The Wilderness of Good and Evil: A Sermon for 1A Lent

 Temptation is a fun topic for a sermon, and we always get the opportunity to preach on it at the start of Lent because we always begin the season with the story of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness... he does succumb... be like Jesus. This year... I was aware of this story being paired with the Second Creation story by the J-writer in Genesis. For the first time, I saw a clear intersection with the two pericopes. 

See what you think.

Texts for this sermon: Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7; Matt 4:1-11

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Prayer: Show me your ways, O Lord, and teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation, in you have I trusted all the day long. Amen.—Ps. 25:3-4

 

The words of that prayer are from Psalm 25.

I carried these words with me every day as part of a discipline I picked up for Lent a while back.

And they seem like good ones to think about as we join Jesus in the wilderness.

That’s right: welcome to the wilderness.

A place where there are no landmarks.

We have no compass, so we don’t know which way is north.

It’s dusty and dry…just as dry as the mouth of a famished Jesus…fasting for forty days and forty nights.

He is far away from all the things he’s known.

The wilderness is that place where…like Jesus… we feel our most alone… and at our lowest point.

This dry land is fertile ground for the Tempter to enter the picture.

It’s in the wilderness where Satan… which is the Hebrew for “the adversary”… can find those weak spots… those vulnerable parts… to lure Jesus into turning from God… with false choices and empty promises.

In Sunday School… at least in my experience of Sunday School… Satan gets presented as an actual figure… that red guy with a pitchfork, tail and horns.

That’s the sort of imagery that works great for a Halloween costume.

Perhaps it makes it easier for us to understand evil if we give it a physical persona.

 

But the Satan who tempts Jesus… the same adversary who whispers in our ears when we are in the wilderness of our lives…is not an actual being.

That evil rises out of the human heart… a heart that knows both good and evil.

Just look again at the story of Adam and Eve.

And bear in mind… this is a story. I honestly don’t think there’s anywhere in recorded history an example of a talking snake.

But what makes the story so real and so true is not whether it’s historically accurate. It’s what it reveals about us…the human race…that makes it true.

God’s beautiful creation… the Adamah or “human” which God scooped up out of the dust and gave breath to… made a critical choice while in the lushness of paradise.

The man and the woman had plenty of food.

They weren’t in the wilderness.

They weren’t in want of anything really.

God expects them to enjoy the Garden… except stay away from that one tree in the middle.

And…we all know what happens.

Just as Satan tempts Jesus with all kinds of irresistible offers in the wilderness…the voice of temptation…the snake…convinces them to eat of the forbidden fruit.

And the human heart has known Good and Evil ever since.

Just one of the many lessons learned in that second creation story from Genesis.

So that’s the real part of the Adam and Eve story. It’s an allegory to explain the inclinations of the human heart.

We can do good… and we can do evil.

And Jesus… fresh out of the waters of the Jordan… still with the vision of the Spirit descending as a dove upon him and hearing that he is God’s beloved Son… now finds himself out in the wilderness… parched… famished… low blood sugar.

And his fully human heart is vulnerable to that human inclination to stray into the evil.

The adversary has been conjured up to test him… bait him… do anything it can to separate him from God.

But rather than turn from God… Jesus dips into that other part of his human heart… the part that is good.

The portion so good and remembering that he is a beloved of God.

He refutes the Tempter with words pulled from the Book of Deuteronomy.

And that’s one of the big lessons from the Temptation story and why I think the Church always puts it at the start of Lent.

What Jesus is demonstrating to us is that even in our weakest and most vulnerable moments… the strength to overcome is not merely our own, but the power of God coming to our aid and shouldering that burden with us.

By turning to the words of Torah…our human Jesus leans into his faith.

Going back to the Scriptures… Jesus is able to summon the strength… the courage… and the bravery to withstand any effort to pull him away from the Source of Light and Love.

Jesus demonstrates that even the one born without sin must still contend with temptation.

Because temptation is that prevalent.

What a powerful lesson we can take with us on our own journeys.

We have resources to help us.

We have the stories of biblical ancestors… we have the psalms… even the hymn tunes… we have those touchstones to turn to at the moments in our lives when we need to be reminded  of the goodness of God that’s within our heart.

When we feel jealous of a friend’s good fortune… we can remember God’s warning to Cain… to not let his jealousy warp his relationship to his brother Abel.

If only Cain had listened.

When we avert our eyes from the homeless or think that the problems that plague those living on the streets are not our problems…Matthew Chapter 25 reminds us that we have an obligation to care for those who are in need.

Temptation… the evil inclinations of the human heart… has no face… no tail… no horns.  It shows up in seemingly benign ways: through racist jokes. Snide comments. And trash talking of our loved ones when they aren’t around.

What Lent provides us is the chance to become more aware of these tendencies to slip into sinful behavior and go back toward God.

Thanks be to God for the words passed down to us… to the songs we can sing to our souls… and to Jesus who continuously teaches and shows us the way to strengthen the goodness in our hearts.

In the name of God… F/S/HS.