Letting Trust Die: 1st Sunday of Lent

Psalm 51 is David’s prayer of repentance after the Bathsheba and Uriah incident. It’s probably the best-known prayer of repentance in the Bible, the words of a man who realizes that his life has not turned out the way he hoped it would, that he isn’t the man he thought he was, he isn’t the “pretty alright guy more or less” that he’d told himself he was. It’s the prayer of a man who has blown through any possibility of denial and is face to face with every bit of the horror and ugliness of sin.

This moment of sorrow and tears is a great one for David, the moment when things stop spiraling downward and begin to turn, the moment of repentance. He realizes that what he wants most of all is the opposite of what he’s been pursuing. What he wants most of all is a pure heart, a faithful spirit, and the innocent joy of the presence of God.


So how did things go so wrong? How did a man looking for happiness find so much misery? If you want to understand sin at its root, if you want to really get to the heart of the matter, there’s no better place to look than the story of the Fall in Genesis. The first sin, the primal sin. In the epidemiology of sin, this is the Patient Zero back to which the infection can be traced.

It’s easy enough to spot the symptoms of sin, they're all around us. I happen to like this world very, very much, but I’m in no danger of mistaking it for a Garden of Paradise. Well, everything that separates this world from a Garden of Paradise - I mean every single thing - is the result of sin. But if we want to be healers of this disease, if we want to help, and especially if we want to build immunity, we need to understand the cause. And that’s trickier. So to Genesis we go.

There are lots of trees in the Garden. They’re pleasant, good, and enticing. Adam and Eve are surrounded by pleasures and delights; that’s God’s will for them! Many trees, many fruits, many delights. There are so many delights in our world! Isn’t that still true for you and me? Aren’t there simply millions of simple, innocent pleasures for us to reach out and enjoy?
Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden by Wenzel Peter

How could we go wrong, how could we choose evil, when good is so pleasurable and so delightful and so available? That’s the serpent’s first problem to overcome. To tempt Eve to choose the wrong, he first has to turn her away from all those delightful good pleasures. He has to make her dissatisfied even though being dissatisfied is totally unreasonable, insane. And in the midst of all these innocent delights, somehow the one thing forbidden captures her attention. It becomes the only thing in the world, the only thing that matters. Suddenly all the good things life offers her fade out of focus. She’s fixated, obsessed on the thing she knows is forbidden. Know what that’s like? Sure you do.

We come to Satan’s opening gambit. He asks her, “Did God really say you were not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?” Check out what he’s up to here: he’s exaggerating the burden of God’s commandment. God only forbade the fruit of one tree while giving them free access to pleasures beyond number. But Temptation twists this around, and makes it seem that God wouldn't let us have any pleasures. It’s the first lie from the Prince of Lies: to make us feel that God’s Commandments are more burdensome, more difficult than they really are. God's laws begin to seem like obstacles to happiness, rather than the royal road to happiness.

Eve puts up a timid fight (better certainly than her silent husband!) but she’s left the door open. She says, “God allows us the other fruit, but this one we aren’t allowed to eat or even touch.” She’s focused on what’s forbidden. Also notice this: in the text, God never actually said anything about touching it. It sounds like Eve has swallowed a bit of the poison: she’s exaggerating the burden. We all know what this is like, too. In the moment of temptation, God’s Commandment seems so unreasonable, so impossible. And you tell yourself, “hey, I have needs.” Or “hey, my life is harder than other people’s, I should be allowed this” or if you’re an especially corny person, “How could something be wrong when it feels so right?”

So the Tempter’s first move is a slight success, and that’s all he needs. She’s started to give. Time for the next move, which is the game-changer. And this has been at the root of every sin since. “No, you won’t die. God knows that if you eat it, your eyes will be open and you will be like gods.” Temptation makes God out to be the enemy. God is an obstacle, a rival. God isn’t looking out for you, he’s keeping you from what you really want!

Eve’s decision isn’t whether she wants the forbidden thing; she wants it. Her decision isn’t what God has to say about it; that’s also clear. She knows what God commands, and her decision is whether to trust Him.

If I asked “where did Adam and Eve go wrong?” you might say “when they disobeyed God.” But they actually went wrong a moment before that. The Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it this way: Sin entered the world when man “let trust in his Creator die in his heart.” Sin entered the world in that moment before Eve reached out her hand, when she decided that God’s commandments wouldn’t make her happy, wouldn’t be enough for her, weren’t in her best interest.

And every sin you’ve ever committed has involved that same decision. You don’t sin because you want to be miserable. You sin because you want to be happy, and you’ve decided that following God’s Commandments isn’t the way to accomplish that. You think, “I need this,” and reach out for the forbidden. You know it isn’t God’s way, and you’ve stopped believing that God’s way is your best option. You’ve let trust in your Creator die in your heart.

Maybe another sermon sometime can cover the consequences over the next few verses: the hiding, the suspicion, the self-consciousness, the devastation of the relationship between men and women, the shame, the chain of broken relationships and broken hearts. But today, in considering the moments leading up to the Fall, here’s what you can learn. Here’s what meditating on Genesis throughout this Mass will do for you: next time the Tempter is whispering in your ear, you’ll be a little more prepared. When God’s Commandments begin to seem burdensome or unreasonable, you’ll know where that’s coming from, you’ll recognize it and call it by its name. Next time you feel like you won’t be happy unless you go some other way than God’s way, you’ll know who you're dealing with and be ready to say “Get behind me!” Next time you find yourself wanting something, and knowing that God says ‘no,’ maybe you’ll trust your Creator. Maybe you’ll trust that His way is your best way, your happiness, your freedom, your joy.


Then, your story won't end like the story of Adam and Eve’s temptation. It will end instead like the story of Christ’s temptation, Matthew 4:11, “And the devil left him, and God’s angels appeared and looked after him.” And you’ll realize, like King David, that what you’ve wanted most all along is simply a pure heart, a faithful spirit, and the innocent joy of the presence of God.

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