• Genesis 2: 15-17; 3: 1-7

One task religions undertake is to explain human evil.  Borrowing from neighboring cultures and religions, this writer (“J”) tells a story of a time of original innocence between God and humankind.  But then divine prohibition, temptation, human rebellion and finally ruptures the relationship.  (However, because the biblical story does not end here, although the relationship is ruptured and altered forever, it is not severed!)

• Psalm 32

Robert Alter analyzes this psalm as a jumbled collection of phrases, borrowed fragments, confusing allusions and perhaps even scribal errors.  (The Book of Psalms, p. 110-112)  Do the confusion and chaos of the text convey a state of anxiety about sin that can only be relieved by assurance of God’s forgiveness?

• Romans 5: 12-19

Paul replaces story with theology and poetry with proofs and “types.”  (And his sympathetic interpreters over the centuries can be even more “Pauline” than Paul himself!)  The preacher’s task is to return even passages such as this one back into story and poetry; from abstractions to human experience of God.  Out of a sharp awareness of human evil that borders on despair, one seeks an escape from its crushing burden.  For Christians, that escape is Christ who insisted in what he said and what he did and finally in what he allowed to be done to him that God’s love prevails, always exceeding even the worst of human evil.

• Matthew 4: 1-12

Jesus confronts temptation himself at the commencement of his public ministry.  After fasting for forty days in the wilderness, Jesus is “famished.”  Weakened and vulnerable, “the tempter” comes to him with a series of offers that would have made his life and ministry easier and more successful.  But the point of Matthew’s account is that Jesus resisted any temptation to take short-cuts or alter his mission.  He rejected any attempt to overwhelm humankind with his message or to make it easy or obvious.  He announces that he serves a higher mission as not only the messenger but the embodiment of that message from God to humankind.

Walter Brueggemann notes that the appearance of Satan in the Hebrew scriptures is “marginal” but haunting.  He writes that the appearance of Satan in Genesis 3 (and the Book of Job)  reveal “that the issues of human life are both more inscrutable and more ominous than simple moralism… will allow.”  (The Theology of the Old Testament), p. 490)  Specifically, Brueggemann reads the choices made by the first two human beings, Adam and Eve, to be a rejection of the partnership God offered– on God’s terms– with humankind, (p. 650 ff)  But, their choice “does not (emphasis added) deny subsequent humanity [to experience] the character of the image of God.” (p. 452)  He cites subsequent references in Genesis (5:1 and 9:16) to the image of God and the promise of covenant with all humankind (9: 8-17) to put into play three powerful biblical assertions:  sin is a rebuffing of God’s offer of partnership by humankind that is meant to enhance all creation; the human rejection is genuinely frightening for its dire consequences; but God will not allow this rupture to overwhelm humankind and the rest of creation.

Satan makes an auspicious appearance right at the very beginning of Mark’s gospel (1:12-13),  (just after the baptism of Jesus in Luke [4: 1-13]) and Matthew, which is today’s appointed gospel.  “The tempter” offers various deals which would make Jesus’ mission on behalf of his Father easier and safer for him.  The confrontation concludes when Jesus quotes from the Torah (Deuteronomy 6: 16) and makes absolutely clear the purpose of all he will say and do throughout his ministry right to his last breath, which is to “worship the Lord God and serve only God.”

Martin Heidegger took up the themes of relationship to God and sin in his lectures.  In one lecture series on St. Augustine, (for which we have his notes), he wrote that the essence of sin for a Christian is when the individual “pulls toward itself,”  “passes onto the side of the will.”  In the Christian narrative, sin is understood to be not pursuing what is “genuine, although he understood what was right,” which Heidegger labels “authentic defiance.”  For the Christian, therefore, sin is the exercise of “individuality” “before God.”  The context of this confrontation is relationship: the creature standing in defiance right in the face of her Creator.

The readings and the gospel of  the First Sunday in Lent this year confront the reader/hearer with some brute assertions:  sin is real; its consequences are powerful and sometimes deadly; it begins with the individual’s rejection of the partnership initiated by God for the nurture of all creation and the building and maintenance of justice for all people.  We acknowledge the realities of our sin before the One who vowed to never abandon us, no matter what.  We are further encouraged to make some confession and seek reconciliation because of the life and death of Jesus, the Christ, whose announced and completed mission it was to bring us back into partnership with our Creator.

Sin is real and always has consequences, but it is not how the biblical story ends.