on holiday, an extended holiday in a rather ramshackle holiday house with a temperamental heater and not many mod cons. A ‘with-it’ young biker comes along to set up the email system so that Mr Golightly can keep in touch with his organization back at home. This young man ( An Archangel in leather) appears at crucial moments to help him.

The story unfolds as Mr Golightly, in amongst his fraught experiences of trying to look after himself, especially remembering to buy milk as he can’t abide coffee without it, and receiving emails that trouble him, interacts with several characters in the village and influences the out come of their lives. He was driven to observe that the more he saw of the world, the more it seemed to him that everything had got into a tremendous muddle” However, the muddle can be sorted out.

No-one is expected to think that the actual events in this story are true, but as the article points out, there are some interesting speculative insights and truths about how this world and the world beyond may intermingle, and the way some people find redemption and others only damnation.

So let us remember that both the Creation stories in Genesis were written to exemplify great truths rather than as an accurate historical account of how the world began and what the first people did. These stories were written for a particular ‘listening community’

One of our foremost O.T. scholars, Walter Brueggeman, argues that there is no text in the Bible that has been more mis-used, mis-interpreted and misunderstood than this text. As a result we cannot truly hear what the story is really about.

He identifies 5 large misunderstandings that need to be cleared away if we are to interpret the story in a valid way.

1) That this is quoted as a decisive text, a text of vital importance. Whereas its actual role in the Bible is as an exceedingly marginal text.
2) The text is treated as an account of ‘the fall’ and it’s nothing of the kind. In general the O.T. does not assume such a ‘fall’ rather that humankind can indeed obey the purposes of God. It is a misunderstanding of what St Paul says, developed by St Augustine that is mostly responsible for this.
3) The text is frequented treated as an explanation of how evil came into the world. In fact the narrative gives no explanation for evil or says that the serpent is the devil, the embodiment of evil.
4) The story is taken as an account of death in the world, whereas it is not a reflection on death but on a troubled, anxiety-ridden life. This is considered to be a far greater problem than death, both in the world of the original story and in our context today.
5) To many, apples and snakes focus the story around questions of sex and the evil wrought by sex. ‘To find any focus on sex or any linkage between sex and sin is not faithful to the narrative’ says Brueggeman. The text is about the dynamics of power, control and autonomy. not the evils of sex.

What has happened, says Brueggemann, is that issues of evil/fall/sin/death/sex have been objectified and seen as things in themselves and taken on a life of their own, taken out of context, blown up out of all proportion and been effectively separated from the faith issues of the good news, the Gospel.

Our concerns, like the characters in the story, are not finally about the danger of sex, the origin of evil, the appearance of death, or the power of the fall but the summons of God as he calls us into being, to live in his world and share in his life and about ‘The purposes of God & our trust or lack of it, in God’.

Most of the O.T. and the whole of the N.T. concern God’s powerful resolve to overcome the alienation of human beings to the God who made them and loves unconditionally and without reservation.

So let us see whether we can truly hear what the Adam and Eve story can tell us about our condition today in the year 2005.

The story sets the scene by taking us right back to the foundation of time when there was a rich and authentic life with God. It then introduces the tension between the life intended by God and the life we choose to live and God’s actions to deal with the consequences.

The human being was created and placed in the garden. This was an intended context.. The human cares for the garden, the garden sustains the human being.
The human is given a permit in the garden. All is available for ease, joy and well-being, the’ Tree of Life’ included. ‘Freely eat’ the humans are told.

However, there is a ‘BUT’; a prohibition; The ‘OTHER TREE’ is off limits. It’s dangerous because it can disrupt the way of life available in the garden.

The plot then thickens. The pace of the story then quickens. The ‘serpent’ is introduced. As one scholar puts it: We see the contrast between God, who acts with decisive verbs; God formed; God made; God planted; to transform chaos into order. By contrast, the serpent can only engage in crafty talk. The serpent is marked by craftiness. The word ‘crafty’ is important for the character of the serpent.

The serpent first questions what God said, then it contradicts what God said. Its purpose is to take the humans out of the practice of trust in God and to counter God’s purpose and promise. The serpent makes the humans doubt God and suggests alternative options. It’s a tissue of lies, of course. What’s on offer is an illusion.

However, the humans are tempted and decide to accept the serpent’s options. As a result, their innocence is shattered, never to be regained. Instead, anxiety and fearfulness have become part of their life.

And how does God react? Does he exterminate them? No, but the consequences of their actions have to be faced. Life will become more difficult. They have to leave the garden and make their own way in life but not alone; they can in the knowledge they have, decide to turn to God willingly and of their own free will.

Much of what follows in the Bible concerns the anguish of God for his people and the ways he tries to reach them, to get them to turn to him willingly and in love. The culmination of God’s action comes in the sending of his Son, Jesus; God’s Christ, to communicate directly and without intermediary, to all those God loves.

As he explores his God-given vocation, after his baptism, Jesus was not exempt from temptation as we heard in our Gospel passage, but sees the illusions for what they are. He knows God is not as portrayed through the three temptations. Jesus is content to be what he is, God’s beloved and obedient Son.

Lent is the time to sort out the voice of life from the counter voices of death. The serpent had no real gift to give and no real acts to perform. The story invites the listener, then and now, to reflect on God’s gifts, and contrast living, as God would have us live, with the crippling power of anxiety and fear in our lives when we do not.

We have entered a new century, one in which what we decide and how we choose to behave will affect whether there is a next generation and if there is, how it may help to shape God’s decisions. This is a very sobering and frightening thought, but also one of great promise, challenge and above all hope. Because, you see, the promise may take more than one form of fulfilment and during this Lenten period, it is that we seek.