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The Three Temptations: Health, Wealth, and Wisdom

The Very Reverend Sam G. Candler
The Cathedral of St. Philip
Atlanta, Georgia
The First Sunday of Lent
10 February 2008

When 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, they took of its fruit and ate.
–Genesis 3:6

What could possibly be wrong with health, wealth, and wisdom?

Health, wealth, and wisdom. They have been the goals of human industry and social progress for as long as we creatures of God have been gathering together. Health, wealth, and wisdom.

The old American sage, Benjamin Franklin, captured the sentiment quite well when he advised, “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”

Those three goals continue to fascinate us. Bookstores and advertisements around the world offer the latest health trend, or the next sure way to gain wealth, or how to feed and sharpen our minds. Health, wealth, and wisdom do not only fascinate us; they pull us into their power like magnets. They lure us. Indeed, they tempt us.

Health, wealth, and wisdom are temptations.

I know we do not ordinarily think of them as temptations. We usually think of something like the seven deadly sins when we think of temptation. Surely the things that we can do wrong in this life are the major sins: pride, greed, envy, anger, lust, gluttony, sloth.

During Lent, when many of us focus on sin in our lives, those are the sins we are most likely to note. How do I become less prideful, less greedy, less envious, less angry, less lustful, gluttonous, or lazy?

Those sins—the seven deadly sins—are always worth remembering. But, today, on the First Sunday of Lent, we hear about a different character of temptation. When Jesus was alone for forty days with the Great Tempter, Satan himself, it is not recorded that he was tempted by pride, or greed, or envy, or anger, or lust, or gluttony, or laziness.

Perhaps one might interpret Satan’s offers as one of these well-known sins. But, generally speaking, the temptations of Satan are much more subtle. Here, eat some bread; you’re hungry. Here, exercise your responsible power of the kingdoms of the world. Here, why don’t you prove yourself the Son of God by having God’s angels protect and save you?

The temptations of Satan to Jesus Christ are just like the temptations of Satan to each of us. They are subtle and sly. They slip into our souls like snakes sliding right under the front door.

Well, such is the way temptation has been part of the human experience from the very beginning. From the beginning of history, for as long as human beings have been self-aware, self-conscious, and able to discern something called right and something called wrong—from the very beginning of what it means to be human—we have been aware of temptation.

And, thus, we have been aware of sin. In our self-awareness, in our true self-knowledge, we have known that no matter how far our human cultures advance and mature, there always seems to be something holding us back, always something going wrong, always something that misses the mark.

Cultures around the world are aware of this feature of human existence, and cultures around the world try to tell the story of how sin came into the world. Or how suffering came into the world. Or why evil is in the world.

Our story, the Christian story, is told in these beautiful first three chapters of the Book of Genesis. We hear there about Adam and Eve, the first human creations of God, male and female. We hear about that idyllic, fantasy place of long ago called “Garden of Eden,” a place that is probably out of the realm of time entirely, and out of the realm of history itself.
 
Our story explains sin using a snake and an apple. In Genesis, sin does not come about through pride, or greed, or envy, or anger, or lust, or gluttony, or laziness. [Those sins are slightly evident in our story (especially pride and envy), but, specifically, they came later. Sin does come about through disobedience, yes. We can spend hours discussing disobedience.]

No, sin comes about through something else in our story. Sin occurs through the pursuit of something good. This is the tragedy of human existence that Genesis tries to explain to us. Sin occurs through the pursuit of something good.

In Genesis, chapter three, the Fall of the Man and the Woman occurs through the pursuit of health, wealth, and wisdom. If anyone has ever been able to heed Ben Franklin’s advice, surely it must have been Adam and Eve. “Early to bed, early to rise, makes man and woman healthy, wealthy, and wise.”

What did the man and woman see in the apple that the serpent was offering so temptingly? The serpent noted that the man and woman would not die if they ate of it, and the serpent noted that they would be like God. Certainly the serpent was sliding close to the sins of pride and envy.

But look again at Genesis chapter three, verse six. What did the man and the woman actually see in that apple? They saw three things. They saw that the tree was good for food, they saw that it was a delight to the eyes, and they saw that the tree was to be desired to make one wise.

It was good for food: health. It was a delight to the eyes: beauty—wealth! It made one wise: wisdom. Health, wealth, and wisdom. What can possible be wrong with health, wealth, and wisdom?

Humanity has been trying to answer that question since the Garden of Eden. What is wrong with being healthy and beautiful, wealthy and wise? In fact, we need sustenance; we need a sense of beauty; we need wisdom. Yet, throughout history, our pursuit of those goals has led to greed, envy, and violence.

In our pursuit of good things—things like health, wealth, and wisdom— we end up doing bad things. This is human history. In our pursuit of good things, we miss the mark and end up injuring one another, doing violence to our neighbor, and harming even ourselves.

This story from Genesis is one of the most powerful stories in human history because it describes our human condition so deeply. Most of us human beings actually try to do right. We want to do the good thing, the right thing.

We look at the tree in the middle of the garden and we see how good it is for food, how it is a delight to the eyes, and how it makes us wise; and so we pursue health, wealth, and wisdom. We take of the fruit and we eat. And history is changed forever.

There is no way to go back. Our human history will never return to a place and a time called the Garden of Eden. This season of Lent reminds us of that proclivity to sin. And, as hard as we will try to keep our Lenten disciplines, we know that we will not avoid sin. We cannot return to the Garden of Eden.

We journey now towards a new heaven and a new garden. God can no longer protect us from sin. But God has mercy. God delivers us from evil not by avoiding evil, but by guiding us through the valley of the shadow of death.

It may be a good thing that we ate of the fruit and so entered the world of history and of right and wrong and of good and evil. As of Genesis, chapter, three, we are now a part of God’s creative and saving work in the world.

God’s work in the world is about redemption, and now we human beings are part of that work with God. The story of Genesis is that we cannot avoid, and we will never avoid, temptation and sin. But the Christian story is that Jesus Christ—the second Adam—defeats temptation and sin; Jesus Christ leads us through the wilderness of sin into a new life.

Today, then, we know two things. One is that the proclivity to sin, the tendency to sin, is inherently part of what it means to be human. But, secondly, being human also means being redeemed in Jesus Christ.

Being human means walking this Lenten journey with Christ, from the garden of the first Adam, through exile and wilderness, to the new garden of the second Adam, the Easter wholeness and Easter beauty and Easter truth—the Easter health, wealth, and wisdom of Jesus Christ our Lord.

AMEN.

The Very Reverend Samuel G. Candler
Dean of the Cathedral of St. Philip

Comments? Contact Dean Candler at: SCandler@stphilipscathedral.org

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