Homily Lent 1A: Choosing God's true good over my apparently good

 

Homily for 1^st Sunday of Lent Year A 2023

Introduction

Sin! Nobody wants to talk about sin.  I am sure you are not looking forward to hearing a homily about sin. I can assure you that I too don't want to talk about sin.  But sin is the subject of our readings today, particularly the passage about the sin of Adam and Eve in our first reading.

One reason we don't hear much about sin is because we have replaced the word with euphemisms.  There is a story about a father who was taking a walk with his teenage son.  And they came upon two people on a park bench involved in a sinful act.  The young man quickly said, "Dad, that is not cool."  So for him, sin was simply "something not cool."

As for the dad who was in his forties, looking at the same act said, "that is inappropriate."  Even he couldn't bring himself to call the act, sin; the act was merely inappropriate.  But when they got back home and were describing the incident to grandpa, it was he who finally said "that is wrong."  And so we have come from grandpa's generation which saw sin as wrong, to ours which sees sin as only inappropriate and now our children who see sin as "not-cool."

Scripture and Theology

But sin is a reality.  It was a reality for our first parents, it is a reality now.  What Adam and Eve did, was not merely "uncool" or merely inappropriate; it was a sin.  What was their sin, I hear you asking?  Thank you for asking.

Our reading began with God giving Adam and Eve two precious gifts.  First, he gave them life.  Think about it; he did not have to create them, but create them he did.  Then, he gave them a lush garden in Eden full of all manner of trees, including the tree of knowledge in the centre.  He allowed them to make use of the trees in the garden.  But he asked for one little, tiny thing: "You shall not eat it [the tree in the middle of the garden] or even touch it, lest you die."  And so Adam and Eve found themselves before a loving God, who gave them all they needed, and some rules, like a good parent does for children.

So how did Adam and Eve come to sin, despite being in this most enviable paradise?  Well, what do you know! The serpent, described as "the most cunning of all the animals" comes to Eve and says that if she eats of the fruit of the tree, she will most certainly not die. "No, God knows well that the moment you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods who know what is good and what is evil.” The Devil is tricky; he downplays the downside that is death and magnifies the upside, knowledge.  Spare a thought for poor Eve; if you were presented with such a proposition, a chance to have the key to knowing what is good and evil, would you not at least consider it?  And as we heard, Eve was convinced and saw three good things in the tree.  It "was good for food, pleasing to the eyes, and desirable for gaining wisdom."

The Tempter will use these same three goods against Jesus in today's gospel: "good for food," the temptation of bodily pleasure, "pleasing to the eyes," the temptation of possessions, and "desirable for gaining wisdom," the temptation of power.  Of course, Jesus will triumph over them, but Eve did not.  She ate the fruit of the tree and gave some to her husband as well.

Eve therefore sins, not only because she disobeys a direct command of God, who forbade her to eat or even touch the tree; she sins also and especially because she assigns to herself the role of deciding what is the true good.  She chooses an apparent good over the true good, a lesser good over the greater good, something else over God, who is goodness itself.  It is this desire to be the masters of our own destiny, the deciders of what is good and evil, or what is the greater good and the lesser good, that is the original sin.

If the first reading was a step-by-step guide in how to sin, the gospel passage is a case study in how to avoid sin.  While Eve’s temptation took place in the lush garden of Eden, that of Jesus takes place in the dry desert of Judah, where he is presented with virtually the same proposition and three apparent goods.

Considering that he was hungry after fasting for forty days and forty nights, the first crack at him by the Tempter was particularly attractive: "If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become loaves of bread," Eve's good for food.  Later in the gospel Jesus will be in the business of making bread out of nothing for the crowds and will change water into wine at Cana wedding.  And so what the Tempter is asking him to do, is actually somewhat of a good thing.

But if Jesus chooses to obey him, he would be abandoning an even better good, his need to rely on God.  He would be taking a short-cut, rather than the way of the cross; he would be nothing more than a magician; he would not be a true messiah.  That is why Jesus tells the Tempter: "One does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God."  In other words, trusting in God is greater than immediate gratification.

The second temptation from the Devil is: "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down" from the temple roof, from God's dwelling place, since Scripture says that God will protect you. This proposition places before Jesus the choice of trusting in God unreservedly or obtaining a little proof that the Father cares for him.  Moreover, jumping down from the temple roof and surviving the experience would have been an excellent opportunity for Jesus to show his divine power and win over many people.  But since doing this would be also be testing God for his own purposes, the equivalent of Eve's desire for knowledge and wisdom apart from God, Jesus rejected this temptation saying: “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.”

The third temptation provides Jesus with another shortcut to power that avoids the suffering of the cross.  "All these [kingdoms of the world] I shall give to you, if you will prostrate yourself and worship me" proposes the Tempter.  And this was not an empty promise.  Jesus had come to take the world from Satan's control.  Should he do it through the arduous way of suffering and death on the cross, or should he take easy way proposed by the tempter?

But again unlike Eve who chose what was pleasing to the eyes, Jesus chose the greater good and not the lesser good.  He says, thanks but no thanks.  Quoting from Scripture he says: "The Lord, your God, shall you worship and him alone shall you serve."  He chooses to worship God above all else.

Christian Life

And so my friends, as we begin our Lenten journey of repenting from sin we have to be aware that the greatest temptation of all is not the ugliness of sin, but its attractive nature, especially when we think of ourselves as the ultimate arbiters of what is truly good, and so are deceived by what is apparently good.

In our daily lives we make choices, some big, some small.  What makes these daily choices particularly difficult is not that we have to choose between what is clearly evil and what is clearly good; that is a fairly easy to do.  The difficulty is that often both choices before us appear to contain some good and we must decide which is the true good.  And if we rely only on our own feelings and wants, without relying on God, we shall most certainly choose the lesser good.  That is why the Catechism (1849) tells us that "Sin is an offense against reason, truth, and right conscience; it is failure in genuine love for God and neighbour caused by a perverse attachment to certain goods."  Let us be watchful against this last part, that attachment to certain lesser goods.

And so, avoiding sin is not just about obeying rules, but also about allowing God to help us choose what is truly good over what is only apparently good.  It could be the choice between watching TV or saying my rosary, the choice between helping someone in need or bypassing them, the choice between being faithful to my spouse or cheating on her, the choice between keeping quiet in the face of evil or speaking against it; do we choose the true good?

Conclusion

Like the 40 days Jesus spent in the desert may our Lenten experience of 40 days be observed through sincere fasting, generous almsgiving and ardent prayer and lead us to realize that only God can offer us what is "[1] good for food and [2] pleasing to the eyes, and [3] desirable for gaining wisdom."  Most of all, let us allow this Eucharist, the highest good, bring us closer to God.