Being Sinners
Commentary
It’s the beginning of Lent, and having worshiped on Ash Wednesday, we have declared that we are separated from God by our own doing. Oh, wait. We probably evaded that idea by talking about “the sins of man.” That does not absolve any of us. WE are sinners. WE disappoint and offend each other on a daily basis. (If you think that’s not you, ask your spouse or children.)
We refuse to admit that we have made a mistake. We spend time trying to pin the blame for our failures on others or on circumstance. We refuse to go out of our way for the poor, those escaping their homes because of violence, or leaving their home countries because they were overrun by thugs who loot, pillage, rape, and laugh about it.1 We say that “charity begins at home,” but often this is an excuse to refuse to donate food, clothing, or money even to the organizations in our own town or neighborhood who provide these things for the needy.
Truthfully, we look at the situation in our world and it overwhelms us. What can I do that would make a bit of difference? We give up before we have even asked God how we might be useful. All of these failures are what constitutes sin.
The pastor who confirmed me told us that “sin” ought to be spelled “s-I-n,” because we are in a state of sin when we put ourselves and what we want at the center of our universe. This is clearly true, as our scriptures today will illustrate. And it tells us what Paul meant when he said in Romans 3:23 that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”
But it is important to understand the literal meaning of the words in the Bible. The word for “sin” in Hebrew means “to miss the mark” -- as when an archer or spear-thrower fails to hit the target. Beginners keep practicing so they can overcome those misses, because in the army missing one’s target can be a serious problem. If you miss the enemy soldiers coming at you, the result may be death -- if not your own, then that of someone standing nearby. This is the meaning of Romans 6:23: “For the wages of sin is death.” It’s not just our death that Paul is referring to, but the results of our sin on the world.
Like Adam and Eve, we may not die as soon as we misbehave, but our sins may be the cause of someone else’s suffering. Think of a drunk driver; s/he knows s/he’s a “little tipsy,” but for the passenger in the car s/he hit, the penalty of death, paralysis, or mental impairment can be instantaneous. Many sins have long-term consequences that go unrecognized until we, or one of our loved ones, die of the effects of our behavior.
This is what it means to say that “the wages of sin is death.”
Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7
There are many stories we have inherited from our ancestors about the beginning of the state of alienation we all live with. Today, our text is the Jewish story about the separation of humans from our God. It springs, in part, from the Babylonian and Assyrian creation stories. It is part of the Torah [the first five books of the Bible] in which Paul had been thoroughly trained, so we have both the ancient story and Paul’s read of it for the early Christians.
The story of the first man (ish) and woman (ishah) is told twice in Genesis, so that both the Priestly and the Yahwist2 versions would be preserved. In both versions, Adam does not mean “a man” but “a human,” whom God made from the fertile reddish-brown soil (adamah)of the Holy Land. God created humans from the earth we stand on, and from this comes the understanding that God is the God of Israel, tied to the land as much as the humans God created are tied to the land.
Both the Priestly and the Yahwist stories say that Adam was created by God to care for the land. In return, he had a beautiful place to live and plenty of good food to eat. Whatever grew in the trees was God’s gift to feed humans, with one exception: the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. That was forbidden fruit, and Adam was told that in the day he ate of it, he would die. From this we learn that the definition of sin from God’s point of view is disobedience. God gives Adam this one rule, and tells him in advance what the results of disobedience will be, and leaves Adam to his work of cultivating the garden.
This story has affected Christians in a variety of ways. The Seventh-Day Adventists, for example, are vegetarians because both the Yahwist God and the Priestly God gave Adam vegetation to eat -- whatever grew on the trees or out of the ground was good to eat, but not animals. In Genesis 2:18-20 (between the sections of today’s reading) God created the animals to be companions for Adam, because “it is not good for the man to be alone.” They are not food. Adam is co-creator of the animal kingdoms in the Yahwist version, because nothing is complete until it is named. But when God looks around, he realizes that none of the animals is really able to be a partner to Adam, so God puts Adam to sleep and from his own bone God fashions a woman.
We should note that in the Priestly version (Genesis chapter 1), God creates the various orders of fish and other sea creatures, land animals, and birds over three divine days, without the participation of Adam. There is no mention of Adam needing a companion, because the priests want to emphasize that God made Adam, ish, and isha in God’s own image, at the same time. The man and the woman stand as equals before God.
With all of the talk about ISIS (ISIL) in the news, and all of the talk about the status of women in Muslim countries, and the persistence of the hijab (scarf), or even the burka (the long garment that covers the woman head to toe) among Muslim women, it may come as some surprise to our congregations that Islam accepts the Torah -- and they use this story about Woman being made as a companion to Man, when God finally realized that none of the other animals would do, as justifying the lesser status of women. (This has been true in Judaism and Christianity also.) Women in the Middle East are often seen in this way, even today, to the point where the men discuss with each other whether women have souls, even whether they are different from the other animals a man might own.
Reform rabbis came to a somewhat different conclusion. Eve was made from Adam’s rib, it has been argued, rather than one of the bones of the head, so that she should not rule over him. She was not made of a foot or leg bone, because she should not be under the man’s heel. Instead, she was made from a rib bone, so that they can lean on each other and go on as equals in their life together.
Christianity has also had arguments about the meaning of this story for the relationship of men and women, especially in marriage. Women, it has often been said, should remain silent, because original sin came into the world when Eve allowed herself to give in to the temptation of eating of the fruit of the tree and then talked Adam into eating it also. Therefore, it is the fault of women that people are separated from God. Under this general thought pattern, the woman was the cause of the sinful nature of humans, and therefore she should be subservient to her husband.
Once again, the eastern European rabbis have some interesting insights into the story of the Fall. First, since Eve wasn’t made yet, she didn’t get the commandment about the tree directly from God, as Adam did. We should therefore suppose that she got the message from her husband. If he told her “don’t even touch that tree,” that enabled the snake to fool her into thinking that her husband didn’t get the message right. And that provides the setting for the story of the first (original) sin.
Christians have been debating about the meaning of the Knowledge of Good and Evil for centuries. There was a long period in which it was taught widely that the knowledge given was sexual. This probably grew out of the comment that both Adam and Eve realized that they were naked and sewed leaves together to cover themselves. This reasoning led to the idea, promulgated by the early Church fathers, that sexual relations, while allowed as long as the two people are married to each other, ought not to be pleasurable. (Yes, if husband and wife enjoyed sex, it was the sin of lust.)
It seems simple enough to take the story at face value: instead of asking God what we should or could do, we started deciding for ourselves what is good and what is evil. There is no need to equate that knowledge with our sexuality, despite the fact that the man and woman suddenly recognized that they were naked. Amongst the Israelites, being naked was a sign of being shamed publicly. (For an instance in which this is made plain, see the story of Noah and his sons after the flood, at the end of the ninth chapter of Genesis.) This led to the common idea of the Day of Judgment being a day when we will all stand naked before God. That nakedness has little to do with physical nudity; it is a sign of all of one’s secrets being laid bare, when we are left with no place to hide.
However, that is not the way the story has been used over the centuries. It is a tale of the proclivity of humans to get to a stage of development where we insist on our right to decide for ourselves what is good for us personally. Today, it’s known as adolescence. Sadly, there are numbers of people who never finish that stage, and that is where we can begin to talk about sin.
The Hebrew word for “sin” actually means “to miss the mark” and comes out of archery practice. So sin is not too horrible to be forgiven by God. Rather, it is like learning any skill. We have to practice getting it right. For that reason, we say to our little ones, “What do you say when you want something?” And we repeat the lesson as often as we must to teach our children to say “please” rather than “gimme that!” “What do you say to Gramma for the cookies?” to insist that they learn gratitude. They will sometimes get it right, and then the next time will throw themselves on the floor, kicking and screaming, refusing to say “please.”
This brings us to the story of the serpent, the “craftiest” of the wild animals. This snake manages to seal the estrangement between God and humans. According to the Jewish storytellers, the story we have in Torah is nowhere near the whole story.
It seems that Eve was standing in the general vicinity of the Tree of Knowledge when the snake wound its way down the tree. The snake begins his deception by enlarging on what he knows was God’s intention: “Is it true, Eve,” the snake hissed, “that you cannot eat of any of the trees in the garden?” Eve corrects the snake. “No, we can eat of any tree except the tree in the middle of the garden. In fact, if we even touch it, we will die!” That’s not what God said either. But Eve wasn’t around when the first Law was given to Adam. Where, we might ask, did that extension of God’s one rule come from?
“Hmm,” says the snake. “Interesting. You won’t die, you know. Your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God.” Eve looks at the tree. (Since she had been so afraid of the tree, she probably hadn’t looked at it either. We humans are like that.)
“It really is a pretty tree,” Eve says. She steps a few paces closer to the tree. The snake watches her, and at the right moment he gives her a shove and she lands against the tree. This so frightens her that she screams. But nothing happens.
“Ssssee?” hisses the snake. “God lied. You touched the tree and you did not die. You won’t die from eating the fruit either.” He watches her, smiling his wicked smile, and waits in silence. Eve eyes the fruit. From this close, she can smell it. It smells so sweet! It’s so beautiful! She takes a fruit from the tree and takes a small bite. And she does not die. Having tasted a small bite, she takes another, bigger bite. The snake smiles. “God lied to you, Eve. You haven’t died.”
But her innocence had. She picks another of the fruits and takes it to Adam. “Look what I have for you!” Eve exclaims. “You have to try this, it’s the most delicious fruit I’ve ever eaten.” So Adam does. And as soon as he swallows, his eyes are opened. He feels naked for the first time in his life. As does Eve. They sew fig leaves together to provide themselves some cover.
The Jewish storytellers (all men, by the way) say that Satan went to Eve because he knew that if he could get her to eat from that tree, she could talk Adam into doing the same. He only had to fool her, and her spouse would follow. Second, don’t enlarge on what God has said and done. She was more easily fooled because either she or Adam had enlarged the proscription. God didn’t say they couldn’t touch the tree. He’d said not to eat its fruit. In the logical analysis of argument, she had set up a “straw man” -- gone way beyond what God had said. If Satan could prove that her “straw man” was false, then he could get her to eat the fruit.
So, in this story, did we all wind up sinners, tossed out of the Garden of Eden because of this woman? Nope. We all wound up tossed out of the garden because of this man. Satan tricked Eve. But he didn’t trick Adam. Adam just blindly went along with what his wife said. Which is why we ask our children: “How could you have been so stupid as to try that?” And when they say that their best friend was doing it, we ask: “If all your friends were jumping off a bridge, would you do THAT too?” Of course, the truthful answer is “yes.” We usually get into trouble because we run in a group, and whatever they do we tend to follow, and make excuses afterward.
More important, like Adam, we have been hiding from God. Before God sent them out of the garden they hid in the bushes, afraid to face God because of “their nakedness.” God was angry, but as Satan said, God did not kill them. They did not die that day. But we have been hiding in fear of The One Who Sees ever since.
Romans 5:12-19
Paul addresses the question of our salvation by talking about Adam. Sin came into the world by one man. That separation from God that we all hate, and fight to ignore, came about because the first man did the one thing God had told him not to do. He didn’t die that first day, but that close walk with God did. That innocent relationship with God died. And since God got angry and tossed the man and woman out of the garden, they were afraid of God. That is a kind of death right there. Ask any child who has been beaten every time Mom got angry or Dad got drunk, or both. Ask every person who has survived a war. Ask any soldier. To watch others die all around us does something to us that cannot be undone except through kindness, gentleness, and love. Fear undoes us. Fear of God without the love for God can destroy us.
It’s not that we have inherited a sinful nature; we’re not doomed to sin. It’s that we grow up with the example of adults to follow. If Mom lies, it must be okay to lie. If Dad breaks things when he’s angry, that must be okay too. We learn what we live with. If we call ourselves Christians, but never worship God or read the Bible, how are we to learn what being a Christian means? If our Christian leadership abuses women and children, what does that do to our trust? If our secular leadership decides that it’s more important to spend money on death than on health, how can we trust that we’ll be cared for when we’re disabled, sick, or old?
Paul is talking to Jewish converts. To them, there are questions of Jewish Law (the Law laid down in the Torah3) that he seems to be ignoring as he talks about Jesus as Messiah. Paul is, in fact, trying to say that Christians are free from a legalistic religion. We no longer have long lists of laws laid down, such as not combining two different fibers in our clothing (Deuteronomy 22:11), or not eating pork or lobster. Paul is saying that sin is different from law-breaking. You cannot hold a Protestant Christian liable for breaking laws of the Roman Catholic Church, for example.
Paul is trying to talk about the gift of God’s grace in the light of the universal tendency of humankind to sin. The impact of his argument cannot be overestimated. The fifth chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans is the one that convinced Martin Luther that that our salvation depends not on our ability to follow the rules of the church, but on the grace of God. It is also is the very passage that led John Wesley to write in his journal: “In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”
The warming of Wesley’s heart led him to the establishment of societies in which people gathered to talk about their spiritual growth and shortcomings, so that they could help each other to follow Christ. He taught them about prevenient grace, meaning the grace of God which goes before us, leading us to God’s free gift. There is no such thing as choosing to be born again by the Spirit, nor can we by any means earn salvation. “The New Birth” is the gift of the Spirit (v. 17) and leads to a good life, not the other way around. People have been able to quit drinking, overcome their past of violence, prejudice, and jealousy, and live holy lives in this Spirit.
All of this is due to one man: Jesus of Nazareth, whom we call the Christ (Greek for “Messiah”). How can that be? If we are condemned as sinners because of the disobedience of one man (Adam), and if the Law (given to Moses) defines what those sins are, how can we all possibly be set free by one man (Jesus Christ)? Paul’s answer is that the love of Christ, shown in his obedience to God, breaks our bonds. We are freed to live righteous lives.
We need to pause here. I have heard over and over from parishioners that righteousness is to be avoided. We pastors have the responsibility to help our congregants understand that we are called to be righteous, and that living a righteous life does not mean we are self-righteous. Living a righteous life means to live a loving life. John Wesley’s formula was this:
Do all the good you can.
By all the means you can.
In all the ways you can.
In all the places you can.
At all the times you can.
To all the people you can.
But this is not what we do to earn the Holy Spirit. This is our response to God’s Spirit moving in us. Certainly, we can tell God that we want the Spirit to live in us. We can speak to God before we understand what Paul is talking about. But the joy in surrender is to know that God is like the father of the prodigal son, constantly watching to see if we will come home.
When I was first working in the church, I was in charge of the Sunday school, training teachers and leading worship for the children. One Sunday, one of the teachers came to me and asked if I could talk with one of our 4th-graders. He had had “a religious experience” at Bible camp that summer, and he had begun asking his mother if he could start taking communion. In our denomination you don’t have to be confirmed to take communion, but it’s rare for a child to ask to be permitted to. I asked Tom why he wanted to be able to take communion, and he said, “Well, at camp we were told that when you take communion you’re actually receiving Jesus, and since Jesus loves me so much, I think I want to be closer to him. My mom said that if you said it was okay, I could.”
I said, “I think you have a clearer idea about communion than many adults I talk to. I’ll talk to the pastor and tell him I said you could take communion.” The pastor readily agreed, both with what I had said, and that Tom clearly understood God’s grace. His desire to take communion came as a result of feeling God’s love, not so that he could make God love him.
Through the grace of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, we are enabled to live lives of hope and love, and we are put right with God. When we recognize that this applies to us, it can be so clear that we have been freed from all that has gone before this moment that it does feel as though we have been given a clean slate, a new start. When this happens, the phrase “being born again” makes perfect sense. We have a “start over” button that gives us hope and frees us from the feeling that God could never love us.
Matthew 4:1-11
Jesus’ ministry begins in Matthew’s gospel with two actions on Jesus’ part -- his baptism and his temptation in the desert. His temptation is the work of the Holy Spirit, in that he is led to go into the wilderness. He fasted for 40 days and nights, the same as the number of years the Hebrews wandered in the wilderness. This reminds us that Matthew was writing to the Jews, and that Jesus is compared to Moses throughout the gospel. So, as Moses and his people wandered 40 years, Jesus wanders for 40 days and nights.
We have taught for a long time that Jesus ate nothing in all that time. But if he truly ate nothing for all that time out in the desert areas south of Judea, he wouldn’t be “famished” -- he would be dead. No one could survive the heat without something to eat. But to concentrate on what he may have eaten, or how much, is to miss the point of fasting to the Jews of Jesus’ day. The Rev. Dr. Kent D. Berghuis4 says in his book Christian Fasting that “the Hebrew Bible rather consistently portrays fasting in conjunction with themes of disruption and restoration. In the midst of disruption, fasting comes to symbolize hope. Through repentance and prayer, fasting can signify the centering of the self in humility, the renewal of the relationship to God’s sustaining force. As such, fasting takes on a dual significance of mourning and hope. And the hope evidenced in the proper kinds of fasting in the Old Testament is ultimately a hope in the fulfillment of the eschatological, messianic age.”
Jesus’ fast in the wilderness, then, is his initiation into his messiahship. That calling is what his people have been begging God for ever since the ten northern tribes were carried away into Assyria, certainly since the Jews’ exile in Babylon, and definitely since the Romans had occupied their country. Jesus cannot simply move from being a carpenter’s son into being the Son of God. He needs to know what kind of challenges he will be up against. So, like Eve, Jesus meets Satan.
When a story is written down, we have an unfortunate loss: tone of voice. Jesus heard the voice of God at the Jordan: “You are my Beloved Son...” Matthew seems to assume that whatever Jesus knows about himself, being God’s messiah is not understood until then. So when he encounters “the tempter,” let us hear “if you are the Son of God”as a snide comment. “Who do you think you are, anyway? The Son of God?!?” Might as well get used to it, Jesus. Unless you can come up with a miracle every time someone questions your authority, there are going to be snide comments.
“If you are the Son of God, why should you be starving like this? God could make these stones be bread. Command them!”
But Jesus remembers his scriptures, and quotes Deuteronomy 8:3: “He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” He is quoting a verse that really slaps the devil, because the verse recalls that God did not let the Hebrews starve, providing them with manna, but it is also true that if we lack the word of God, we will be truly starved. He has grasped the underlying meaning of the scriptures.
In a like manner, the devil takes him up to Jerusalem and the highest point of the Temple, and this time the devil quotes scripture (Psalm 91:9-12)! This is a good warning. Not everyone who can quote scripture is on the side of God. Don’t underestimate the power of the devil to see into your heart and use your own experiences to push you in the wrong direction. “So you’re safe in the care of the Lord, are you? Let’s test that. Throw yourself down. If the angels are really looking after you...” But Jesus says, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test” (quoting Deuteronomy 6:16).
Finally, the devil leads him to “a very high mountain” and showed him the kind of glory the rulers of the world enjoy. And he says something that some people have used to assert that the devil rules this world (v. 9). But before we take that as a given, we need to remember that the devil was a liar in the garden, and is a liar today. Perhaps that truth is what makes it so easy for Jesus to throw this back at the devil, as he says “Away with you, Satan!” (Deuteronomy 6:13).
The end of his temptation comes not just because he has ordered the devil to go away, but because God was in fact watching this struggle. God’s angels “came and waited on him.” He was comforted, probably fed, and definitely shown the care God has in mind for him.
At the end of his temptation, Jesus was ready to begin his work on our behalf. At the beginning of Lent, we are challenged to follow Jesus, to become students of his teaching so that we are prepared for the grace and power God has in mind for us.
1 There are many videos online, but for an article that covers the problem in print, see the VICE NEWS article “ISIS is still holding nearly 2,000 Yazidi women as slaves.” A warning: the content of some of the videos is graphic and disturbing, especially those that are the testimony of people who have escaped.
2 “The Yahwist” editor is so named because he belonged to a group of Hebrew worshipers who called God “YHWH” (without the vowel jots deliberately to stop anyone from saying God’s Name, which would violate the commandment against misusing God’s Name).
3 The Torah, or the Five Books of Moses, are the first five books of what we Christians call the Old Testament.
4 According to Bible.org, Kent is currently Senior Pastor of First Baptist Church of Lansdale, Pennsylvania, and Adjunct Professor at Palmer Theological Seminary and Biblical Theological Seminary.
We refuse to admit that we have made a mistake. We spend time trying to pin the blame for our failures on others or on circumstance. We refuse to go out of our way for the poor, those escaping their homes because of violence, or leaving their home countries because they were overrun by thugs who loot, pillage, rape, and laugh about it.1 We say that “charity begins at home,” but often this is an excuse to refuse to donate food, clothing, or money even to the organizations in our own town or neighborhood who provide these things for the needy.
Truthfully, we look at the situation in our world and it overwhelms us. What can I do that would make a bit of difference? We give up before we have even asked God how we might be useful. All of these failures are what constitutes sin.
The pastor who confirmed me told us that “sin” ought to be spelled “s-I-n,” because we are in a state of sin when we put ourselves and what we want at the center of our universe. This is clearly true, as our scriptures today will illustrate. And it tells us what Paul meant when he said in Romans 3:23 that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”
But it is important to understand the literal meaning of the words in the Bible. The word for “sin” in Hebrew means “to miss the mark” -- as when an archer or spear-thrower fails to hit the target. Beginners keep practicing so they can overcome those misses, because in the army missing one’s target can be a serious problem. If you miss the enemy soldiers coming at you, the result may be death -- if not your own, then that of someone standing nearby. This is the meaning of Romans 6:23: “For the wages of sin is death.” It’s not just our death that Paul is referring to, but the results of our sin on the world.
Like Adam and Eve, we may not die as soon as we misbehave, but our sins may be the cause of someone else’s suffering. Think of a drunk driver; s/he knows s/he’s a “little tipsy,” but for the passenger in the car s/he hit, the penalty of death, paralysis, or mental impairment can be instantaneous. Many sins have long-term consequences that go unrecognized until we, or one of our loved ones, die of the effects of our behavior.
This is what it means to say that “the wages of sin is death.”
Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7
There are many stories we have inherited from our ancestors about the beginning of the state of alienation we all live with. Today, our text is the Jewish story about the separation of humans from our God. It springs, in part, from the Babylonian and Assyrian creation stories. It is part of the Torah [the first five books of the Bible] in which Paul had been thoroughly trained, so we have both the ancient story and Paul’s read of it for the early Christians.
The story of the first man (ish) and woman (ishah) is told twice in Genesis, so that both the Priestly and the Yahwist2 versions would be preserved. In both versions, Adam does not mean “a man” but “a human,” whom God made from the fertile reddish-brown soil (adamah)of the Holy Land. God created humans from the earth we stand on, and from this comes the understanding that God is the God of Israel, tied to the land as much as the humans God created are tied to the land.
Both the Priestly and the Yahwist stories say that Adam was created by God to care for the land. In return, he had a beautiful place to live and plenty of good food to eat. Whatever grew in the trees was God’s gift to feed humans, with one exception: the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. That was forbidden fruit, and Adam was told that in the day he ate of it, he would die. From this we learn that the definition of sin from God’s point of view is disobedience. God gives Adam this one rule, and tells him in advance what the results of disobedience will be, and leaves Adam to his work of cultivating the garden.
This story has affected Christians in a variety of ways. The Seventh-Day Adventists, for example, are vegetarians because both the Yahwist God and the Priestly God gave Adam vegetation to eat -- whatever grew on the trees or out of the ground was good to eat, but not animals. In Genesis 2:18-20 (between the sections of today’s reading) God created the animals to be companions for Adam, because “it is not good for the man to be alone.” They are not food. Adam is co-creator of the animal kingdoms in the Yahwist version, because nothing is complete until it is named. But when God looks around, he realizes that none of the animals is really able to be a partner to Adam, so God puts Adam to sleep and from his own bone God fashions a woman.
We should note that in the Priestly version (Genesis chapter 1), God creates the various orders of fish and other sea creatures, land animals, and birds over three divine days, without the participation of Adam. There is no mention of Adam needing a companion, because the priests want to emphasize that God made Adam, ish, and isha in God’s own image, at the same time. The man and the woman stand as equals before God.
With all of the talk about ISIS (ISIL) in the news, and all of the talk about the status of women in Muslim countries, and the persistence of the hijab (scarf), or even the burka (the long garment that covers the woman head to toe) among Muslim women, it may come as some surprise to our congregations that Islam accepts the Torah -- and they use this story about Woman being made as a companion to Man, when God finally realized that none of the other animals would do, as justifying the lesser status of women. (This has been true in Judaism and Christianity also.) Women in the Middle East are often seen in this way, even today, to the point where the men discuss with each other whether women have souls, even whether they are different from the other animals a man might own.
Reform rabbis came to a somewhat different conclusion. Eve was made from Adam’s rib, it has been argued, rather than one of the bones of the head, so that she should not rule over him. She was not made of a foot or leg bone, because she should not be under the man’s heel. Instead, she was made from a rib bone, so that they can lean on each other and go on as equals in their life together.
Christianity has also had arguments about the meaning of this story for the relationship of men and women, especially in marriage. Women, it has often been said, should remain silent, because original sin came into the world when Eve allowed herself to give in to the temptation of eating of the fruit of the tree and then talked Adam into eating it also. Therefore, it is the fault of women that people are separated from God. Under this general thought pattern, the woman was the cause of the sinful nature of humans, and therefore she should be subservient to her husband.
Once again, the eastern European rabbis have some interesting insights into the story of the Fall. First, since Eve wasn’t made yet, she didn’t get the commandment about the tree directly from God, as Adam did. We should therefore suppose that she got the message from her husband. If he told her “don’t even touch that tree,” that enabled the snake to fool her into thinking that her husband didn’t get the message right. And that provides the setting for the story of the first (original) sin.
Christians have been debating about the meaning of the Knowledge of Good and Evil for centuries. There was a long period in which it was taught widely that the knowledge given was sexual. This probably grew out of the comment that both Adam and Eve realized that they were naked and sewed leaves together to cover themselves. This reasoning led to the idea, promulgated by the early Church fathers, that sexual relations, while allowed as long as the two people are married to each other, ought not to be pleasurable. (Yes, if husband and wife enjoyed sex, it was the sin of lust.)
It seems simple enough to take the story at face value: instead of asking God what we should or could do, we started deciding for ourselves what is good and what is evil. There is no need to equate that knowledge with our sexuality, despite the fact that the man and woman suddenly recognized that they were naked. Amongst the Israelites, being naked was a sign of being shamed publicly. (For an instance in which this is made plain, see the story of Noah and his sons after the flood, at the end of the ninth chapter of Genesis.) This led to the common idea of the Day of Judgment being a day when we will all stand naked before God. That nakedness has little to do with physical nudity; it is a sign of all of one’s secrets being laid bare, when we are left with no place to hide.
However, that is not the way the story has been used over the centuries. It is a tale of the proclivity of humans to get to a stage of development where we insist on our right to decide for ourselves what is good for us personally. Today, it’s known as adolescence. Sadly, there are numbers of people who never finish that stage, and that is where we can begin to talk about sin.
The Hebrew word for “sin” actually means “to miss the mark” and comes out of archery practice. So sin is not too horrible to be forgiven by God. Rather, it is like learning any skill. We have to practice getting it right. For that reason, we say to our little ones, “What do you say when you want something?” And we repeat the lesson as often as we must to teach our children to say “please” rather than “gimme that!” “What do you say to Gramma for the cookies?” to insist that they learn gratitude. They will sometimes get it right, and then the next time will throw themselves on the floor, kicking and screaming, refusing to say “please.”
This brings us to the story of the serpent, the “craftiest” of the wild animals. This snake manages to seal the estrangement between God and humans. According to the Jewish storytellers, the story we have in Torah is nowhere near the whole story.
It seems that Eve was standing in the general vicinity of the Tree of Knowledge when the snake wound its way down the tree. The snake begins his deception by enlarging on what he knows was God’s intention: “Is it true, Eve,” the snake hissed, “that you cannot eat of any of the trees in the garden?” Eve corrects the snake. “No, we can eat of any tree except the tree in the middle of the garden. In fact, if we even touch it, we will die!” That’s not what God said either. But Eve wasn’t around when the first Law was given to Adam. Where, we might ask, did that extension of God’s one rule come from?
“Hmm,” says the snake. “Interesting. You won’t die, you know. Your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God.” Eve looks at the tree. (Since she had been so afraid of the tree, she probably hadn’t looked at it either. We humans are like that.)
“It really is a pretty tree,” Eve says. She steps a few paces closer to the tree. The snake watches her, and at the right moment he gives her a shove and she lands against the tree. This so frightens her that she screams. But nothing happens.
“Ssssee?” hisses the snake. “God lied. You touched the tree and you did not die. You won’t die from eating the fruit either.” He watches her, smiling his wicked smile, and waits in silence. Eve eyes the fruit. From this close, she can smell it. It smells so sweet! It’s so beautiful! She takes a fruit from the tree and takes a small bite. And she does not die. Having tasted a small bite, she takes another, bigger bite. The snake smiles. “God lied to you, Eve. You haven’t died.”
But her innocence had. She picks another of the fruits and takes it to Adam. “Look what I have for you!” Eve exclaims. “You have to try this, it’s the most delicious fruit I’ve ever eaten.” So Adam does. And as soon as he swallows, his eyes are opened. He feels naked for the first time in his life. As does Eve. They sew fig leaves together to provide themselves some cover.
The Jewish storytellers (all men, by the way) say that Satan went to Eve because he knew that if he could get her to eat from that tree, she could talk Adam into doing the same. He only had to fool her, and her spouse would follow. Second, don’t enlarge on what God has said and done. She was more easily fooled because either she or Adam had enlarged the proscription. God didn’t say they couldn’t touch the tree. He’d said not to eat its fruit. In the logical analysis of argument, she had set up a “straw man” -- gone way beyond what God had said. If Satan could prove that her “straw man” was false, then he could get her to eat the fruit.
So, in this story, did we all wind up sinners, tossed out of the Garden of Eden because of this woman? Nope. We all wound up tossed out of the garden because of this man. Satan tricked Eve. But he didn’t trick Adam. Adam just blindly went along with what his wife said. Which is why we ask our children: “How could you have been so stupid as to try that?” And when they say that their best friend was doing it, we ask: “If all your friends were jumping off a bridge, would you do THAT too?” Of course, the truthful answer is “yes.” We usually get into trouble because we run in a group, and whatever they do we tend to follow, and make excuses afterward.
More important, like Adam, we have been hiding from God. Before God sent them out of the garden they hid in the bushes, afraid to face God because of “their nakedness.” God was angry, but as Satan said, God did not kill them. They did not die that day. But we have been hiding in fear of The One Who Sees ever since.
Romans 5:12-19
Paul addresses the question of our salvation by talking about Adam. Sin came into the world by one man. That separation from God that we all hate, and fight to ignore, came about because the first man did the one thing God had told him not to do. He didn’t die that first day, but that close walk with God did. That innocent relationship with God died. And since God got angry and tossed the man and woman out of the garden, they were afraid of God. That is a kind of death right there. Ask any child who has been beaten every time Mom got angry or Dad got drunk, or both. Ask every person who has survived a war. Ask any soldier. To watch others die all around us does something to us that cannot be undone except through kindness, gentleness, and love. Fear undoes us. Fear of God without the love for God can destroy us.
It’s not that we have inherited a sinful nature; we’re not doomed to sin. It’s that we grow up with the example of adults to follow. If Mom lies, it must be okay to lie. If Dad breaks things when he’s angry, that must be okay too. We learn what we live with. If we call ourselves Christians, but never worship God or read the Bible, how are we to learn what being a Christian means? If our Christian leadership abuses women and children, what does that do to our trust? If our secular leadership decides that it’s more important to spend money on death than on health, how can we trust that we’ll be cared for when we’re disabled, sick, or old?
Paul is talking to Jewish converts. To them, there are questions of Jewish Law (the Law laid down in the Torah3) that he seems to be ignoring as he talks about Jesus as Messiah. Paul is, in fact, trying to say that Christians are free from a legalistic religion. We no longer have long lists of laws laid down, such as not combining two different fibers in our clothing (Deuteronomy 22:11), or not eating pork or lobster. Paul is saying that sin is different from law-breaking. You cannot hold a Protestant Christian liable for breaking laws of the Roman Catholic Church, for example.
Paul is trying to talk about the gift of God’s grace in the light of the universal tendency of humankind to sin. The impact of his argument cannot be overestimated. The fifth chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans is the one that convinced Martin Luther that that our salvation depends not on our ability to follow the rules of the church, but on the grace of God. It is also is the very passage that led John Wesley to write in his journal: “In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”
The warming of Wesley’s heart led him to the establishment of societies in which people gathered to talk about their spiritual growth and shortcomings, so that they could help each other to follow Christ. He taught them about prevenient grace, meaning the grace of God which goes before us, leading us to God’s free gift. There is no such thing as choosing to be born again by the Spirit, nor can we by any means earn salvation. “The New Birth” is the gift of the Spirit (v. 17) and leads to a good life, not the other way around. People have been able to quit drinking, overcome their past of violence, prejudice, and jealousy, and live holy lives in this Spirit.
All of this is due to one man: Jesus of Nazareth, whom we call the Christ (Greek for “Messiah”). How can that be? If we are condemned as sinners because of the disobedience of one man (Adam), and if the Law (given to Moses) defines what those sins are, how can we all possibly be set free by one man (Jesus Christ)? Paul’s answer is that the love of Christ, shown in his obedience to God, breaks our bonds. We are freed to live righteous lives.
We need to pause here. I have heard over and over from parishioners that righteousness is to be avoided. We pastors have the responsibility to help our congregants understand that we are called to be righteous, and that living a righteous life does not mean we are self-righteous. Living a righteous life means to live a loving life. John Wesley’s formula was this:
Do all the good you can.
By all the means you can.
In all the ways you can.
In all the places you can.
At all the times you can.
To all the people you can.
But this is not what we do to earn the Holy Spirit. This is our response to God’s Spirit moving in us. Certainly, we can tell God that we want the Spirit to live in us. We can speak to God before we understand what Paul is talking about. But the joy in surrender is to know that God is like the father of the prodigal son, constantly watching to see if we will come home.
When I was first working in the church, I was in charge of the Sunday school, training teachers and leading worship for the children. One Sunday, one of the teachers came to me and asked if I could talk with one of our 4th-graders. He had had “a religious experience” at Bible camp that summer, and he had begun asking his mother if he could start taking communion. In our denomination you don’t have to be confirmed to take communion, but it’s rare for a child to ask to be permitted to. I asked Tom why he wanted to be able to take communion, and he said, “Well, at camp we were told that when you take communion you’re actually receiving Jesus, and since Jesus loves me so much, I think I want to be closer to him. My mom said that if you said it was okay, I could.”
I said, “I think you have a clearer idea about communion than many adults I talk to. I’ll talk to the pastor and tell him I said you could take communion.” The pastor readily agreed, both with what I had said, and that Tom clearly understood God’s grace. His desire to take communion came as a result of feeling God’s love, not so that he could make God love him.
Through the grace of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, we are enabled to live lives of hope and love, and we are put right with God. When we recognize that this applies to us, it can be so clear that we have been freed from all that has gone before this moment that it does feel as though we have been given a clean slate, a new start. When this happens, the phrase “being born again” makes perfect sense. We have a “start over” button that gives us hope and frees us from the feeling that God could never love us.
Matthew 4:1-11
Jesus’ ministry begins in Matthew’s gospel with two actions on Jesus’ part -- his baptism and his temptation in the desert. His temptation is the work of the Holy Spirit, in that he is led to go into the wilderness. He fasted for 40 days and nights, the same as the number of years the Hebrews wandered in the wilderness. This reminds us that Matthew was writing to the Jews, and that Jesus is compared to Moses throughout the gospel. So, as Moses and his people wandered 40 years, Jesus wanders for 40 days and nights.
We have taught for a long time that Jesus ate nothing in all that time. But if he truly ate nothing for all that time out in the desert areas south of Judea, he wouldn’t be “famished” -- he would be dead. No one could survive the heat without something to eat. But to concentrate on what he may have eaten, or how much, is to miss the point of fasting to the Jews of Jesus’ day. The Rev. Dr. Kent D. Berghuis4 says in his book Christian Fasting that “the Hebrew Bible rather consistently portrays fasting in conjunction with themes of disruption and restoration. In the midst of disruption, fasting comes to symbolize hope. Through repentance and prayer, fasting can signify the centering of the self in humility, the renewal of the relationship to God’s sustaining force. As such, fasting takes on a dual significance of mourning and hope. And the hope evidenced in the proper kinds of fasting in the Old Testament is ultimately a hope in the fulfillment of the eschatological, messianic age.”
Jesus’ fast in the wilderness, then, is his initiation into his messiahship. That calling is what his people have been begging God for ever since the ten northern tribes were carried away into Assyria, certainly since the Jews’ exile in Babylon, and definitely since the Romans had occupied their country. Jesus cannot simply move from being a carpenter’s son into being the Son of God. He needs to know what kind of challenges he will be up against. So, like Eve, Jesus meets Satan.
When a story is written down, we have an unfortunate loss: tone of voice. Jesus heard the voice of God at the Jordan: “You are my Beloved Son...” Matthew seems to assume that whatever Jesus knows about himself, being God’s messiah is not understood until then. So when he encounters “the tempter,” let us hear “if you are the Son of God”as a snide comment. “Who do you think you are, anyway? The Son of God?!?” Might as well get used to it, Jesus. Unless you can come up with a miracle every time someone questions your authority, there are going to be snide comments.
“If you are the Son of God, why should you be starving like this? God could make these stones be bread. Command them!”
But Jesus remembers his scriptures, and quotes Deuteronomy 8:3: “He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” He is quoting a verse that really slaps the devil, because the verse recalls that God did not let the Hebrews starve, providing them with manna, but it is also true that if we lack the word of God, we will be truly starved. He has grasped the underlying meaning of the scriptures.
In a like manner, the devil takes him up to Jerusalem and the highest point of the Temple, and this time the devil quotes scripture (Psalm 91:9-12)! This is a good warning. Not everyone who can quote scripture is on the side of God. Don’t underestimate the power of the devil to see into your heart and use your own experiences to push you in the wrong direction. “So you’re safe in the care of the Lord, are you? Let’s test that. Throw yourself down. If the angels are really looking after you...” But Jesus says, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test” (quoting Deuteronomy 6:16).
Finally, the devil leads him to “a very high mountain” and showed him the kind of glory the rulers of the world enjoy. And he says something that some people have used to assert that the devil rules this world (v. 9). But before we take that as a given, we need to remember that the devil was a liar in the garden, and is a liar today. Perhaps that truth is what makes it so easy for Jesus to throw this back at the devil, as he says “Away with you, Satan!” (Deuteronomy 6:13).
The end of his temptation comes not just because he has ordered the devil to go away, but because God was in fact watching this struggle. God’s angels “came and waited on him.” He was comforted, probably fed, and definitely shown the care God has in mind for him.
At the end of his temptation, Jesus was ready to begin his work on our behalf. At the beginning of Lent, we are challenged to follow Jesus, to become students of his teaching so that we are prepared for the grace and power God has in mind for us.
1 There are many videos online, but for an article that covers the problem in print, see the VICE NEWS article “ISIS is still holding nearly 2,000 Yazidi women as slaves.” A warning: the content of some of the videos is graphic and disturbing, especially those that are the testimony of people who have escaped.
2 “The Yahwist” editor is so named because he belonged to a group of Hebrew worshipers who called God “YHWH” (without the vowel jots deliberately to stop anyone from saying God’s Name, which would violate the commandment against misusing God’s Name).
3 The Torah, or the Five Books of Moses, are the first five books of what we Christians call the Old Testament.
4 According to Bible.org, Kent is currently Senior Pastor of First Baptist Church of Lansdale, Pennsylvania, and Adjunct Professor at Palmer Theological Seminary and Biblical Theological Seminary.
