Angel Food Mathhew 4:1-11, Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7

Angel Food
Matthew 4:1-11
Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7

Do you know the story of Tantalus?
It’s one of those Greek myths that tell us so much about ourselves.
There are different versions of the story,
but one version says that Tantalus was invited to Mt. Olympus to dine with the gods.
There he misbehaved and tried to bring ambrosia, the food of the gods,
back to his people so that they, too, would know the secrets of the gods.
Zeus, being Zeus, got angry
and, as punishment for daring to pull back the curtain and expose the divine council,
Tantalus was forced to stand in a pool of water under a low hanging fruit tree.
Every time he reached for a piece of fruit to eat, the wind would blow
raising the limbs with the fruit just beyond reach of his fingertips.
And every time he bent to take a drink,
the water would quickly recede before he could even wet his lips.
Today we think of Tantalus every time something we want is just out of reach
and we are “tantalized” by it.

The story of Tantalus begs the question,
“What would it be like to eat the food of the gods?”
What would it be like to slip out of our mortality and know what God knows?
Would it be so bad if you and I could, from time to time,
shrug off the heavy coat of bum knees and blurred vision;
unlace the corset of unfulfilled dreams and debilitating fear;
pull off the mittens of helplessness, the goggles of short-sightedness
and do something truly Olympian?
Know something or say something divinely profound?
As long as human beings have been telling stories,
we’ve spun yarns about this impulse we have to step over divine boundaries.
Greek mythology suggests that human beings are prevented from achieving divine power
because of the jealousy of the gods.
The gods simply don’t want the competition.
The stories of our FAITH, however, hint at another reason entirely.
The stories of our faith tell us that we as human beings must live within our limits
for our own good.
To try to go beyond our limits is to exceed the specifications for which we were created
and like a single engine airplane trying to break the speed of sound
or a fisherman trying to land a shark with a cane pole
it’s a sure-fire recipe for disaster.

Look at the story of the Garden of Eden.
Barbara Brown Taylor, writer and preacher, sums up the story of the Garden by saying
“The point is, God drew a line in the Garden of Eden and said,
‘Human beings on this side, God on this side.
Tree of Life on your side, tree of the knowledge of good and evil on my side.
Stay on your side of the line if you know what’s good for you’.”1
The resulting drama with the crafty snake, the gullible Eve, and the clueless Adam
is not, as some would spin it, a story telling us who to blame for evil in the world.
It’s simply a tale we tell to admit
that we human beings have never been good at respecting boundaries.
There are reasons for this:
We don’t respect the boundaries between the human and the divine
because we are so easily impressed by our own cleverness.
Just this past Friday I heard that someone has made a radio
that can fit on the head of a pin.
They made it out of something called carbon nanotubes.2
It seems that today’s technology, silicon chips
will soon go the way of glass vacuum tubes.
Somebody who can make a radio that will fit on the head of a pin
is pretty smart; pretty special – wouldn’t you say?

We don’t respect the boundaries between the human and the divine
not only because we’re so clever,
but because it’s so hard for us to get the distance from ourselves
that’s required to see ourselves for who we really are.
It’s so hard for us to understand why the values we hold dear
and our way of doing things and thinking about things
are not universally admired and copied.
I’m so smart and funny and compassionate and RIGHT
that I must be at least a little bit divine, don’t you think?

We’re clever and we’re near-sighted
and a third reason we don’t respect the boundaries between the human and the divine
is because being alive feels so permanent.
It’s simply hard to imagine that we AREN’T immortal.
When my eyes are open and my heart’s beating and my lungs are filling with air
it’s just difficult to take death seriously.

So listen, you may be clever.
You may be an upstanding citizen and have a firm grip on what you believe.
You may be a live wire, sure enough.
But you’re not God. Hate to break it to you. You’re not God. Not even close.
And that’s fine. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.
In fact, it’s the way you were made.

Despite the limitations, being human is a state of grace.
That’s what Jesus showed us in the wilderness.
Being human is a state of grace.

Matthew tells us,
“Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the Devil.”
Jesus has just been baptized by John in the Jordan.
He’s felt the touch of the Spirit on him and heard a voice, a DIVINE voice, from heaven
saying, “This is my son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
It’s the kind of experience that might turn a man’s head;
the kind of experience that might start a man thinking about stepping over the line;
testing the boundaries between himself and God.
But, Jesus doesn’t just sit and dwell on his baptism.
In no time flat he finds himself in the Judean desert looking for water,
fasting for all he’s worth.

We’re told he fasted 40 days.
Don’t take that too literally.
In the Bible, the number 40 simply means
“the right length of time to accomplish the purpose.”
Jesus fasted 40 days in the wilderness –
or, just enough time to fully experience his flesh and blood humanness
in all it’s weakness.
“He was FAMISHED,” Matthew tells us. Nothing but skin and bones.

Those who look to this story to try to understand the “Devil”
or to get a firm grip on the nature of evil or the effects of temptation
are sure to be disappointed.
In fact, in Matthew’s account the Devil seems quite the gentleman.
He’s no psychopathic serial killer, no tyrannical dictator, no beady-eyed CEO.
He’s just as beguiling here as he was in the Garden story,
tipping his hat and cutting quite the figure in his snakeskin boots.
He’s there simply to tempt Jesus to cross the line;
to get him to deny his humanity by giving into the impulse to play God;
• to be as compassionate as God by turning stones into bread so none need hunger;
• to be as unfettered as God so as to be free even of gravity’s downward pull;
• to be as omnipotent as God, ruling over every king and kingdom.

We know that later in his ministry the Scriptural witness to Jesus will, in fact,
record instances when Jesus does all the things the Devil suggests:
• feeds 5000 with just a few loaves and fish
• ascends into the clouds following his resurrection as the disciples look on
• takes his place at the right hand of God to rule in power
so that every knee bows and every tongue confesses him as Lord.
But Jesus does these things in his own time and on his own terms.
He does them only after he has asserted his full humanity.
He does them only after he has felt hunger, known loneliness, embraced fear.

In the story of the Garden of Eden, the humans, Adam and Eve, give in to the temptation;
they do not accept the built-in limits of humanity;
The irony is, in trying to exceed the limits of their humanity
they end up falling short of the full potential of humanity –
the reason for which they were created in the first place -
which is to have an uncomplicated, loving relationship with their Creator.

In the story of Jesus in the wilderness, the human, Jesus, resists temptation
embraces the limits of flesh and bone, head and heart, and in so doing
restores for each of us our capacity to be close to God.

If we’re honest, we admit that we chaff under the itch of our humanity.
Sometimes it feels like a cheap wool sweater two sizes too small.
But this season, the season of Lent, is the time to buck up and claim our humanity;
to encourage one another to embrace our limited-ness.
It’s the time to acknowledge sadness, pain, disappointment and even death
as part of the deal; as part of the package of being in this world.
Even if we could somehow catch the comet’s tail and rise above it all,
think of what we would lose in the process.

Matthew ends his story by saying that when the Devil was through with Jesus
angels came and waited on him.
As a child I heard that line and imagined a huddle of winged beings
around the weakened, emaciated Jesus, tut-tutting and tsk-tsking,
holding fine china plates and feeding him with polished silver forks.
And what did they feed him?
Not ambrosia, no way! They fed him angel food cake, of course.
The kind my mother would bake from scratch that funny looking cake pan.
It always seemed a miracle to me, how that cake would come out of the oven -
a perfect circle, eight inches tall, golden brown on the top and light as a feather.
Mom had a special thin wire cake cutter just for cutting angel food cakes
and I see her now lovingly laying a thick wedge on my grandmother’s china plate
spooning out stiff whipped cream and a topping of fresh strawberries.
Mom quit baking years ago. She slipped into dementia at the end of her life.
She lost the ability at the end of her life to follow a recipe, even the old ones in her head.
When I think of her dementia, her decline, her death – her humanity - it stinks.
But without her, without her humanity, I never would have tasted the food of angels.
______
1Taylor, Barbara Brown. Remaining Human, “Living By the Word,” The Christian Century, February 7, 1996.
2 Nano Scale Radio Shows Carbon Electronics Potential, Ira Flato interviewing John Rogers, NPR Talk of the Nation Science Friday, February 08, 2008.