3/1/20
(Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7; Ps. 32; Romans 5:12-19; Matthew 4:1-11)
Welcome to Lent. I mean that. It’s my favorite season of the church year: it feels harsh sometimes, but the light is very bright, and very clear.
This year at St. John’s we’re not doing a mid-week Lenten program as we have done in the past. Instead, as a congregation we will be directing our attention in a particular way this season: to the issue of social justice. We have a social justice committee which has been hard at work on this – in the hallway they’ve put up a whole new bulletin board full of information that’s extremely illuminating, both in general and in specific; and you’ll be hearing more, on a regular basis, as the weeks of Lent go by.
Starting now. When the biblical writers talk about justice (plain and simple), they’re talking about God’s justice, which is social justice: people, in community, trying to live with each other in the kingdom of God. This is at the core of what it means to be Christian, following the way of Jesus. And it’s particularly appropriate to talk about it today, on the first Sunday of Lent.
In Lent, we face our sinfulness. The reality of sin is fundamental to the Christian understanding of how the world works. We are all sinners, and we live in a world permeated by sin: a broken world. Please, as we think about these things, let us try to put aside the baggage that these words – sin and sinner – have acquired over the centuries; often, it has to be said, from being used by religious authorities to beat people over the head with in order to maintain themselves in power; and in so doing, betraying the truth those words express.
That we are sinners does not mean we’re terrible human beings. It means we’re human beings, who can’t help being sinners. Jesus understood this: when his disciples asked him, Teach us how to pray, he gave them what we call the Lord’s Prayer, to be used all their lives long: a simple, concise prayer, which covers the essentials; and which includes the words, “forgive us our trespasses”. Which means Jesus knows we make mistakes, and knows we’re going to keep making mistakes, all our lives.
The readings today all have to do with this universality of sin among the human race. The Genesis story is the description from thousands of years ago of how we got this way in the first place, and as far as I’m concerned it’s as good an explanation as any. The gospel story is of how Jesus, being human, is tempted to sin, and conquers the temptation only through the power of God.
And Paul, in the passage from his letter to the Romans, writes that we cannot escape sin in this life; but, through God in Christ, we are freed from sin’s terrible power over us. This is spiritual, psychological, and emotional power so extreme he calls it slavery (Rom. 7:14: “…but I am of the flesh, sold into slavery under sin.”) But (Gal. 5:1): “…Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”) Jesus uses this same language in the gospel of John: “Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin….[But] if the Son makes you free, you will be free forever.”
By the grace of God in Christ, we have freedom from the bondage of sin. This is the good news, the news that liberates us all. But in the Christian life there’s an important condition involved – a truth expressed by the great German Lutheran Dietrich Bonhoeffer: “There is no freedom from, without freedom for.” You’re not truly free of something unless you’re living and acting out of that freedom. And Bonhoeffer says further (it’s gendered language), “Freedom is not something man has for himself, but something he has for others.” Our life as Christians is inevitably, and always, lived in service to the rest of the human family. Jesus says this over and over. And here’s where we see it’s a matter of social justice.
Last fall I became aware of an edition of the Bible, first published about ten years ago, called the Poverty and Justice Bible. It’s in a translation called the Contemporary English Version, which is slightly different than the one we use in the Episcopal Church; but the main feature of this Bible is that it highlights – in orange – passages that have to do with poverty and justice. And there’s orange everywhere, many times in places even if you know the Bible you don’t expect it. I was flipping through and stopped, randomly, at the story of the feeding of the five thousand in Mark chapter 6, a story we don’t normally think of as having anything to do with justice. But this is what was in orange: “Jesus took the five loaves and the two fish. He looked up toward heaven and blessed the food. Then he broke the bread and handed it to his disciples to give to the people. He also divided the two fish, so that everyone could have some.” This is God’s justice at work. Jesus makes no distinctions about who is to receive food. There’s no question of qualifications, of relative deserving: everyone should have some.
Our attention to God’s justice – our awareness of injustice, and our responsibility as Christians to do something about that – is vital to the life of faith. The foreword to the Poverty and Justice Bible was written by the Rev. Dr. James Howard Lawson, a major figure in the struggle for civil rights in this country. In this foreword he talks about the two greatest figures in the Bible, Moses in the Old Testament, Jesus in the New, and says: “In their…encounters with God, they are compelled to take on God’s will for their times which is both extremely personal and therefore social….The God who meets them hears the cries of hurt and pain, sees the sufferings and oppressions of [God’s] people, grieves over the human plight and ‘comes down’ to deliver.”
When Moses first meets God in Exodus chapter 3, at the burning bush, the first thing God tells him is, “I am the God who was worshiped by your ancestors….I have seen how my people are suffering as slaves in Egypt, and I have heard them beg for my help because of the way they are being mistreated….I have come down to rescue them from the Egyptians….Now go to the king! I am sending you to lead my people out of his country.”
And there’s a big lesson for us in Moses’ response: he says, “Who am I to go to the king and lead your people out of Egypt?” This is what most of the Old Testament prophets say, when they first hear God’s call: some variation on, Are you kidding? You want somebody else, I don’t have that kind of faith. And isn’t that often our response, when we see something of God’s work that needs to be done? That’s too much for me. It’ll take a bigger person than I am.
Well, when Moses says Who am I, Lord, to go to the king, God answers simply, I will be with you. God does not say, Oh, pshaw. There’s no need for false humility. Of course you can do this. God simply says, I will be with you. That answers that. And God says the same thing to each of us.
And at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry, immediately after his temptation by the devil as Luke tells the story in chapter 4, Jesus kicks things off by going to the synagogue, standing up and quoting from Isaiah chapter 58, which says (pertinently, to us in Lent):
Do you think the Lord
wants you to give up eating
and to act as humble
as a bent-over bush?
Or to dress in sackcloth
and sit in ashes?
Is this really what he wants
On a day of worship?
I’ll tell you
what it really means
to worship the Lord.
Remove the chains of prisoners
who are chained unjustly.
Free those who are abused!
Share your food with everyone
who is hungry;
share your home
with the poor and homeless.
Give clothes to those in need:
don’t turn away the homeless.
We are free from sin, as we are free for God’s justice. The first step for each of us, as people of faith, is to keep our eyes open to God’s justice that wants to happen, is begging to be done, all around us, in little and big ways. And the second is, when we see that, prayerfully to consider, What is God calling me to do about this? We don’t see burning bushes; but we do feel nudges. So we take one step. Then another. And we remember that God says to us, as to Moses: I will be with you. That’s all we need. Let us keep this in our hearts in this season of Lent; and see what happens. Thanks be to God.