Sermon preached at St John’s Bexley: 26th February 2023: First Sunday of Lent: Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7; Romans 5:12-19; Matthew 4:1-11
From The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe:
“It is dull, Son of Adam, to drink without eating,” said the Queen presently. “What would you like best to eat?”
“Turkish delight, please, your Majesty,” said Edmund.
“The Queen let another drop fall from her bottle onto the snow, and instantly there appeared a round box, tied with green silk ribbon, which, when opened, turned out to contain several pounds of the best Turkish Delight. Each piece was sweet and light to the very centre and Edmund had never tasted anything more delicious. He was quite warm now, and very comfortable.”
Led into a Winter Wilderness where all is snow and ice, Edmund is tempted by Turkish Delight: His favourite thing to eat and, especially as a child growing up in wartime when sugar was rationed, a very rare delicacy.
For Edmund the Turkish Delight became the Devil’s Bread in the Wilderness: The thing the famished body in the desolation craves so much – but offered by one with motives so sinister that to take and eat could only result in betrayal.
“Son of Adam, I should so much like to see your brother and your two sisters. Will you bring them to see me?”
“I’ll try,” said Edmund, still looking at the empty box.
“Because, if you did come again – bringing them with you of course – I’d be able to give you some more Turkish Delight.”
Entrapment: Edmund has tasted the forbidden fruit and now that he craves more, the Witch has identified the thirty pieces of silver that will bring him to betray those he loves, the siblings closest to him, who, as evacuees in a stranger’s house, are his everything: For the taste of Turkish Delight he is willing to sell out His World.
What would do that for us? What might we desire to taste so much that we might exchange everything and everyone we love so dearly just for a morsel of it?
For Eve you’d think there would be nothing: Surely with the freedom of the Garden of Eden she and Adam had everything they could want… Eden is different to the Wilderness, to the barren harshness of the Wintery Narnia… And yet the Serpent identifies the one thing forbidden to Adam and Eve and capitalises on it: Drawing attention to it so that even in the Utopia of the Garden it seems like Turkish Delight on snowy ground.
Like Edmund in Narnia, Eve, and subsequently Adam (because we’re not letting him off the hook!), take and eat… And in doing so bring their World crashing down around them.
What have we given up for Lent?
What is the one thing that we have denied ourselves as we journey through the Wilderness?
How much do we crave it’s taste?
And what would happen if we did take just one bite…
Clearly our giving something up is a small representation of those bigger temptations: Absent mindedly accepting that Chocolate won’t hand your nearest and dearest over to the White Witch… That small sherry you’re allowing yourself in front of Call The Midwife tonight isn’t going to see you cast out of the Garden, sin entering in the World and Fallen Humanity crying out for a saving Messiah…
We would hope…
But in exercising the denial, in saying no to something, anything we choose whether we join Christ in the Wilderness, or Eve in the Garden: We may desire something so much but knowing that one does not live by bread alone, we can, for all the sensation and joy of the taste we expect to receive, do without… At least for a while…
Take, eat…?
I say all this, and in just a few moments we may see the story again as I stand in front of you and invite you to take, eat a small piece of bread: A Eucharistic Wafer: The Body of Christ, offered in our lives as bread in the desert.
Perhaps it’s telling that surrounded by the opulence of the chancel, my robes, the stained glass and pink marble, the velvet altar frontal, the sound of the choir and organ – such splendour! – the bread offered will appear to be the most simple substance in this place: A little circle made only of flour and water.
The Bread of Life: What were you expecting, Turkish Delight?
… By the end of the chapter, Edmund will be feeling sick. Later in the story the Queen will enslave him to pull her sled across the thawing snow, he will ask for Turkish Delight and be given dry bread…
Whatever Wildernesses we find ourselves in, we will be offered bread (in various forms): Some will give life and some we cannot live by. In the Lenten Wilderness we take our example from Christ, present with us in the desert – through His guidance we will know when to take and eat, and when to turn down the Serpent’s delights…
Fr. Edward 