+“I can do it.” “Well, let me help you”---“NO, I CAN DO IT MYSELF!”
Child Development expert Erik Erikson posits eight stages of psychosocial development -- stages of identity formation that have been a cornerstone of child development theory since the mid 20th century. Generally, pre-schoolers are in the stage of initiative vs. guilt-- their core job being exploring and then trying to assert control and power over their environment. Success in this stage gives children a sense of purpose, failure results in a child exerting too much power, bringing on adult disapproval and leaving the child with a latent sense of guilt.
In other words, according to Erikson, children between the ages of 3 and 5 are testing the limits of their own power. And the job of the parental figures in the lives of these children is to patiently listen to the tantrum and then soothe the child saying, “I know you don’t like this now, but one day you’ll understand.”
Our reading from the third chapter of Genesis, commonly referred to as the story of the Fall, relates a similar experience between the first humans and God. From the beginning, we have rejected assistance, insisting that we can DO IT OURSELVES. As Dennis Olson, a professor of Hebrew Scripture at Princeton puts it: “[This reading] is less about explaining the origin of sin and more about describing the reality of what it is to be human and our mysterious human tendencies to rebel against God, to resist the gracious boundaries and limitations God places around us for our own good, and to desire to be like God.”
The story of the first humans falling away from God is the foundational story of how we, like pre-schoolers, want to do everything on our own, without assistance, without limits. When we fail to let our eternal parent, God set some limits on us, we get into trouble, We forget that we are the children and God is the wise and loving parent who says, “I know you don’t understand now, but one day you will.”
All three of our readings this morning deal with the down n’ dirty reality of what it is to be human.
Adam and Eve are wooed by the serpent’s tempting words, and as a result they unleash a desire for more power. In our reading from Romans, Paul describes Adam as the carrier and unleasher of the disease called sin and Jesus, who both Paul and Matthew refer to as the Second Adam, as the vaccine against it. The conflict between our desire to be all that God created us to be and our desire to be fully independent and self-reliant with no need for help, be it from our loving parent, or God is nicely summarized later in Romans when Paul states, “I do not understand my own actions .For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” (Romans 7:15). Turning away from God, engaging in things that carry us farther away from God, isn’t what we want to do, but it ends up being what we do.
In our gospel reading the devil tries his darndest to tempt Jesus into sinning, but our fully human and fully divine savior doesn’t succomb. Now it’s easy to brush this off as Jesus’ divinity, outweighing His humanity. That he saw the devil’s tricks and didn’t fall for them. But to assume this is, I think, insulting to Jesus the man. Jesus didn’t give into temptation not because he didn’t feel it---he felt it as powerfully as all of us would, but because he was strong enough, open enough, trusting enough, to not give in. Giving in would be to deny God’s love and Jesus --both in his humanity and his divinity--just wouldn’t do it.
Jesus was human in every way, except he did not sin. He didn’t sin, because he didn’t have too. Jesus had no need to exert dominance over his environment because he had spent time in conversation with God. He prayed. A lot. When we pray we engage God in conversation. When we don’t pray, we don’t give God time to talk to us. We don’t hear God. Jesus heard God. Jesus listened, He respected that God’s will was to be done. When we forget that God is really in charge, when we fail to listen, we open a hole deep within us, a hole of uncertainty and anxiety. A hole we try to fill through our desire for more and more---more stuff, more prestige, more power. In an effort to fill this hole of uncertainty and anxiety we behave in unhealthy and unproductive ways.
This hole deepens and widens each time we step away from God, each time we yell I CAN DO IT. Each time we forget that not only are we not alone….we weren’t created to be alone, go it alone or do it all by our self! God has, throughout all time, attempted to place loving, grace-filled limits on us—not to confine us, but to secure us to live a life of trust and discovery instead of a life of testing and consequences. But we break away, trying to fill this emptiness with noise, busy-ness, STUFF.
This is why Lenten Fasts are so important—you see the goal of the fast isn’t to make us miserable, the goal of the fast is to help us realize that there’s nothing wrong with being dependent. By removing all the distractions we come face to face with the uncertainty and anxiety of that hole. When we quiet ourselves we gaze into that hole and call out, praying, “God, I can’t do it, please don’t leave me alone, please help me.”
When we get to that place—that place of utter helplessness—we’ll discover something truly amazing: that hole, that empty space deep within us, the one we strive so hard to fill with stuff? The one we try to ignore through the distraction of doing, the distraction of needing, the distraction of wanting? That space is filled to the brim by a God who, long ago, learned that although we’ll test the limits and try to do it ourselves, we will, when we get quiet enough and hungry enough, run back into the arms of our loving and eternal parent—who knew that one day, we’d understand. +
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