Thoughts on Today’s Lessons for Sunday, March 9, 2014
The temptation of Jesus as envisioned by an African artist.
This week’s readings open the Lenten season with scriptural views of temptation and sin. In the creation legend, Eve and Adam give in to temptation and eat the fruit that God had told them not to touch. Not even God’s warning that the fruit would bring death was strong enough to block the overpowering temptation that came with the crafty serpent’s promise that they would gain Godlike knowledge of good and evil. Temptation is powerful; and so is the shame that comes with realizing that we have distorted our relationship with God and each other, a loss of loving connection that we know as sin.
Psalm: Psalm 32
Many of the Psalms celebrate the joy of loving God and living in God’s way. This Psalm in particular makes this point with an unusual twist: It exalts the joy, relief and “glad cries of deliverance” that erupt from our souls when we accept God’s sure forgiveness. Indeed God’s steadfast love surrounds all of us who trust enough to acknowledge our wrongdoing, confess our transgressions and accept God’s loving deliverance from the pain and guilt of separating ourselves from God through sin.
Second Reading: Romans 5:12-19
Offering pastoral guidance to the people of the ancient church in Rome in its struggle with human relationships, Paul sketches a direct connection between the sin of Adam (curiously, he doesn’t mention Eve) and the divinity of Jesus Christ, the son of God. If Adam’s yielding to the temptation of the fruit brought death into the world, as the Genesis verses foretell, then Jesus’ incarnation as one of us restores justification and life for all through God’s free gift of grace.
Gospel: Matthew 4:1-11
These verses come immediately after Jesus’ baptism, where he heard the voice of God declaring him God’s beloved Son. Now Jesus goes into the wilderness. To meditate and pray? Wait! What’s this? The Holy Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil? That’s not the way most of us remember this Gospel story! The devil – not a scary red horned creature but something more like the “Adversary” who tested Job’s faith in the Old Testament story – tries to test Jesus, tempting him three times to perform miracles to help himself. But Jesus shows that he is Son of God, standing strong against temptation.