Written by:  Gordon McPhee

                                           Matthew 4: 1-11

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7 [MSG]

2 15 God took the Man and set him down in the Garden of Eden to work the ground and keep it in order.

16-17 God commanded the Man, “You can eat from any tree in the garden, except from the Tree-of-Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil. Don’t eat from it. The moment you eat from that tree, you’re dead.”

3 1 The serpent was clever, more clever than any wild animal God had made. He spoke to the Woman: “Do I understand that God told you not to eat from any tree in the garden?”

2-3 The Woman said to the serpent, “Not at all. We can eat from the trees in the garden. It’s only about the tree in the middle of the garden that God said, ‘Don’t eat from it; don’t even touch it or you’ll die.’”

4-5 The serpent told the Woman, “You won’t die. God knows that the moment you eat from that tree, you’ll see what’s really going on. You’ll be just like God, knowing everything, ranging all the way from good to evil.”

6 When the Woman saw that the tree looked like good eating and realized what she would get out of it—she’d know everything!—she took and ate the fruit and then gave some to her husband, and he ate.

7 Immediately the two of them did “see what’s really going on”—saw themselves naked! They sewed fig leaves together as makeshift clothes for themselves. 

INTRODUCTION       

“FIG LEAVES, OF ALL THINGS!”

Welcome to St. Simeon’s Anglican Church and to the first Sunday of the season of Lent. Ash Wednesday, celebrated this year on February 18th, marked the beginning of the 40-day trek to Holy Week and Easter. Although it is a solemn occasion, Lent also refers to the lengthening of days, springtime, and new beginnings. However, it is meant to remind us through a time of personal reflection, fasting, and prayer of the cost of that renewal. The seed must die and fall into the ground if it is to come to new life and produce (John 12:24).

The Gospel reading today is the standard theme for Lent, the forty days of fasting and temptation that Jesus suffered after being baptized. But I would like us this morning to entertain rather the reason all this is necessary. Why is it not enough for us to simply turn to God, do the best we can to be good and obey His commandments? Paul, in his letter to the Romans that we will read, points to Adam and the doctrine of Original Sin and conveniently, our Old Testament reading is from Genesis 3, relating this very same event.

So today, to start Lent off significantly, but, I hope, a little lightly with tongue in cheek, we’re going to look at what the Bible, not ancient church rhetoric, says about the temptation in the garden and ask the question we all want to have answered, why “fig leaves, of all things!”

SERMON:

Let’s begin by getting that burning question about the fig leaves out of the way. Verse seven of the story of “Original Sin” we read today says, “They sewed fig leaves together as makeshift clothes for themselves,” referring to Adam and Eve after their eyes were opened and they realized they were naked. What that really means, even allegorically, is not quite clear. Ostensibly, they had lost their innocence; they’d eaten of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and now being naked upset them somehow, where it hadn’t before, even though they were still the only two people on earth. But we’ll get back to that later; let’s stay focused on that fig leaf issue.

How many here know much about figs and fig leaves? Not a big subject in our neighbourhood, I see. Well, let me introduce you to the fig leaf.

They sewed fig leaves together as makeshift clothes for themselves. Gen. 3:7

It may not strike you right away, but if you had all the plants in the world to choose from to make clothing to cover yourself, why would you pick, excuse the pun, a fig leaf? We may assume that the Singer Sewing Machine had not yet been invented, nor even the needle and thread, so how in the world would you sew together leaves that looked like that? At best, we could say your clothes breathe.

As well, we should note that the sap in the stem of the fig leaf is an irritant to the skin. You can Google a video on harvesting fig leaves to make a tea in which the nice gentleman cautions you to wear gloves and wash any exposed skin after handling the leaves. All of which tells us that Adam and Eve may have gained the knowledge of good and evil, but little else of useful practicality. It also explains why, later in verse 21, we’re told, “God made leather clothing for Adam and his wife and dressed them.” And I’m not going to entertain the controversy of whether God approves of wearing animal furs. Suffice it for our purposes this morning to acknowledge that God was both merciful and gracious in His dealings with His miscreant children.

So, in answer to our question, why fig leaves, I think we’d be inclined to suggest that Adam and Eve may not have been the brightest pennies in the garden, except perhaps that they were the only pennies in the garden. Or, possibly not.

The serpent was clever, more clever than any wild animal God had made. He spoke to the Woman          Gen. 3:1

There was, of course, the serpent. We’re told it was the most clever and cunning of all the animals God had made. In truth, it was smart enough to communicate with Adam and Eve. Now I’m not going to attempt to convince you that Dr. Doolittle is a documentary film, nor that I have long and involved conversations with our dog, Hunter. However, you may think so if you ever witness me explaining to him why we should do what I want rather than follow his preferences. There is, however, well-documented evidence of cognition and varying degrees of intelligent communication with the animal kingdom.

We have in scripture the story of Balaam’s talking donkey, but I would not want you to imagine that a donkey, or snake, could manage to form and pronounce human language. I also believe that we should not be so arrogant or presumptuous as to think that the authors of these stories expected the reader to accept such a physically implausible story. The presentation would be of a primordial understanding. Something we have no issue with when discussing God communicating with people. Until Jesus was born, God didn’t have the physical apparatus to form words, any more than Balaam’s donkey or the snake in the garden.

So we understand and readily accept the idea of communication without sound. In Paul’s numerously recounted story of his conversion, he understands an intelligible communication from Jesus, but the people around him hear only a noise like thunder. This is a similar recounting of Moses’ experience when God spoke to him at Mount Sinai, but the leaders of Israel only heard thunder. The examples in scripture are many, and we accept them as they are told, either as experiential, a waking vision, or a dream.

So why not, in the first days of creation, in the garden of Eden, God’s cleverest creatures, able to communicate with their fellow creature, humans, albeit created in the likeness of God, and so especially endowed with His eternal spirit. But here you’ll turn to me and say, “No, the story goes that Satan was the serpent and tempted Eve, and that is why the serpent could speak.” Well, Harry Potter talking snakes aside, that, my friends, is a long-standing Christian evangelical myth that never in any version encroaches on the pages of Holy Scripture.

He spoke to the Woman: “Do I understand that God told you not to eat from any tree in the garden?”        Gen. 3:1

Now Satan entered the scene and seduced David into taking a census of Israel     1 Chronicles. 21:1

Once again God’s anger blazed out against Israel. He tested David by telling him, ‘Go and take a census of Israel and Judah 2 Samuel 24:1

The Hebrew word satan is a verb meaning ‘to oppose’. In the Old Testament, it shows up most often in the Book of Job and refers to a member of the host of heaven who challenges Job’s piety. The earliest, and one of only a couple of references to ha-satan, or The Satan, is found in 1 Chronicles 21:1. It is an almost word-for-word retelling of a story from 2 Samuel 24. In Samuel however, it is God who insights David to take a census. The Books of Samuel and Kings are thought to be from an early period in Israelite history. Chronicles is a later retelling of much of this history by the scribe Ezra, who returned from the Babylonian exile to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem.

The theology of an evil being opposing God derives from the ancient Sumerian and Babylonian world of the supreme god Marduk. It is believed to have entered Jewish thinking through Zoroastrian influence during the 2nd Temple period of Israel. Which neatly explains why there isn’t any mention of a ‘Satan’ at work in the world before that era. The authors of Chronicles couldn’t resolve the theology of the Samuel story with God as the progenitor of David’s temptation to take a census, so they assumed the first authors had made an error and endeavoured to correct it in the retelling by introducing Satan, the evil tempter. They found it much nicer to consider that, like Flip Wilson of the 60’s and 70’s, “the Devil made him do it.”

“You can eat from any tree in the garden, except from the Tree-of-Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil. Don’t eat from it. The moment you eat from that tree, you’re dead.”  Gen. 2:16-17

The Woman said to the serpent, “Not at all. We can eat from the trees in the garden. It’s only about the tree in the middle of the garden that God said, ‘Don’t eat from it; don’t even touch it or you’ll die.’”  Gen. 3:2-3

So, what did the snake, not Satan, say to Eve that was so tempting that she couldn’t resist disobeying a direct command from God?

God’s command was, “You can eat from any tree in the garden, except from the Tree-of-Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil. Don’t eat from it. The moment you eat from that tree, you’re dead.” Well, it sounds to me like good advice from a loving parent. God knew what would happen if they ate from that tree and warned them not to. Along comes the serpent and asks a reasonable question of the new human residents, “So what did God say you were allowed to eat and not eat?” And here’s the first hint of a problem. Eve doesn’t repeat God’s warning to the snake; she changes it. Now it’s an order, “Don’t even touch it, or you’ll die.” And notice, she says “you’ll die”, not like “you’re dead.”

This difference is real. The first uses the Hebrew word tā·mūṯ (tamooth), and Eve uses the word tə·mu·ṯūn (tamoothoon). They both mean dying, but Eve’s version is more right away, and God’s implies something less immediate, like a sentence.

The serpent told the Woman, “You won’t die. God knows that the moment you eat from that tree, you’ll see what’s really going on. You’ll be just like God, knowing everything, ranging all the way from good to evil.”      Gen. 3:4-5

The serpent, not having heard God’s instructions to Adam and Eve, simply tells her the truth. It knows what the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is and that you don’t die, tə·mu·ṯūn, from eating the fruit. That humans will suffer a different problem the snake is unaware of, they will be tā·mūṯ, dead in spirit, separated from that intimate relationship with God. We have the theology that death entered the world through this original sin, but obviously, the creatures and the snake were well aware of what dying was. The death that entered the world through the first Adam, as expressed in the Book of Hebrews, was spiritual death.

When the Woman saw that the tree looked like good eating and realized what she would get out of it—she’d know everything!—she took and ate the fruit and then gave some to her husband, and he ate.           Gen. 3:6

Now, let’s get to the crux of the matter. The snake didn’t entice Eve to try the fruit or suggest anything of the kind; it just, being the cleverest of God’s creatures, told her the truth about the tree and God’s instructions, at least as regards the modified version Eve had communicated. Eve, and we can read Adam into every line of this story because he was certainly there for the big event, “saw that the tree looked like good eating and realized what she would get out of it.”

No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind.       1 Corinthians 10:13

Now let me remind you of Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 10:13, “No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind.” Adam and Eve took and ate of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, not because of some alluring advertisement they saw on television or an unsolicited but overwhelmingly tempting sales pitch by the Satan corporation. They ate, because despite God’s loving, gracious, protective instructions, they wanted to. They “saw that the tree looked like good eating and realized what [they] would get out of it.” That’s it, pure and simple, no need for tomes of long-winded theological reflection on Satan and Original Sin.

And why is this important for us to consider as we enter the season of Lent? Well, we love to have somebody to blame. If only we were not surrounded by so much temptation in the world, we say, we’d be all right. We’d love to believe, and mostly we do, that we’re really not so bad. It’s really Satan’s fault, after all, he “prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). But, then, if we’re not really so bad, if rebellion against God and evil are from Satan and not from us, ourselves, then why did Jesus have to die? If we could discipline ourselves and let that supposed goodness out, we would empty the cross of both its meaning and its power to save.

And what is most disappointing is that it denies us all the loving grace our Lord Jesus Christ pours out day in and day out into this world through the Holy Spirit. If we don’t need the cross, if we’re really not like Adam and Eve, succumbing to our own rebellious desires against God, then we are truly on our own. Our prosperity and security are in the hands of governments and world leaders, and our health and hope are in the hands of doctors and the health care system.

Lent is a time of self-reflection and prayer. Reflection on who we truly are, like Adam and Eve, rebellious young children ready to see God’s loving guidance as restricting unreasonable commands, simply because we don’t understand, and we don’t have trust, and, ready to rebel, to take things into our own hands, unfortunately, to our own peril.

Pray for hearts that seek Jesus and His love. That look first to the Holy Spirit for peace, provision, and healing in our lives. It’s important we set the snake aside and look in the mirror for the source of our problems, and humbly allow God’s love and grace to cleanse and renew us through this season of Lent. There is great power and healing in God’s grace if you will allow it to flow into your life.

Amen