Chosen and Tried

Lent 1

Fr. Tim Nunez

May my spoken word be true to God’s written word and bring us all closer to the living word, Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen

This past week, our landscaper, Kevin, and his crew began to restore the plants that had been killed by our recent freezes, and trim back the burned portions of the ones that survived. Kevin does beautiful work. I wonder if he realizes how biblical it is! Adam and Eve’s initial job description is to till the land in the garden of Eden and keep it, just like Kevin.

Being created in the image of God means Adam and Eve are capable of seeing things as they are, imagine how they ought to be and then bring that vision into reality. A garden isn’t just nature. It’s nature tended with purpose, shaping nature, improving upon it.

They are archetypes of human responsibility, that we have the capacity to think and create, and therefore manage the world around us and maintain it as best we can. We have to make choices, what needs work and what doesn’t, and the timing and methods we will use. So far so good.

But, there’s a snake in the garden who exposes our capacity to choose wrongly, to choose against God’s will, to ruin the garden. I do not doubt for a moment that there is a malevolent, personified evil that is ever seeking to tear down God’s people. And we are quite capable of tempting each other and being tempted ourselves. Temptation is always around us. Temptation is always within us.

There is no escaping responsibility for willfully choosing against God’s will for us, things done and left undone. (I should note here that the original Hebrew indicates that Adam was with Eve every step of the way. The “you” is plural. Adam’s later attempt to blame Eve only worsens his guilt). This is, and always has been, the essential human condition from the beginning. Despite being made in the image of God and having been given the ability and responsibility to keep the world beautiful, we too easily and too often succumb to the evil within us and around us.

God chose Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to form a new people defined by their covenant with him, to draw humanity back to faithfulness with the one true God. From Abraham on, they carry this witness forward. They till and keep things well at times. They also stumble and foul things up all along the way, generation after generation, in good times and in hard times. But God stays with them. Israel becomes an archetype as a nation, a witness of faith and failure. The human struggles with sin inherent from the beginning are writ large in Israel across centuries.

We find that being chosen by God does not mean that you are better than everyone else, or better than anyone else. It means you take on the burden of knowing God, of knowing his expectations, the purposeful work of tilling and keeping his garden, and enduring the consequences of your ongoing failures to make the world beautiful through the light of his glory and grace.

Jesus takes all of this on when he meets the devil, the deceiver, in the wilderness, after fasting for forty days and nights. It touches the very heart of our problem, which is that we are so susceptible to temptation. It is usually very subtle. Each temptation Jesus faces is, in itself, good, but twisted in an ungodly and evil direction.

Bread is good. Meeting our needs is good, as long as we are faithful. Jesus shows us never to ground our faith in filling our hunger by bread alone, but rather to live by the Word of God. Think about that when you take communion. It is not bread alone, but includes the real presence of Christ himself, the living Word of God.

Signs from God are good. Jesus shows us never to ground our faith on signs from God. They do happen. How many stories do we hear about people who say, “Lord, if you’ll just get me out of this mess or moment,” and then he does. But begging God’s mercy is different from testing him, isn’t it? “Help me!” is quite different from “Prove yourself to me.”

Rising to levels of community responsibility and influence can be good if we remain faithful to God. Jesus shows us never to ground our faith in the power and positions of this world. If and when we attain them, we are to regard them as blessings which we are to steward for him, tilling the garden and keeping it. Jesus says, “Away with you, Satan! For it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve only him.’” Then, then the angels come to him.

Jesus will face these temptations again and again, really continuously, throughout his ministry all the way to the cross. He will never know where his next meal will come from. No matter how many healings and miracles he does, people will want more. People will continuously expect him to lead a political revolution, whether or not that’s what they want him to do.

He was sent by God in part to serve as a visible example of faithful living. He was sent by God in part to finally heal the unending wounds caused by our failures to do so.

Here we are, where God has planted us. We can do a lot of good, tilling and caring for our patches of garden. There is a lot of beauty, and we delight in it. But sin comes in like a freeze, wounding some plants and killing others. Temptation continues to afflict Christ’s body, the church, as a whole and as individuals. The enemy lays a lot of very subtle snares around us, too. It looks and may be good, but only when handled the right way. The wrong way is easier. “No one will know. No one will see. It doesn’t really matter.”

The difference is we have Jesus. Our need of a Savior does not diminish because we have him. Just keep turning back to him.

AMEN!