The Power of Myth

2026-16
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
by the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector

The First Sunday in Lent, February 22, 2026

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7 ; Psalm 32 ; Romans 5:12-19 ; Matthew 4:1-11

If you were here last week on Ash Wednesday, you heard me say this:

In the Garden of Eden, we made the ill-advised decision to try to be like God. And God said, “Well, if you insist. This is going to be harder than you think, so let’s get started. But you can’t stay in this safe little garden. Out you go!”

You may not have heard the story told that way before. A far more common Christian understanding of “the Fall” is that Adam and Eve disobeyed God and were rightly punished. But this has never been the only understanding of the Adam and Eve myth.

And yes, I said myth, because we are indeed talking about myth.

Last week we heard from the Second Letter of Peter that Peter didn’t follow “cleverly devised myths” when he shared the news of Jesus’ Transfiguration on the mountaintop. It may have been a slap against competing schools of thought like Epicureanism or Stoicism. But this week we hear a story that is very clearly a myth. Is the Garden of Eden a “cleverly devised myth”?

Well, it’s certainly clever, in that it ties together multiple threads of human anxiety to explain a core dilemma. Is it “devised”? A better word might be “developed.” We don’t know who first began telling the story of Adam, Eve, and the serpent—or exactly when. We only know that it was handed down to us out of the mists of ancient Jewish lore.

Nothing about the story suggests that we should treat it as history. But it would be an error to assume that just because it’s a myth, that makes it useless.

The story of the Garden of Eden addresses several core questions. Why do we so often do the wrong thing even when we know the right thing? Why is God so seemingly hidden from us that we can deny God’s very existence, or at least deny God’s power to act? Why is humanity never in sync with God’s hopes for our world?

Along the way, the story addresses a few other points, like: Why are humans afraid of snakes? Why do we wear clothes? And more importantly … why do we die?

I see yet another question addressed here: Would God ever lie to us? Maybe for a good reason? God tells Adam and Eve that if they eat the fruit, they will die on that very day. The serpent says, “Nonsense! The fruit isn’t poison. It’s powerful, and it will change the way you see the world.” Who turns out to be telling the truth?

In the Letter to the Romans, Paul presents a full-fledged theology about the effect of that fruit. “Sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned.” For Paul, the death that did come was more complicated than immediately face-planting in the grass. Adam and Eve weren’t in the garden long enough to learn whether they would ever die from natural causes. But as Genesis goes on, they do indeed die.

Paul uses the Eden myth to set up his theology of Christ’s death and resurrection. For him, Adam and Jesus are bookends on the human experience. Adam created the problem, and Jesus undoes it. In medieval times, the story came to be told another way as well: Eve created the problem; she was the first to taste the fruit. But another woman undoes the problem, and that’s Mary—by being willing to become the mother of Jesus.

The myth of Eden is not to be taken literally, but to be unpacked and looked at from lots of different angles—internalized and utilized and only then, in a more complex way, to be believed in.

So let’s turn now to the story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. Is this also a myth? I bet I’m making you nervous here. Many of us raised in non-fundamentalist churches are quite comfortable understanding the earliest stories in the Bible as myth. The stories of Jesus are quite another thing. If there is indeed myth in the gospels, who’s to say the whole thing isn’t made up? It’s a slippery slope, right?

Well, I’ll remind you here that the “slippery slope” is a common logical fallacy. When we hide behind the fear of it, it protects us from having to address it. In this case, though, I think the slippery slope is well worth dancing on.

When it comes to the devil tempting Jesus in the wilderness, we have a choice. We can imagine that Jesus later told the story to his disciples. Or we can imagine that somebody later created the story as a myth to get across something deeper.

Now, personally, I have a hard time imagining Jesus saying, “And then the devil said … and then I said …” In the synoptic gospels—Matthew, Mark, and Luke—Jesus doesn’t talk about his personal experiences all that much. And to talk about how you resisted temptation sounds to me like bragging. I think Jesus would have preferred to keep his temptations to himself.

So let’s look at a few other options. If someone other than Jesus is the originator of the story, we may imagine that the Holy Spirit spoke it into their mind, relating in exact detail what actually happened to Jesus in the wilderness. Or we can allow for some measure of freedom in the creator’s imagination. The inspiration of the Holy Spirit that lies behind Scripture is not an exact science!

Either way, regardless of how important it is to you that the temptation of Jesus in the desert literally happened, the truth that springs from the story is far bigger. It shows that Jesus was both human and divine: human because he was tempted to compromise his principles, and divine because he didn’t.

It is also the story of all of us. Every one of us has, at some point, failed to resist the temptation to do something harmful. But the devil is subtle. Far more commonly, we have been tempted to do something good in completely the wrong way.

The devil reminds Jesus that he has the power to turn stones into bread. Why stay hungry if you don’t have to? Why suffer at all? We can even connect this to the later story of Jesus feeding thousands of people. Why didn’t he do this more often? Why didn’t Jesus just manufacture enough bread to feed everybody in the world, and then keep doing it? If Jesus had that power, why should anyone ever go hungry?

Yet Jesus resists, not because he denies this power, but because he’s fasting on purpose. The temptation is to see the surface problem and immediately fix it by any means necessary. But what if there are deeper problems that this solution would only make worse?

The second temptation is for Jesus to throw himself from the pinnacle of the temple, for certainly angels could swoop down and catch him before he hits the ground. This is the temptation to make a show of our talents. It’s saying to God, “If you really love me, you’ll let me succeed at whatever I attempt.” The corollary, of course, is that if we don’t succeed—if we splatter on the rocks below in our arrogant efforts—we can blame God for it rather than our own stupidity or shortsightedness.

Finally, the devil invites Jesus to take control of all the kingdoms of the world. A man who can produce endless bread and command angels to keep saving him from death certainly has the power to do anything he wants.

But there’s an interesting assumption here. The devil claims that all the kingdoms of the world actually belong to him, and that he is the only one with the power to give them to others. Is the devil confused or deceiving himself about who’s really in charge? Well, let’s play devil’s advocate. How often are we tempted to take the kind of power that only the devil offers?

I need to share here a couple of funny memes I’ve seen on social media. One is a photo of a page-a-day calendar of inspirational Bible quotes. On this particular day, the quote is, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” – Matthew 4:9. The caption says, “Less inspirational when you know who said it.”

A more recent meme shows a classic image of the devil facing off with Jesus in the desert. The caption says, “Christian Nationalism: When Christians accept the offer that Jesus turned down.” It’s the most spot-on meme I’ve seen in years! Ultimate power and control—the kind easily taken up by billionaires and people connected with them—can only be ours if we worship the Evil One. Christian Nationalism is Exhibit A. I would also submit to you Exhibit B: the Epstein files.

Now, we each have our own temptations in life, depending on our circumstances and the complications of our own personalities, traumas, and disorders. What is easy for one person to say no to is difficult for another. Resisting these temptations is exhausting. But when we do, and when we collapse afterward from the effort, we can expect the very angels of God to attend to our needs.

At least, that’s how I apply this myth. If it is a myth. Or maybe it’s a myth that also literally happened? I am not especially concerned about the distinction.

In the Garden of Eden, the serpent tempted Eve and Adam to become like God. But Jesus shows us that to be like God is not to do showy, godlike things. To be like God is to resist the temptation to control, to overpower, to exploit—to prevent others from growing in their own way and in their own time. To let go of such temptations is much harder than we think it should be.

So here we are on the First Sunday in Lent. The next time you find yourself with a little more power than you expected … what will you do with it? And how are you using the power of myth to resist temptation?