First Sunday of Lent
Doug Huron

Genesis 2: 15-17; 3: 1-7
Psalm 32
Romans 5: 12-19
Matthew 4: 1-11

Often, when we first read the lessons for a particular Sunday, no theme is apparent.  They just seem to be a random collection of verses.  Well, that sure ain’t true today.  There is no subtlety.  The theme leaps off the pages and smacks you in the face.

It’s a familiar theme.  Sin and death entered the world because of one man’s disobedience, and sin was forgiven and death transcended because of Christ’s faithfulness.  In particular, Adam – or rather Eve, as we witness the first of countless tales of a noble man brought low by a woman’s treachery – disobeyed God’s injunction not to seek wisdom by eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  And because of this disobedience, man will wring his living from the sweat of his brow, and woman will scream out in childbirth.  And both will die.

Jesus, though, rejected the three temptations that Satan placed before him, even though he was especially vulnerable, having just ended a 40-day fast.  Notice the sequence here.  First Satan tried to humiliate Jesus, doubting that he could turn stones into bread.  Then he tried to kill him, suggesting that Jesus should throw himself off a cliff and saying that surely angels would break his fall.  Jesus turned away both schemes with memorable words: “Man does not live by bread alone,” and “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”

So, having failed in two attempts to injure Jesus, Satan tried the greatest motivator of all – an appeal to vanity.  If you only acknowledge my lordship, I will place the whole world at your feet.  This time Jesus isn’t so polite – probably his hunger is affecting his civility – and he brusquely tells Satan to get lost.

So the question is: would we – you and me – be more like Jesus in resisting Satan’s temptations, or more like Adam?  The answer is easy: we’d be – and we are – Adams.  We might be able to resist a few times, but ultimately we succumb.  There’s a reason, after all, why it’s called original sin.  And why we pray weekly, and some of us daily, for God to “lead us out of temptation.”

Yahweh was not pleased with challenges to his authority.  So Adam was forbidden to do something that might make him wise, because wisdom is God’s province.  In similar fashion, those who would try to build a tower to heaven were divided by a confusion of tongues.  Yet we are continually tempted to acquire wisdom -- and we do it, knowing that it might challenge God’s authority.

As a lawyer, I feel compelled to raise some points in mitigation.  First, God gave us some measure of intelligence and curiosity.  Should we let those gifts wither away?

More important, Eden was an idyllic, pre-worldly place, where men and women walked around naked and not think twice about it — or even once.  Eden was like heaven; the contrast between good and evil did not exist there, because there was no evil.  There was no need to know the difference between the two – and no need to risk the challenge to God’s authority that comes from the acquisition of knowledge.

But we are not in Eden.  We’re irredeemably part of the world.  And despite the danger of challenging God’s authority, we must acquire knowledge.  Why?  Because we are called to emulate God in doing good and combating evil.  But to do that, we must be wise.  There is a tension here.  Whatever the risk, we must eat from the forbidden tree.

What does all this have to do with Lent?  Besides the obvious fact that Lent commemorates Jesus’ fast in the desert?  I’m probably the wrong guy to ask.  At the Ash Wednesday service, Dunstan said he used to forget, from week to week, that we were in the Lenten season.  But at least he knew what Lent was.

I remember one day in eighth grade, February of ’59, when I noticed one morning that Karen Knott, and one other attractive, popular girl, I think it was Jean Bottamiller, had come to school, unaware that they had smudges on their foreheads.  Ever gallant, I softly mentioned this to Karen, thinking that she would be appreciative.  She responded, “it’s Ash Wednesday.”  I don’t think she added, “you dunce,” but she might as well have.  The point is that attending a Unitarian church, and a Presbyterian one before that, did not prepare me for Lent.

Also Wednesday night, Dunstan talked about Lent as a journey, a transition from Point A to Point B.  Perhaps the journey can be a personal one — from the desert valley within all of us, where the acquisition of knowledge is a weapon in the service of power, to a spiritual promontory where wisdom promotes justice.

The journey will be difficult, because it’s so easy — so tempting — to be smug, and vain, about all the knowledge you have, and to think it makes you pretty terrific, almost god-like.  It’s much harder to be humble about what you’ve learned and to use it for decency and good.  Perhaps during Lent, we can seek solitude and ponder the distinction between the two uses of knowledge.

As Dunstan also said, let’s try to avoid being weighed down by guilt, as we inevitably fail to complete this journey.  Instead, let’s approach it in a serious but lighthearted way — with nonchalance as well as tenacity — knowing that, in Walt Scarvie’s words, “It’s all gift.”