Grace Upon Grace

This is the sermon I preached at Grace on the Fifth Sunday in Lent. You can view the livestream and the bulletin. The image is The Raising of Lazarus, by Rembrandt (circa 1630-32, public domain). My kids really do like the joke. Or at least the pretend to like it. Or maybe they’re laughing at me because I think it’s funny.

Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace be unto you and peace in the name God the Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

1. The three friends looked forward to their annual adventures, opportunities to reconnect each year after their lives had gone in separate directions following college. This was to be their most arduous challenge yet, a hike through the Mojave Desert. They arrived at the trailhead of the Pacific Coast Trail, only to find a mysterious stranger who offered to grant them one wish each. “In addition to what you’ve already packed,” he told the three friends, “I will gift you with any single item you want to help get you through this hot, dusty land.” The friends looked at one another, astonished and mystified. The first answer quickly: “I know how thirsty I’ll be; I wish for a water bottle that never runs out of water.” The stranger handed over just such a bottle, replying, “You have chosen wisely.” The second, knowing he could share his friend’s water now, asked for something different: “I’ll take a bottle of sunscreen that will never run out.” This, too, was granted. The third friend’s eyes twinkled with wisdom in the glow of the hot sun. With an air of certainty, he spoke: “I wish for a car door.” His friends looked at him, incredulous. The stranger granted the wish, but he, too, was curious: “Why in the world would you want to lug a car door through the desert?” “Isn’t it obvious?” the man answered. “Whenever it gets too hot, I can just roll down the window!”
2. Ezekiel, exiled from his home with the rest of his people, is brought in a vision to the edge of a dry, deserted valley. This is no joke; neither is it an adventure. It is a desperate moment. The hot air is still, without the hint of wind. All that’s in the air is death, the prophet’s vision dominated by bones, as far as his eyes can see. Is this a vision of the future? The coming end of his people, left to die in a foreign land? Is there hope? Can these bones live? Ezekiel fears the obvious answer and defers to the Lord: “O Lord GOD, you know.”
3. Mary and Martha see not a vision, but the reality of death unfolding in real life. Their brother, Lazarus, the one whom Jesus loves, has taken ill. Jesus arrives too late, at least by their reckoning. There’s nothing to be done for their brother but give him a burial and mourn his death. Is there no hope for the future? Doesn’t Martha believe in the resurrection? Yes, sure, but it seems a far-off hope, a prophecy as yet unrealized. All she can see clearly is death, which has come to claim her beloved sibling far too soon, buried now four days. Four days. Too long for the dead man’s spirit to linger; too long to hope for resuscitation. Lazarus, like the bones in Ezekiel’s vision, was not simply “mostly dead,” to borrow a phrase from Billy Crystal’s Miracle Max in The Princess Bride. No, Lazarus was dead Martha is nothing if not a realist. She knows that it is too late.
4. While Jesus knows that this will lead to God’s glory, and to Martha being the one in John’s Gospel to offer the christological confession that Jesus is the Messiah and the Son of God, Jesus does not gloss over Martha’s grief. He joins her in grief. He weeps, for he, too, loved Lazarus. He weeps, for he loves Martha and Mary. He weeps, because he is God, and God loves God’s people. Jesus does not stand far off, at arm’s length from our sorrow and pain. He joins us in our grief, the divine heart of the Triune God breaking open in compassion. What happens next is not so much a miracle meant to amaze as it is a protest against the power of death, offered in solidarity for those who mourn in the dry, dusty valley of death.
5. Jesus joins us in our grief and thank God for that. When our hearts are most broken, God is most present for us. But if that were all Jesus did, it would be cold comfort, indeed. When God’s people were lost in exile and all hope seemed lost, God told Ezekiel to prophesy to the bones and to prophesy to the breath. With Word and wind, echoing God’s creative work at the beginning of creation, the prophet sees death itself undone – a foretelling of the future when God will act decisively to bring life out of death. The prophecy is brought to life in the raising of Lazarus. Jesus, the Word of God enfleshed, speaks. Lazarus can do nothing but obey, the breath of life filling his lungs as he steps out of eternal night and into the light of resurrection dawn.
6. Of course, this new beginning for Lazarus is the beginning of the end for Jesus. This world is so entrapped within death’s power that the promise of life is threatening. So Jesus, too, will die. But there, deserted by nearly everyone, forsaken, he feels, even by his Father, Jesus joins himself to our deepest pain and sorrow. And three days later, he will show us that our grief, though very real, is not the only emotion left to us; that death, though very real, is not final and does not get the last word. As Lazarus is unbound from his graveclothes, we, too, are unbound from the power of sin and death. We look across the valley and feel the wind of the Spirit beginning to stir. We look to the cross and see the heart of God breaking open as Christ joins us in our grief. We look to Jesus and see the great I AM who is the resurrection and the life for all who believe. Christ stands before you today, calling you out of your grave and into newness of life. The fresh air of the Holy Spirit is on the move. Roll down a window? No. Let’s roll away the stone. Take a deep breath, and step into the life God has come to share with you, on both sides of the grave. Amen.

And now may that peace that passes all understanding keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus, this day and forever. Am

Here’s the sermon I preached at Grace (River Forest, IL) on the Fourth Sunday in Lent. You can view the livestream or look through the bulletin. The image is Healing of the Blind Man, by Carl Bloch, 1871 (public domain).

Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace be unto you and peace in the name God the Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

1. The streetlights weren’t working properly that night as he walked home late from work. As he took the shortcut through the alleyway toward his own street, it was almost pitch dark. He knew the path well enough and wasn’t worried about it. But a moment later he paused. He’d heard a small noise in the darkness just ahead of him. He waited and listened; but, hearing no more, he guessed he’d been mistaken and started to walk on. At once he heard the noise again. Again he stopped, and felt a small shiver of fear. What was it? Who was it? He decided to put on a brave face. “Who’s that?” he asked, hoping his voice didn’t sound either too fearful or too threatening. “Is that you, Peter?’ asked the voice of a neighbor in return. “Thank goodness! I couldn’t see who it was and I was scared stiff!” Their eyes grew used to the dark and they laughed together. They had both been afraid of each other, quite needlessly. The Anglican scholar N.T. Wright tells this story as part of a Bible study on John 9, reminding us that the main problems here are darkness and fear, both of which persist as long as we remain blind to the light of Christ and with eyes shut toward one another in the darkness.
2. Our story in Jerusalem, which centers on Jesus and a man who was born blind, begins with a number of blind men. Jesus’ disciples, to be specific. Jesus sees a man, but the men travelling with Jesus do not. They, trapped in this world’s deep night, don’t see a person. They see a disability, which they fear, and a theological problem, which they cannot understand. They wonder who sinned to cause such a fate to fall upon this man, for surely such a situation is someone’s fault. Jesus, however, sees the man for who he is, someone created by God for the sake of having God’s glory revealed through his life. Jesus sees the man and, seeing him, loves him. In a delightfully odd way, Jesus heals him. He spits into the dry earth, makes mud with his divine saliva, and smears it on the man’s eyes without bothering to ask the man if he was interested in a mud mask. He sends him to wash. The man goes, washes, and returns able to see. Which is to say, he is able to do something that hardly anyone else in the story can do.
3. As soon this man can see, it becomes clear that most others cannot. His neighbors disbelieve their own eyes, because in spite of clear evidence, the change is too miraculous. Many, although not all, of the Pharisees choose to remain in the dark over issues of Sabbath keeping; their preconceived notions of what is good and godly make it impossible for them to see what is plain as day. The man’s parents, fearing for their own place in the community, refuse to affirm what is obviously clear. The one who is claimed by Jesus, cleansed by Jesus, is now able to see. But as for those who think they’re doing just fine on their own, regardless of the outcome of their spiritual ophthalmological exam, these receive judgment for their willing desire to remain in the dark. These who seem perfectly well and healthy end up judged for their blindness. But as for the one who couldn’t see at the start? He grows into a vision of faithfulness, seeing in Christ not only the One who was able to restore his sight, but the Son of Man who is the very Light of the World. When Jesus says I am the light of the world, those around him would have caught the echoes of the burning bush, through whom God proclaimed, “I AM who I AM.” They would have seen the reflection of God’s presence like that in the pillar of fire by night, God’s own presence leading them not only from darkness to light, but from bondage to freedom. They would recall that that the primal creational change was bringing light to the darkness: Let there be light. And there was! Jesus is claiming in this moment to be the light-giving, life-giving presence of God, the One, the only One, who can bring people out of their self-imposed blindness, out of their darkness, into the light. As Bono of U2 sings in the new lyrics of their old song, “Where the Streets Have No Name”: “I can get through the fire if I go with you. There’s no other way through.” Just as Jesus was the one way from chaos to creation; just as Jesus was the one way from slavery to freedom; so is Jesus now the only way through spiritual blindness to sight, through deep-pressing darkness to light.
4. For the recipient of the miracle, it’s all good. But for the people around him, the change is too much. It threatens their understanding of how God works; it upends their view of others, a view that allows them to not see one another, to write off others as other, as less than. But the grace of God that Jesus unveils demands that we open our eyes and see. This is not easy for us. As Flannery O’Connor writes, “All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and change is painful.” Indeed, so painful that it costs us everything. So Dietrich Bonhoeffer could write, grace “is costly because it costs people their lives; it is grace, because it thereby makes them live.” Graced with new eyes opened by the Light of the World, we can see one another as God sees us: as people, not disabilities. In fact, we may well begin to see what Jesus saw: that the very people society overlooks are the ones through whom the presence and power of God is most clearly revealed.
5. Seeing Jesus now, we see how he is present with us in every darkness. There is now nothing left to fear. Even as we journey into the dark vale of death’s shadow, the Light doesn’t leave us. For he himself has descended into our muddy mortality, planting his cross in the midst of this world’s suffering and sin. And though the light goes out for a time on that Friday afternoon, it is not extinguished for long. In his rising, Jesus transforms the valley of the shadow of death into the antechamber of eternal life. Darkness will be cast aside forever as we are caught up in God’s goodness and mercy, as the psalmist sings. So set aside fear. Fear of the dark, fear of each other, fear of death. Open your eyes to the light. Look to Jesus, the great I AM by whose light you now see. Awake, sleepers, and live in the light, for before you even knew to ask, Christ shined on you and brought you to life and light eternal. Awake to the joy that we are not strangers to fear in the night, but neighbors in the light, laughing at the grace of it all. Amen.

And now may that peace that passes all understanding keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus, this day and forever. Amen.

I preached this sermon as part of our midweek Lent series, Encounters with Christ, at Grace Lutheran Church, River Forest, IL. You can view the service bulletin here. The image is Anders, of course. He’s six in this picture, and is pretty proud that he just built BB-8.

Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace be unto you and peace in the name God the Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

1. Anders and I were doing some theologizing the other day, as we are wont to do. My eleven-year-old son had a good question: In heaven, will there be unlimited LEGO sets? I answered that yes, there would be. Or God will remove your desire to build LEGO sets. But heaven won’t be the place you wish you could play LEGO but can’t. Truth be told, I have very little understanding of what heaven will be like, and frankly, I don’t worry too much about it. That’s above my pay grade. I figure God’s got that under control. But I don’t blame Anders for wondering. It is interesting to think about. And when I was his age, I wondered about it, too.
2. I can still remember sitting in a classroom on the second story of the education wing that had been built in the 1960s when churches needed education wings. There, in Sunday school at First English Lutheran Church, I became convinced that heaven was a place of infinite chalkboards. Really! In heaven, I imagined, there was a chalkboard for each person who ever lived. And what was the purpose of the chalkboard? Well, young Dave imagined that God spent God’s time putting a tally mark on a person’s board every time they committed a sin. Hash mark after hash mark, every fifth a diagonal crossing through the previous four, on into infinity.
3. While we may not think of heaven as a collection of chalkboards, I think we do think about sin this way. It is the constant adding up of all the ways we have let God down. To be sure, there’s truth to this. By the end of today, in things done and left undone, through thought, word, and deed, I’ll have added some more sins to my ongoing tally. But I don’t think this paints a full picture, if only because it gives us the illusion that if we tried hard enough to be better, we might just be able to pull it off. We might just be able to keep our boards clean. We might just be able to save ourselves by relying on our own ability to fulfill God’s law.
4. Sin, however, is not merely the accumulation of all the wrong done in the world. Sin is also a force that we have released into the world over which no longer have much control. Jesus, in his discourse with Nicodemus, alludes to a story from their ancestors’ past that illustrates the point. While they were wandering in the desert, they turn against God. Again. Why, they moan, did God bring them out into the wilderness. They’ve had enough of the manna and quail, thank you very much. It’s a short memory to forget so quickly the 400 years of enslaved misery, but there you go. We always want what we don’t have. As a result of their sin, poisonous snakes are sent into their midst, and once there, no amount of good behavior on the part of the Israelites will save them. They need salvation from outside themselves.
5. Our sin, not just yours and mine but that of all humans in all times and places, has been released into the world and it now has a power of its own. That doesn’t let us off the hook, of course, but the simple fact is that no amount of good behavior, no amount of piety, is going to get us out of the jam in which we’ve found ourselves. We cannot rely on good works, our own or anyone else’s.
6. The good news of the gospel, which Jesus proclaims to Nicodemus, is that we don’t need to rely on good works, our own or anyone else’s. Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so will the Son of Man be lifted high on a cross for the salvation of the whole world. We can never become righteous on our own. But with faith, which at its root is trust, and specifically trust in Christ, God will make us righteous. Just as long ago God reckoned Abraham’s faith as righteousness. If you focus only on the problems slithering around your feet, you’ll never solve them. But if you look up, you’ll be saved by the God who has come down to you in Christ.
7. In our sin, God’s Law has become for us a curse, not only because we cannot fulfill it perfectly, but because we imagine that we need to. But God did not give the people the Law so that they could fulfill it and that by fulfilling the Law they would be saved. God saved the people first, then gave them the Law so that they would know how to live together, with one another and with God, in the land that was to be given to them. So it is for us: God saves us, then calls us back to the Law once given. Paul does not say that those who do good works are under a curse; he says that those who rely on good works are under a curse. Set free by God’s grace, we are free from imagining that God is keeping score. We are liberated from the power that sin once held over us. We are free to do good works for the reason they were intended – not to prove ourselves but to bless others, all to the praise of God.
8. I recall a conversation from early in my ministry with a pastor who was nearing the end of his ministry. He said to me, “I’m just not sure about the cross anymore. Do people really need to hear about that all the time? Isn’t it all a bit depressing?” I understand where he was coming from, which I think was just a weary desire for the world, and for people, to get better. But the only reason to stop speaking of the cross would be if we stopped needing what Christ became incarnate to give us: forgiveness of sins, life everlasting, and liberation from the powers of this world. But we continue to need these gifts, for we cannot them on our own. We were never supposed to, for the matter. What God has always most desired of us is faith, the simple trust of a child that clings to a parent. Until Christ returns, this world will be filled with powers beyond our control, powers to which we contribute, from which we cannot escape. But look up. See Christ, and live! As Lutheran theologian Timothy Wengert says, being a Christian is not really a before-and-after experience, even if that’s how we talk and sing about it at times. I once was lost but now am found, and all that. It’s more of an “I’m always lost but God is always finding me” situation, even if that makes for less poetic hymnody. God is finding you again today. Look to God, seen most clearly in Christ crucified, arms outstretched in love. Look to Christ and live.
9. And being alive, do good works (even if that’s hard for Lutherans to hear). Seek justice. Show kindness. Work for peace. Not to minimize the marks on your chalkboard, but because God isn’t keeping score. There is no measurement taking place to which you must measure up. Christ has done it all for you! Do good works not so that God would see how good you Do good works so that others would see how good God is. This is the call of the baptized after all, to let you light so shine before others that they would see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven. Our Father in heaven. There’s that heaven again. I don’t know what heaven is going to be like, but I know it will mean freedom and liberation. Liberation from the power of sin, freedom from my need to prove myself. And who knows? Perhaps time enough to play as the children God created us to be, trusting that Jesus – the Lamb at the center – is taking care of everything. Amen.

And now may the peace that passes human understanding keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus, this day and forever. Amen.

This is the sermon I preached for the Second Sunday in Lent at Grace Lutheran Church, River Forest, IL. You can view the bulletin and watch the livestream of the service. The image is a photo taken by me, a failed selfie that includes most of our group members from the retreat.

Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace be unto you and peace in the name God the Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

1. This weekend, 14 of our Confirmation students are away at a retreat at Lutherdale, a Bible camp in southern Wisconsin. Pastor Troy joined them Saturday. I drove up with the kids on Friday night and returned after lunch yesterday. Sitting with some of the kids before I left, I asked them what their favorite part of the retreat had been so far. There were a variety of answers, from the food to the songs to the sleeping. But one girl answered, “These people right here. I mean, I knew them all before we came up here. I knew her from Sunday school, and those two from school school, and them from Confirmation, but I didn’t really know know them. You know? And now look at us. We’re all best buds!” Well, that doesn’t have much to do with the sermon. Or does it? But it’s always good to remind you, dear people of Grace, that you are stewarding some amazing young people in their faith journey. You should be proud, and you should be attentive. They grow up fast after all! Why, weren’t these 7^th and 8^thgraders just born, what? Like five minutes ago? Amazing. Look at ‘em now! And we have the chance as a congregation to nurture and care for them in their faith journey. How good for them to be on retreat together. On Friday evening, as we drove along Highway 50 through the snowstorm that wasn’t, we passed a country church, set among sprawling farms, implement dealers, and boat shops. On the side of their parish hall, facing the highway, bold letters proclaimed: “God so loved the world . . . John 3:16.”
2. Dot dot dot. There aren’t too many Bible verses for which you can just trail off into an ellipsis and trust that people will know what you’re talking about. Psalm 23, sure. Micah 6:8? Genesis 1? The pickings get pretty slim after that. But John 3:16? Absolutely. We all know what comes next: that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Even in a culture in which biblical literacy is declining, people know this one. Martin Luther once called this verse the gospel in miniature, for it contains that which we most need to know. But make no mistake: the dot dot dot cannot be assumed or implied. It’s in the ellipsis that our old life is eclipsed, in which new life begins.
3. But how does new life begin after life has already begun? This is the question posed by Nicodemus to Jesus in their middle-of-the-night encounter. Shall he return to his mother’s womb and be born a second time? How would she feel about that? Who knows what drives Nicodemus to see Jesus, what would eventually lead this Pharisee to follow Christ. Perhaps he’s captivated by what he’s heard of this One who has already turned water into wine and overturned the tables in the Temple. Perhaps he has a sense that his understanding of God is too small or his sin too great or his darkness too deep, and that this Jesus can help. Whatever sends Nicodemus to Jesus in the night, it seems he is looking for new life. But to be born again, from above? This, of course, is impossible. Is there no way forward?
4. By the time the story reached chapter twelve, things have gone wrong again. Last week we heard of humanity’s turning away from God in the garden, giving themselves into the power of sin. In short order, the author of Genesis moves us from their expulsion from the garden to Cain’s act of fratricide, from God’s starting over with Noah to humanity’s rebellion at Babel. God chooses at this point to work through one particular family, descended from Noah through Shem, down the generations to Terah. But just when things seem to be moving in the right direction – in this case by a movement to the land of Canaan – the project hits a snag. Terah stops his family’s march in Haran, 400 miles short of the goal. And Terah’s son, Abram, the one through whom God intends to carry out God’s work, is married to Sarai. Abram and Sarai are unable to conceive a child. The family line is about to run out. How will this family’s life continue? It is impossible. But God comes to Abram, promises that he and Sarai will become parents of a great nation, and that through their so-far non-existent family, all of the families of the earth would be blessed.
5. 2,000 or so years later, two of Abraham and Sarah’s many descendants find themselves speaking together in the night. Long ago, Abraham had believed the Lord’s promises, in spite of their impossibility. Abraham and Sarah believed, and they went. Before taking a single step on the journey, and long before God made good on God’s promises, Abraham trusted God. Had faith in God. And God reckoned it to Abraham as righteousness. Nicodemus, a teacher of the people, knows that God is a God of impossible births. A God who makes a way where there is no way. A God who calls into existence things that do not exist. This, Jesus tells him, is what God is up to in the ministry upon which Jesus is now embarked. Is there a way forward? Forgiveness of sins and hope for the future? Yes. The Spirit is blowing in a new direction. Amid life’s darkness and depression, in this life where suffering and sorrow swirl round, in our dead ends with no way forward, a new sign is planted. Jesus, the Son of Man, will be lifted up. If we look to him, we will live. Here, in the ellipsis, we find not condemnation but hope. God gives God’s Son that those who believe will live, that this world that God so loves may be saved. On the cross, God reaches out to us with Christ-created grace, and we reach back with the Spirit-gifted faith. We are drawn with Jesus into his tomb, the womb through which God brings life back into the world. Jesus is lifted high on the cross, and that should have been the end of it. But God brings something out of nothing. Out of the nothingness of death, God brings life. From above, of water and the spirit, we are born again.
6. At camp this weekend, we were broken up into small groups for Bible study. I was with ten young women, including two from Grace, plus a leader from another congregation. Each group was given a large sheet of paper, on which we drew the outline of a human figure. Through the figure, we drew a line, labelling one side “saint” and the other “sinner.” Then we were given names of famous people, and the kids were asked to put them on either the saint side or the sinner side. So, the sorting began. Then we turned to Romans and were reminded that our standing before God is not determined by what we’ve done. And thank goodness, for in spite of our relative merit (or not), we have all sinned and fallen short. We have all contributed to the marring of this world God so loves. We have all been wounded by others. Is there a way forward? Yes. God comes to us again, asking only that we believe. God comes to us again and gives the Son for us. Where we had no life, God gives life. We are all sinners, but for the sake of Christ, we are all saints. Reborn in the waters of baptism, we are made alive as saints, the holy people of God. Granted, this can be hard to grasp. In the end, no amount of theology could convince my middle school group that Taylor Swift was in any way sinful, and no amount of theology could convince them that there was a place among the saints for Aaron Rodgers. We’ll leave that to God to sort out. Today, we are reminded that there is nothing we can do to save ourselves, and nothing we need to do to save ourselves, for God has done it for us. Is there a way forward? Hope for the future? Yes. Look up. See Christ, and live.
7. The world, the whole cosmos, had become the realm of those who had turned from God. But God never turned God’s back on the world. God does not turn God’s back on you. God desires what God has always desired for you: life in its fullness, on both sides of the grave. All God asks is that you would believe, have faith. And since even that can be a challenge, God’s Spirit has come to you to create and sustain that faith. You have been saved by the Son and are saints forever. For God so loved the world. Well, you know the rest. But it’s worth saying it all again: He gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Believe, friends. Keep the faith. Nurture one another in the faith. From above, you are born again. Welcome to life. Dead ends are dead and there is always a way forward. Amen.

And now may that peace that passes all understanding keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus, this day and forever. Amen.

I preached this sermon at Grace Lutheran Church, River Forest, IL, on the First Sunday in Lent. You can watch the service and view the bulletin. The image is Jesus Tempted from the Chapel at Frederiksborg Palace in Copenhagen, by Carl Bloch (19th century, public domain).

Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace be unto you and peace in the name God the Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

1. Erika’s absence from worship is not only fairly uncommon, it’s also not usually cause for joy. Today might be an exception. Today is one of those days where she might get the wrong idea that God approves of her ways. Her vegetarian ways, to be specific. Before their sin and subsequent fall from grace, it seems that Adam and Eve were vegetarians, God having given them freedom to eat all the fruit of the earth they could, save from one tree. It’s just the worst when Erika thinks she has the religious high ground! Truth be told, I not only respect her for her dietary choices, I’m healthier for them. While we do not live in a meat-free home, we eat less meat than we otherwise might, which is better for the world and better for us. But darn if it doesn’t make me miss what I don’t have. So it is that, when presented with the opportunity, I’m more than happy to grab a sausage biscuit from McDonald’s, or a beef from Johnnie’s, or BBQ from anywhere, or, well, you get the idea. I hunger for these meaty treats all the more because I don’t usually get to have them. But I’ll confess, since Erika’s not here to hear my confession, that the joy I find is fleeting. Don’t get me wrong; I feel no guilt over the occasional hamburger. But that’s how hunger works. No matter how much I eat, no matter how good it tastes, I’m going to get hungry again.
2. Hunger, in its many forms, is at the center of our readings on this First Sunday in Lent. On this day when our forty-day Lent has just begun, we find Jesus at the end of his forty days of wilderness fasting. Jesus, fully human, feels the pangs of hunger in his gut. He is famished. At his weakest. It is precisely here that the devil comes to tempt him. Jesus, like the rest of us, would have a hankering for that which he hadn’t had in a while. But the devil’s handiwork here is subtle and surprising. He doesn’t use Jesus’ hunger to get Jesus to eat something or do he shouldn’t. He uses Jesus’ hunger to tempt Jesus to be something, someone, he isn’t. At least, that’s what the devil tries to do. “If you are the Son of God,” Satan begins. If. Aren’t you? That’s you, right? God’s Son? The same Spirit that led Jesus into the wilderness was present when God’s voice broke through the heavens over the Jordan and announced that Jesus was God’s Son. If you are? Is Jesus hungering to be something more? Does he feel the need to prove, rather than receive, his identity? That’s what Satan wants to know.
3. It’s the same scene that Satan enacted in the Garden long ago, if one is willing to assume that the devil is in the serpent. The serpent goes after those who hunger, too, but there are no empty bellies here. Adam and Eve might not have access to Johnnie’s beef, but they have everything else they want. Still, they hunger, unwilling to be who they were made to be. The author of Genesis lays out the purpose of creation and the place of humanity within it: Creation is meant to grow and thrive, and humans are meant to till, keep, and serve God’s creation. They, we, have all they need, yet they hunger for more. They yearn to be masters of the knowledge of good and evil, arbiters of what is right and wrong for their lives. To be clear, Adam and Eve were moral beings before they ate the forbidden fruit. Right and wrong were clear. It was right to assist God is God’s project of caring for creation; it was wrong to eat from the one tree of which they were not supposed to eat. Adam and Eve already know right from wrong; the fruit of the tree was about them determining such things for themselves rather than trusting in the God who wanted nothing more than to simply provide for them. Would they be content to remain children of God, or would they hunger to become as gods, those meting out good – and more often evil – upon others? Sadly, clearly, it was the latter. And as for them, so for us. We disregard the blessed identities God has crafted for us, exchanging them for the cheap veneer of choice, the lie of self-determination. As was asked in our Cornerstones Bible study this week, “Why didn’t they just do what they knew they were supposed to do?” Indeed. Why not? And why don’t we? Because the hunger in our bones is to be like God, never mind that we have stilled instead of tilled God’s creation; that we have unleashed violence and hatred and war – war in this week when we mark the unholy and wholly unnecessary destruction which Russia has unleashed upon Ukraine. Yes, we humans know what is right and what is wrong, but in seeking to become gods, we call the good evil and the evil good. This is where we find ourselves, ensnared not by God but by our own willful insistence on knowing what’s best in spite of all evidence to the contrary.
4. Jesus enters into our hunger. Mark Bangert, recently deceased pastor and professor, known and loved by many at Grace, writes: “That Jesus was famished taxed his concentration; the tempter knew (his) vulnerabilities. Nevertheless, the testing was not about appetites or hungers. Sonship was at stake here. The Spirit wanted to know whether Jesus was up to taking on the seemingly impossible role of being the faithful Son.” If you are the Son of God, turn these stones to bread and feed this hungry world. If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down and let the angels bear you up. If you but worship me, I’ll give you the kingdoms of the world. The if has no power over Jesus, for he does what we do not. He trusts unfailingly in the God who gives him his Sonship. Jesus will trust God’s Word alone. Jesus will not test God. Jesus will worship God. He undoes the sin of the garden, the one human overturning the damage done by the one person and by every person. And in the end, he will upend the temptations, allowing himself – not stones – to become bread to feed the world. Allowing himself to be cast into death that others may live. Allowing himself to be taken high up, not in glory to receive the kingdoms of this world, but upon a cross to overcome them and inaugurate the new Kingdom of God.
5. Lent may be a time for self-improvement, but the discipline of this season is first a time to focus on Christ, and what he has done for us. To see where our self-centeredness has led us, to see his God-centeredness, and to renew the long baptismal obedience of Christ-centered living. Even Christ who is God did not grasp or claim equality with God. He trusted in God’s Word. Will we? Will we, at the end of our sinful selfishness, discover the freeing joy of being not God? The joy of being the people God has created us, the people that Jesus has saved us to be, the people the Spirit has indwelt us to be.
6. Friends, we are hungry. In our hunger, we consume so much that does not satisfy, so much that consumes us. Today, see the One who satisfies. The Christ who satisfies the law and the prophets when we could not. The One who stands up to and stares down the evil one, when we could not. The One who quiets forever the Adam or Eve inside each of us, creating instead a new you. This Jesus is the one human who has undone every human’s sin. Even yours, whatever it may be. All that it may be. There is nothing else that will satisfy you, in this world or into the next. But there is also no need to be hungry. You are a child of the most high God, created and redeemed to love God and serve God within this good creation, knowing that your place in the Kingdom is secure. Christ feeds you. Watches over you. Suffers and dies for you. For his sake God forgives you. All so that you may be who God wanted you to be to begin with. A child who trusts in the Lord, who receives yourself as a gift of new life from God, prepared for the new paradise that is to come. Amen.

And now may that peace that passes all understanding keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus, this day and forever. Amen.