The day God got lonely
Commentary
Today is the first Sunday during Lent. This is an important fact to note. In Advent, Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost, the Sundays belong to the season. They are Sunday of ... But during Lent, the Sundays are not part of Lent. The forty days of the season flow around the Sundays, calling us to share the journey of suffering with Jesus. The Sundays themselves, however, are islands of mercy, reminding us that Jesus is alive and forever victorious.
Still, the Sundays and the days of Lent cannot be separated, as the scripture passages for today remind us. Lent is about suffering and sadness and pain and heartache. Mostly we focus on these things in the general life of humanity since the Fall, and then concentrate them in the life of Jesus, particularly in the tough final weeks as he moved toward the cross. Yet the scripture passages for today remind us of another side of the suffering and sadness and pain and heartache. It is the heart of God that aches and breaks, too, when we move away from our creational goodness.
Imagine the conversations among the Father, Son, and Spirit from all eternity. There are terms of endearment; there are songs of praise; there are words of encouragement. Next imagine the creative energies that gave rise to this universe -- the expression of the desires in the heart of God to spill out and spread lavishly the care and commitments and kindness that flow through the Trinity. This world, according to the Bible, is the grand outpouring of God's generous desire to multiply love and to enjoy creatures made in God's own image, having in themselves the ability to ever expand the joy of divine blessing.
The early days of creation must have been a marvelous time, both here on earth and in heaven above. The book of Job hints at the wonder when these words are found on the lips of God: "Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation ... while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?" (Job 38:4-7). Imagine the amazement of creatures, mineral and animal, terrestrial and celestial, and physical and spiritual springing into being at the winsome song of God. Imagine all of these as the preparation for God's final creative work -- shaping human life to be the reflection of the community of the Trinity! Suddenly the universe was alive with prayer and conversation and drama and love. Suddenly there was music of oratory and tenderness of intimacy. Suddenly the house of divine manufacturing became a home of divine Spirit interconnected with human spirit.
Then we read of the disobedience in the Garden, and we feel the shuddering horror of humanities lost in sin. Later, we encounter Jesus less than alone in the wilderness -- "comforted" only by the devil. Out of these stories the impact of Lent takes a different turn; it is not only we humans who suffer and cry, who wander in death lands and cemeteries, who struggle to find meaning in an alien world. It is God, too, who is lonely. The loneliness of God is found in the Garden of Eden after Adam and Eve have left. No more daily walks and talks. No more teas or nectars. No more playful observations of the bounding impalas or the sneaky geckos. God is lonely.
When we walk with Paul down the family tree of humanity, we find the feud of the ages: Adam the First's kin on one side; Adam the Second's kin on the other. God is lonely again, and Matthew reminds us that the loneliness of God takes on very human shape and pain when Jesus' own preparation for ministry was a forty-day tour of duty with only himself and the devil as companions. Feel the loneliness as these passages come alive today.
Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7
There are many ways to enter the book of Genesis, and most of them are not easy. It seems that the world of Genesis is too far removed from our own. The creation stories do not answer many of the questions we want to ask of them. The people of the early chapters are almost cardboard cutouts with only one or two notable features each. The genealogies leave us wondering about their correlation with archaeological records.
One helpful way to listen to Genesis is through the ears of those at Mount Sinai in Exodus 20-24. While we may quibble about how the text of these early books of the Hebrew Bible came into being, there is no question that the story within the text indicates that the Bible began at Mount Sinai. Prior to the Exodus there was no written scripture. Abraham did not read a Bible. Jacob did not memorize Psalms. Joseph had no prophetic meditations to reflect upon while imprisoned in Egypt. Moreover, the Israelites forget who the God of their ancestors was during their multiple centuries of slave labor. Even Moses, who was specially saved and prepared by God for a work of leadership, did not know who this God was until Moses himself was about eighty years old! Only after the rushed exit from Egypt and the arduous trek through the wilderness did a number of things fall into place at Mount Sinai.
The covenant struck (or "cut," to be more accurate to the Hebrew) at Mount Sinai was shaped in the typical contract arrangements of the day. The Hittite nation had fashioned a standardized form of international treaty in something we today call the Suzerain-Vassal Covenant. It usually had six parts: a preamble declaring the right of the sovereign to initiate the covenant relationship; a historical prologue explaining the background that produced this moment of covenant-making; the stipulations of the covenant relationship; curses and blessings that expressed outcomes to the covenant or its failure; a list of witnesses who would confirm the making of this covenant; and a document clause that told where the copies of the covenant would be kept and when they would be read. Interestingly, all six parts of this Suzerain-Vassal Covenant structure are found in Exodus 20-24.
With that in mind, it appears that Genesis forms an extended historical prologue to the Sinai Covenant, explaining in greater detail why this covenant has become necessary. Reading Genesis from that perspective begins to pull things into meaningful and preachable form. From the backward glance of the Sinai covenant-making event, Genesis falls into four story-cycles roughly encompassed by these chapters: 1-11, 12-25, 26-36, and 37-50. While every major story-cycle is composed of a number of shorter tales, there seems to be either a dominant character or an over-arching theme in each. Genesis 1-11 explain to the Israelites at Mount Sinai who God was (Creator) and the character of this God's creation (endowed with freedom, intended good, but now in a state of war with its Creator). Chapters 12-25 give Israel a sense of her special identity and how a covenant with God had shaped her from the very beginning. Chapters 26-36 answers the question of what kind of character Israel had, based upon the stories of Jacob (the conniver) who became Israel (the one who wrestles with God). And chapters 37-50 tell how Israel came to live in Egypt.
In this light, the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden teaches Israel the nature of life (stewardship of the natural order), the desire of God (intimacy with humankind), and the limits of human conduct (freedom within the definable boundaries of God's commands). This is explained through the poetry of creation's birth (Genesis 1-2), and summarized in the first half of the Genesis text for today (Genesis 2:15-17).
The second half of today's text unfolds the beginnings of human rebellion. The origin of the serpent is not explained, nor is the serpent's unusual understanding of the human situation. Later, after the curse of Genesis 3:14-15 the serpent will effectively disappear from the narrative. In other words, the serpent functions here merely as a foil by which to process initial human transgression. Questions about the serpent cannot be answered from the text. The text is not about the serpent; it is about how humans became enemies of God. The text goes on to tell of the first sins -- deliberate disobedience to a direct command of the Creator God -- and then explains the outcome: alienation, separation, isolation, and shame.
While the text for today cuts off the rest of the story, the outcome between Adam and Eve is the same as that between the humans and their God (3:8-24). Whatever intimacy there had been between God and these honored creatures is now gone. Adam and Eve lose communion with each other, and the human race begins its murderous slide. More importantly, God loses communion with Adam and Eve, and both grow very lonely.
Romans 5:12-19
Paul was concluding his third mission journey (Acts 18:23--20:38) when he wrote this letter. He was wintering in Corinth at the time (Romans 16:23), staying with his good friend Gaius. Paul was on his way to Jerusalem to bring a financial offering for the poor in the Jerusalem church (Romans 15:26); he hoped soon afterward to make a personal visit to Rome (Romans 15:24-25). This letter anticipated Paul's coming, and included a summary of his teachings.
In large outline, the first three chapters of Romans focus on the desperate plight of humankind; chapters 4-8 announce God's remedy through the work of Jesus; chapters 9-11 wrestle with the matter of Jewish election and Gentile participation in the plans of God; and the rest of the letter expresses ways in which Christian faith can be lived out in society. Here in chapter 5, Paul is summarizing the significance of Jesus' work. In the previous chapter Paul had pointed out that God must do what we cannot do; this was true even for Abraham. Although we cannot earn God's good pleasure, we are connected to it through faith, and since the recent full revelation of God's plan in Jesus, the object of our faith is Jesus himself.
In the text for today, Paul sets next to one another two family trees. The first is the blighted and wilting horror growing from the misshapen stump of Adam (vv. 12-14). The second is the marvelous and vital sturdy living thing emerging from the trunk of Jesus Christ (vv. 15-17). All of us participate in the first by the accident of birth. As one wit put it, "Life is a sickness for which the only cure is death."
Theologians continue to debate whether this passage promotes ideas of universal salvation. The minimalist approach says no; we only transfer from one tree (Adam's) to the other (Christ's) when we actively believe in the sacrificial work of Jesus. The moderate version says maybe; we are all automatically transferred from Adam's family tree to Jesus' family tree, but those who choose again to challenge God and intentionally disobey will be sent back and perish when Adam's tree is burned. The maximalist understanding is that the grace and gift of God (see v. 15) exceed our ability to cling to any tree, and automatically places us in the family of Jesus. The call now is for us to live as if we honor that gift.
Whatever approach you take, the larger theme is clear: God was lonely when Adam's tree began to die outside the Garden of Eden, so God replanted a tree of human grace and glory, and brought those whom God chose (some, many, or all of us) back into the family.
Matthew 4:1-11
Matthew's original audience was largely composed of Jewish Christians. Matthew's method of tying Jesus to the Old Testament heritage of Jewish faith involved demonstrating how Jesus relived the history of Israel in miniature, replaying the major events and eras of its formative period. Here Jesus mirrors the forty-year wilderness wandering of Israel in the Sinai deserts by way of his own forty-day wilderness sojourn.
The three temptations that Jesus endures echo specific challenges Israel faced early in its national existence. Each of these incidents is reviewed by Moses in the early chapters of Deuteronomy. First, while traveling through the deserted wastelands of the wilderness, Israel had complained to God about lacking food and facing starvation (Exodus 16). Jesus encounters similar famishment, and uses Moses' teaching in Deuteronomy 8 to resist a quick fix that would remove him from following Israel's path.
Second, Israel quarreled with Moses in Exodus 17:1-7, declaring to him that God's power was insufficient to care for their needs. Moses recalls this incident in Deuteronomy 6:16, and reminds the people that God has never failed them in the past. Because of this they ought not doubt or question God's ability to care for them in the future. When Jesus is placed by the tempter in a situation where God's care might be tested, Jesus quotes Moses' words (Deuteronomy 6:16) to resist such unnecessary exercises, and stands his ground.
Third, immediately after these two incidents in Exodus 16-17, Israel faced the prospect of becoming lost among the other nations and reduced to being merely like them. The battle between Israel and Amalek in Exodus 17:8-16 was resolved only when Moses went up to "the top of the hill" (v. 9) and kept the national focus upward (Moses' hands needed to be lifted toward heaven) to Israel's true leader. The strength of Israel that day was not found in its military might but in its devotion to the God who transcended all national affairs. Similarly for Jesus, from a "high mountain" he is enabled to see the power and wealth of the nations, but only when he quotes Moses' reminder from Deuteronomy 6:13 can he resist the prospect of becoming merely a world leader. As with Israel, his mission is much greater.
Matthew clearly wants his readers to understand Jesus' forty days in the wilderness as parallel to Israel's forty years in the wilderness. In each case the messenger of God is tempted to give up or deny God's power or settle for a typically human resolution to a problem. Yet, as Matthew shows, Jesus mimics Israel's reliance on God, and emerges from the wilderness experience with integrity intact, and facing the next state of his mission with renewed confidence in God.
Two themes surface from this story of Jesus' wilderness temptations. First, there is the loneliness of God. It was the loneliness of God, following the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, which led God to seek other traveling companions. In Old Testament times, Abraham and his descendents were called to be God's tour partner. The wilderness experiences they went through together strengthened their dependence on one another, especially Israel's on God. In New Testament times Jesus replays Israel's existence and becomes the visible divine partner on earth. Jesus makes evident to those around him what it means to walk with God, even through wilderness times. In Jesus' steadfast commitments is found the example that others who wish to travel with God can follow.
Second, since Jesus is himself fully divine, his wilderness struggles allow God to experience life as an exile. Just as Adam and Eve were forced out of the Garden and into the "wilderness" apart from intimacy with God, so in Jesus God experiences the wilderness loneliness that humans have had to face these many centuries. It will be through this wilderness experience, leading right up to the loneliness of the cross, that Jesus endures the painful loneliness of humanity in its quest to return to the Garden and intimacy with God. Only when the words, "My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?!" (Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34) have been wrung from Jesus' heart on Golgotha will a solution to God's loneliness be found. That day God would rip apart the temple veil and emerge from God's isolation to return to human interaction once again. From that time forward the Spirit of God would come on the church, and its people would again be the dwelling place of God.
Through the loneliness of Jesus is the remedy to the loneliness of both God and humanity finally found. So on this first Sunday during Lent we spend time on the island of grace that lifts us above the lonely forty-day walk of suffering and pain.
Application
Some years ago a woman wrote the following poem that she called "A Lonesome Middleager":
Do you know what it means to be lonely?
Do you know how it feels to be blue?
Do you know what it's like to feel
No one really cares just how things are with you?
Yes, it's nice to be friendly at church time;
You are thankful when they tell you they pray.
But what about long, lonely night hours,
Not to mention the following day?
You can call up your friends, and I do that;
You can ask them how they're doing, too.
But you wish that they'd say, "Come on over
And help us eat up the leftover stew."
Most everyone has a son or a daughter,
A husband, a mother, or sis.
But when you're alone with no loved ones,
To me, I just merely exist.
This woman has captured the painful power of loneliness. Charles Williams, when asked about the meaning of the Old Testament, said that it could be summarized as depicting "the loneliness of God." Dorothy Day gave this title to the story of her lifelong search for meaning and God, The Long Loneliness. In all of these we are reminded of the agonizing alienation that settles into our world when God and humanity are separated by sin (Genesis 3). Two family trees develop side by side (Romans 5), and Jesus walks through the wilderness experiencing both God's loneliness and also that of humanity (Matthew 4).
On this first Sunday during Lent, dig into the pain of alienation, and let your people feel the angst of a world come undone by the separations of racism, social stratification, spiritual isolation, philosophic skepticism, and sinful inability to be ourselves or with others who matter. Then point to God's long quest to rejoin us, and God's desire to have us rejoin God in fellowship, and show how each is powerfully portrayed in the wilderness walk of Jesus at the outset of this Lenten season.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 32
Psalm 32 is first of all a psalm that praises the forgiving grace of God. The psalm establishes the distinct connection between our physical well-being and our spiritual standing. We today, in a more secular vein, call this psychosomatic. Yet, it is not our personal psyche, nor our personal body, but the union of the two which is proclaimed by the psalm. It would be wrong to use the psalm as a demonstration of the theology of reward. There is a fundamental connection which we neglect only to our peril and destruction.
Instruction in this facet and teaching God's grace by pointing to its performance in the past, the holy story of Jew and Christian becomes a history which should be taught. Learning is sacred. The roots of learning are deep, sometimes hidden in the Bible, but nevertheless present. We are not brute beasts, but people who are gifted with a mind. If the beginning was the word, then such word must be proclaimed again and again. We share in this breath of God. Enlightenment is a duty we have toward those who are capable of perceiving such light as has come in the scripture, and finally, in the person of Jesus Christ.
The psalm does not deny the distress of the unfortunate who do not know about a gracious God. The psalmist takes it upon himself to instruct those who can receive such instruction and learning. We must see how instruction occupies a very important place in Israel's tradition. We might recall the old Talmudic saying: "You can change a place of worship into a place of learning, because learning is sacred unto God and goes on seven days a week. Worship occupies only a few hours, and therefore you can never change a place of learning into a place of worship." Worship is beautiful, but it is based on the knowledge of what you are doing. Instruction and learning are vital for good worship.
The emphasis of Psalm 32, in spite of the fact that it is a penitential psalm, is on the steadfast love of God and the joy it gives all who live in him. Such joy is not artificial, it is not the result of something we do for ourselves. It is God's action to bring this joy to us by his steadfast love. The steadfast love of God is a love emanating from him alone, and we reflect such love into the world.
Into our broken world, troubled by the life of sin and our death, has come the resurrection of Jesus Christ. His life without sin gave us a chance. Through death he overcame death and ascended to the side of the Father. He is there, as a source of joy and of hope to all who believe. Hope in the biblical understanding is not something uncertain, because we are sure it will happen. We are just not sure when -- the time and the place. There is a certainty in our Christian hope that offers more than security. The emphasis on instruction and learning is significant. It teaches us to overcome the injustices of this world by practical work, and to instruct and learn the finer points of our faith. The work of the mind is not something at the fringe, but in the center of our faith. How can you confess your sins and repent if you are ignorant in faith?
Still, the Sundays and the days of Lent cannot be separated, as the scripture passages for today remind us. Lent is about suffering and sadness and pain and heartache. Mostly we focus on these things in the general life of humanity since the Fall, and then concentrate them in the life of Jesus, particularly in the tough final weeks as he moved toward the cross. Yet the scripture passages for today remind us of another side of the suffering and sadness and pain and heartache. It is the heart of God that aches and breaks, too, when we move away from our creational goodness.
Imagine the conversations among the Father, Son, and Spirit from all eternity. There are terms of endearment; there are songs of praise; there are words of encouragement. Next imagine the creative energies that gave rise to this universe -- the expression of the desires in the heart of God to spill out and spread lavishly the care and commitments and kindness that flow through the Trinity. This world, according to the Bible, is the grand outpouring of God's generous desire to multiply love and to enjoy creatures made in God's own image, having in themselves the ability to ever expand the joy of divine blessing.
The early days of creation must have been a marvelous time, both here on earth and in heaven above. The book of Job hints at the wonder when these words are found on the lips of God: "Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation ... while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?" (Job 38:4-7). Imagine the amazement of creatures, mineral and animal, terrestrial and celestial, and physical and spiritual springing into being at the winsome song of God. Imagine all of these as the preparation for God's final creative work -- shaping human life to be the reflection of the community of the Trinity! Suddenly the universe was alive with prayer and conversation and drama and love. Suddenly there was music of oratory and tenderness of intimacy. Suddenly the house of divine manufacturing became a home of divine Spirit interconnected with human spirit.
Then we read of the disobedience in the Garden, and we feel the shuddering horror of humanities lost in sin. Later, we encounter Jesus less than alone in the wilderness -- "comforted" only by the devil. Out of these stories the impact of Lent takes a different turn; it is not only we humans who suffer and cry, who wander in death lands and cemeteries, who struggle to find meaning in an alien world. It is God, too, who is lonely. The loneliness of God is found in the Garden of Eden after Adam and Eve have left. No more daily walks and talks. No more teas or nectars. No more playful observations of the bounding impalas or the sneaky geckos. God is lonely.
When we walk with Paul down the family tree of humanity, we find the feud of the ages: Adam the First's kin on one side; Adam the Second's kin on the other. God is lonely again, and Matthew reminds us that the loneliness of God takes on very human shape and pain when Jesus' own preparation for ministry was a forty-day tour of duty with only himself and the devil as companions. Feel the loneliness as these passages come alive today.
Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7
There are many ways to enter the book of Genesis, and most of them are not easy. It seems that the world of Genesis is too far removed from our own. The creation stories do not answer many of the questions we want to ask of them. The people of the early chapters are almost cardboard cutouts with only one or two notable features each. The genealogies leave us wondering about their correlation with archaeological records.
One helpful way to listen to Genesis is through the ears of those at Mount Sinai in Exodus 20-24. While we may quibble about how the text of these early books of the Hebrew Bible came into being, there is no question that the story within the text indicates that the Bible began at Mount Sinai. Prior to the Exodus there was no written scripture. Abraham did not read a Bible. Jacob did not memorize Psalms. Joseph had no prophetic meditations to reflect upon while imprisoned in Egypt. Moreover, the Israelites forget who the God of their ancestors was during their multiple centuries of slave labor. Even Moses, who was specially saved and prepared by God for a work of leadership, did not know who this God was until Moses himself was about eighty years old! Only after the rushed exit from Egypt and the arduous trek through the wilderness did a number of things fall into place at Mount Sinai.
The covenant struck (or "cut," to be more accurate to the Hebrew) at Mount Sinai was shaped in the typical contract arrangements of the day. The Hittite nation had fashioned a standardized form of international treaty in something we today call the Suzerain-Vassal Covenant. It usually had six parts: a preamble declaring the right of the sovereign to initiate the covenant relationship; a historical prologue explaining the background that produced this moment of covenant-making; the stipulations of the covenant relationship; curses and blessings that expressed outcomes to the covenant or its failure; a list of witnesses who would confirm the making of this covenant; and a document clause that told where the copies of the covenant would be kept and when they would be read. Interestingly, all six parts of this Suzerain-Vassal Covenant structure are found in Exodus 20-24.
With that in mind, it appears that Genesis forms an extended historical prologue to the Sinai Covenant, explaining in greater detail why this covenant has become necessary. Reading Genesis from that perspective begins to pull things into meaningful and preachable form. From the backward glance of the Sinai covenant-making event, Genesis falls into four story-cycles roughly encompassed by these chapters: 1-11, 12-25, 26-36, and 37-50. While every major story-cycle is composed of a number of shorter tales, there seems to be either a dominant character or an over-arching theme in each. Genesis 1-11 explain to the Israelites at Mount Sinai who God was (Creator) and the character of this God's creation (endowed with freedom, intended good, but now in a state of war with its Creator). Chapters 12-25 give Israel a sense of her special identity and how a covenant with God had shaped her from the very beginning. Chapters 26-36 answers the question of what kind of character Israel had, based upon the stories of Jacob (the conniver) who became Israel (the one who wrestles with God). And chapters 37-50 tell how Israel came to live in Egypt.
In this light, the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden teaches Israel the nature of life (stewardship of the natural order), the desire of God (intimacy with humankind), and the limits of human conduct (freedom within the definable boundaries of God's commands). This is explained through the poetry of creation's birth (Genesis 1-2), and summarized in the first half of the Genesis text for today (Genesis 2:15-17).
The second half of today's text unfolds the beginnings of human rebellion. The origin of the serpent is not explained, nor is the serpent's unusual understanding of the human situation. Later, after the curse of Genesis 3:14-15 the serpent will effectively disappear from the narrative. In other words, the serpent functions here merely as a foil by which to process initial human transgression. Questions about the serpent cannot be answered from the text. The text is not about the serpent; it is about how humans became enemies of God. The text goes on to tell of the first sins -- deliberate disobedience to a direct command of the Creator God -- and then explains the outcome: alienation, separation, isolation, and shame.
While the text for today cuts off the rest of the story, the outcome between Adam and Eve is the same as that between the humans and their God (3:8-24). Whatever intimacy there had been between God and these honored creatures is now gone. Adam and Eve lose communion with each other, and the human race begins its murderous slide. More importantly, God loses communion with Adam and Eve, and both grow very lonely.
Romans 5:12-19
Paul was concluding his third mission journey (Acts 18:23--20:38) when he wrote this letter. He was wintering in Corinth at the time (Romans 16:23), staying with his good friend Gaius. Paul was on his way to Jerusalem to bring a financial offering for the poor in the Jerusalem church (Romans 15:26); he hoped soon afterward to make a personal visit to Rome (Romans 15:24-25). This letter anticipated Paul's coming, and included a summary of his teachings.
In large outline, the first three chapters of Romans focus on the desperate plight of humankind; chapters 4-8 announce God's remedy through the work of Jesus; chapters 9-11 wrestle with the matter of Jewish election and Gentile participation in the plans of God; and the rest of the letter expresses ways in which Christian faith can be lived out in society. Here in chapter 5, Paul is summarizing the significance of Jesus' work. In the previous chapter Paul had pointed out that God must do what we cannot do; this was true even for Abraham. Although we cannot earn God's good pleasure, we are connected to it through faith, and since the recent full revelation of God's plan in Jesus, the object of our faith is Jesus himself.
In the text for today, Paul sets next to one another two family trees. The first is the blighted and wilting horror growing from the misshapen stump of Adam (vv. 12-14). The second is the marvelous and vital sturdy living thing emerging from the trunk of Jesus Christ (vv. 15-17). All of us participate in the first by the accident of birth. As one wit put it, "Life is a sickness for which the only cure is death."
Theologians continue to debate whether this passage promotes ideas of universal salvation. The minimalist approach says no; we only transfer from one tree (Adam's) to the other (Christ's) when we actively believe in the sacrificial work of Jesus. The moderate version says maybe; we are all automatically transferred from Adam's family tree to Jesus' family tree, but those who choose again to challenge God and intentionally disobey will be sent back and perish when Adam's tree is burned. The maximalist understanding is that the grace and gift of God (see v. 15) exceed our ability to cling to any tree, and automatically places us in the family of Jesus. The call now is for us to live as if we honor that gift.
Whatever approach you take, the larger theme is clear: God was lonely when Adam's tree began to die outside the Garden of Eden, so God replanted a tree of human grace and glory, and brought those whom God chose (some, many, or all of us) back into the family.
Matthew 4:1-11
Matthew's original audience was largely composed of Jewish Christians. Matthew's method of tying Jesus to the Old Testament heritage of Jewish faith involved demonstrating how Jesus relived the history of Israel in miniature, replaying the major events and eras of its formative period. Here Jesus mirrors the forty-year wilderness wandering of Israel in the Sinai deserts by way of his own forty-day wilderness sojourn.
The three temptations that Jesus endures echo specific challenges Israel faced early in its national existence. Each of these incidents is reviewed by Moses in the early chapters of Deuteronomy. First, while traveling through the deserted wastelands of the wilderness, Israel had complained to God about lacking food and facing starvation (Exodus 16). Jesus encounters similar famishment, and uses Moses' teaching in Deuteronomy 8 to resist a quick fix that would remove him from following Israel's path.
Second, Israel quarreled with Moses in Exodus 17:1-7, declaring to him that God's power was insufficient to care for their needs. Moses recalls this incident in Deuteronomy 6:16, and reminds the people that God has never failed them in the past. Because of this they ought not doubt or question God's ability to care for them in the future. When Jesus is placed by the tempter in a situation where God's care might be tested, Jesus quotes Moses' words (Deuteronomy 6:16) to resist such unnecessary exercises, and stands his ground.
Third, immediately after these two incidents in Exodus 16-17, Israel faced the prospect of becoming lost among the other nations and reduced to being merely like them. The battle between Israel and Amalek in Exodus 17:8-16 was resolved only when Moses went up to "the top of the hill" (v. 9) and kept the national focus upward (Moses' hands needed to be lifted toward heaven) to Israel's true leader. The strength of Israel that day was not found in its military might but in its devotion to the God who transcended all national affairs. Similarly for Jesus, from a "high mountain" he is enabled to see the power and wealth of the nations, but only when he quotes Moses' reminder from Deuteronomy 6:13 can he resist the prospect of becoming merely a world leader. As with Israel, his mission is much greater.
Matthew clearly wants his readers to understand Jesus' forty days in the wilderness as parallel to Israel's forty years in the wilderness. In each case the messenger of God is tempted to give up or deny God's power or settle for a typically human resolution to a problem. Yet, as Matthew shows, Jesus mimics Israel's reliance on God, and emerges from the wilderness experience with integrity intact, and facing the next state of his mission with renewed confidence in God.
Two themes surface from this story of Jesus' wilderness temptations. First, there is the loneliness of God. It was the loneliness of God, following the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, which led God to seek other traveling companions. In Old Testament times, Abraham and his descendents were called to be God's tour partner. The wilderness experiences they went through together strengthened their dependence on one another, especially Israel's on God. In New Testament times Jesus replays Israel's existence and becomes the visible divine partner on earth. Jesus makes evident to those around him what it means to walk with God, even through wilderness times. In Jesus' steadfast commitments is found the example that others who wish to travel with God can follow.
Second, since Jesus is himself fully divine, his wilderness struggles allow God to experience life as an exile. Just as Adam and Eve were forced out of the Garden and into the "wilderness" apart from intimacy with God, so in Jesus God experiences the wilderness loneliness that humans have had to face these many centuries. It will be through this wilderness experience, leading right up to the loneliness of the cross, that Jesus endures the painful loneliness of humanity in its quest to return to the Garden and intimacy with God. Only when the words, "My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?!" (Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34) have been wrung from Jesus' heart on Golgotha will a solution to God's loneliness be found. That day God would rip apart the temple veil and emerge from God's isolation to return to human interaction once again. From that time forward the Spirit of God would come on the church, and its people would again be the dwelling place of God.
Through the loneliness of Jesus is the remedy to the loneliness of both God and humanity finally found. So on this first Sunday during Lent we spend time on the island of grace that lifts us above the lonely forty-day walk of suffering and pain.
Application
Some years ago a woman wrote the following poem that she called "A Lonesome Middleager":
Do you know what it means to be lonely?
Do you know how it feels to be blue?
Do you know what it's like to feel
No one really cares just how things are with you?
Yes, it's nice to be friendly at church time;
You are thankful when they tell you they pray.
But what about long, lonely night hours,
Not to mention the following day?
You can call up your friends, and I do that;
You can ask them how they're doing, too.
But you wish that they'd say, "Come on over
And help us eat up the leftover stew."
Most everyone has a son or a daughter,
A husband, a mother, or sis.
But when you're alone with no loved ones,
To me, I just merely exist.
This woman has captured the painful power of loneliness. Charles Williams, when asked about the meaning of the Old Testament, said that it could be summarized as depicting "the loneliness of God." Dorothy Day gave this title to the story of her lifelong search for meaning and God, The Long Loneliness. In all of these we are reminded of the agonizing alienation that settles into our world when God and humanity are separated by sin (Genesis 3). Two family trees develop side by side (Romans 5), and Jesus walks through the wilderness experiencing both God's loneliness and also that of humanity (Matthew 4).
On this first Sunday during Lent, dig into the pain of alienation, and let your people feel the angst of a world come undone by the separations of racism, social stratification, spiritual isolation, philosophic skepticism, and sinful inability to be ourselves or with others who matter. Then point to God's long quest to rejoin us, and God's desire to have us rejoin God in fellowship, and show how each is powerfully portrayed in the wilderness walk of Jesus at the outset of this Lenten season.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 32
Psalm 32 is first of all a psalm that praises the forgiving grace of God. The psalm establishes the distinct connection between our physical well-being and our spiritual standing. We today, in a more secular vein, call this psychosomatic. Yet, it is not our personal psyche, nor our personal body, but the union of the two which is proclaimed by the psalm. It would be wrong to use the psalm as a demonstration of the theology of reward. There is a fundamental connection which we neglect only to our peril and destruction.
Instruction in this facet and teaching God's grace by pointing to its performance in the past, the holy story of Jew and Christian becomes a history which should be taught. Learning is sacred. The roots of learning are deep, sometimes hidden in the Bible, but nevertheless present. We are not brute beasts, but people who are gifted with a mind. If the beginning was the word, then such word must be proclaimed again and again. We share in this breath of God. Enlightenment is a duty we have toward those who are capable of perceiving such light as has come in the scripture, and finally, in the person of Jesus Christ.
The psalm does not deny the distress of the unfortunate who do not know about a gracious God. The psalmist takes it upon himself to instruct those who can receive such instruction and learning. We must see how instruction occupies a very important place in Israel's tradition. We might recall the old Talmudic saying: "You can change a place of worship into a place of learning, because learning is sacred unto God and goes on seven days a week. Worship occupies only a few hours, and therefore you can never change a place of learning into a place of worship." Worship is beautiful, but it is based on the knowledge of what you are doing. Instruction and learning are vital for good worship.
The emphasis of Psalm 32, in spite of the fact that it is a penitential psalm, is on the steadfast love of God and the joy it gives all who live in him. Such joy is not artificial, it is not the result of something we do for ourselves. It is God's action to bring this joy to us by his steadfast love. The steadfast love of God is a love emanating from him alone, and we reflect such love into the world.
Into our broken world, troubled by the life of sin and our death, has come the resurrection of Jesus Christ. His life without sin gave us a chance. Through death he overcame death and ascended to the side of the Father. He is there, as a source of joy and of hope to all who believe. Hope in the biblical understanding is not something uncertain, because we are sure it will happen. We are just not sure when -- the time and the place. There is a certainty in our Christian hope that offers more than security. The emphasis on instruction and learning is significant. It teaches us to overcome the injustices of this world by practical work, and to instruct and learn the finer points of our faith. The work of the mind is not something at the fringe, but in the center of our faith. How can you confess your sins and repent if you are ignorant in faith?
