Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7; Psalm 32; Romans 5:12-19; Matthew 4:1-11
The Rev. Candice B. Frazer
Serpent in the garden, Satan in the wilderness—every year most of us approach Lent from the place of temptation believing we are not enough and that God can only love us if we give something up or take something on or be something different. But what if God simply loves us for who we truly are—beloved children, created by God and called good from our inception? What if we are already enough?
The world will not tell you this. Nations and principalities and kingdoms and powers will tell you that you are not enough, that you can never be enough. That no matter how much you try, you still need this one more product, this one more belief, this one more desire fulfilled in order for you to truly be all that you can be and more. It is the lie we tell ourselves to overcome our short fallings. It is the lie born that day in the Garden of Eden when Eve saw the tree was good for food, a delight to the eyes, and the path to wisdom.
We can’t help it. We are fallen creatures born of fallen parents. We continue the lie, generation upon generation, that we must become something different, something more—an elusive game that we must leave our mark upon the world to prove our worth. We compromise our values and lose our sense of self-worth in order to prove ourselves to others and, maybe in our finer moments, prove ourselves to God. We can’t accept our failures, our mistakes, our weaknesses and instead, like Eve, blame others for them refusing to own our self-responsibility.
I have a friend, let’s call her Emma. Emma is a beautiful woman—smart and talented and funny as she can be. She was adopted as a baby to two loving, wonderful people who doted on her and gave her a fairy tale life. She was treated as a princess and she lived into that persona—wearing pearls with t-shirts and excelling at everything she did. There was never a time that Emma did not know she was adopted. Her parents told her that all the time. At some point in her young adulthood, she decided to seek out her biological parents. She had struggled with alcoholism and this had caused her to wonder if there might be a genetic connection. In some ways, I think she also wondered if life might have been different, better, with biological parents. She had fallen for the lie that there had to be more in life—there had to be some reason she was not enough.
Though Emma had never lacked anything—love or material goods—in her growing up; the idea of rejection was too much for her. So she sought a family that she believed would make her whole. Finding her birth mother was not encouraging. She was poor, single, and had multiple other children who had done little to further their lives or break out of the cycle of poverty. Instead of seeing her adoption as a gift, Emma allowed herself to sink into further self-doubt and worthlessness marrying a man who would gaslight her and lead her into a dark hole of depression and eventually drug addiction.
That is what happens when we eat of the tree of knowledge—not gas lighting and drug addiction, but self-doubt and a loss of worth. We no longer believe in who we are, who God created us to be. We cannot trust the simple truth that we are beloved, that we are good.
Emma, in her despair, sank lower and lower into the bondage of self-doubt and worthlessness. She began to steal for drugs—a carton of cigarettes, a six pack of beer. Then she began to prostitute herself, trading sexual favors for her next high. My sweet friend who had a private school education, a college degree, had been a teacher and helped other children to achieve their dreams, had become a strung out drug addict with nowhere to turn. Her parents, the ones who adopted her and loved her unconditionally, never rejected her. They would not give her money but they paid for her apartment and bought her groceries once a week, imploring her to turn her life around. Sadly, the shame she felt at their love for her only caused her to spiral more deeply into the darkness. Their refusal to reject her was almost unbearable for her. She could not accept who they saw her to be. In their eyes, she was a beloved child. In her eyes, she was sinner who could never be redeemed.
So often this is who we believe ourselves to be—sinners in need of redemption. We get stuck in this moment of time when Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the tree and forever defined us as sinners instead of creatures of God who are good. We get so distracted by the bad things in life—all the times we have failed one another, ourselves, even God—that we can not see any definition other than sinner be it in relation to ourselves or to others.
Emma’s life is no fairy tale. No matter how much her parents tried to give her everything, she came away with nothing. Her life spiraled out of control for several years—even to the point of me having to tell her not to contact me again until she had gotten treatment which was the hardest thing I have ever had to do. Not because of me or anyone else, she finally found the courage to get sober. She checked herself into a recovery program for the umpteenth time—and for whatever reason, this time it worked. She got clean, she found a man who loved her for who she is, she reunited with her parents, she has three beautiful daughters including a special needs child who she has poured her life into. Today she is happy and finding her way in the world in creative and redemptive means that no longer define her as wanting but as making what was once ugly and rejected, beautiful and desired.
The funny thing is, that is the way God has always seen Emma—beautiful and desired. It was she who could not see herself that way—in part because the world is always telling us that we are neither beautiful or desired and in part because we choose to eat the forbidden fruit and live in shadow instead of accepting that which has always been available to us in the light of day—God’s unconditional love and desire for us. Because there is absolutely nothing we can do to separate ourselves from the love of God.
However you spend your Lent this year—giving something up or taking on some new discipline—I hope that it clears away the clutter and distraction of the world that wants to tell you that you are not enough and, instead, reminds you and reinforces the knowledge and love of God for you, that you are always enough no matter who you are or what you have done. God loves you and from the moment of your creation—through all of your earthly life and into your eternal one—God claims you as good. In the simplest of terms and the most basic of meanings—you are good. If for no other reason than because: God made you, God knows you, and God loves you.