INTRODUCTION TO THE SCRIPTURE
Year A - First Sunday in Lent
The liturgical season changes from revelation to repentance in preparation for the celebration of Jesus' Passion and Resurrection at Easter. The colours of the candles and drapes on pulpit and table reflect this change too. Purple symbolizes repentance.
GENESIS 2:15‑17; 3:1‑7. "In Adam's sin, we sinnèd all," said an old New England catechism based on the alphabet. That is the thrust of this passage.
A modern interpretation adds that our consciousness of good and evil is what makes us truly human. The choice between good and evil, right and wrong, creativity and destructiveness, is always ours to make. Ours too is the responsibility for making that choice and being accountable for the consequences.
PSALM 32. This is a witness to the assurance of God's forgiveness for the penitent soul. It acknowledges both the universal sinfulness of humanity and the prevenient mercy of God, a grace that precedes even our willingness to repent or confess.
ROMANS 5:12‑19. Here Paul describes the universal sinfulness of humanity in terms of the myth of the disobedience Adam and Eve as we read in Genesis 2‑3. And then he gives God's antidote: the free gift of forgiveness that makes us right with God (justification) through the obedience of Jesus Christ in his life and death which were affirmed by God in the resurrection and exaltation.
MATTHEW 4:1‑11. Lent recalls the forty days in the wilderness Jesus spent in preparation for his ministry. However the experience of his being tempted may be interpreted, Jesus had to make some very meaningful choices. How was he to carry out his mission? The three temptations were options he had to consider and reject because they were not God's will for him. Had he chosen any of them, he would not be our Saviour and Lord.
A MORE COMPLETE ANALYSIS:
The Season of Lent was instituted in the 4th century as a period of
fasting and repentance in preparation for Easter. In the Eastern
churches, Lent lasts the eight weeks before Easter except for
Saturdays and Sundays which are regarded as festival days. In the
Western churches, the 40‑day period begins on Ash Wednesday and
extends, with the exception of Sundays, to the Easter Vigil on Holy
Saturday, the day before Easter. The observance of fasting and other
forms of self‑denial during Lent varies within Protestant and Anglican
churches where the emphasis is on penitence. Recent changes in Roman
Catholic practices have relaxed that church’s laws on fasting too. Since 1966,
fasting and abstinence are obligatory only on Ash Wednesday and Good
Friday.
GENESIS 2:15‑17; 3:1‑7. "In Adam's sin, we sinnèd all" read an old
New England catechism taught to children as their first reading
lesson. That is the thrust of this brief excerpt from the myth of the
Garden of Eden, albeit greatly elaborated by the gospel lesson below.
Some may prefer the literalist view which regards it as something
other than a myth, but there is little strength to such a position.
The documental theory of the Pentateuch regards it as the beginning of
the J document. The geography of the story appears to have been drawn
from an ancient Near Eastern tradition of an idyllic garden from which
rivers flowed. Some have placed it in the Tigris-Euphrates River valley in modern Irqu. Other cultural dependencies have been identified by
scholars who view it nonetheless as a literary masterpiece.
In Genesis 2‑3, however, this garden is no simple paradise, but a place created by God in which humans live, eat and work. It thus functions as a symbol of the unbroken relationships between God and humanity, and between humanity and nature. The story told in 2:4‑3:15 describes how these relationships were broken by the deliberate disobedience of the humans to whom God had given exclusive but limited oversight of the garden. In Ezekiel the expulsion from Eden after the Fall serves a metaphor of judgment against nations (Ezek.28:11‑19; 31:8‑9, 16,18); and in Joel 2:3 as a metaphor for the coming "day of the Lord."
Other ancient legends contrasted a lost time of perfection with the present state of human suffering. Despite the temptation of Eve by the serpent and of Adam with the fruit offered to him by Eve, a unique aspect of the Genesis story implies that the degradation of humanity came about as result of deliberate choice freely made by both of them. For this they bore the inevitable consequences of being punished, driven from Eden and condemned to suffer.
The serpent represents another link with the common mythology of the ancient Near East. Among the Canaanites, for instance, the serpent was symbolically
portrayed as both beneficent and hostile. The narrator of J altered the figure so that this craftiest and best informed of creatures (3:1, 4‑5) appears as friendly to Eve, but also as Yahweh's antagonist opposing the divine purpose with disastrous results for all concerned (vss. 14‑19). This had implications for later eschatological references to serpents (e.g. Isaiah 11:8; 65:25) as well as in the
exegesis of the story by apocryphal and NT authors.
A modern interpretation adds that our consciousness of good and evil makes us truly human. The choice between good and evil, right and wrong, creativity and destruction, is always ours to make. Ours too is the responsibility for making that choice and being accountable for the consequences.
During Lent we have the opportunity acknowledge our failures, turn back to God, receive forgiveness and begin anew to walk in God's way.
PSALM 32. At first glance this psalm offers assurance of God's forgiveness for the penitent soul. It acknowledges both the universal sinfulness of humanity and the mercy of God that brings joy to the forgiven. But this is not the prevenient mercy that precedes our willingness to repent and confess. Rather it speaks of the forgiveness which follows repentance. This insight came to the psalmist when he realized that there was a direct relationship between an unspecified illness and his sin (vss.3‑5). Thus the basic intent of the psalm is to instruct the faithful how to act when sickness comes upon them. As such it reflects the common attitude to sickness held throughout the ancient Near East and still so regarded by many people of different faith traditions.
The psalm also contains elements closely associated with wisdom literature of the post‑exilic period. Both its didactic character and its choice of words point in this direction. Of special note are the various synonyms for the cause of spiritual isolation which the forgiveness of God had overcome. Thus in vss.1‑2 we find four words, each of which expresses a slightly different aspect of the
experience: transgression, sin, iniquity and deceit.
Transgression means a willful disobedience to divine commandments. Sin is to miss the goal of righteousness and duty through neglect. Iniquity refers to guilt that has not been expiated. Deceit is actually self‑deception, the excusing of oneself to evade responsibility for one's behavior. Each form of sin is repeated in vs.5 as the psalmist acknowledges and seeks forgiveness. He then turns his attention to the way of maintaining a right relationship with God in the typical style of a wisdom teacher. The psalm ends with a reminder of the sharp contrast between the rewards for wickedness and those for righteous living (vss.9‑10).
ROMANS 5:12‑19. As we read in Genesis 2‑3, Paul described the failure of all of us in terms of the myth of the disobedience of Adam. Notably, he totally omitted Eve from his argument. His exegesis was somewhat convoluted, however, as most modern exegetes complain. It depended on both the rabbinical style and doctrine current in his time. He adopted typology, a system which used representative symbolism, as the means of explaining both the universality of human sin and of salvation through Jesus Christ (vs.14).
For Paul, Adam represented all unredeemed humanity. Moses represented the consciousness of sin which knowledge the law brings to the human mind. The result of Adam's sin was death for all humanity (vs.12b). For Jews, death held a particular horror. It meant nothing less than separation from God (cf. Ps.115:17). This was the condemnation all humanity suffered as a result of Adam's disobedience (vss.15, 17). For Paul, one of the greatest blessings of the Christian faith was that death no longer held such terrors if one died in
fellowship with Christ.
Whether or not Paul actually believed that Adam was the first human being, the concept of human solidarity or the corporate personality lay behind his attempt to explain both sin and salvation. That brief Puritan saying taught to children placed the whole story in a context Paul would have easily understood: "In Adam's sin we sinned all." He would have gone further to say: "In Jesus Christ we are all redeemed." God's antidote for human sin is the free gift of forgiveness that makes us right with God (justification) through the obedience of Jesus Christ in his life and death.
This passage is difficult to read in almost every English translation. Understanding what Paul said is lost in a confusion of words and phrases no longer meaningful to the modern mind. Yet as William Barclay said: "There is no passage in the New Testament which has had such an influence on theology as this passage; and there is no passage which is more difficult for a modern mind to understand."
Barclay puts into simpler terms what Paul attempted to say to the Romans: "By the sin of Adam all men became sinners and were alienated from God; by the righteousness of Jesus Christ all men are now considered as righteous and are restored to a right relationship with God....Whatever else we may say about Paul's argument this we can say ‑ it is completely true that man was ruined by sin and rescued by Christ." (*The Daily Bible Study: The Letter to the Romans.* Edinburgh: The Saint Andrew Press, 1955.)
MATTHEW 4:1‑11. Lent recalls the forty days Jesus spent in the wilderness in preparation for his ministry. At the same time, we must recall that Matthew drew this idea from the OT passages in which both Moses and Elijah are said to have spent similar periods of fasting in the wilderness (Ex.32:28; 1 Kings 19:8). As for them, so for Jesus; the sojourn in the wilderness involved a deep spiritual experience.
This is implied in the synoptic account that the Spirit guided Jesus into the wilderness. The difference in the Matthean account is not the person of Satan, or the devil as the tempter; but the extensive elaboration drawn from the hypothetical Q document of a supposed conversation between Satan and Jesus.
Our word *devil" translates the Greek *diabolos" which originally meant *accuser* or *slandered*. In the Septuagint (LXX), it was used to translate the Hebrew word *satan,* meaning *adversary.* By 200 BCE the name *Satan* had become the embodiment of evil and by NT times it had become synonymous with *devil.*
Matthew saw the temptations as satanic interference in Jesus' pursuit of God's will and purpose for his life. Whether or not we believe in the person of Satan, we can regard them as the options before Jesus as to the means of carrying out his mission. Even good people with manifestly good intentions frequently have to consider such options in an extended and very personal meditative process.
Whereas the spiritually oriented person may need to pray, the secular person may merely say, “I must think about that.” In the wilderness Jesus had both the time and the opportunity to do both. The “forty days” had no great significance other than as a reminder of the forty years the Israelites’ wandered in the wilderness under Moses’ leadership. That Jesus had some very similar experience in order to make significant choices emphasized the human aspect of his person and the worldly aspect of his mission. The use of the term "Son of God" and quotations from the Old Testament pointed to the spiritual reality of his struggle juxtaposed with his humanity.
Four of the five scripture quotations are from Deuteronomy. Jesus' response to the first temptation came from Deuteronomy 8:3. Significantly, the first part of that verse, which was not quoted, referred to hunger as a means of humbling the unfaithful Israelites and bringing them to a deeper consciousness of divine providence. This temptation held out the opportunity for Jesus to think of himself first and to use his authority as the Son of God to offer the multitudes food for the body instead of spiritual food. For Mark and much later for John's Gospel, if not for Matthew, the feeding of the five thousand created just such a problem (cf.Mark6:52; John 6:25‑40). Twentieth century historian Arnold Toynbee wrote that Communism was a Christian heresy because it offered to the proletariat of the world the same temptation that Satan offered to Jesus - food in exchange for loyalty.
As Shakespeare said in *The Merchant of Venice,* (Act I, Scene 3, line 99) "The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose." The saying has become proverb in our English vernacular. So in Matthew 4:6 Satan used that device to tempt Jesus to demonstrate his authority in a spectacular feat. The quotation came from Ps. 91:11‑12 to which Jesus responded with a quotation from Deut. 6:16.
Technically the temple had no pinnacle, so the place of the temple to
which Satan transported Jesus must have been the highest point on the
temple. Today tourists are shown a corner of the wall of the temple
platform as the probable site, but this particular part of the walls
of Jerusalem was not erected until the 16th century by Suleiman, the
Moslem of sultan Constantinople who rebuilt the walls against potential invasion by European Christians.
The third temptation presented Jesus with a bold choice between worshiping and serving God or another deity, however configured by the one who cast himself in that fraudulent role. The mountain to which Satan took him symbolized Mount Sinai, where Moses received the Decalogue. The vista provided Jesus with an option to use his authority to be the typical triumphalist warrior‑messiah of Jewish tradition. There is a site on the edge of the Judean wilderness overlooking the Dead Sea near Jericho where Greek Orthodox monks still practice an isolated life of religious devotion. If this site
is the site of the third temptation as tradition contends, the bare rock and burning sun do nothing to commend it as a desirable kingdom. The imposter was offering Jesus a glory he could not produce.
As before, the Deuteronomic law stood as the sole authority for Jesus to follow. The choice did not give him a prescribed plan. Instead he would learn the details of his spiritual path as he went forward in faith. The way would become clear as he walked humbly in the service of God. The prophetic message of Micah 6:8 may well lie behind Matthew's quotation of Deuteronomy 6:13.
However we may choose to interpret the temptations, the choices Jesus had to make are also those which we confront in our own moral and spiritual decisions. It is not too much to say that his temptations are also ours.
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