The Surprizing Wilderness

Lent 1 A Feb. 10, 2008 St. Paul’s

Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7 Psalm 32

Romans 5:12-19 Matthew 4:1-11

After Jesus was baptized in the Jordan River, the Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness. He ate nothing for 40 days, and at the end of that time, the devil came to him with three temptations, that if he only did these three things, life would be good. The devil promised him money (all the bread he would ever need), power (all the kingdoms of the world would be under his rule) and protection – and at this point the Gospel sounds a lot like a plot from The Sopranos. Money, power, protection – if you just do what Tony Soprano says and don’t get anyone angry.

All three lessons today deal with sin – and I am afraid sin is something that is very much with us. Life on the streets, like life in the wilderness, is hard. You can see all the temptations just walking out our doors. Buy that bottle of whiskey, that bag of dope. Get angry at the least thing. Be suspicious, greedy, devious. The lessons today deal not with the mild sins of omission – the things we have left undone – but those big things we know all too well that we have done all too often.

And where did sin come from? St. Paul lays out the classic argument that lies at the basis of Western civilization: it was Adam, in his disobedience, who did it all. Adam’s curse. Adam’s fall. Jesus, the sinless one, through the grace of God, reverses that curse, restores us to our loving relationship with God, gives us a second chance.

But what a story we have in the gospel, which is a bit more nuanced than St. Paul’s letter to the Romans. The gospel story is the story of temptation. I think it is wrong to read into these lines that this temptation in the wilderness was easy for Jesus. Remember, Jesus, the son of God, is fully human, vulnerable to be tempted, vulnerable to sin. Money, power, protection: Jesus, the human being, knows just as strongly as we do why those things are appealing.

The word in German for “temptation” is versuchung. Literally, it means a mis-search. A mistaken quest. The word for “search” is suchen; a quest is die Suche. So a temptation is a search that goes awry, a search for something in the wrong place. Jesus did go on a search in the wilderness, and indeed in his ministry, he was concerned with money – mostly dealing with people who had very little – and with power – although he said his power was not that of this world – and with protection – with healing and care for the poor, the marginalized, the forgotten. So yes, the devil was right in that Jesus went out into the wilderness to search for things that included what to do about money, power and protection. But Jesus was right in knowing that the versions of those things offered by the devil were things that would take him further from God, not closer to God, who is, after all, the subject of all our quests and longings and searches.

Sin is not only about disobedience and punishment. It is not always about breaking rules, for we all know plenty of people who sin mightily, right out in the open, perhaps even following the letter of the law. People who have power behind them, people who have money, people who can be protected after they sin. Mostly, though, our sins are smaller, more mundane, slips of the tongue, little power plays, the desire to put my ego before the other person’s, my needs ahead of someone else’s. The list goes on and on.

But what sin is really about is distancing ourselves from God, and I don’t mean God as a little voice of conscience sitting on our shoulder. I mean God as our loving creator, who put us in this world to care for it as God intended it to be cared for, God who has already given us more than all the power and protection Satan’s money can buy.

The gospel lessons for Lent this year are stories that underscore just how much God loves us, and how much God tries and tries to get up close to us. We will read a series of stories from the Gospel of John: the story of Nicodemus, to whom Jesus says, you must be born of water and the spirit. The story of the Samaritan woman at the well, with whom Jesus discusses the water of eternal life. The story of Jesus restoring sight to the man blind from birth. And finally the story that sets in motion the events surrounding Jesus’ arrest, the story of the raising of Lazarus from the dead. The stories of our Holy Lent this year are not stories of sin and disobedience, but of light, and love, and hope, and promise, stories of God coming to us time and time again, just to get us to turn around and get close. I invite you to the observance of this Holy Lent, a time of surprising grace. The angels will come and wait on us.