3  IMAGINARY PLACES 

TO VISIT:  

A GARDEN, A DESERT  

AND A HILL 

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily is, “3 Imaginary Places to Visit: A Garden, a Desert and a Hill.”

When we read today's 3 readings, many themes and thoughts come jumping up out of the text. I'd like to reflect on some of those themes and images:

·        A Garden and It’s Trees

·        The Tree of Life in the Middle of the Garden

·        Serpents and Snakes Sneaking in the Grass  

·        Temptation

·        Sin - Falls from Grace

·        Desert,

·        Temptations: the Big Ones

 CLOSE YOUR EYES

I'd like to begin with a guided imagery and imagination trip. Close your eyes and picture the following 3 scenes. Or picture the following as a dream that you had and this is what you saw.

First of all, you're in a beautiful garden. There are lots of trees - especially fruit trees. There are animals roaming around. They are friendly - Bambi or Teddy Bear like. There are all kinds of flowers. The garden is lush and beautiful. There are water falls and streams. Your feet like the feel of green grass underfoot. Your eyes see the glistening fruit. Your ears are picking up the musical sounds of this tropical paradise all around you.

As you’re meandering through the garden, you spot this special looking fruit tree. You stop. It’s there that you begin to hear a hissing snake – with a seductive whispering voice that says,  “Take and eat!”

You hesitate because you had also heard another voice say, “”Don’t take. Don’t eat from this tree. You can eat from any tree in the garden except this one.”

You think, “There’s always a catch!”

You have entered a new phase of life. Up till you heard those voices you thought, “All is good” -  but now you realize there is forbidden fruit.

You think for a moment: there are plenty of other trees in this garden to pick fruit from. You remember hearing that there is this other tree. It’s called “The Tree of Life” and you know it’s in the middle of the garden.

So secondly, you go looking for that tree. You keep walking around till you come to a hill. There it is: the tree in the middle of the garden - The Tree of Life.

But this tree is not what you expected. It’s not a peaceful moment as back there at the tree with the forbidden fruit.

This tree is different. You see a crowd of people crucifying a naked man on that tree. They are spitting and cursing at him and you can't believe that people can be that cruel to another human being

You hear the words, “Take and eat.”

You don’t. You wonder: “Should I go back to the other tree? You remember that’s where you heard those same words, ‘Take and eat!’ You stand there torn between both trees.”

You look at your watch. It’s getting late. You know will be looking for you – in the garden - in the cool of the evening.

Next, the third image hits you. You picture yourself in a desert for 40 days – the complete opposite of the garden.  That place was easy. This place is tough.

You start to hear deep inner temptations – three  big ones.

First you feel the temptation to sensuality - to pig out, to stuff yourself with food, or stuff, or lust, or money and you are overwhelmed in your body with the choices you have to make.

You say “No!” to this temptation. You choose to say, “Yes” to  the Spirit because you know there is more to life than what you can see and taste and touch.

You ponder this choice – there in the desert – an experience so, so different from your garden experience. Slowly you realize – as you look back at the whole of your life -  that this first temptation is part of everyday life - moving in out of traffic - moving in and out of gardens and deserts - and hills of your life.

Some days you feel all is perfect. Life is a garden. You’re in paradise. Some days you feel hot and bothered. Life is a desert. You’re being sand blasted.

Then you’re hit with the second temptation here in the desert. You sense life’s struggles. Sometimes life feels like it’s all burden.  You feel tempted to avoid work and choose the easy way out by being superficial. It's the temptation to "flash" - to try to dazzle the others with surface trash rather than substance. You remember moments when you were in school and you had to write a term paper. You fake it. You put together junk and you know it. You put your work in an expensive binder. You put in graphs or pictures and use all the computer tricks you know to make it look good. But down deep you know you didn't do your homework.

Then comes the third temptation. You are tempted by power - to Lord it over others. You have a job - any job - and people are under you and you are tempted to use them or ignore them or not listen to them. You see it in government. You see it in the Church, but now you see it in yourself. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. What will you do? What will you choose?

You wake up! You open your eyes. You realize that life sometimes is moments in a plush garden – where all is good – but from time to time your eye spots  forbidden fruit. Sometimes its moments on a hill – seeing someone being crucified. And sometimes it’s like being in a desert being hit by big time temptations.

TODAY'S READINGS: BEGINNING LENT

While I was doing the guided imagery above, what thoughts hit you? Where did you go? What will Lent 2014 look like for you?

As we begin Lent,  the Church wants us to reflect on heavy duty stuff. Today it gives us 3 readings that should be reflected on over and over again. We are in the garden of Eden with Adam and Eve. We are in the Desert with Jesus. We are in the heart of Paul as we find his thoughts in Romans and we have to do some heavy praying and thinking.

Lent is a way of getting us to enter our hearts and see them as a plush garden or as a dry empty desert – or as moments on a hill – sitting under his cross – the Tree of Life.

Many churches – like our church – have this big barren cross up here. How do we see it?  Is it the tree of life for us?

40 DAYS AND 40 NIGHTS

Lent provides us with 40 days to think about all these life issues.

Take sin and temptations to sin. We know they are real. The person who thinks they are without sin, let them turn over the first stone within their hearts. Surprise they will find worms everywhere. Enter deeper into ourselves and we’ll find snakes everywhere. We have snake pits within.

We also have fruit trees in abundance.

So we also have beautiful qualities.

But somehow as we grow older, we begin to discover the knowledge of good and evil. We make choices and we eat of its fruit. We bite into a beautiful apple and discover it's half rotten and a worm crawls within.. The temptation looked perfect from a distance, but we blocked out the ramifications of our behavior.

Take original sin. We run into people who say that they don't believe in Adam and Eve – that story about these two characters in the early pages of the Bible. We run into people who tell us that they don't believe in original sin.

We are tempted to laugh at them, but we choose not to. We know everyone needs to learn all these things are both real and imaginary.  They really exist – but they exist in every human heart.

That’s what a myth is – a story – that helps us understand our story.

Inside each of us is paradise, the garden, the tree with the forbidden fruit on it – as well as the tree of life in the center mountain of our heart – as well as the desert of emptiness.

Adam and Eve is our story. Christ is our story.

It takes time – and sometimes a life time of coming to church – to hear these scriptures – these writings to see, to discover, to learn that they are not just any literature. They are the thoughts of many people put together over many re-tellings on basic human situations.

Have you wrestled with the idea of original sin? I do every time I do a baptism of a baby.  Here is this tiny baby – innocent – and so, so cute. Then I am saying these prayers over this baby – using words like, “kingdom of darkness” and “original sin” and I feel “funny”.

Where is the God who says, “All is good!”

Why are we saying that this little brand new baby – has sin within him or her?

Then I step back and realize – we’re looking at the big picture here.

Give this kid time. Give this kid time to realize that life has forbidden fruit and temptations in the deep desert periods of life. And let’s give this kid – help – strength for the future. Give him or her parents who will give him or her lots of love and good example.

I heard and have never forgotten the saying, “If you want to change a person, you have to change his or her grandfather and grandmother.”

As humans we are tainted by sin. We are not God. We are also tainted by God – and his goodness – and we wrestle all our lives with urges of good and evil, sin and grace, the great tug of war of life.

The sacred scriptures, our bible, wrestle with this issue.

In Chapter 9 of John, in the story of the man born blind, Jesus says he was not born blind because of the sins of his father. Yet – on the other hand we have the DNA and the genes and the eyes of our fathers.

I’ve listened to tapes of people in ACOA – Adult Children of Alcoholics – and yes patterns come down in families – good and bad. If our grandparents  could speak, maybe they would say they are sorry for sins and bad example they have show and passed down to us. Maybe they would say that they got them from their parents and back and back and back. So greed begets greed. Lust begets lust. Anger begets anger. I jump on someone for spilling coffee on my note pad and they are steaming at being yelled at, so they go out and pick on someone else and the domino effect of anger ripples across the world - starting with me. Or did I get angry because someone yelled at me for spilling coffee twenty years ago. Hell, I was just a kid.

But this is too simplistic an understanding of original sin and sin in general. We have to go much deeper – and this enough – too much for now.

Good thing we have one more Lent  - and many Lents to come - to tackle these  big issues.

CONCLUSION

I sense each of us has to write our own Confessions like Augustine – to explain what we have come up on all this as of today. Each of us has to write our own Letter to The Romans as well. And let’s throw in the need to make imaginary journeys into the garden and desert in our being – as well as stand under the cross of Jesus – and hear him say, “Take and eat. Take and eat.” Amen.