Encountering God 1: Encountering Temptation

 

                Today is the start of an (overly… perhaps) ambitious 15-week sermon series titled: Encountering God. It will link Lent and Easter and culminate on Pentecost. 15 stories of God meeting 15 different individuals, from Adam to Ezekiel to Thomas to the 12 and eventually to all of us on Pentecost.

                What I didn’t anticipate was that, from the start, these stories resist an overly flat telling or categorization—and that’s okay, the preacher has to let the Word do what the Word Does—I gotta let God be God.

                For example, today’s lesson complicates an easy, “Look, this is how God interacts with Adam” sort of reading—instead there is a dynamic when encountering the God of Scripture that we Lutherans call—Law and Gospel. The Word must work on us some as a Mirror (showing us our faults) and Window (interpreting injustices), before it can exude grace as a Love Letter from God.

So, despite my best efforts to wrestle scripture into a simple formula—we’ll enter into this series, “Encountering God” by beginning with Encountering Temptation.

Prayer

 

God and Humanity’s story begins well enough—Work this land, care for the Garden; it is so precious. Avoid this one thing—here is a boundary I give to you, so that you will live, not die.

And The Crafty One, destroys God’s boundary and uses it for spare parts, constructing a new boundary, one with an unnatural thickness that makes it into a THING—an idol out of a rule. No longer is this some sort of good advice or gracious protection from danger, it is a violent wall keeping Adam down. Serpent asks questions predicated on rules instead of promises. “Is God stingy?” “Is God a liar?” by the end there is even an implied: “Does God think he’s better than me?”

And then Humanity’s eyes are opened to our own capacity to collapse our connections to God and neighbor—we believe falsely that it is our duty to rebuild the break—each attempt just another folly, another fig leaf, another whirl of blood and nonsense, all of it exposed. Instead of abiding with God, we rely on our weak animal heat to fix what only God can.

 

And the Apostle Paul reads all this, and sees it as the rough intersection between Death and Sin—Death’s uncontrollable descent strips away decency! We replace limits with lies, shrug off finitude and make it murder… That we are Dust, that we are Ash—it becomes an excuse and entry point for alienation, manipulation, exile, revenge, boasting of violence… and all of that just in chapters 3-4 of Genesis! Have mercy!

 

But he doesn’t stop there. He insists that God the same God who offered a lifegiving boundary, a garden to keep, good labor—that same God keeps after us—gives us gift and gift—abundance, blessing, justification—the rightwising of the world that I yammer on about so often! In Christ Jesus God deals with Sin singular with a capital S and presses back through all those vile responses to finitude until death itself is destroyed! Christ is the better way—the way from the beginning—Humanity in the Garden, embraced by promise instead of rules, instead of idols, abiding.

A New Adam—one who is Fully—completely—human. “Look! That one is a true human being!”

 

                The Human One, the Son of Man, the Son of God—when he encounters Temptation, it comes seeking the Old Adam, but finds the New One instead.

                “Is God stingy?” “Is God a liar?” “Is God better than me?” The Spirit chased you out here into the desert—thin with scarcity and want. Embrace an If/Then world—if God is truthful, if God is more worthy to worship than the powers of this world—then show me so!

                But that’s the Old Adam’s playbook—the New Adam responds, “Because God is good, therefore get out of here Satan!

                But the Tempter kept at it, still assuming he was like the Old Adam, curved in on himself, a naval gazing narcissists… and Jesus responds to continually trusting in God, naming his dependance on God, God is at the core of his being.

                “Feed yourself with this bread” “No, I will feed the 5,000.”

“Never be dependent on anyone ever again!” “Lord, give us today our daily bread.”

                “Save yourself.” “No, this path is the salvation of the whole world!”

“Look here is a lifeboat for one.” “Deliver us from Evil.”

                “Don’t you want a Kingdom for yourself?” “No, my Kingdom is not of this world!”

                “The powers and riches of this world can offer you everything—there won’t be a single boundary for you!” “Lord, Thy Kingdom Come!”

 

                In encountering temptation, we are able to see its opposite—we Encounter God.
-A God who is not stingy, but abounds in gift and grace.
-A God in whom there are no lies, but instead is dependable and trustworthy.
-A God who would never even consider the question, “Do I think I’m better than you?” because God blesses and makes right the twisted world we’re addicted to and continually construct—redeems our idols and puts them in their proper place. Do not die, but live!

Amen.