Thoughts on Today’s Lessons for March 5, 2017
The Temptation on the Mount, (1308-1311). Tempera painting on wood, Duccio di Buoninsegna (1260–1318), the Frick Collection, New York City.
Sunday’s readings launch the penitential season of Lent with a firm scriptural grounding in the theology of temptation and sin. We begin with the familiar Creation story, as the crafty serpent tempts Eve and Adam with the fruit that God had told them not to touch. When the serpent persuaded them that the fruit would not kill them at all, in spite of God’s warning, but would in fact give them Godlike knowledge of good and evil, they could not resist. Temptation was powerful; but so was the shame that followed when they realized they had broken their relationship with God.
Yes, deep guilt may follow the knowledge that we have sinned, failed in our trust and separated ourselves from God through sin. Guilt’s heavy hand weighs on us, the Psalmist sings, drying us out, withering our bones, leaving us groaning in pain. So much more is the joy, then, the relief and “glad cries” that burst out when we acknowledge our wrongdoing, confess our transgressions, and receive God’s loving deliverance from the pain and guilt of sin.
Second Reading: Romans 5:12-19
Paul draws a direct connection between the sin of Adam and the divinity of Jesus Christ, the son of God. This would have been an important image for the members of the church in Rome as they struggled to restore relationships between the church’s pagan converts and its Jewish Christians who were returning from exile. Adam, the first of creation, gave in to the temptation of the fruit and brought death into the world. But now, Paul reminds them, Jesus’ incarnation as one of us restores us all – not only a selected few – with justification and life through God’s free gift of grace.
Gospel: Matthew 4:1-11
At the beginning of Epiphany, we heard Matthew’s account of the baptism of Jesus, when the voice of God declared him God’s beloved Son. Now we learn that the Spirit then led Jesus into the wilderness … to be tempted by the devil? This seems to be a very strange thing for the Holy Spirit to do, but we know that the Spirit works in mysterious ways. The devil – in a role something like the “Adversary” who tested Job’s faith – tries to test Jesus, too, tempting him three times to perform miracles to help himself. But Jesus stands strong, and at the end of 40 days of fasting, he resists temptation and orders the devil away.