Tough beginnings
Commentary
Object:
Ancient Israel's calendar of daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly markers was not so much a schedule of holidays that broke up the work seasons into manageable pieces. Rather it was the rhythm of married life with Yahweh. It was the way in which the covenant relationship was acknowledged daily and weekly, and then encouraged the deep permeation of the relationship as a kind of living testimony through the multiple anniversary remembrances throughout the year.
So it is with the liturgical year calendar of the Christian church. We mark the seasons not merely by way of the changing climatic conditions of snow and sun, seedtime and harvest, but rather by tracing the movement of God's redemptive activities in time:
• Advent -- we wait expectantly through the dark night of earth's soul for the light of divine redemption.
• Epiphany -- we celebrate the light of God's revelation among us in the glow of Jesus' presence.
• Lent -- we stumble with Jesus under the weight of unresolved evil and judgment toward the "beautiful, scandalous night" of crucifixion, which will forever change human and cosmic destinies.
• Easter -- we rise to new life with Jesus, aware that things can never be the same for those who are "born again."
• Pentecost -- we are empowered by the Paraclete indwelling to live beyond mediocrity as daughters and sons of the great king, who share in the transformation of society as the kingdom of God presses against us with its hopes and dreams and expectations.
Each step in the journey is another opportunity to start over. We begin again on this Sunday during Lent to rethink our lives in the new ways of our Creator and redeemer. This is what comes out of the dark story of our first parents. This is the rebirth promised by Paul in his letter to the Roman church. This is the hope we share with Jesus as he spends time in the wilderness on the way to redemptive glory.
Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7
The "mythical" qualities of Genesis 1-11 ought not to be interpreted as synonymous with either "untrue" or "non-historical." Myths are stories that summarize worldviews in elided prose, giving snapshots of the value systems that drive a culture, or providing hooks on which to hang the unspoken but ubiquitous understanding of a social group's values and self-perception. This is why the stories told by way of myths may sometimes appear to be cartoon-like fairytales, or at other times a selection of emblematic events from the actual unfolding of a community's early history. In fact, many times they appear to be a combination of both. Myths by their very nature are not scientific descriptions or journalistic documentaries and should not be read in that manner. Myths serve instead to carry the fundamental values and worldview understandings of a culture in a manageable, memorable collection of tales.
It is in this way that Genesis functions as an extended historical prologue to the Sinai covenant. The stories of Genesis answer a number of important questions that arise simply because Israel has been shaken loose from 400 years of enslaved slumber and is now being reshaped as the marriage partner of God in a divine mission that has not yet been fully clarified. Genesis gives the context to the suzerain-vassal treaty formed in Exodus 20-24. It takes important moments from both Israel's distant and recent past and uses these as the shepherding banks by which to direct the flow of the people's river of identity into their new and uncertain future.
Because there is no authorial self-disclosure within the pages of Genesis we are left to speculate about its specific origins. An interesting and important clue emerges from the text itself when the Hebrew nomenclature for God is analyzed. Most often, especially beginning with the stories of Abram in Genesis 12, "Yahweh" is used to name the divinity. According to the book of Exodus, this name emerged in Israel through the deity's self-disclosure to Moses in the encounter between them at Mount Horeb (Exodus 3). This would indicate that whoever wrote Genesis, and whenever the writing happened, this book was created no earlier than the lifetime of Moses and functions within the scope of the covenant-making events of Exodus. Thus, if one is to listen to the internal testimony of the literature of the Bible, Genesis must be understood to function as a companion volume to the covenant documents of Israel's national identity formation at Mount Sinai. Therefore Genesis must be read not as a volume preexisting in a disconnected primeval world, but rather as the interpretation of events leading up to the engagement of Yahweh and Israel at Sinai in the suzerain-vassal covenant established there. Genesis is the extended historical prologue of the Sinai covenant.
Viewed this way, the message of Genesis is readily accessible. To begin with, the cosmological origins myths of chapters 1-11 are apologetic devices that announce a very different worldview than that available among and within the cultures surrounding Israel. The two dominant cosmogonies in the ancient Near East were established by the civilizations of Mesopotamia (filtered largely through Babylonian recitations) and Egypt.
When placed alongside these other cosmogonic myths, the Genesis creation story is very spare and poetically balanced. In brief testimony it declares that God existed before the world that is apprehended by our senses was brought into being. It also asserts that creation happened by way of divine speech rather than through the sexual interaction of deities, or as the animation of guts and gore left over and emerging out of their conflicts. Moreover, creation was an intentional act that took place by way of orderly progression.
In the balanced rhythm of poetic prose, the Genesis creation story shows how divine planning and purpose brought the world into being specifically as a home for humanity. These creatures are not the byproduct of restless fighting among the gods. Nor are they a slave race produced in order to give the gods more leisure. In fact, according to the Genesis account human beings are the only creatures made in the image of God, thus sharing the best of divine qualities.
If, as the literature requires, the creation stories of Genesis 1-2 are part of a lengthy historical prologue to the meeting of Yahweh and Israel at Mount Sinai, these cosmogonic myths are not to be read as the end product of scientific or historical analysis. They are designed to place Israel in an entirely different worldview context than that which shaped their neighbors. Humanity's place in this natural realm is one of intimacy with God, rather than fear and slavery. The human race exists in harmony with nature, not as its bitter opponent or only a helpless minor element. Women and men together share creative responsibility with God over animals and plants.
Moreover, there is no hint of evil or sin in the creation stories themselves. In fact, the recurring refrain is that God saw the coming-into-being of each successive wave of creation and declared it to be good. There is no eternal dualism of opposing forces that in their conflict engendered the world as we know it. Nor is the creative energy of human life itself derived from inherent and co-equal powers of good and evil which, in their chasing of one another, produce the changes necessary to drive the system. Instead, evil appears only after a fully developed created realm is complete, and then enters as a usurping power that seeks to draw away the reflected creativity of the human race into alliance with forces denying the Creator's values and goals. Evil and sin are essentially linked to human perspectives that are in competition with the one declared true and genuine by the creation stories themselves.
In Genesis 3-11, following the devastating effects of evil that leach their way through the world, the Creator displays graciousness in delaying the sentence of death (2:17) upon them, and also by way of providing promises that this conflict need not end their existence. Instead the human creatures are driven out of the Garden of Eden, in what seems to be a divine desire to pull them to their senses through the restlessness of homelessness. They become exiles, and their descendants, in order to compensate, build cities as an apparent attempt to regain civility. All these efforts fail, however, and the cancer of disobedience explodes in acts of killing and violence.
Romans 5:12-19
Because Paul had not yet made a visit to Rome, this letter was less personal and more rationally organized than was often otherwise true. Paul intended this missive to be a working document; the congregation, already established in the capital city of the empire, would be able to read and discuss it together in anticipation of Paul's arrival, which was planned for some months ahead (Romans 1:6-15). Paul summarized his working theme and emphasis up front: a new expression of the "righteousness of God" had been recently revealed, with great power, through the coming of Jesus Christ (Romans 1:17).
Paul moves directly from his brief declaration about the righteousness of God into an extended discourse on the wrath of God as revealed against wickedness (Romans 1:18). Because of this, many have interpreted Paul's understanding of God's righteousness as an unattainable standard, against which the whole human race is measured and fails miserably. Only then, in the context of this desperate human situation, would the grand salvation of Christ be appreciated and enjoyed.
But more scholars believe that Paul's assertions about the righteousness of God actually have a positive and missional thrust. In their understanding of what Paul says, it is precisely because of the obvious corruption and sinfulness in our world, which are demeaning and destroying humanity, that God needed again, as God did through Israel, to assert the divine will. In so doing, the focus of God's righteousness is not to heap judgment upon humankind; instead God's brilliant display of grace and power in Jesus ought to draw people back to the creational goodness God had originally intended for them. In other words, the Creator has never changed purpose or plan. The divine mission through Israel was to display the righteousness of God so that all nations might return to the goodness of Yahweh. Again, in Jesus, the righteousness of God is revealed as a beacon of hope in a world ravaged by evil bullies. The power of God is our only sure bodyguard against the killing effects of sin and society and self.
This more positive perspective on the righteousness of God fits well with the flow of Paul's message. In chapters 1:18--3:20, Paul describes the crippling effect of sin. We are all alienated from God (1:18-25). But we are also alienated from each other (1:26-32), so that we begin to treat one another with contempt and painful arrogance, and destroy those around us in the malice that blinds us. We are even, says Paul, alienated from our own selves (2:1-11), not realizing how tarnished our sense and perspectives have become.
We make excuses about our condition (2:12--3:20), claiming that we are actually pretty good people (2:12-16), or accusing society and religion of raising moral standards to levels that are simply unrealistic (2:17--3:4), or even blaming God for all the nastiness around us and within us (3:5-20). Yet the result is merely self-deception and continued rottenness in a world that seems to have no outs.
Once the stage has been set for Paul's readers to realize again the pervasive grip of evil in this world, Paul marches Abraham out onto the stage as a model of divine religious reconstruction. God does not wish to be distant from the world, judgmental and vengeful. Rather, Jesus comes, the fullness of God's healing righteousness revealed.
The story of God's righteousness as grace and goodness begins with Abraham. God has always desired an ever-renewing relationship with the people of this world, creatures made in God's own image. Paul describes God's heart of love in 3:21-31, using illustrations from the courtroom (we are "justified" -- 3:24), the marketplace (we receive "redemption" -- 3:24), and the Temple ("a sacrifice of atonement" -- 3:25). Moreover, while this ongoing expression of God's gracious goodness finds its initial point of contact through the Jews (Abraham and "the law" and Jesus), it is clearly intended for all of humankind (3:27-31).
This is nothing new, according to Paul. In fact, if we return to the story of Abraham, we find some very interesting notes that we may have glossed over. "Blessedness" was "credited" to Abraham before he had a chance to be "justified by works" (4:1-11). In other words, whenever the "righteousness of God" shows up, it is a good thing, a healing hope, an enriching experience that no one is able to buy or manipulate. God alone initiates a relationship of favor and grace with us (4:1-23). In fact, according to Paul, this purpose of God is no less spectacular than the divine quest to re-create the world, undoing the effects that the cancer of sin has blighted upon us (Romans 5). It feels like being reborn (5:1-11). It plays out like the world itself is being remade (5:12-21). This is the great righteousness of God at work!
Matthew 4:1-11
Matthew does a quick-step through a variety of incidents in Jesus' early life to reveal the essential character of this unique and specially born savior. Jesus, Matthew makes clear, is actually destined to replay or relive the life of Israel in a host of dimensions:
• Jesus copies Israel's miraculous existence and purpose, born through divine intervention as savior of nations (1:18-25).
• He is spared from the murderous intents of a scheming king (2:3-8) who goes on to slaughter the innocents (2:16-18), just as Moses was delivered in Exodus 2 while many Israelite boys were slaughtered.
• Like the nation as a whole, Jesus is gathered out of Egypt (2:15).
• From his earliest days, he is dedicated to a divine mission (so the play on the words "Nazirite" and "Nazarene" in 2:23).
• His ministry is set in motion by passing through waters (3), right at the same spot where Israel crossed the Jordan River in order to begin its witness to the nations from the Promised Land.
• Jesus also wanders in the wilderness for forty days (4:1-11) before he can fully assume his adult responsibilities, mirroring Israel's traumatic forty years described in the book of Numbers.
As we read this story of Jesus' temptations, we need to be guided by several interpretive principles that Matthew builds directly into his narrative flow. First, while Matthew never allows us to question whether these things actually happened, he also wants us to understand the symbolic significance of them. Jesus needed to be in the wilderness for forty days, just as Israel was. And what was the purpose of this time in wilderness? For Israel, it was a period of purification and preparation, when listening to the voice of God was paramount. Before the start of Jesus' own ministry to the nations of the world, Jesus must be purified and prepared in the wilderness, just as Israel was, and live constantly by the divine word that sustains.
Second, the whole of reality is caught up in a spiritual conflict. The temptations of Jesus are not unique to him and never occur in the rest of time or society. Rather, the temptations of Jesus are the essence of reality. Notice that the key theme of the "Sermon on the Mount," which follows, is the conflict between the evil in ourselves and the kingdom of heaven. Jesus will put it succinctly: "Seek first the kingdom of heaven and its righteousness, and all these things will be added as well." Here Jesus is living out in his personal life the larger dimensions of reality that we too often ignore as superstitious or irrelevant.
Third, the temptations themselves are built into an increasing hierarchy of potency. First comes the call to survival: turn these stones into bread. After all, what good is a dead person in the work of the living God? Second comes the plea for faith's assurance: throw yourself off this pinnacle and either put yourself out of this existential misery or otherwise experience the miracle of faith you pretend to believe. Is faith relevant? Does God exist? Can religion be meaningful (see Psalm 73 for an extended meditation on this by Asaph)? Finally comes the meaning challenge: why not worship the god that pays the best dividends? From external survival to the assurances (or lack thereof) of faith to the questions of meaning itself, Jesus is taken on a ride. But each time he resists and relies not on his own insights but scripture itself. Each quote he offers is taken from Deuteronomy, the "gospel of Moses" as Samuel Schultz called it. Over against the challenge that we need to take care of our business, Jesus lives in the pious confidence that God makes our lives his business. Countering the existential leap of faith, Jesus has no time for the "God of the gaps," but sees all of life as religious devotion, even when there are no external signs. Responding to the religious choices of fidelity to the powers that appear most benevolent, Jesus lives out the testimony of Job and arms himself with Moses' fundamental call to prayer.
Fourth, note the brief conclusion at the end of this passage: "Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him" (Matthew 4:11). Scripture has sustained Jesus' testimony. Confrontation has won Jesus the victory. And heaven is neither ignorant nor unmoved by these things.
Application
Chiam Potok's wonderful novel In the Beginning starts with these powerful words: "Beginnings are hard." Potok goes on to show how the start of a new life or a new venture, even when it is wrapped in excitement and promise, is often a very difficult transition.
Certainly the church's transition from Epiphany (or Ordinary Time) to Lent is difficult. We are snatched from a commonplace existence and thrust into a journey of pain that ends in death. While we know the other side of the story, the Easter celebration of resurrection and new life, the journey itself is difficult and takes us to places, with Jesus, where we don't really want to go.
Today in the congregational gathering are many who are living in the tough moments of the beginnings of difficult paths. The great comfort of Lent is that Jesus knows. Jesus walks with us so that we might walk with him into a better future. This is the gospel.
An Alternative Application
Matthew 4:1-11. The temptations of Jesus, while very different and certainly more intense than anything we usually face, are still a note of solidarity between himself and our journeys of faith and life and pain and challenge. These can be profitably explored at the start of the Lenten journey. Suffering is connected with pain, but pain can come in many varieties. Deepest, of course, is that of abandonment. It was abandonment, especially by God, that the devil used in his attempt to provoke Jesus' pain.
Pain is usually sharpest the instant it is inflicted. I can no longer call to mind the intensity of the pain I felt when I had a bicycle accident as a teenager. The Bible says that after a woman has given birth, she no longer remembers the excesses of her labor pains. It's the same with betrayal. The only way we can keep the pain alive is by replaying over and over in our minds the movement the agony was inflicted.
Every book by Jewish Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel relives the horror of the Holocaust. Wiesel intends his writings to hurt, because he wants to keep the pain alive. He wants to remind people of the ungodly betrayal of Hitler, the unthinkable betrayal of the Nazis, and the incredible betrayal of German Christians. They turned their backs on their fellow human beings. They called on God to bless them and sent God's people to the gas chambers.
Although remembering our painful experiences can be constructive, it can also be destructive. Isn't life in the present challenging enough without dwelling on past hurts? Don't we already know in our hearts how great our agony is? Why cling to it and replay it without end?
Sometimes the healing of our hurts starts only when we find another song to sing. Take the story of Helen, for instance. She had her sights set on a law degree from Ohio Wesleyan College. But then the flu epidemic of 1918 hit, taking her father as a victim. Suddenly everything had changed. Helen couldn't go to college; she had to get a job to support her mother.
During the next ten years, Helen worked for an electrical utility company. Just when she thought she was destined to remain lonely and unmarried, young Franklin Rice stepped in. He was a dashing entrepreneur, an up-and-coming banker. When they married in 1928, Helen's future was bright with promise.
A year later the stock market crashed, and Franklin's financial world fell apart. He couldn't take the pressure, so he committed suicide.
Read the litany of Helen's life: a deceased father, a lost car, a vanished fortune, a dead husband, a lonely existence. Where is God when it hurts?
You may know Helen better than you realize. You see, she eventually took a job with the Gibson Greeting Card company. Helen Steiner Rice became a folk poet who spoke the language of thousands of Christians.
Some years ago Helen was asked which poem she thought was her best. She couldn't tell, she said, but she did know which one meant the most to her. It was this:
So together we stand at life's crossroads
And view what we think is the end.
But God has a much bigger vision
And he tells us it's only a bend.
For the road goes on and is smoother,
And the pause in the song is a rest.
And the part that's unsung and unfinished
Is the sweetest and richest and best.
So rest and relax and grow stronger.
Let go and let God share your load.
Your work is not finished or ended;
You've just come to a bend in the road.
Are you in pain today? Do you feel as if God has betrayed you? Then pause for a moment and ask yourself, "How long is my view?"
As Jesus reminds us, our souls need to know.
So it is with the liturgical year calendar of the Christian church. We mark the seasons not merely by way of the changing climatic conditions of snow and sun, seedtime and harvest, but rather by tracing the movement of God's redemptive activities in time:
• Advent -- we wait expectantly through the dark night of earth's soul for the light of divine redemption.
• Epiphany -- we celebrate the light of God's revelation among us in the glow of Jesus' presence.
• Lent -- we stumble with Jesus under the weight of unresolved evil and judgment toward the "beautiful, scandalous night" of crucifixion, which will forever change human and cosmic destinies.
• Easter -- we rise to new life with Jesus, aware that things can never be the same for those who are "born again."
• Pentecost -- we are empowered by the Paraclete indwelling to live beyond mediocrity as daughters and sons of the great king, who share in the transformation of society as the kingdom of God presses against us with its hopes and dreams and expectations.
Each step in the journey is another opportunity to start over. We begin again on this Sunday during Lent to rethink our lives in the new ways of our Creator and redeemer. This is what comes out of the dark story of our first parents. This is the rebirth promised by Paul in his letter to the Roman church. This is the hope we share with Jesus as he spends time in the wilderness on the way to redemptive glory.
Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7
The "mythical" qualities of Genesis 1-11 ought not to be interpreted as synonymous with either "untrue" or "non-historical." Myths are stories that summarize worldviews in elided prose, giving snapshots of the value systems that drive a culture, or providing hooks on which to hang the unspoken but ubiquitous understanding of a social group's values and self-perception. This is why the stories told by way of myths may sometimes appear to be cartoon-like fairytales, or at other times a selection of emblematic events from the actual unfolding of a community's early history. In fact, many times they appear to be a combination of both. Myths by their very nature are not scientific descriptions or journalistic documentaries and should not be read in that manner. Myths serve instead to carry the fundamental values and worldview understandings of a culture in a manageable, memorable collection of tales.
It is in this way that Genesis functions as an extended historical prologue to the Sinai covenant. The stories of Genesis answer a number of important questions that arise simply because Israel has been shaken loose from 400 years of enslaved slumber and is now being reshaped as the marriage partner of God in a divine mission that has not yet been fully clarified. Genesis gives the context to the suzerain-vassal treaty formed in Exodus 20-24. It takes important moments from both Israel's distant and recent past and uses these as the shepherding banks by which to direct the flow of the people's river of identity into their new and uncertain future.
Because there is no authorial self-disclosure within the pages of Genesis we are left to speculate about its specific origins. An interesting and important clue emerges from the text itself when the Hebrew nomenclature for God is analyzed. Most often, especially beginning with the stories of Abram in Genesis 12, "Yahweh" is used to name the divinity. According to the book of Exodus, this name emerged in Israel through the deity's self-disclosure to Moses in the encounter between them at Mount Horeb (Exodus 3). This would indicate that whoever wrote Genesis, and whenever the writing happened, this book was created no earlier than the lifetime of Moses and functions within the scope of the covenant-making events of Exodus. Thus, if one is to listen to the internal testimony of the literature of the Bible, Genesis must be understood to function as a companion volume to the covenant documents of Israel's national identity formation at Mount Sinai. Therefore Genesis must be read not as a volume preexisting in a disconnected primeval world, but rather as the interpretation of events leading up to the engagement of Yahweh and Israel at Sinai in the suzerain-vassal covenant established there. Genesis is the extended historical prologue of the Sinai covenant.
Viewed this way, the message of Genesis is readily accessible. To begin with, the cosmological origins myths of chapters 1-11 are apologetic devices that announce a very different worldview than that available among and within the cultures surrounding Israel. The two dominant cosmogonies in the ancient Near East were established by the civilizations of Mesopotamia (filtered largely through Babylonian recitations) and Egypt.
When placed alongside these other cosmogonic myths, the Genesis creation story is very spare and poetically balanced. In brief testimony it declares that God existed before the world that is apprehended by our senses was brought into being. It also asserts that creation happened by way of divine speech rather than through the sexual interaction of deities, or as the animation of guts and gore left over and emerging out of their conflicts. Moreover, creation was an intentional act that took place by way of orderly progression.
In the balanced rhythm of poetic prose, the Genesis creation story shows how divine planning and purpose brought the world into being specifically as a home for humanity. These creatures are not the byproduct of restless fighting among the gods. Nor are they a slave race produced in order to give the gods more leisure. In fact, according to the Genesis account human beings are the only creatures made in the image of God, thus sharing the best of divine qualities.
If, as the literature requires, the creation stories of Genesis 1-2 are part of a lengthy historical prologue to the meeting of Yahweh and Israel at Mount Sinai, these cosmogonic myths are not to be read as the end product of scientific or historical analysis. They are designed to place Israel in an entirely different worldview context than that which shaped their neighbors. Humanity's place in this natural realm is one of intimacy with God, rather than fear and slavery. The human race exists in harmony with nature, not as its bitter opponent or only a helpless minor element. Women and men together share creative responsibility with God over animals and plants.
Moreover, there is no hint of evil or sin in the creation stories themselves. In fact, the recurring refrain is that God saw the coming-into-being of each successive wave of creation and declared it to be good. There is no eternal dualism of opposing forces that in their conflict engendered the world as we know it. Nor is the creative energy of human life itself derived from inherent and co-equal powers of good and evil which, in their chasing of one another, produce the changes necessary to drive the system. Instead, evil appears only after a fully developed created realm is complete, and then enters as a usurping power that seeks to draw away the reflected creativity of the human race into alliance with forces denying the Creator's values and goals. Evil and sin are essentially linked to human perspectives that are in competition with the one declared true and genuine by the creation stories themselves.
In Genesis 3-11, following the devastating effects of evil that leach their way through the world, the Creator displays graciousness in delaying the sentence of death (2:17) upon them, and also by way of providing promises that this conflict need not end their existence. Instead the human creatures are driven out of the Garden of Eden, in what seems to be a divine desire to pull them to their senses through the restlessness of homelessness. They become exiles, and their descendants, in order to compensate, build cities as an apparent attempt to regain civility. All these efforts fail, however, and the cancer of disobedience explodes in acts of killing and violence.
Romans 5:12-19
Because Paul had not yet made a visit to Rome, this letter was less personal and more rationally organized than was often otherwise true. Paul intended this missive to be a working document; the congregation, already established in the capital city of the empire, would be able to read and discuss it together in anticipation of Paul's arrival, which was planned for some months ahead (Romans 1:6-15). Paul summarized his working theme and emphasis up front: a new expression of the "righteousness of God" had been recently revealed, with great power, through the coming of Jesus Christ (Romans 1:17).
Paul moves directly from his brief declaration about the righteousness of God into an extended discourse on the wrath of God as revealed against wickedness (Romans 1:18). Because of this, many have interpreted Paul's understanding of God's righteousness as an unattainable standard, against which the whole human race is measured and fails miserably. Only then, in the context of this desperate human situation, would the grand salvation of Christ be appreciated and enjoyed.
But more scholars believe that Paul's assertions about the righteousness of God actually have a positive and missional thrust. In their understanding of what Paul says, it is precisely because of the obvious corruption and sinfulness in our world, which are demeaning and destroying humanity, that God needed again, as God did through Israel, to assert the divine will. In so doing, the focus of God's righteousness is not to heap judgment upon humankind; instead God's brilliant display of grace and power in Jesus ought to draw people back to the creational goodness God had originally intended for them. In other words, the Creator has never changed purpose or plan. The divine mission through Israel was to display the righteousness of God so that all nations might return to the goodness of Yahweh. Again, in Jesus, the righteousness of God is revealed as a beacon of hope in a world ravaged by evil bullies. The power of God is our only sure bodyguard against the killing effects of sin and society and self.
This more positive perspective on the righteousness of God fits well with the flow of Paul's message. In chapters 1:18--3:20, Paul describes the crippling effect of sin. We are all alienated from God (1:18-25). But we are also alienated from each other (1:26-32), so that we begin to treat one another with contempt and painful arrogance, and destroy those around us in the malice that blinds us. We are even, says Paul, alienated from our own selves (2:1-11), not realizing how tarnished our sense and perspectives have become.
We make excuses about our condition (2:12--3:20), claiming that we are actually pretty good people (2:12-16), or accusing society and religion of raising moral standards to levels that are simply unrealistic (2:17--3:4), or even blaming God for all the nastiness around us and within us (3:5-20). Yet the result is merely self-deception and continued rottenness in a world that seems to have no outs.
Once the stage has been set for Paul's readers to realize again the pervasive grip of evil in this world, Paul marches Abraham out onto the stage as a model of divine religious reconstruction. God does not wish to be distant from the world, judgmental and vengeful. Rather, Jesus comes, the fullness of God's healing righteousness revealed.
The story of God's righteousness as grace and goodness begins with Abraham. God has always desired an ever-renewing relationship with the people of this world, creatures made in God's own image. Paul describes God's heart of love in 3:21-31, using illustrations from the courtroom (we are "justified" -- 3:24), the marketplace (we receive "redemption" -- 3:24), and the Temple ("a sacrifice of atonement" -- 3:25). Moreover, while this ongoing expression of God's gracious goodness finds its initial point of contact through the Jews (Abraham and "the law" and Jesus), it is clearly intended for all of humankind (3:27-31).
This is nothing new, according to Paul. In fact, if we return to the story of Abraham, we find some very interesting notes that we may have glossed over. "Blessedness" was "credited" to Abraham before he had a chance to be "justified by works" (4:1-11). In other words, whenever the "righteousness of God" shows up, it is a good thing, a healing hope, an enriching experience that no one is able to buy or manipulate. God alone initiates a relationship of favor and grace with us (4:1-23). In fact, according to Paul, this purpose of God is no less spectacular than the divine quest to re-create the world, undoing the effects that the cancer of sin has blighted upon us (Romans 5). It feels like being reborn (5:1-11). It plays out like the world itself is being remade (5:12-21). This is the great righteousness of God at work!
Matthew 4:1-11
Matthew does a quick-step through a variety of incidents in Jesus' early life to reveal the essential character of this unique and specially born savior. Jesus, Matthew makes clear, is actually destined to replay or relive the life of Israel in a host of dimensions:
• Jesus copies Israel's miraculous existence and purpose, born through divine intervention as savior of nations (1:18-25).
• He is spared from the murderous intents of a scheming king (2:3-8) who goes on to slaughter the innocents (2:16-18), just as Moses was delivered in Exodus 2 while many Israelite boys were slaughtered.
• Like the nation as a whole, Jesus is gathered out of Egypt (2:15).
• From his earliest days, he is dedicated to a divine mission (so the play on the words "Nazirite" and "Nazarene" in 2:23).
• His ministry is set in motion by passing through waters (3), right at the same spot where Israel crossed the Jordan River in order to begin its witness to the nations from the Promised Land.
• Jesus also wanders in the wilderness for forty days (4:1-11) before he can fully assume his adult responsibilities, mirroring Israel's traumatic forty years described in the book of Numbers.
As we read this story of Jesus' temptations, we need to be guided by several interpretive principles that Matthew builds directly into his narrative flow. First, while Matthew never allows us to question whether these things actually happened, he also wants us to understand the symbolic significance of them. Jesus needed to be in the wilderness for forty days, just as Israel was. And what was the purpose of this time in wilderness? For Israel, it was a period of purification and preparation, when listening to the voice of God was paramount. Before the start of Jesus' own ministry to the nations of the world, Jesus must be purified and prepared in the wilderness, just as Israel was, and live constantly by the divine word that sustains.
Second, the whole of reality is caught up in a spiritual conflict. The temptations of Jesus are not unique to him and never occur in the rest of time or society. Rather, the temptations of Jesus are the essence of reality. Notice that the key theme of the "Sermon on the Mount," which follows, is the conflict between the evil in ourselves and the kingdom of heaven. Jesus will put it succinctly: "Seek first the kingdom of heaven and its righteousness, and all these things will be added as well." Here Jesus is living out in his personal life the larger dimensions of reality that we too often ignore as superstitious or irrelevant.
Third, the temptations themselves are built into an increasing hierarchy of potency. First comes the call to survival: turn these stones into bread. After all, what good is a dead person in the work of the living God? Second comes the plea for faith's assurance: throw yourself off this pinnacle and either put yourself out of this existential misery or otherwise experience the miracle of faith you pretend to believe. Is faith relevant? Does God exist? Can religion be meaningful (see Psalm 73 for an extended meditation on this by Asaph)? Finally comes the meaning challenge: why not worship the god that pays the best dividends? From external survival to the assurances (or lack thereof) of faith to the questions of meaning itself, Jesus is taken on a ride. But each time he resists and relies not on his own insights but scripture itself. Each quote he offers is taken from Deuteronomy, the "gospel of Moses" as Samuel Schultz called it. Over against the challenge that we need to take care of our business, Jesus lives in the pious confidence that God makes our lives his business. Countering the existential leap of faith, Jesus has no time for the "God of the gaps," but sees all of life as religious devotion, even when there are no external signs. Responding to the religious choices of fidelity to the powers that appear most benevolent, Jesus lives out the testimony of Job and arms himself with Moses' fundamental call to prayer.
Fourth, note the brief conclusion at the end of this passage: "Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him" (Matthew 4:11). Scripture has sustained Jesus' testimony. Confrontation has won Jesus the victory. And heaven is neither ignorant nor unmoved by these things.
Application
Chiam Potok's wonderful novel In the Beginning starts with these powerful words: "Beginnings are hard." Potok goes on to show how the start of a new life or a new venture, even when it is wrapped in excitement and promise, is often a very difficult transition.
Certainly the church's transition from Epiphany (or Ordinary Time) to Lent is difficult. We are snatched from a commonplace existence and thrust into a journey of pain that ends in death. While we know the other side of the story, the Easter celebration of resurrection and new life, the journey itself is difficult and takes us to places, with Jesus, where we don't really want to go.
Today in the congregational gathering are many who are living in the tough moments of the beginnings of difficult paths. The great comfort of Lent is that Jesus knows. Jesus walks with us so that we might walk with him into a better future. This is the gospel.
An Alternative Application
Matthew 4:1-11. The temptations of Jesus, while very different and certainly more intense than anything we usually face, are still a note of solidarity between himself and our journeys of faith and life and pain and challenge. These can be profitably explored at the start of the Lenten journey. Suffering is connected with pain, but pain can come in many varieties. Deepest, of course, is that of abandonment. It was abandonment, especially by God, that the devil used in his attempt to provoke Jesus' pain.
Pain is usually sharpest the instant it is inflicted. I can no longer call to mind the intensity of the pain I felt when I had a bicycle accident as a teenager. The Bible says that after a woman has given birth, she no longer remembers the excesses of her labor pains. It's the same with betrayal. The only way we can keep the pain alive is by replaying over and over in our minds the movement the agony was inflicted.
Every book by Jewish Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel relives the horror of the Holocaust. Wiesel intends his writings to hurt, because he wants to keep the pain alive. He wants to remind people of the ungodly betrayal of Hitler, the unthinkable betrayal of the Nazis, and the incredible betrayal of German Christians. They turned their backs on their fellow human beings. They called on God to bless them and sent God's people to the gas chambers.
Although remembering our painful experiences can be constructive, it can also be destructive. Isn't life in the present challenging enough without dwelling on past hurts? Don't we already know in our hearts how great our agony is? Why cling to it and replay it without end?
Sometimes the healing of our hurts starts only when we find another song to sing. Take the story of Helen, for instance. She had her sights set on a law degree from Ohio Wesleyan College. But then the flu epidemic of 1918 hit, taking her father as a victim. Suddenly everything had changed. Helen couldn't go to college; she had to get a job to support her mother.
During the next ten years, Helen worked for an electrical utility company. Just when she thought she was destined to remain lonely and unmarried, young Franklin Rice stepped in. He was a dashing entrepreneur, an up-and-coming banker. When they married in 1928, Helen's future was bright with promise.
A year later the stock market crashed, and Franklin's financial world fell apart. He couldn't take the pressure, so he committed suicide.
Read the litany of Helen's life: a deceased father, a lost car, a vanished fortune, a dead husband, a lonely existence. Where is God when it hurts?
You may know Helen better than you realize. You see, she eventually took a job with the Gibson Greeting Card company. Helen Steiner Rice became a folk poet who spoke the language of thousands of Christians.
Some years ago Helen was asked which poem she thought was her best. She couldn't tell, she said, but she did know which one meant the most to her. It was this:
So together we stand at life's crossroads
And view what we think is the end.
But God has a much bigger vision
And he tells us it's only a bend.
For the road goes on and is smoother,
And the pause in the song is a rest.
And the part that's unsung and unfinished
Is the sweetest and richest and best.
So rest and relax and grow stronger.
Let go and let God share your load.
Your work is not finished or ended;
You've just come to a bend in the road.
Are you in pain today? Do you feel as if God has betrayed you? Then pause for a moment and ask yourself, "How long is my view?"
As Jesus reminds us, our souls need to know.
