Tempted to be Perfect

Text: Genesis 3:1-7

It is tempting to read this passage in Matthew as a call to us to be perfect.

We are all tempted by one thing or another, we think, and in this Gospel story Jesus is tempted by the same things. One view is that we all need food, we all need safety, and we all need to have some control over our lives. So those are the things with which the tempter tests Jesus. A darker view of the temptations is that represent our desire to magically force the world to our will, to be the center of something spectacular, and to have power over all who would thwart us.

Either way, in the story Jesus is tempted as we are, by the things we are. But the difference between us and Jesus is that we succumb to temptations and Jesus does not. We are human, after all, and sin. But Jesus, who is supposed to be a model for us, is perfect. We, if you buy this interpretation, are supposed to be perfect, too. But I don’t buy it, and I don’t think Jesus would, either.

Perfection is a tricky sort of thing.

When a couple gives birth to new baby, or adopts one, you hear the parents say, “He’s just perfect,” “she’s just perfect.” The couple’s friends see a wonderful child, but sometimes a little bald or a little flushed or whatever—signs of humanity—wonderful but not perhaps perfect. It may be that the eyes of the new parents are blinded. It may be that they see perfection where the rest of us see only really-good.

It may be that parents see more poorly than others. Or maybe instead they see better. And that perfection is what they see. Their child, though as flawed as humanity can be, is perfect.

When God created the heavens and the earth—in Genesis, before the Garden episode we just heard about—when God created each day, at the end of the day God pronounced it good. God said in Hebrew: It is Tov. Which means a little more than good. It means good like everything is working fine and all the parts seem to fit the way they are supposed to. It means perfect, like when you finish a project and you’re pretty happy about it and you say, “perfect.” God made the world, and God said, “perfect. It’s just perfect.” Perfect for what it is, like a perfect new child is perfect—just so, creation was perfect.

The actions of the man and the woman did not undo that. A child grows and the parents still look and see a perfect child. Even though as people grow up they do things that are messed up, they are no less children of their parents, who see them as at the same time both flawed and perfect. Does God see creation with eyes any less loving?

The story of the events in the garden is a story written from our point of view. The point of view of humanity now. How in the world did we get to this state of affairs? In a sense, the garden story is a story of growing up. And like all good growing up stories, the key moment is the discovery of evil. The story doesn’t so much explain things as name them. We humans feel the force of evil. Something that is greater than our own individual inclinations to be bad. Something more cosmic than that.

The story is a story of discovery. An unfortunate discovery, for sure. The man and woman eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Not just the tree of knowledge: this is not about wisdom. And not the tree of evil. The tree is the tree of knowledge of good and evil. What the man and woman know now that they didn’t before is that evil exists, that is causes harm and hurt, and that it is different from good. And different from God. And they discover that humans are somehow caught in the interaction.

What changes is what they know, not what they are or who they are. Which is mortal children of God. This story is not the story of the beginning of sin. We do not learn from this story that sin is brought into the world by the actions of the woman and man, in spite of what the Apostle Paul argues. All we do know is that the are both tempted by a serpent, which most of us, correctly I think, make out to be the devil, the evil one. And that they succumb. They are changed. But they are no more changed in type or nature than we are as children or as our children are.

We often think of sin as some kind of unfortunate add-on. An ugly and burdensome accessory. Or like a few extra pounds that we carry. Something we can get rid of as easily as we can rid ourselves of extra weight by dieting: something difficult but possible. We sometimes look at the saints (or sainted people we know) as we look at the “after” models in diet ads. People who have amazingly prevailed.

But sin is not shed by spiritual diets. That’s what Luther found when he decided that all his good works (all his diet-like discipline) weren’t helping him. Sin is of us. That does not mean we are bad. Only that we are creatures. We sin.

God loves us for what we are. I’m sure you have heard that before. But this does not mean that God loves us in spite of our sins. Not that God loves our clean souls that happen to be covered in mud at the moment. God loves us in our sins, not in spite of them. God loves us because we are still perfect, each still God’s child.

We love one another for our vulnerabilities, not in spite of them. That’s why, I suspect, people love you. People love you for your vulnerabilities. Not because you are so great, but because you are great and also you are not always so great. God loves us because we are great and not so great.

The story in Matthew is not about us being perfect. It is not about us at all. It is about Jesus, who he is, his identity, and the life that he is about to enter. It is a temptation story, but the temptation that he faces in the desert and in his life is not the temptation to be perfect. Which is not a problem for Jesus. Jesus feels in the desert the strong urges that all people feel. Eating when hungry, worrying about being safe, trying to keep things under control. Jesus feels, in this beginning of his ministry, what it is to be human.

And the temptation of Jesus is to give in to his desire to be human. To be like an ordinary human. To be only so brave and not braver. To live a long and happy life in the company of his best friends. To avoid his mission and destiny. To avoid the inevitable suffering and the cross ahead.

When Jesus dismisses the tempter: Away with you, Satan!—he uses the same words he uses later to dismiss Peter. Get behind me, Satan! Peter offers what the tempter offers. Human living. Peter and the tempter hold out to Jesus what only he cannot have: a mortal and flawed life just like ours. Jesus, like earthly leaders, only more so, is alone.

The desire to be perfect is Satan’s call. He tempts Jesus and us with the prospect of ignoring, escaping, or dismissing the world. His call appears in many voices of the world suggesting that we can be perfect. They are, as we say in baptism, the devil’s empty promises. They call to us. But God’s voice is not one of them.