Moving on Up -- a Lectionary Reflection for the Second Sunday of Lent

Genesis 12:1-4a



Romans 4:1-5, 13-17


John 3:1-17

Moving on Up . . .

You can’t see the Kingdom of God without being “born from above.” So says Jesus to Nicodemus (John 3:3). That phrase “born from above” might be a key to understanding the journey of faith. We are by nature physical beings, but by grace we become spiritual beings. By faith we are enabled, as we allow the Spirit, who like the wind, blows where it likes, without us being able to control it. If we’re willing to allow grace to bless us, then our lives might be transformed so that we can participate in God’s work of transforming the world that God loves. If being part of the realm of God means being “born from above,” then most assuredly the path of faith is an upward track. While this path may lead upward, it needs to be said that most often it first goes into the valley.

In approaching these three lectionary texts for the second Sunday of Lent, my thoughts are being pushed in interesting directions from my concurrent readings in Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life (Jossey Bass, advanced proof). Rohr speaks of the reality that faces us all – that we will fall before we rise.

So we must stumble and fall, I am sorry to say. And that does not mean reading about falling, as you are doing here. We must actually be out of the driver’s seat for a while, or we’ll never learn how to give up control to the Real Guide. It is the necessary pattern. (P. 66).

The journey we are taking, should we chose the way of the Spirit of God, won’t be an easy one. Consider the journey of Abraham and Sarah, after God calls him. Yes, he receives a promise and a purpose, but it’s not all smooth sailing. God calls Paul on the Damascus Road, he’s blinded and then healed, but it’s not all smooth sailing for him either. As for Jesus, he hears the call and takes up the mantle of God, but his path leads to a cross before it leads to resurrection. Suffering is part of the course of life. We must go down, in order to move up. The cross comes before resurrection. If we’re to experience the fullness of God’s promises we must understand this reality.

Our journey starts with a promise to Abram. God says – go to a new country and I’ll make for you many descendants and you we’ll be blessed so that you might be a blessing to the nations. That’s pretty good news, but it demands a sacrifice. Abram must leave behind his home and his family in order to receive the blessings. But Abram went by faith. But, he doesn’t go alone. In this particular set of verses, we don’t read Sarai’s name, but this is a partnership. There will be no descendants without her. The promise made to Abram and Sarai is really one of the most important statements in scripture, because it sets the context for the rest of the story. Christians come into the story as heirs of the promise to Abraham by grace, for we are not direct descendants of Abraham and Sarah. But then again, as we’ll see, even Abraham and Sarah and their descendants don’t earn this promise, but instead receive it by grace. It is grace that enables them to receive the call of righteousness by faith.

In many ways Romans 4 is a commentary on the Genesis 12 passage. According to Paul, the call of Abraham is not something that has been earned. Abraham is our ancestor, not because of works, but simply because Abraham believed God. Now what does this mean? “Abraham believed God.” Does that mean that God gave Abraham some kind of ordination exam with a set of questions that needed proper answers lest he be rejected? That doesn’t seem to be the case. Abraham isn’t justified – made right before God – because of the Law. Remember the Law doesn’t come until later. No, it’s a matter of faith, and again faith isn’t assent to a set of doctrines, but is simply trust. Abraham heard the call to leave behind family and friends and security so that he could follow God’s lead into Canaan.

It’s important that as we hear Paul place the Law behind Faith, we don’t hear him denigrate the value of Law. For Paul the Law its place, but it’s not the end game. Again, turning to Richard Rohr, who speaks of life’s two halves, the first half has to do with identity formation and security. It’s a question of ordering one’s life, and most assuredly the Law helps with this task. In the second half of life, we can begin to take risks and journeys beyond secure boundaries, but as Rohr suggest, “maybe they cannot answer a second call because they have not yet completed the first task.” He then goes on to write:

Unless you build your first house well, you will never leave it. To build your house well is, ironically, to be nudged beyond its doors (p. 23).

We have to fulfill at least a large part of the first half tasks before we’re ready to move on. Apparently Abraham was ready to take the next step. So was Paul. The point is, that if adherence to the Law is all that is required, then faith is of little value. If Law is the end, then what we have is a rather risk-averse life. The Law has its place, for as Rohr writes, “without law in some form, and also without butting up against the law, we cannot move forward easily and naturally” (p. 25). To live by faith is to take that step outside the doors, to butt up against the walls that try to keep us inside, and being to fly, to test the waters, and live by the Spirit.

This brings us to the gospel lesson from John. The text itself doesn’t speak to the Abraham paradigm that is present in the two texts from Genesis and Romans, but John pushes us to think outside the box. Nicodemus comes to Jesus, seeking wisdom (we would assume), but Jesus throws him for a loop with his talk of being born from above if he should want to see God’s kingdom. Like most of us, Nicodemus is thinking in very material terms. How can I be reborn from my mother’s womb? But, Jesus is speaking in spiritual not material terms. He’s moving beyond the first half concerns of rules and boundaries and identities to the life in the Spirit, where we test boundaries and allow God to move in and through us so we might reach our full potential as God’s children. Jesus first says – if you want to see the realm of God you have to be born from above – that is, born from heaven. Then he ups the ante, and says – if you want to enter the Kingdom then you will have to be “born of water and Spirit.” Traditionally, this phrase has been taken to refer to baptism, but I’m convinced that in context the point isn’t baptism, but rather a contrast between physical birth (water) and spiritual birth. Both are necessary, for we are born of the flesh, but if we’re open then we can also be born of the Spirit as well. To enter the kingdom we must experience this spiritual birth, and when it comes to the Spirit, the wind blows where it will. We don’t control it, and it will push us outside the box.

In this conversation, as John tells the story, Jesus moves onto a discussion of what it means to fall upward. No one has ascended to heaven, he says, except the one who has descended from heaven – the Son of Man. But the one who has descended must be lifted up, even as Moses lifted up the serpent, so that whoever would believe might have eternal life. And what does it mean to believe? Again, I don’t think it means signing on the dotted doctrinal line, but rather trusting in the one who seeks to take us on a journey of faith – the Spirit of God. Our hope lies then in the one sent by God who loves the world, so that whoever trusts in the one God has sent might not perish but have eternal life, which as Richard Beck notes, may have less to do with quantity of time as it does with quality of life in God.

The question that these texts raise concerns whether we’re ready to move on up into the heavenly realm? Are we ready to follow the Spirit and live outside the box? Have we formed/been formed in such a way that our identities are secure enough that we can leave the nest and follow the Spirit into new opportunities to be in partnership with God in loving the world? And we do so by faith, knowing that the wind of the Spirit blows where ever it wills!



Temptation -- a Lectionary Meditation

Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7



Romans 5:12-19


Matthew 4:1-11

Temptation

“There are several good protections against temptation, but the surest is cowardice.” (Mark Twain)

Two stories of temptation lead off the Lenten journey, reminding us that temptation is an ever present challenge. Though, as Mark Twain notes, there are ways of dealing with temptation, the most effective being – run for the hills! Or better yet, never take risks, and you’ll not have to deal with problems such as this. But if we want to live fully and put ourselves in a position to grow and mature in our faith, then we must face the prospect of falling prey to temptation. It is, in fact, the central theme of the biblical story. Richard Rohr writes:

It is not that suffering or failure might happen, or that it will only happen to you if you are bad (which is what religious people often think), or that it will happen to the unfortunate, or to a few in other places, or that you can somehow by cleverness or righteousness avoid it. No, it will happen, and to you! Losing, failing, falling, sin, and the suffering that comes those experiences – all of this is a necessary and even good part of the human journey. [Richard Rohr, Falling Upward, (Jossey Bass, proof copy), p. xxii]

It is important that as we take in these stories that we not forget that falling down is part of the journey, but growth comes as we get up and move forward in the presence of God. In this week’s lectionary readings there are two stories of temptation – one referring to Adam and Eve and the other to Jesus. In the middle we come across Paul’s meditation on sin and redemption – through one man sin comes into the world, through the second man its effects are overcome. In Genesis God puts a tree into the middle of the garden and says – don’t eat or you’ll die. In Matthew, Jesus is baptized by John and then is immediately driven into the Wilderness by the Spirit so that he might be tested. Are we ready to be tested? That is the question.

In the first story God puts a man in the garden and tells him to till it and tend to it. He can eat of all the trees in the garden, except one, and if he eats of this Tree of Knowledge he’ll most assuredly die – though Genesis doesn’t tell us how this will occur (Gen. 2:15-17). But, as you read this warning, you have to know that something untoward is going to happen. You can’t put a tree in the middle of the garden that has really good looking fruit on it and then say – don’t eat. You know he’ll eventually bite into the fruit. With this warning in place, the lectionary guides have us skip over the section where God creates the woman as the man’s companion, and takes us to the encounter between the woman and the Serpent, who according to the writer of this text is the craftiest of God’s creations. Note here that the reference isn’t to the devil, though later interpretive tradition will make this connection. The Serpent says to the woman: “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden?” Of course, God didn’t say anything of the sort. God said you have all that you need, so stay away from that tree in the middle of the garden. If you eat it, you will die. The woman knows the truth and responds accordingly. But the key to the discussion is the suggestion by the Serpent that the reason God doesn’t want them to eat of the fruit is that upon eating it they will be like God, knowing both good and evil. The Serpent promised wisdom, but God asked for trust, trust that was quickly broken. And upon eating the fruit, the eyes of both are opened and they discover that they are naked, and so they cover themselves with fig leaves. Yes, shame enters the picture and the two whom God created to be companions are now alienated from each other. And as the story goes on, they hide even from God, suggesting that alienation from God had also crept into the picture. While we talk about sin here, the real issue is one of broken trust. But, as Rohr points out – that is part of life. The question is – how will we respond to the realities. Will we get back up and seek reconciliation? Will we allow that original trust to be restored?

Before we turn to Matthew’s temptation story, we turn to Romans 5, where Paul talks about the consequences of the man’s transgressions. Although the woman is often blamed for the Fall, Paul is of the mind (maybe it’s his chauvinism) that the man is responsible. Of course, Paul is also concerned about creating a parallel situation. Adam is seen as the one who breaks trust with God, and therefore allows for sin and death to enter the picture. The passage opens with one of the most pregnant verses in the New Testament. Taken literally it seems to give support to the doctrine of original sin. Paul writes that it was through a man (Adam) that death came into the world because of sin, and death spread to all humanity because all sinned. Paul is reaching back to Genesis 2-3, and offers his explanation as to why sin is so prevalent and why death is experienced by all. Because of Adam we all die, and the culprit has traditionally been seen as original sin. We sin because of Adam and we die because of him. It seems so genetic, but not so fast. Note that Paul says that death spread to all because all sinned, not because the man sinned. Sin was present since the beginning of human history – that is the implication of the text, and it has had devastating effects. It is also clear that sin is not simply disobedience of the Law, because sin and death existed prior to Moses.

The key point in all of this is the role that Adam (the man) plays in the story. Paul says that Adam is the type of the one to come. And while sin and death was introduced into the world through the actions of the first man, through the work of the second Adam (Christ) comes grace. Thus, if many die because of the first man’s sin (setting the world in motion toward disobedience), so in the second Adam’s obedience this is turned around. In a statement that almost sounds universalist in intent, Paul says that “because of the one man’s trespass, death exercised dominion through that one, much more surely will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness exercise dominion in life through one man, Jesus Christ (Rom. 5:17). We must face the reality of sin – however it may have come into the world – but the good news is that in Christ its effects have been overturned. Forgiveness is ours.

When we read Matthew’s Temptation story, it’s easy for us to discount the threat to Jesus’ identity. We just assume, or at least many assume, that Jesus is divine and therefore there’s really nothing to be concerned about. It’s all just a test, to which all the answers have already been given. There’s really no chance that Jesus would actually have failed or fallen. But if we take such a view. If there’s nothing really at risk in the incarnation, then what’s the point? Is it a mere exercise for our enjoyment? Is the devil too stupid to know that Jesus couldn’t fall, so God was having a good laugh? If these tests are real and God’s purpose could have been thwarted, then Jesus is – in Paul’s terms – the Second Adam. In his obedience he shows us the way to rebuild trust; how to walk in righteousness. But as the story goes, the devil gave it his best shot, but it wasn’t good enough. The temptations were truly seductive. Bread to end hunger; a spectacle to draw followers; rule over the world in exchange for a small bow. And yet in each case, Jesus stood strong in the Spirit. Jesus chooses to live by the words that come from the mouth of God; chooses not to put God to the test; and Jesus chose to worship God and not the devil. In the end the devil goes away, and the famished savior is tended to by the angels. It is in the obedience of the Second Adam that the disobedience of the First Adam is reversed. But obedience is more than playing it safe. Obedience involves taking necessary risks so that one might grow in faith and practice.

Temptation is part of life. We will fall, lest we believe that perfection is something to be guarded to such an extent that we’re not willing to live life in the presence of God. That is not, I believe, what God calls for us to do. It is in reality the way of death and not life. Let us then pursue God’s purpose for our lives, by living boldly in the world.