Distractions

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
February 10, 2008

Distractions
Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7
Matthew 4:1-11

What do you suppose was God’s first reaction
when he learned that Adam and Eve
had taken fruit from the Tree and eaten it?
What do you suppose his thoughts were
before he confronted the pair,
and sent them out from the Garden?

I’ve always imagined that God was wistful,
somber, even sad,
thinking to himself:

I’d thought I had been so clear with them,
“You may eat freely of every tree in 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 what did they do?
They took and they ate.
The woman tried to blame the serpent,
and the man tried to blame the woman.
But the fact is:
they each disobeyed me.

They had no reason to disobey me:
I had given them everything they needed:
A beautiful garden in which to live;
plenty of food,
all the animals and creatures of this earth;
I’d given them each other;
Most important, I’d given them myself
my presence in their lives;
I’d given them my love.

What was it that compelled the woman to reach out to the tree?
What was it that compelled the man to take the fruit?
What was it that compelled them both to eat?
Why didn’t they listen to me?”

I don’t think God was angry as much as he was
disappointed and distraught.

We have loaded this story with mythology over the centuries.
We’ve turned the fruit into an apple,
even though the Hebrew word specifies only “fruit”,
and even though apples were not common
in that part of the world.
We’ve made Eve the principal villain,
and Adam the unwitting victim of her lies and seduction,
even though the text makes clear
that he was standing with Eve the whole time,
and Eve handed him the fruit
without saying a word.

We’ve put the devil into the serpent,
even though the ancient Hebrew texts never referred to any
sinister being named the devil,
and the text pointedly refers to the snake
as a “crafty animal” which God duly punishes.
Strip away the mythology and what do we have?
A story of temptation and seduction?
The devil pulling the hapless Eve and Adam into darkness?

No, not at all.
This is story of disobedience,
of bad choices.
The two were faced with a choice:
a choice to listen to God and obey him,
or a choice not to listen to God,
and in the process disobey God.
Adam and Eve made a choice;
They made a bad choice.

They certainly could not complain that they were confused,
or they did not understand.
God could not have been clearer:
“Do you see that tree? Don’t touch it;
don’t eat the fruit from the tree.
Anything else you want is yours,
just stay away from that tree.”

I think we make too much of the word “temptation”.
It is a word that seems to suggest something akin
to Sirens singing their irresistible song,
leading to sin and disaster
for the otherwise unwitting, innocent victim.

I prefer the word “distractions.”
Our lives are filled with distractions,
things that can call our attention away from our
lives as disciples of Jesus Christ,
if we let them,
if we lose our focus on Christ.

Adam and Eve were distracted:
they 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…”
The distraction was there before them,
and they chose to focus on the distraction,
rather than keeping their focus on being obedient to God.

And then they took a bad situation and made it worse:
In all too human fashion, they immediately
tried to shift the blame,
the woman blaming the serpent
and the man not content with blaming the woman,
felt perfectly justified in blaming God himself,
“it was the woman who did this to me,
and you gave her to me…”

Why is it that we are so unwilling
to take responsibility for our actions?
Why is it that we are so quick to paint ourselves as victims
when something goes wrong?
Why is it that we seem to put more time, energy and effort
into excuses, than into truth, honesty, and faithfulness?
Why is that we are so resistant to understanding
that excuses always sound like excuses,
lame, weak,…
disingenuous,… dishonest?

We cannot hope to know forgiveness until
we first accept responsibility for our own actions.
The first step to knowing the grace,
the amazing grace,
that comes with forgiveness
is to say clearly and boldly,
“I have done wrong.”

Ponder with me for just a moment,
about how differently things might have turned out
had Adam and Eve acknowledged their sin to God,
rather than trying to avoid responsibility.
What if they had said,
“God, we disobeyed you. We know it,
It wasn’t the serpent’s fault.
It was no one’s fault by our own.
We know it;
We acknowledge it,
We confess it,
and we seek your forgiveness.”

If the story of Adam and Eve teaches us what not to do
the story of Jesus in the wilderness teaches us
what we should do,
Here in this story, the negative turns to the positive.
There is Jesus hungry and tired,
the devil trying to distract Jesus from obedience,
even tempt him with food, riches, and power.

But Jesus of course keeps his focus,
not distracted, not tempted,
and remains obedient to God.

Mark understood that this was a story of distraction
and almost treats the story as a distraction,
condensing it to just two verses in his gospel,
without any of the detail or drama
that both Matthew and Luke give us.
It is Matthew that gives the best,
and I think most appropriate,
ending to the story, though.
Did you hear it?
There is no power struggle,
nothing that is suggestive of the mythological battles
between light and dark that we find in many
books that were not included in the Bible.

No, Jesus simply bats the distractor away
as though he was nothing more than a pesky fly.
“Away with you Satan, for it is written
worship the Lord your God
and serve only him.”
The Greek can be translated even more simply,
“Go away,”
Go away.
Pest, distraction.

What could be simpler:
When we face things that distract us
from being obedient children of God,
we don’t need to lash ourselves to the mast
as Odysseus did to survive the seduction of the Sirens,
We simply just need to say,
“Away with you!
Go away!
“Begone!
I will not let you distract me
from worshiping the Lord and serving him.”

Lent provides us with the ideal time to
reflect on all the distractions that fill our lives:
to name them and own them,
so we can begin to work on batting them away,
“begone, away with you.”

This is not as easy as it sounds,
for we need to begin by acknowledging
our own readiness, even eagerness
to turn to whatever it is that is distracting us.
We need to acknowledge that we rather like
the distractions that fill our lives.

We need to acknowledge
how hard it is to take responsibility for our own actions,
We need to acknowledge
that we regularly make bad choices.
We need to acknowledge
that none of us is a victim of some slippery seduction.
We need to acknowledge
how hard it is to say,
“I have disobeyed.”

But these are the first steps to dealing with distractions,
the first steps to learning how to deal
with the distractions that will come tomorrow
and the next day and the next day.
The first steps toward learning how to bat them away,
sweep them away.

I have for quite some time thought
that the most powerful symbol for Lent is the broom,
the ordinary broom.
Lent is the time we should do some spiritual housecleaning,
to take out the broom and sweep away
all those things that clutter up our lives
that distract us from the lives of faithfulness,
and discipleship to which we are called.

The clutter that distracts each of us
is different from person to person,
but we’ve all got it, and we all need to clean it out.
Think of the junk drawers you have in your life,
junk drawers not in your kitchen,
but in your life:
Drawers that contain things that you should have
got rid of long ago, but which you have hung onto.
We have each have drawers that hold grudges,
drawers where we keep prejudices,
drawers that hold our judgments that we have made.

Open up the drawers and acknowledge what is in them.
They distract you from your role as a faithful disciple of Christ.
Dump the contents on the floor,
and sweep them all out,
out into the sunlight,
where they’ll be blown away
by the cleansing wind that is the Spirit of God.

Lent is not a time to take on empty rituals.
It should be a time of deep, spiritual introspection.
“Mortification not of the flesh,
but of your inner self”,
so you can see and acknowledge where you have become
complacent,
where the foundation of your faith is weak
and need shoring up so you are better able
to deal with distractions.

“The purpose of Lent is to arouse,”
writes Edna Hong (Bread and Wine),
“arouse our sense of sin”
to arouse so we can then acknowledge it
acknowledge how we allow ourselves to be distracted,
how we choose distractions over Christ.

Only when we have a sense of our sin,
can we truly begin to understand
what grace is all about,
the amazing grace given to us,
by God through Jesus Christ.

Today is the First Sunday in Lent.
We have but 40 days till Easter; that’s not that much time.
Don’t let anything distract you from the task before you:
acknowledge where you have turned from God,
acknowledge where you have embraced and pursued distractions,
acknowledge where and when you have made bad choices,
acknowledge where you have clutter and junk
that distracts you and weakens the foundation of your faith.

Use these 40 days to do some deep introspection;
some deep cleaning,
and then rebuilding.
God will grace you through his Holy Spirit
with all the strength and energy
you will need to do the work you know you need to do.
God will guide you and help you,
so that in the future you’ll be able to deal with
distractions that come with life,
saying confidently
as our Lord Jesus Christ did,
“Away with you,
for I shall worship the Lord God
and serve only him.”
AMEN