Scars in the Snow
Tempting accusations in the first Sunday in Lent
The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.”
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?” The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’ ” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die, for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman 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, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.
Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7
Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tested by the devil. He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterward he was famished. The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” But he answered, “It is written,
‘One does not live by bread alone,
but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ ”
Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written,
‘He will command his angels concerning you,’
and ‘On their hands they will bear you up,
so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’ ”
Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’ ”
Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory, and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” Then Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written,
‘Worship the Lord your God,
and serve only him.’ ”
Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.
Matthew 4:1-11
We have come back around to the season of Lent, a time of taking honest stock in where we are and where our sin may be in our walk with God. This naturally involves looking at temptation as our readings do today. And if we’re going to look at temptation, we’ve got to also take a look at how Satan works.
Satan is playing the role of the tempter here in our Matthew reading, even explicitly called “the tempter.” While the snake in Genesis is not specifically named as Satan, he still fulfills the role of the tempter in this notorious seduction of Eve. However, the Bible does not name the figure of “Satan” until the Book of Job. There, Satan does not get his name as a tempter, but rather another role, almost opposite to the Tempter: the Accuser.1
If we’re going to take stock of where we are with sin, our mistakes, and how we deviate from God, let’s think about these two big umbrella names for Satan: the Tempter and the Accuser. These roles are more related than we may think, two opposite sides of falling off the Way that are really entwined in the same thing: spiritual pride. Let me explain.
If you drove by our house this week, there is a good chance you saw my car looking like it was in the middle of the Daytona 500, tilted upwards 45 degrees, but instead of a track, my tires were spinning in snow off our raised driveway. This first happened on the right side of the driveway when I was backing up and just started feeling the slip. I thought, this isn’t so bad, I’m only barely off. So, tempted by hubris, I thought, I can just get out of this myself with a little creative mat placement. When that didn’t work, I thought I’d just turn my wheel the other way, go into reverse, and back up right onto the driveway. This only made matters worse, physics sliding my car further off. I dug out some more snow, waited for my wife to get home so I could push while she drove, and I still thought we could get it, but we just got deeper and deeper into the snow and off the driveway. Round one to hubris, saved by the grace of a tow, but deeply embarrassed.
So a couple days later, I clear our driveway, see the large gash on the hubris side, and say to myself that if there’s anything I’m not going to do, it’s get in that same ditch again. So I back up and overcorrect the other direction towards the house and the deceptively built-up snow. And yes, I fall on the other side, caught on the edge and in the air again. If you thought I was mad at myself the first time in embarrassment, this was true self-loathing (this Lent, I’m giving neighbors the gift of hearing the pastor swear). There was no temptation of hubris in this failure.
In both cases, while there was a physical problem of falling off on the side of the road, the real problem was my pride, showing up first as arrogance, then as humiliation. I was so embarrassed from the first failure, so adamant not to be hubristic, I ended up falling in and creating another gash on the other side. Even after a fresh snowfall on Friday night, these gashes look almost like scars in the snow.
I believe most of us carry some of these scars in the snow of our souls, on one side of the ditch or the other. These scars tell stories of pain, the times when temptation, hubris, and arrogance of our spiritual pride got us off the path of God that it caused us to hurt ourselves or other people. These scars tell a story to ourselves that “I must never do this again.” But perhaps this takes us to the other side of spiritual pride, and we become enamored by intense judgment, either from ourselves or a family member or authority figure or in our idea of God. If we become scarred by this judgment and realize it’s a ditch, we might reject the idea that we must ever feel shame, and there we are back on the other ditch of hubris doing what we feell like. One way Satan works is by feeding our spiritual pride on either side, driving a wedge between us and God by trying to create in us the scars of arrogance and the scars of shame.
This is Satan at his worst as both Tempter and Accuser. The Tempter gives us the pride of excessive non-judgment, that we can come up with our own rules, that God’s will doesn’t matter. The snake does this through his famous question, “Did God really say…?” Satan takes this idea further, goading Jesus by tempting him with Scripture, “Look, here’s what God really said. Now go use that power of yours.” Jesus, of course, counters with more Scripture, discerning the higher priorities, holding onto God’s overarching will.
But we are not like Jesus. We twist Scripture to be what we wish it to be and grab that fruit, seeking that knowledge of good and evil, for at least if we break God’s law, we’ll know something more true about the universe, the dark side of human nature. “Maybe,” we might think, “I can really be like God and know how to use my evil for good.” But the tragic irony is that as we keep trying to take more and more bites of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, we don’t actually gain the knowledge of God; as Paul repeatedly says, the peak of our wisdom is utter foolishness compared to God’s foolishness in the cross. “Anyone who claims to know something does not yet have the necessary knowledge, but anyone who loves God is known by him.” (1 Cor 8:2-3) And so the devil wedges us away from our love of God and being truly intimate with him, tempted by our own voracious appetite not simply for lusts of the flesh, but power, including the power of human knowledge and human wisdom.
So that’s the Tempter. I think we understand him better than the Accuser. But while the Accuser is Satan’s role in the Book of Job, the Accuser is actually in the snake in Genesis too, embedded within temptation. In Job, Satan plays the role of prosecutor, accusing Job of only loving God because God blesses him so much. But also, implicit in that is Satan accusing God that he is only loved because humans love what he does for them. And so as the story goes, Satan then tempts Job through suffering to curse God, which he never does.
Back to the Garden. In Genesis, the snake is not only tempting Eve, but also accusing both God and Eve through lies (another name for the devil, diabolos, is “the slanderer”). The snake accuses God of envy, saying, “God didn’t give you those rules because he loves you, but because he feels threatened by you. Eat the fruit, open your eyes, be like him.” Quite an accusation. Hidden within this is another accusation, this time towards humans: if you can only become like God by breaking his laws, then the fundamental accusation is that you are not enough for God. You ought to be ashamed at how pathetic you are. You can’t even get your car out of the snow. We religious people should recognize how often we can become the Accuser. The Accuser can be turned just as easily on ourselves as we turn it on other people.
If the Tempter part of the devil says, “Did God really mean that?”, the Accuser says, “You are too despicable for God.” The Tempter, pulling us to the Ditch of Arrogance, tells us that God’s rules are just suggestions, that obedience is unnecessary, and when we fall in that ditch, the Accuser yanks us the other way to the Ditch of Shame, which tells us we are utter frauds, that forgiveness is impossible, and God does not love you after all. The Tempter wants us to seize power by our own rules and become our own gods, while the Accuser says, “What an utter evil fool you were, and your rightful place is there in the ditch.”
Whether the devil is accusing you of being too bad or tempting you to think you’re too good, the goal is to get you off the path of trust and into a ditch of self-obsession by slandering us and slandering God. The very name of Jesus, Emmanuel, means, “God is with you,” and Satan wants us to believe, in one way or another, “God is not really with you. You cannot touch him, and he never wants to touch you.” A deep lie.
There is another option between the two deformed choices, either the Accuser with deformed judgment or the Tempter with deformed non-judgment. In between these ditches, on the Way, is discernment, trusting God’s commandments as reflecting his deep wisdom, receiving his teaching as a beautiful gift for us. In between these ditches is walking with Jesus and knowing he is not disgusted by you but wants to walk with you. In between these ditches is believing no, Satan, God really is with me. He is with all of us.
When we deeply discern, we can’t help but eventually end up at a place of confession. When we realize that yes, we cannot make ourselves like God, we repent of the ways we try to break spiritual laws and instead turn to utter reliance on God. When we realize we cannot perfectly obey the rules anyway, we turn to his mercies, new every morning. We remember that no matter how great or deep our sin is—and it is great and deep—God’s love is even greater and even deeper. It always is.
One of our big mistakes is making the devil too powerful, obsessing over his ditches—perhaps I’ve just done that here. We often end up in one ditch precisely because we’ve obsessed about the opposite ditch; we end up in shame because we’re obsessed with perfection, or we end up utterly depraved because we’re obsessed with not feeling shame. When Jesus faces these temptations and accusations, he simply shifts the paradigm: away, Satan, I don’t want that. I want to be fully with God and to love what he loves. I don’t want to fight your ditches, I want to be with him.
Have you fallen off on one side of the ditch recently? Have you done something awful, or can’t stop doing awful things to yourself? Have you been unkind? Have you been unfair? Have you been inconsiderate or inconsistent? Have you said something you’ve regretted, or held back something you realize you should have said? Have you been the accuser or the tempter? Do you have those scars in your snow? And has it been such a long winter that those tracks gashed into you are a memory that will not go away? Are the scars so deep that even when fresh snow falls, they are still there?
Fear not. The ice and snow will melt under his warmth. Your scars in the snow may still be there. There might still be tire tracks in the spring, there might be a bumper off, or maybe a screw or two loose. But as we carry on in Lent, trying and failing to drive on the path of discernment, never believe the lies of temptation or accusation. Remember that God is always with you. He knows your scars, for he carries his own. Amen.
Sometimes rendered Opponent or Adversary, the Accuser