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We approach this first Sunday of Lent with mixed feelings. Normally we come to church because we want to sing and celebrate and we trust that the mood will make us feel good about ourselves. On this first Sunday of Lent things are different. The mood is more somber, prayers are penitential, and there is talk of confession and repentance. Such things as sacrifices and self-denial are suggested. The penitential acts of honesty reiterate, despite our intentions, achievements, and appearances, that we are sinful. In other words: we sin.

Sin is not something that many people have spent much time talking about or worrying about through the years of the cultural and sexual revolution. We have done a good job developing subtle, elaborate mechanisms in the defense and denial of sin. Jung said, "The darker the shadow inside, the more polished the mask we must wear." There is a cost to a life that is spent polishing the mask. Will Willimon points out that the Christian faith has an odd response to all of this, "You can repent." Christ gives us the resources to be honest about ourselves. We don't have to polish the mask, for Christ sees the shadow we're attempting to hide beneath. Christ knows all about our sinful past, and he makes it his own. Christ's strong love for us, that embraces us and dies for us, enables us to tell the truth.

How appropriate that 1 Peter 3:18-22 should be our text for this first Sunday in Lent. There are many things regarding this text which are difficult and perplexing. Scholars have been haggling over this text for centuries. As one scholar stated, they have examined, probed, dissected, allegorized, and argued about it since the time of Augustine. Ironically, the main theme of the text has not been the main interest of the scholars. Most of the discussion has centered around Jesus' mission to the "spirits in prison." There has been much debate regarding the meaning of "death in the flesh ... alive in the spirit," and of the section, "he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison." There has been a great deal of debate about who these imprisoned spirits actually are. The argument has ranged from the spirit of those who disregarded Noah's warning in Genesis 6 regarding the pending flood to "evil angels" where Christ preached to the underworld to disobedient fallen angels. Some have suggested that his journey to the underworld took place in the interim period between Christ's death and resurrection. Others have insisted that this "spiritually alive" Christ is the resurrected Christ and that it took place after the resurrection and prior to the ascension.

Much of this debate is speculation. We need to be careful not to allow what appears to be an endless debate to distort or overshadow the rest of the message in 1 Peter. I agree with Leonard Sweet's statement that "this text provides one of the Bible's most vivid witnesses to the saving power of Christ's sacrifice and his enduring, unceasing love." Emphatically, Paul declares that it is "once for all," pointing out that this single act of the sacrifice of Christ upon the cross is to be distinguished from the repeated deaths of victims under the Levitical system. Those sacrifices needed to be repeated, but the sacrifice of Christ on the cross is "once for all."

Christ Suffered For Our Sins

This text makes a forceful statement on this first Sunday of Lent -- Christ suffered for our sins once and for all. This places the death of Christ on the cross at the center of our attention and thinking during this Lenten season. Pheme Perkins has pointed out that Jesus did not die as a heroic leader of a populist movement. Jesus was not crushed by the powerful Roman authorities as a martyr victim. She points out that this may be a popular vision of the cross today, but the New Testament writers do not describe Jesus as a heroic leader of a resistance movement or as a shattered victim of evil. Rather, the New Testament writers insist that the cross depicts God's love for a sinful and undeserving humanity (The Living Pulpit, July 1992, p. 16). This is exactly how Paul has described the situation in our text: "For Christ has suffered for sins, once for all, the righteous for the unrighteousÉ."

This passage also helps us to understand something of the innocent sufferer. Jesus has brought us to God through this shining example of his obedience to the will of God. Jesus endured human suffering with patience and trust to bring us to God. We who were lost without hope are brought to God, as Paul states, being "made nigh by the blood of Christ" (Ephesians 2:13). Those who suffer innocently or seemingly without cause or reason, in the midst of their bitter experience, can obtain a measure of comfort and hope with the promise of Christ's companionship and the inspiration of his example. The real and meaningful way of dealing with human suffering is to view such suffering in light of the suffering of Christ. His suffering provides us with some understanding of our suffering. Christ's suffering can help us to accept our suffering and turn it into a means of grace. Thus, not only do we as lost sinners look to the cross of Jesus as our only hope of being reconciled with God and with one another, but also within Christ's suffering we gain some insight regarding human suffering.

People With A Past

This first Sunday of Lent we need to discover that we are a people with a past. Willimon states: "I expect that a psychiatrist might say that our elaborate defenses and denial of sin are themselves evidences for sin's stark reality. I would have no need to look good in my charitable giving, be seen by others in church, defend my victimization, and fiercely assert my innocence if I did not know, down deep, my sin" (Pulpit Resources, January 1997, p. 27). Regardless of your past, our text today points to some very notorious sinners and uses them as examples of how far the scope of God's love in Christ extends. If the comforting and forgiving presence of Christ is able to reach to the prison that held some of history's most disobedient spirits, then surely Christ's saving power and healing presence is available to all today.

Lent reminds us that the sinfulness and sordidness that permeate the world around us percolate in our own hearts. But Lent also reminds us Christ comes to set us free from the burdens and sins of the past by discovering the unconditional nature of God's love for us, forgiving us -- setting the captives free.

I know not how Calvary's cross
A world from sin could free;
I only know its matchless love
Has brought Christ's love to me.

-- Henry W. Farrington

The Righteous For The Unrighteous

The apostle reminds us in Romans 5:6 that "Christ died for the ungodly." He goes on to state that rarely would anyone die for a righteous person, but "while we were yet sinners Christ died for us" (5:8b). Love can go no further than that. It is understandable how a person would be willing to die for a noble cause or lay down one's life for a friend. The remarkable thing about Christ is that he laid down his life for us while we were yet sinners. For a people who had no thought of God, no care for God or God's cause. In fact, a people who were sinners and for the most part hostile to God. The fact is, the righteous Jesus laid down his life for the unrighteous so that he may be able "to bring you to God." James D. G. Dunn points out that "God shows his love by doing for man and woman, at the time of need and in the sacrifice of Christ, what they could not do for themselves" (World Bible Commentary, vol. 38, p. 267). The apostle is quite clear that the whole saving process, the righteous for the unrighteous, is the proof of God's love. Christ suffered to establish "once for all" that God is love.

We come on this first Sunday of Lent in our fallen state, broken state, confused state, or whatever state we happen to be in. It is good to know regardless of whatever state we find ourselves, because of the suffering love of Christ, the righteous for the unrighteous, we can come to God knowing that we are both loved and accepted just as we are.

Mary Ann Bird is a short story writer. She wrote a short story about her own life titled "The Whispering Test." She said she grew up knowing that she was different and she hated it. She told how she was born with a cleft palate, and when she started school her classmates made it clear to her how she looked to others. She was a little girl with a misshapen lip, crooked nose, lopsided teeth, and garbled speech. When schoolmates would ask, "What happened to your lip?" she would tell them that she had fallen and cut it on a piece of glass. She said, "Somehow it seemed more acceptable to have suffered an accident than to have been born different. I was convinced that no one outside of my family could love me." There was a teacher in the second grade whom she adored. Mrs. Leonard was a short, round, happy, and sparkling lady. Annually in her class she would conduct a hearing test which she gave to every student. Students would go to the wall and cover one ear and listen for her to whisper a sentence, and the student would have to repeat it back to her. The teacher would say such sentences as, "The sky is blue," or "Do you have new shoes?" Mary Ann said she went to the far wall and waited for those words that God must have put in her teacher's mouth. Mrs. Leonard whispered to her, "I wish you were my little girl." She said that those seven words changed her life.

You do not need to worry whether you are acceptable to God or not. Regardless of what, who, where you are -- God has already made that choice.