The 1st Sunday of Lent: A 2026

Original Airdate: February 26, 2023
Genesis 2:7-9; 3:1-7 | Romans 5:12-19 | Matthew 4:1-11

Grant, almighty God, through the yearly observances of holy Lent, that we may grow in understanding of the riches hidden in Christ and, by worthy conduct, pursue their effects.    Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever, amen.

We have begun a very, very important season called Lent.  The word means springtime, and in the opening prayer, we asked God to bless us with the benefits that anything we do during Lent, the observances of holy Lent, might have an impact on us.  And it’s so clear in that opening prayer we’re saying, “The observances that we choose in Lent are there to help us grow in understanding of who you are and what is hidden in you.”  So even though there’s a long tradition of choosing things that are difficult or painful, being without certain comforts during Lent is beneficial.  Well, it is if it means that we’re creating more space, more time for reflection.  Who is this Christ?  What is he trying to teach me about my life and about the way I live that would engage me in a more intimate relationship with God the Father?

So let’s look at this first set of readings and see if it doesn’t set a tone for something that we could hold onto through the whole season, and that is the difference between life and death.  We have a choice, to live the life that God has called us to or to reject it and pick something else, something that is more attuned to our lower nature and to live that, which is a kind of death.  So let’s go back to the beginning.  I love that this is the beginning, first Sunday of this particular season, and we go back to the very beginning of God’s relationship with human beings, the Garden of Eden.  In it we have a story.  We all know that story very well, but it’s funny.  This story has a lot of things added to it that aren’t really there.  For example, there’s nothing about an apple in this story.  It’s about fruit, but we’ve made it an apple.  And most people will talk about Satan in the form of a snake that is tempting Adam and Eve, but it’s not a snake at all.  It’s the most cunning of human beings but not even a human being, an animal.  So let’s say it’s the most cunning part of our lower nature, and the serpent comes to the woman and questions what command that God had given Adam Eve not to eat of the tree in the middle of the garden, though that’s just implied, and not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  What is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?  Well, the more I reflect upon it, the more I think about it, it’s a kind of desire to become like gods.  At least that is what’s told to them by this cunning animal spirit in all of us.  It’s saying, “If you really want to, you can use God, and you can use everything in you to make you into this strong, autonomous being that has power over people.  Wouldn’t you like to be like God, that kind of God?”  I’m sure that was the most primitive sense of who God was.  And so the woman thought, “Well, maybe this would be good for wisdom.  Maybe ⎯ it certainly looks beautiful.  It’s good for nourishment,” logic working its way in.  But just think for a minute.  She’s choosing to eat the apple, because she thinks it will bring the wisdom of God inside of her, and you’ll notice that, when God talked about the tree in the center of the garden, he said, “Don’t even think about eating that.  Don’t even touch it, because if you do, you’ll die.  And what is the tree of life?  It’s wisdom, the hidden knowledge of who God really is and who you really are, and you can’t take that in now, because you’re not evolved enough to deal with it.”  So we have this very strong image that, in the first story we have about God’s relationship with us, we see this warning about death.  “Be careful what you choose.”  And notice that the cunning animal instinct says, “You know what?  You break the rules, and your eyes will be opened, and you’ll be like God.  And it will be wonderful.”  And then just a few lines later they broke with the commandment of God.  Their eyes were opened, and they were ashamed.  They were naked.  They covered themselves.

Could this story be the story about the choice to evolve as God intends us to or just simply bypass the whole process and demand that we become almost omniscient and able to do anything we want?  Hubris, pride, that’s part of it, but it’s also a wonderful story about the evolution of the human nature into a being that has some kind of inner moral code that, when you break it, your body reacts.  It’s interesting.  Guilt, you feel bad about something you did.  Shame, your whole body feels it.  Somehow you’re the sin.  So maybe we can see very much in this story that the most important thing we learn from this first encounter of God with his people is he wants them to grow slowly, naturally and to evolve into being not like God, being a god, but being in God and being with God.  

So now if we look at the beginning of ⎯ we look at this story as the beginning of the Old Testament.  Let’s look at the beginning of the New Testament, and the beginning of the New Testament is similar.  A temptation takes place, and so we find ourselves, after many centuries of struggling to become who God calls us to be ⎯ God enters the world to fulfill his promises in the Old Testament and to reveal fully who he is, to give his true wisdom.  We’re ready now to enter a new stage of existence.  No longer are we dependent solely on ourselves and our struggle to do what we’re told, but now we’re entering into a world where we’re going to become someone, not by being like God, being like him in the sense of doing what he does, but being with him and becoming something brand new.  

So look at Jesus.  He’s tempted by now not the highest form of our animal nature, but no, he is directly confronting evil.  So it’s the devil that’s there, and he asks him three things.  “Command these loaves to become bread, or jump off this tower to prove that God is there to help you.”  Or again he says, “Why don’t you look at the world as it is and know that you could run the whole thing?  You are so wise and so talented and so creative.”  Think about that.  Every one of them is a call to truth.  It’s like a temptation not to be in tune with the way things really are.  Jesus says, “The only thing I ever long for is the truth, the bread of God.  God’s presence in me is my bread.  It’s not something outside of me that makes me strong.  It is my interior presence of God that offers me the insight into what the world is really like and who God is and who I am.”  And then if you look at very much the second one, it’s so easy that he's saying, “Look, I don’t doubt in any way, shape or form that this is taking place.  I have absolute trust that this process that I’m engaged in, no matter what it turns into or how it works.  I’m going to believe that it’s the unfolding of what must be.”  What an incredible decision for Jesus to make at the beginning of his ministry.  “I want nothing but the truth.  I want to live through whatever is happening to me and accept it, knowing it’s bringing me to truth.”  And then at last, with that truth so much coursing through his veins as God’s Spirit courses through his whole body, he’s saying, “I am dedicated to a life not of being served the world, but I’m dedicated to a life of service.  I want the truth.  I want to trust.  I want to be in service.  I want human beings to be awakened to what you’ve awakened in me, and I’m living it.  And I want to teach it.”  And the most amazing thing about Jesus is he spoke less in words and more in who he was.  

That’s our challenge during Lent, to be one, to resonate out of your heart that you are longing for truth.  You’re longing for things to be understood in your heart, that they must be, and you are open and growing in your ability to serve.  That’s our season, and that’s our work.  Amen.

So in the first reading, from Zephaniah, there’s something there that struck me, and that is he says, “For those of you who observe a law, you can seek justice, seek humility.”  And then he just says, “Perhaps God may not be angry with you.”  The reason I say that is because, if you create a rigid system of laws and rules and you break one, you have this sense that God is angry, and God isn’t wanting a relationship like that with you.  He doesn’t want you tiptoeing around and making sure you do every single thing right so that he doesn’t get angry, because he's not ⎯ that’s not his major longing with human beings.  It’s not to be their corrector and their judge and their punisher.  No, he wants them to be intimately engaged with him, and that intimate engagement is really fascinating, because it’s not just for us that he wants to be a part of our lives.  But unless he’s a part of our lives, we will never be able to be what we need to be for other people.  In other words, the gift that God’s presence brings to you and me, the capacity to love, to heal, to save, to free, all that, when it comes into us, it becomes this thing that is there not just for us but is for those around us.  God longs for a relationship with us, because it can radically change the relationship we have with each other, and so it’s interesting in Zephaniah when God says, “I will always have a remnant in your midst.  There will always be a people humble and lowly that take refuge in my name, and they do no wrong.  They speak no lies, no deceit in them.  They take care of their people, their flocks, and they are protected.”  So that seems to me that God will promise not necessarily that one set of unique individuals will never fall into the trap of sin.  It just means that there’s always someone around that has this gift within them.  That’s God’s promise.  If he decided that he wanted us to be co-workers with bringing life and light into people’s life, then it would seem that, as he promises his presence with us, he’ll also present ⎯ there’s people around you if you can find them.  You’ll know them when you’re with them, because there’s something that resonates from them that feels so right, so good.  There will always be someone there for you, and it’s your work to be open to them.  

Now, it’s reiterated in the reading from St. Paul to the Corinthians.  He’s saying that the whole notion of God wanting a relationship with us is based in the fact that we are not enough, that we need to be humble.  We’re not the most powerful.  We’re not of noble birth.  We’re not always wise.  We’re not always the strongest.  We’re not always the best, but that is the way God intended us to be so that, when we admit to that, when we realize that and allow him to then do something within us, then we are close to what his message is, because the message of Jesus is to reinterpret the relationship the Old Testament was guilty of producing within people.  And by guilty I mean that they were constantly told they had to be obedient, and they had to do everything that God called them to do in order for him to be on their side in battles or there for them or making sure their crops were raised correctly.  

So we listen to this beautiful prayer.  It’s really kind of a prayer that he’s offering to this crowd, and then he seems to gather his disciples over maybe afterwards, or maybe it was during it.  But it seems like he was almost teaching this to the crowd certainly, but he really needed his disciples to understand it.  So he saw the crowd, but then he calls his disciples close to him, like he’s saying, “Listen to this.”  And the first thing he says is that, “Everyone who understands who they are, for them to know they are blessed, which means somehow in sync with me, in relationship, a healthy relationship with me, they have to be poor in spirit.”  And that simply means that they’re not enough.  Their spirit, human spirit is not enough.  Divine spirit is what human spirit is made to be entangled and intwined with so that we can be the people that the kingdom of heaven is asking us to be, and remember, the kingdom of heaven is not something that’s happening later.  It’s happening now.  The kingdom of heaven is now.  Jesus would say that.  It’s like the whole world continues to be created toward this goal, and we keep moving, moving closer to what we might call heaven or a place of peace, a place of wonder, a place of beauty.  We make mistakes, and we keep trying to learn from our mistakes.  

So we have the reminder that you have to be poor in spirit, and then you have to mourn.  And I think the mourning is everything to do with facing everything in you and everything in the world that isn’t the way you want it to be.  It’s sad that there’s such violence and discord and wars in this world.  And if you can mourn that, you’re blessed, meaning you don’t expect it not to be there, but you know how to somehow suffer it with humanity so that that suffering brings about a new relationship in a situation that will not fall into the trap that causes these conflicts and this pain in the world.  And I love the image of meekness, because the meek are those people who don’t have a clear, perfect answer for everything.  They are not falling into the trap of Christianity that is constantly oversimplified by preachers that just simply say, “It’s as simple as stop sinning.  God is good.  You’re bad.  God will save you if you stop doing what you’re doing.”  Meekness is softening your whole notion of all these nice, neat explanations.  What you have to do is hunger, hunger and thirst for God and hunger and thirst for right relationships with people, and when you do that, you’re going to be filled with this capacity to resonate from your heart mercy, wisdom, peace, all the things promised in this wonderful set of readings.  And then he must have looked directly at his disciples eyes and said, “But you know what?  One day you’re going to be really persecuted for my sake, and you are going to go through something awful.  And they’ll be persecuting you, utter every kind of evil falsely against you, but when you take a stand in this world with this new vision of who I am and what I’m calling them to do, it’s going to be rejected and resisted intensely.”  He doesn’t go so far as to say, “And all of you will be murdered except for one.”  This isn’t something that’s just sweetness and light.  To live the way that the Beatitudes calls us to live is a way to be open to the reality of the world, finding the peace that is your inheritance, but being a peace giver, a lover, a forgiver, and at times, the victim of misunderstanding and even hatred.  God bless you.

Father, bless this season with rich experiences that awaken in us the truth of who you are and what you’ve come to teach.  Lead us away from places that create and emptiness, a darkness, a kind of death, and lead us into the light of your truth.  And we ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.