The First Sunday in Lent

The Wilderness
Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7
Matthew 4:1-11

One of the predominant themes of this First Sunday in Lent is wilderness. The Old Testament reading from Genesis tells at least most of the story of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from paradise into the wilderness. And the Gospel reading is about Jesus’ time in the wilderness.

You know the story from Genesis. From my perspective it is not meant to be about who is to blame, nor is the primary focus on exactly what he or she did wrong. Rather, the story illustrates a fact of human existence. Its meaning is to illuminate something that is uniformly true about human beings, especially with respect to our relationship with God. Note that in this story no human being lived and died in paradise. No human being, male or female, lived his or her entire life in paradise. Throughout the Biblical witness we do not have any examples of people who avoided life outside of paradise—life in the wilderness. We all live in the wilderness. We all live our whole lives in the wilderness.

I’ve mentioned before what a rich teaching resource the seasons of the church year are. Each in its turn enables us to explore and experience a different facet of our life of faith. But it’s also important to remember that, although we experience the seasons in sequence, one after another, they are, in fact, cumulative. They are all true simultaneously. The season of Lent brings the wilderness. But we actually dwell in the wilderness of Lent all of the time—every day of our lives.

It’s very important to specify what this particular wilderness is and what it is not. The story from Genesis helps us. The wilderness of Lent is a place where we have the knowledge of good and evil. We know that there is good and there is evil and we affirm that they are profoundly different. And yet, we are not consistently able to choose the good. We know that good and evil are monumentally different and yet we cannot, or do not, or will not do what is good. That is the wilderness of our daily existence.

The Litany of Penitence which we said on Ash Wednesday reminds us of our failure to choose the good. In the litany we confess “the pride, hypocrisy, and impatience of our lives… our self-indulgent appetites and ways, and our exploitation of other people… our intemperate love of worldly goods and comforts, and our dishonesty in daily life and work.” Simple, everyday dishonesty. Then there is “our negligence in prayer and worship, and our failure to commend the faith that is in us… our indifference to injustice and cruelty… uncharitable thoughts toward our neighbors… our waste and pollution of [God’s] creation, and lack of concern for those who come after us.” These failures are a part of every human life. They vary in magnitude, and perhaps you would be reluctant to call them “evil.” But they are. They are all failures to choose the good. They are all evil in God’s sight.

The wilderness of Lent is a place where we understand and acknowledge a profound difference between good and evil, between what is godly and what is not, and yet we are unable to consistently choose the good.

The wilderness is a place of intense moral and spiritual tension and struggle. This particular wilderness is not a place where the physical aspects of life are hard. Nor is it a place of natural disaster and calamity. The wilderness of Lent is a place of moral and spiritual struggle. It is not a place of earthquakes and tsunamis. I’ve said before: God doesn’t cause earthquakes; human sin doesn’t cause earthquakes. Plate tectonics causes earthquakes. Plate tectonics are not a part of the wilderness of Lent. But it is a part of the wilderness when we understand plate tectonics, but human greed or ambition or indifference continues to build cities in areas of high risk with only minimal standards. And I’m think more now of the US than Japan. And the voracious demand for energy of all of the developed countries is a part of the wilderness. Our ungodly refusal to temper that voracious demand places many at grave risk.

Nor is the wilderness of Lent the true wilderness of the American frontier, for example, or other areas in the world today where the physical aspects of life are hard. Where disease or economic conditions make life trying. Not to diminish those struggles at all…. But the wilderness of Lent is a place of moral and spiritual struggle. A place where good and evil lie before us and we struggle and fail to choose the good.

We have a tendency to try to escape or deny the wilderness of our lives. We seek to escape by falsely persuading ourselves that we really can make the right decisions. We delude ourselves with the belief that if we really try we can consistently choose the good.   Just a few weeks ago in the epistle reading none other than St. Paul came pretty close to claiming moral perfection. He maintained that he wasn’t really aware of anything that could be held against him. But even he backed down and acknowledged that God might know better (The Eighth Sunday after the Epiphany; 1 Corinthians 4:1-5). It is either delusion or pride to maintain that we can escape the wilderness of Lent by our own strength or will. That we can make always right decision and thereby escape the tension and struggle of the wilderness.

The only other way out of the wilderness would be to renounce our baptisms. To deny that there is any difference between good and evil. Neither good nor evil really exists and we don’t care if there is a difference between them. It doesn’t matter what choices we make. This is to deny the reality of moral struggle and therefore deny the reality of the wilderness. The only way to make that claim is to renounce our identity as Christians.

For Christians, the difference between good and evil is real and profoundly important. And, yet, we are unable on our own to consistently choose the good. Today and the season of Lent are meant to remind us that escape and denial are not options for us. There is no escape from the wilderness for us. We live our lives in a place where the decisions and choices we make are overwhelmingly important, yet we cannot always get it right.

Which leaves us with only God’s mercy and grace.

The church’s invitation to us all to the observance of a Holy Lent culminates with the reminder of “the need which all Christians continually have to renew their repentance and faith.” No exceptions. All Christians. All the time. Need to renew our repentance and faith. Living in the wilderness, our repentance and faith need renewing all of the time.

And Jesus is in the wilderness with us offering renewal and reconciliation. Remember Jesus was in the wilderness, too. It is not a Godless place. God’s own being, God’s own grace and beauty and creative power can be found in the wilderness. Jesus is here. Seek him here in the wilderness. He offers the renewal that we need.

We live in the wilderness of Lent. A place where we know good, but often do evil. As Lent proceeds we will be reminded that it was in the wilderness that Jesus was crucified. But it was also in the wilderness that he rose again from the dead.