The First Sunday in Lent, Year A, 2011

Matthew 4:1– 11

The Rev. Ronald N. Johnson

We are now in the season of Lent, a special season of the church year in which we seek to know ourselves as God knows us.  It is a time for introspection, for reflection on our lives, the way we are, the way we act, the way that we relate to others and to our God.  Lent’s theme is a theme of repentance and the promise of an amendment of life’s purpose, because if we honestly do our Lenten homework, we cannot help but realize that when measured by God’s divine ruler, our lives fall short of the mark.  That is reality, because sin is reality.  We are sinners who have fallen short of God’s expectation for us.  We cannot dodge that reality.  The purpose of Lent is to help us understand ourselves and the reason that we are what we are, so that we can present our brokenness to God and openly and honestly acknowledge our failures.  It is in this way that we are able to open ourselves to God’s healing grace and his forgiveness.  Said in another way, Lent is a very special time in the Christian year to open ourselves to the Spirit of God so that we grow, in that Spirit, towards the image of Christ.  Our quest, as disciples of the Master, is to imitate the Master, to be ever more Christ-like.  Lent is a special time for working towards getting this done.

 Seldom do we find a set of readings that better present the essence of our human condition and the Christian understanding of sin and redemption than the collection that we have this morning.  The Apostle Paul tells us, in his letter to the Romans, that as one man’s sin, meaning Adam’s sin, led to universal condemnation, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all.  Our Lord gave himself for our salvation.  What a difference one death makes, when the death is that of the Son of God.  Our Lord died that we might be freed from the consequence of our sin, a consequence that is our personal death, not just physical death but spiritual death – the ultimate nothingness.   Through our Lord’s sacrifice, we find merit in God’s eyes and the death sentence is overturned.  We are reckoned righteous by God.  There is a thing, here, that we call atonement - atonement with a small “a,” when we consider ourselves and acknowledge our sinfulness; atonement with a capital “A,” when we consider that Jesus took our sin and lifted it on the Cross.  In Christ’s victory of life over death, our sin is buried with death so that we can dwell in the righteousness of God.  “Oh, death, where is your sting?” Saint Paul asked, and then said, “Oh death, where is your victory?”  The sting is gone, when we receive the absolution that comes from Christ’s death and his Easter victory.

In the Old Testament reading, we heard the ancient story of humanity’s fall.  Adam is a generic Hebrew word meaning “humanity.” The creation story tells us that Adam sought to know as God knows, and in seeking that knowledge, Adam attempted to place himself on par with God.  When we substitute ourselves for Adam, as we must in order to understand, we find that it is our nature to think that we, alone, can decide what is best - for ourselves and for our world.  Each and every time that we do this, we risk thwarting God’s will.  Reduced to essential meaning, sin is nothing more than telling God that we know more and better than he does, and that we neither want nor need his help.

The implication of the Genesis story is that original sin derives from Adam’s fall.  It suggests a universal human attribute that is contrary to good.  Traditionally, we have called that original sin “pride.”  But here pride takes a hard fall.  Sometimes pride is a good thing, because sometimes pride prompts us to take life’s higher road and stand firm in the face of temptation.  If, however, pride means selfishness, then pride may well be “original sin,” because pride then prompts us not to take the high road, but to put ourselves first, before God and before neighbor.  Narcissism is the reason that we yield to temptation, and incipient narcissism, threateningly present in all our intentions, stands ever ready to take us into sin.

God is aware that temptation is ever lurking. That is the point of Saint Matthew’s account of our Lord’s temptation, which we read in our Gospel reading this morning. Every human is subject to temptation, and that includes Jesus.  Jesus was subject to temptation even as we are, but he did not yield.  Jesus chose righteousness over sin. God is aware that although we, too, can choose righteousness over sin, even the saints, from time to time, mess up and chose evil. So, God

sent Jesus Christ into this world to save sinners.

The season of Lent is a time for introspection.  It is a time to contemplate God’s love and ask how we are responding to that love.  Only then can we do what Lent calls us to do - make straight, within ourselves, a pathway for the Son of God.  Amen.