Sermon for February 26, 2023 – The First Sunday in Lent
Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7; Psalm 32; Romans 5:12-19; Matthew 4:1-11
As the daylight changes, as the blankets and mounds of snow eventually melt, and the ground, grass, and our gardens come back into view, how the perspective changes. Our posture changes. Our disposition changes. We emerge from our winter hibernation. We embrace the warmth of a new season. And as each season passes things change. We see what was hidden for so long under the blanket of winter: familiar plants, flowering trees, and yes, the trash and debris as well. Today’s scripture stories offers us two perspectives: one in a garden overflowing with abundant life, one in a wilderness with the apparent absence of life, and both stories provide us with the opportunity to grow closer to God as we start out Lenten journey.
That first garden was Paradise with everything provided. Amazing life with an abundance of food, pleasure, beauty, creatures and companionship. Our first parents, Adam and Eve, had a life of harmony with nature, with each other and with God. They were naked and unashamed. They walked freely with each other and with God. Then that subtle suspicion and ensnaring question slithered up: What am I missing? “Did God really say you shall not eat from any tree of the garden?” “No, we can eat from every tree except that one. We can’t even touch it or we’ll die. Every tree but that one.”
The question slithered up again: What am I missing out on? What does this say about me? Perhaps I’m not really safe. Perhaps I don’t have what I need. Does God really care? Perhaps I’m not enough. Not good enough.
Fearful, questioning, wanting more our parents took and ate the forbidden fruit. Then their eyes were opened and their perspective changed. It wasn’t the anticipated treasure of becoming like God that they were promised. Rather, with a sour sting in the mouth, they realized they were naked. They had even less power than presumed. They were all of a sudden vulnerable and afraid. Ashamed, they made clothes to hide from each other, and then…then they hid from God.
In the gospel story, Jesus encountered other slithering invitations in the wilderness: “Turn these stones into bread. Throw yourself off the temple’s roof. Bow down to me.” Like Adam and Eve, like us, Jesus was tempted. He was hungry. He questioned God’s provision, and he wanted control. Jesus was human.
These slithering questions and slithering invitations echo our core concerns: What am I missing? Am I enough? From our parents, we’ve inherited a deep fright and a tendency to fight. Bending over backwards attempting to make others approve of us. Accumulating, trying to fill an aching absence. Commanding and clinging, trying to grab control…control we will never have.
All because we shudder at seeing the naked truth that we are limited and imperfect, vulnerable and a breath away from death. This gets more twisted with our physical bodies. The slithering shame of not being thin enough, attractive enough, or strong enough is especially deadly. Our preoccupation for what we are not, overshadows who we are…who we are meant to be. Our struggle is about being needy by nature. Our struggle is about surrender.
Perhaps God invites us not to fight, but rather to float. Floating on our backs as in the ocean or a river. You know what it’s like. Lean back and let go. Allow the flow to take you; to let it go and open your body, your heart, your soul. That’s the key: let go. Just like the waters of baptism, the water holds us, supports our weight, if we trust and give our all. When we look up to see where we are or when we struggle, we sink. So we have to thrash, paddle or swim. It’s only when we stop trying, when we surrender, that we float. In order to surrender, we must have trust that the water will indeed carry us. Surrender is counter to all of our instincts to survive; to be in control. To surrender is to let go, and to let go means trusting in God.
In the wilderness, Jesus may seem like an expert fighter, but listen instead to this model floater: “One does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. Do not put the Lord your God to the test. Worship the Lord your God and serve only him.” In other words: It’s not up to me. I’m not in control. I’m needy by nature, limited and looking to God because I cannot do this on my own. So, I’m letting go. I’m floating in the ocean of divine love.
Lent is a time for changing perspective, for reclaiming the naked truth. We are dust and to dust we shall return. We are imperfect. We are needy. We will fall short again, and again, and again. And despite of that, despite the fact we will never be perfect as our first parents were before the apple, we are also fully known and fully loved. God has told us this time and again. God already knows everything about us. Many of us believe God loves unconditionally. What really changes us…is risking letting ourselves experience that love.
Lent invites us to risk living the truth. The truth of life and death. The truth of revealing who we truly are before God, with all our curves and edges, all our perfect imperfections. So, we begin our worship with confession right up front, and we kneel for full disclosure, honesty, weighted reality. God already knows. Naming it with our lips and in our hearts is a way of letting go, of surrender. Part of the challenge of prayer, certainly mine, is the resistance to speak with God about everything. I want to ignore much of my pain and shame. Yet acknowledging it and letting it be heard is part of how we are healed. It is how we let go. When we do, it feels like floating, being released and supported.
We confess, and then we experience God madly in love, running to meet us, bursting with amazing grace. Lent is living the naked truth: our deep need for God and God’s great delight loving us. As we continue to be confronted with slithering questions and invitations, try floating rather than fighting, trusting God to support your whole weight, praying your pain and shame, letting yourself be loved.
Notice how the perspective changes as you lay flat and gaze up. Perhaps you’ll see more of what’s been hidden from your sight. Forgotten truths may resurface. So much is revealed as we float, float in the ocean of divine love, from which we were born and to which we will return.
