First Lent
Gen. 2, 3 Mtt. 4:1-11
And so we begin the season of Lent. There is no accident to the choice of lessons for today. The account of the temptation, sometimes from Mark, sometimes Luke, today from Matthew is always the first Sunday in Lent. On a superficial level this choice was logical because we see Jesus in the wilderness for forty days the same amount of time we have circumscribed for Lent. On a more profound level this text is chosen because it directs us to a time of introspection and confession of our sinfulness, our own wrestling with the devil, if you will. Lent and the objectives of Lent are kind of a quaint, churchy thing to do aren't they? Where is there time anymore in the busy-ness and pace of our hectic lives to think about obedience to God, to assess our failures, to recommit to be the people God calls us to be? No, we just have to keep "going along to get along" and trust our desire to be good to make us good.
Today, in light of our lessons I would challenge you to see that this lent thing is more than just stuffy church tradition -that our lives need the soul searching introspection of Lent as much as they need exercise and nutrition. We need to "kick it up a notch" as Emeril would say.
Our Gospel lesson begins by telling us "Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the Devil." Now what you need to know is that Jesus has just come from his baptism in the river Jordan. The verses just before today's lesson say "And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God , note that the Spirit of God, descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said "this is my son the Beloved with whom I am well pleased."
Jesus is still dripping wet from this event when, we are told, he was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He was led up by the Spirit--God's spirit brought him into the wilderness where, we can assume, God knew he would be tempted. I have trouble with that--it always seems such a set up to me. It throws me back to the Old version of the Lord's Prayer, "And lead us not unto temptation." And yet indeed that seems to be what's happening here. Small Catechism.
I have the same question about our Old Testament lesson from Genesis, Why did God plant that tree in the garden anyway? What does that say about this God -is this God out to trick and trap us by making the evil so accessible and yes, so tempting. Not one of us, not a single one of us would put rat poison on our three year olds dinner plate and expect that they wouldn't eat it. Although we might imagine that a fifteen year old might be willing to resist.
Perhaps this says something about the relationship God wants with us.
First God wants to trust us and does trust us. Claimed in the power of baptism God has given us approval. God isn't setting it up for us to fail. God assumes we can handle the responsibility of choice in the world.
I think about the first time I gave the car keys to my kids. If I thought they really couldn't handle the responsibility to be a good driver and yet I gave them the keys I'd be a terrible parent. If they didn't know the basics, the rules of the road, if they didn't know how to make right and left turns, to use their mirrors, to judge distances between cars and yet I gave them the right to drive I would be putting them in a dangerous situation and setting them up for failure. Just so, if I give them the keys they should know it is because I believe they are capable and I have confidence in their ability.
Just so, God puts that tree in the garden fully confident in the capability of Adam and Eve to choose the good. We cannot believe that God would give us freedom and responsibility if God knew beforehand that we did not have the capability to do that which was right and good. That would make God an ogre, a vengeful and spiteful deity who takes delight in our failures and our problems.
The spirit led Jesus out to that wilderness. Now this wilderness is an interesting place. Free association here--If I say the word wilderness what do you imagine? For some it would be a desert, for some a forest for some perhaps the tundra--I suppose we all imagine a place where we are most at a loss, most helpless most at the mercy of the environment. But the thing we can all affirm about the wilderness is that it is a place that is dangerous, desolate, frightening, unpredictable and out of our control.
Edmund Steimle has written a very famous sermon where he defines the wilderness as "the peril of ordinary days." He talks about "the unheroic life of dirty dishes and crying children of cancelled flights and time clocks , of telephone calls and ringing doorbells, of feeding the chickens and sweating for a weeks pay--and asks 'Is this the life of a child of God?" Maybe this is the wilderness where we encounter the devil in our midst.
And isn't it intriguing how the devil wheedles his way into Jesus thinking--If you are the son of God he says...If you are the son of God...
Have you ever split wood or watched someone split logs. First you upend a log, setting it on the ground or better yet on a tree stump. You take a steel wedge and with the sledgehammer held in one hand, you tap it carefully into the end grain of the log. Then you step back and take a full swing. And if you have planned it right, if you have aimed well enough and set the wedge in the end of the log properly, if your eye is good, you hit the wedge with the deep clang of metal on metal and the two halves of the log go flying apart. The wedge forces the log apart, overcoming the natural adhesion within the log, rending the fibers that have grown together over the years. It's a powerful image of forcibly dividing something, something that is one, something normally inseparable, something made to be together.
With that question, "If you are the Son of God" posed to Jesus the devil is setting the wedge between the father and his son. The question once posed has the potential to break apart that which has been so solidly grown together.
That, after all, is the real temptation, the temptation for Jesus to see himself apart from the purpose and plan of God, to question his identity as the chosen beloved son.
So too for us--our real temptation is to somehow see our lives separated from the redeeming love of Jesus Christ, perhaps to think our sins too great to be saved, or too ordinary to be understood .
The wedge of sin is ubiquitous and expanding. It begins early; it goes deep it spreads abroad. That is the message of the story of the fall in Genesis. A wedge was slammed into the garden that God had created, and things were thrown awry--the relationship between Adam and Eve, their relationship with God, and Gods vision of how things were supposed to be. Things were split like the log is split for firewood.
Lent is our opportunity to solidify our relationship with God and to look at the wedges that separate us from God and from one another. Lent is our chance to take stock of the wilderness in which we find ourselves.
But during our Lenten meditations and prayers we should begin and end with the sure and certain knowledge that God loves us, trusts us and claims us; that God desires that the wedge of sin not come between the fibers that have bound and grown us together. The Spirit rests upon us and guides us.
Amen