From the great book of Genesis we have heard, once again, the account of our origin . . . and of what it is to be human:

the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.  And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed . . . to till it and keep it.  And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.”  . . . And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.

To be human is to be a living being who dwells in the place where God has brought you so that you might till it and keep it.  To be completely human is to be before God and one another without shame, representing God to one another and to all of Creation and being obedient to the Lord your God.

    Does that define the sum of your life?  Is the first concern of your life that the creatures of God thrive?  Do you love each and every one with the divine affection of its Creator?  Are you forthright with one another in all things, there being no secret places in your heart or in your soul which are forbidden to someone . . . or to God?  Does that describe your character?  No?  . . . There’s a reason for that.  It’s because

the serpent was more subtle than any other wild creature that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree of the garden’?”  And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden; but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’ ”  But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die.  For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

And with these words, the woman becomes distracted -- she loses focus -- she becomes anxious about God’s regard for her:  perhaps He didn’t tell her the whole truth; perhaps the Lord God is holding something back.  And so, the woman becomes anxious about God’s regard for her and suspends her love for God in order to covet the good which she imagines has been withheld from her.  She suspends her love for God in order to covet the good of the Forbidden Tree.  So that,

when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit [she disregarded the Lord God] and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, and he ate.  Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons.

The serpent lied, of course, when it said, “you will not die.”  For, this morning you have heard the account of the death of your humanity; . . . you have heard of the hour in which, as Saint Paul puts it, “sin came into the world . . . and death through sin.”

    Of course, the tragedy could have been avoided if the Lord God Almighty had not deliberately planted the forbidden tree in the Garden in the first place.  And the tragedy could have been avoided if the Lord God Almighty had not made the serpent so subtle.  But that is the final condition of humanity:  . . . as well as being created to represent God to Creation and to obey Him and to be before one another and God without shame . . . it is a necessary condition of humanity that it be permitted to choose not to represent God.  To be created in God’s sacred Image is to have the unique privilege of choosing not to be compelled to conform to your nature.  . . . And that is exactly what the man, called Adam, and the woman, he called Eve, chose to do.  Instead of being themselves, . . . they chose to be like God, . . . knowing good and evil.  And the result, of course, is that they lost sight of the One Good, Who is God.  They lost sight of the One Good because their vision was filled with the sight of a veritable fog of lesser and intermediate goods (and the evils which attend to choosing one good and not another).  . . . And the consequence of the man and woman electing to be like God and not to represent Him . . . was that they condemned themselves to the necessity of representing themselves in everything, . . . because in choosing to be like God, . . . they supplanted the One, True God with themselves.  That is Original Sin:  the deformation of our humanity by severance of communion with God in the pursuit of self-interests in all things.  And even when we say we believe in God, . . . it is not the One, True God we believe in; . . . it is a dead god.  It is a dead god because the condition of our belief is that our god represent our interests.  The condition of our belief in our god is that it represent the interests of a deformed and confused humanity that has no life in it.

    For instance, . . . if one should consult the Canons of the Episcopal Church, they will find Title I, Canon 17, section 5 which states that

No one shall be denied rights, status, or access to an equal place . . . [in] this Church because of race, color, ethnic origin, national origin, marital status, sex, sexual orientation, disabilities or age . . .

The Canon asserts that the god we believe in has more interest in preventing impediments . . . than in enabling sacred lives.  . . . Quite some time back there was an article in The Daily Star, written by a State Trooper, giving advice about winter driving.  The Trooper wrote that when someone goes into a skid, they tend to cause the car to go in the direction they are looking; . . . they tend to steer in the direction they are focused.  So, the Trooper’s advice was that if you go into a skid focus your attention in the direction you want to go; . . . not on where you don’t want to go.  Good advice.  So, if the Church wants to not go in the direction of discriminating against accidents of nature, . . . then it ought to replace Title I, Canon 17 with a Canon affirming persons who emulate Jesus(!); . . . whose lives are Simple, Chaste, and Focused upon being obedient to God’s sacred word; . . . focused upon the single Good which is capable of overcoming life’s fog of lesser goods.

    Saint Matthew has something to say to us today about focus.  . . . There are three fundamental classes of distraction, Matthew says; . . . there are three fundamental classes of distraction that can ruin our focus and make us anxious about God’s regard for us so as to suspend our love for Him in order to contemplate the particular good we desire.  The first class of distraction is Bodily.  If God truly loves me, and if God truly cares for me (we whine), then He would not suffer me to endure the bodily discomfort of being without the things I crave.  He would satisfy my “needs” with permissive indulgence . . . so that even the most barren thing might give me “fulfillment”.  And so, Matthew tells us, the Tempter whispers in the ear, “If you are a Son of God -- if you are God’s daughter -- command these stones to become loaves of bread.”  To accept the challenge completes the distraction.  For, if the stone becomes a loaf, then we assume that it is God’s will that we please ourselves with whatever comes to hand, . . . and if the stone remains a stone, then it is proof that God cares nothing for us and bodily abstinence is a folly.

    The second class of distraction is Spiritual.  If God truly loves me, and if God truly cares for me (we reason), then I should be immune and impervious to accidents of nature; I should never know discouragement, aridity, sorrow, or grief; all my enemies should fall into the pits they have dug for me, and all my prayers should be answered without hesitancy and in accordance with their imagined effect.  And so, the Tempter whispers, “If you are a Daughter of God -- if you are God’s son -- throw yourself down . . . and God will raise you.”  To accept this challenge completes an even worse distraction than the one before.  For, if God does, indeed, rescue me . . . then I will assume that I am God’s master, . . . and if He does not . . . then I will know that prayer and faith are useless baggage.

    The final class of distraction is Existential.  In this we idly turn our gaze upon all the nations of the world.  We hold court with ourselves and pronounce judgments upon evil and declare what is just . . . and who should suffer and who should not . . . if I but had the power of God to change all things by fiat and persuasion.  And so, the Tempter comes to us and says, “All this I will give you, if you will but leave off prayer and fasting; if you will ignore Holy Scripture and fall down and worship me.”  And this is why I call this third distraction “Existential,” because it places your very existence at risk.  For, no matter how great the good it is we think to do, . . . to worship the “justice” of the good we desire is damnation; for it supplants the Lord of Life with a dead thing.

    Now, notice how Jesus responds to each of these temptations to distraction.  About the first class -- the Bodily -- our Lord says, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.’ ”  Jesus responds to the distraction with focus upon God.  . . . About the second class of distraction -- the Spiritual -- our Lord says, “Again it is written, ‘You shall not tempt the Lord your God.’ ”  Jesus again responds to the distraction with focus upon God.  . . . And at the moment He is tempted to place His existence at risk, Jesus names the Tempter:  “Begone, Satan!  for it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.’ ”  . . . Because, you see, it is Satan who guided the serpent’s subtlety in Eden; . . . it is Satan who helps us along the path of distraction.  Not because the Liar either loves us or hates us -- we are too insignificant for him to even notice -- except that we are loved by God; . . . and the Evil One despises God so much that he would pretend to be our friend and promise us anything in order to grieve our heavenly Father.  . . . It is, of course, your God-given privilege to do just that:  to grieve God by not to fulfilling your nature but to enjoy, instead, the wild ride of self-interest, listening to snakes and the contrary demands of your flesh and the lies of the devil.  . . . But Jesus has shown us a better way, Saint Matthew says; . . . Jesus has shown us that the proper response to the spiritual warfare which the Evil One wages against our heavenly Father is to remember that you are but dust (as I said to you on Ash Wednesday) . . . and that “you shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve” (as Jesus says to us today).