Adam and Christ.

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

March 1 MMXX

I.

In our reading from his letter to the church in Rome, the apostle Paul reminds us that sin came into the world by means of a single representative person: Adam.  This is how the world managed to deteriorate from the shining, good, blessed, abundant, harmonious creation that God makes in Genesis 1 and 2, to our situation where human life is dominated, corrupted, and perverted by the evil powers of sin and death.  

Paul suggests that this story explains the unfortunate and obvious fact of existence, that “all have sinned.”  That is, the human situation is one of separation: separation from the Creator, the creation, each other, and even ourselves.  Humans have this chronic irresistible compulsion to cave in to the same kind of temptation we see in the story of Adam and Eve.  In other words, we view ourselves as the masters of the world, who get to decide what to do with it on the basis of narrow, temporary, self-interest.  

Coaxed by the snake, the woman in the Genesis story decides she wants what she wants when she wants it, and grabs the fruit, yanking it off a branch of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, as if it were something she can just consume as a satisfaction of her own desire.  In other words, instead of following the affirmation of Psalm 24, “the earth is the Lords and the fullness thereof, the world and all that dwell therein,” she decides, as we all do, that “I will decide what I want and I will arrange to take it when it suits me.  I know what the Creator said, but the Creator isn’t here right now, and I’m hungry.”

At that moment, as soon as she and the snake start talking as if God were  not present, she ceases to see herself as an integral part of the good creation, related to and connected to everything else.  She now sees herself as separate from the rest of the world, standing over-against other creatures, even in competition with them, with the right to consume, destroy, extract, utilize, waste, or otherwise have her way with them, based on her sense of what she needs.  

Adam and Eve thus represent us.  The question is not one how we managed to inherit sinfulness from them, as if it were some kind of genetic birth-defect.  But really Adam and Eve inherit these negative qualities from us, that is, from the humans who were awakened to this brokenness in themselves, and got inspired by God to write these stories to explain how we got here.  How did we manage to trade a magnificent garden of spectacular abundance for all to share, for a hard existence competing with each other for scarce and hard-won resources?

It happened, and it keeps happening, because people keep succumbing to the same temptations.  We keep relying on our own desire, reason, fear, memories, and limited perception to make decisions.  We keep imagining we are separate from everyone and everything else, and have to fend for ourselves in a hostile universe.  We keep pretending that God is somewhere far away and doesn’t know what we are doing and doesn’t care, and at best only helps those who help themselves.

In other words, all have sinned.  Everyone joins in this dance of ego.  Adam represents this disastrous common heritage of humanity. 

II.

But the apostle at the same time now offers an alternative common heritage of humanity, the salvation which has emerged into the world in Jesus Christ.  Through him we are reconciled, that is, brought back into connection and relationship, with God, each other, creation, and ourselves.  Through him, God’s final answer is given, and that answer is the free gift of grace, love, and forgiveness.

Paul makes a big deal out of the symmetry of this.  Just as the human relationship with God was broken by “one person,” so also God sends “one person” to restore it.  Just as “one person” represents the egocentricity that infects everyone, so also “one person” represents the salvation that liberates everyone.  Just as death exercises dominion over human existence because of “one person,” so also, he says, and even “much more surely will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness exercise dominion in life through the one person, Jesus Christ.”

Adam (and Eve, of course; Paul seems to conflate them for the purposes of this argument) sinned by separating themselves from God and creation, and grabbing, taking, extracting, stealing, grasping, and utilizing something that didn’t belong to them, the fruit of the tree of knowledge.  They were appropriating for themselves what they decided they wanted.  Thus they stand for our entire acquisitive, selfish way of living, based on fear, distrust, and desire.

Jesus Christ, on the other hand, does just the opposite.  He gives himself.  He makes of himself an offering, shedding his own blood, even relinquishing his life for others, that is for us, the “weak” and “the ungodly,” as a pure act of undeserved, unmerited grace.  

By doing this, he cancels out and erases what Adam represents in us, and he reveals something in us that is deeper, truer, and more original.  He demonstrates our real identity, our essential humanity, as an expression of God and a participant in God’s nature.  He reminds us of God’s prior action back in Genesis 1, fashioning humanity in God’s own Image and Likeness.

He shows us that human life is not really about what you get; it is about what you give.  To focus on what you get leads inexorably to death, extinction, and eradication.  It is manifest in the violence and injustice that rules in our world, which invariably turns God and creation into our enemy.  

But to focus on what you give, and to ultimately give your very self, is to participate in the life of God, which is an outpouring of love.  Jesus reveals that God is this eternal self-emptying, which gives life, love, justice, forgiveness, and liberation to all.

III.

Where Adam represents the way we cave in and surrender to self-centered temptation, thus allowing ourselves to be enslaved by our own corrupt and lethal desire, Jesus Christ represents our true nature that rejects, resists, and stands fast against such thoughts.  He shows that we can, in him, say “no” to the cravings, urges, and drives that urge us to consume, use, waste, destroy, and take for ourselves the gifts of God.  

And that is what is going on in this reading from the gospel.  When he is baptized, Jesus hears that Voice from heaven declaring him to be God’s beloved Son.  That is such a tremendous experience that he has to ratify it by going out into the desert for a time of intense prayer, reflection, and fasting.  He has to sort of prove that he is indeed who that Voice says he is.  

Finally, Satan appears to him and makes to him the same basic offer he made to Adam and to each of us: “Are you going to take what you think you need for yourself?  Are you going to feed your ego, your reason, your fear, your desire?  Are you going to live your life as if it was all about you?  Are you going to go along with what your own ego and your whole society says you should just naturally and automatically strive for?”  

Or are you going to realize your true nature as the Image of God, a child of God, who belongs to God, and who is therefore in some sense one with God and all that God has made?  Can you show that it is really not about you: the “you” of your small, limited, fearful, self under the power of what Paul calls “flesh”?  But will you access and embody instead your majestic, clear, open, integrated, connected true Self, in what Paul calls the “Spirit,” the very breath of God?

The devil represents the influence of selfishness aimed at the annihilation of God’s creation.  He presents Jesus with three temptations: to make bread to satisfy his own hunger, to gain fame from a supernatural spectacle, and to receive the worldly power and glory of human empires.  I interpret these as basically money, fame, and power, three temptations to which we are all prone, to one degree or another.   

In these three temptations, Jesus shows that in him we may demonstrate our true nature as children made in the Image of God, by our resistance to these sub-human, anti-human, self-destructive addictions that we are subject to.  Jesus shows that the way to eternal life or the Kingdom of God involves the categorical renunciation and rejection of these toxic impulses, based on our experience and conviction that we are God’s beloved children.

IV.

For we have been set free, Paul would say, by his blood, which is to say his life, delivering us from death and reconnecting us to God.  That was the function of the blood in the Passover and Atonement sacrifices in the Torah.  That is why we regularly share together sacramentally in Christ’s body and blood: his life is in us, we are his body.

Facing down these temptations is not something we can do on our own, by our will power or our rationality.  It is something that, like all addictions, can only be addressed together, in community, with others.  That is really the whole point: realizing our being in intersecting communities, in mutual dependence and support, in a life of sharing.  That realization is what mitigates against the nihilistic narcissism that Adam caved in to and the devil provokes.

Christ represents our true, integrated humanity, made in God’s Image, declared Gods children, and placed in the web of creation as God’s agents for praise, thanksgiving, joy, justice, and peace.

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