Eucharistic meditation

Genesis 2:9; 3:6: Out of the ground the Lord God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food . . . . So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate.

The word translated as “covet” is first used in Genesis 2-3, where it means “desirable.” When Eve looks at the fruit of the tree of knowledge she judges that it is good and desirable to make wise. Before Eve tasted the fruit, she had already sinned by coveting her neighbor’s fruit. Yahweh was the first victim of greed and theft.

But here’s the thing: Eve is right.

The fruit of the tree is, like all the fruits of the garden, desirable and good. Eve’s sin is not that she covets something evil. She desires something that is truly desirable. Eve’s sin is to seize it now , rather than waiting for Yahweh to give it to her.

Covetousness is idolatry, Paul says. It is also impatience. To covet is to demand now what we are promised later, to desire it so strongly that we grab it before its time. To covet is to enjoy now the sexual pleasure that God offers you only in marriage; to covet is to grab now the authority that you haven’t matured to; to covet is to cut corners to make your first million.

At the Lord’s table, we eat from an altar that even the priests of the Old Testament could not eat from. We drink wine in the presence of God, something that no one could do for thousands of years. We gather in the inner sanctuary, before the throne of God Himself, where once only the high priest could go. This table offers good things that the saints of the Old Testament desired century after century and never received.

The Lord’s table is a weekly rebuke to covetous impatience, weekly instruction not only in desiring the right things but in desiring the right things at the right time.