You Will Be Like Gods

1st Sunday of Lent - Genesis 2:7-9, 3:1-7

The LORD God formed man out of the clay of the ground
and blew into his nostrils the breath of life,
and so man became a living being.

Then the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east,
and placed there the man whom he had formed.
Out of the ground the LORD God made various trees grow
that were delightful to look at and good for food,
with the tree of life in the middle of the garden
and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Now the serpent was the most cunning of all the animals
that the LORD God had made.
The serpent asked the woman,
“Did God really tell you not to eat
from any of the trees in the garden?”
The woman answered the serpent:
“We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden;
it is only about the fruit of the tree
in the middle of the garden that God said,
‘You shall not eat it or even touch it, lest you die.’”
But the serpent said to the woman:
“You certainly will 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 woman saw that the tree was good for food,
pleasing to the eyes, and desirable for gaining wisdom.
So she took some of its fruit and ate it;
and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her,
and he ate it.
Then the eyes of both of them were opened,
and they realized that they were naked;
so they sewed fig leaves together
and made loincloths for themselves.

The early chapters of the Book of Genesis are fascinating to say the least. Using what St. John Paul II called mythopoetic language, they describe real events at the dawn of creation and humanity’s fall into sin, real events that, if we are honest, play out in our lives daily. We could spend the entirety of Lent meditating just on the first three chapters of the Bible. 

The first portion of the First Reading this week comes from the Second Creation Story. That’s right. There are two. The first one illustrates the supremacy of God, while this second one illustrates the intimacy of God. Rather than declaring man into existence, God rolls up his sleeves, shapes man with his own hands, and breathes his own breath, his Spirit, into man. Then he proceeds to fashion a home suitable for his incredible creation. That incredible creation is you. The Lord knows all the contours of your existence, and it is his own breath that keeps you in existence. 

And what does the Lord’s incredible creation do with this gift of life? We squander it at the instigation of the Devil. What follows in Genesis 3 is a playbook from the pits of hell. The man’s job was to guard the garden, and yet this fire breathing serpent is allowed to enter and converse with his bride. Nahash in Hebrew is something quite a bit more fearsome than the garter snake from our picture Bibles. This is a direct assault on his mission as guardian. Without speaking to the man at all, the serpent has issued a dare to do his duty coupled with the not-so-subtle suggestion that the man will not do it. He issues that same wordless dare to you and me every day. 

The serpent attacks the woman with a poisonous relationship, a friendly conversation with a fearsome dragon who calls God a liar who is holding out on her. God’s clear and simple command not to eat from one tree has turned blurry. Did God really tell them not to eat from any tree? Can they even touch the tree of knowledge of good and evil? Can we really even know what God wants? The serpent then plants the seed of doubt about God’s goodness and suggests that they can become like God but without God’s help. 

These will be the serpent’s tactics throughout Lent and throughout the rest of our lives: suggesting that we not do our duty, poisonous relationships, turning clear commands blurry, doubting God’s goodness, and trying to be gods ourselves. Praise God that in the aftermath of such rebellion on our part he promises a Redeemer to crush the head of the serpent (see Genesis 3:15). That Redeemer shows us how to resist the lures of the Devil. He atones for every sin from Eden onward on Good Friday, and then on Easter Sunday he even destroys the ultimate punishment for sin when he rises from the dead. These events happened at the dawn of human history, they happened two thousand years ago, and they are happening right now in your own heart.