First Sunday in Lent

Painting by Edward Riojas

          We had to transfer our Ash Wednesday to Thursday this week. I was glad so many of you were able to come then, for the important beginning to the season of Lent. You heard the words, "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." I said them to you as I thumbed ash into your forehead. It's a reminder of our frailty, of our mortality. We are people whose bodies will die one day, and go back to the dirt. Modern funeral rituals and embalming techniques and cement vaults and metal coffins aside--our bodies will eventually return to earth. At the grave, I always take a handful of earth to throw onto the casket, and I say, "We commit this body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust." Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.

          And that's as it should be. Because the first man was created out of...dirt. The word "humus" describes rich topsoil. It's related to the word "human." Humility, humbleness, even the old Western movie word "hombre"--these words all describe things as coming from the low down dirt. 59 elements are found in the human body and every single one of them is also found in soil.

          The first man's name, as recorded in the Bible, is "Adam" which comes from the Hebrew word "adamah," which means--you guessed it--dirt. God makes Adam from the adamah and sets him the garden made of dirt to till the dirt.

          The problem is, Adam wasn't supposed to turn back into dirt. There wasn't supposed to be sin and death in the Garden. God did not intend for disease and pain and suffering to be a part of his adamah.

          So God sets out to fix it. Look at the second lesson for today. Take your bulletin home and read it again this afternoon. In this passage from Romans, Paul is pointing out the similarities and differences between Adam and Christ. Sin came into the world through Adam and Eve’s disobedience in the Garden. They wanted to be like God, and so succumbed to the temptation offered by the serpent. By that act, sin and death spread to all of us. This is what is called original sin—it’s sin from our very origins, our very beginnings, from the dirt on up..

          Adam, Paul says, is a type—a pattern--of the one who was to come. God intended from the very beginning of creation to renew Adam. To send someone who would be Adam, made new. And that one is Jesus. See the parallels?

·      Christ’s righteousness leads not to death for everyone, but life for everyone.

·      Instead of eating the fruit of the tree, Jesus becomes the bloody fruit hung on the tree of the cross, he becomes food for the whole world.

·      Instead of breaking the fast and eating the fruit like Adam did, Jesus keeps his fast and does not succumb to the temptation to turn stones to bread, misusing his Godly power for personal gain.

·      Jesus is Son of God, but he is also human, made of dirt, like Adam was. He knew perfection in heaven, like Adam did in Paradise. He knew hunger and thirst like Adam did. He even knew temptation, like Adam did. But the difference is this: Christ knew temptation, but he refused to give in to it.

Evil mastered Adam in the Garden. The serpent overcame both Adam and Eve. So, when Jesus was fasting in the wilderness, the old tempter, Satan, tries the same thing again. Satan figured that here was another human, another one made of humus, and he could do the same thing. Once again, the devil speaks honeyed words, this time in a desert, not a garden. Again, Satan tries to twist the words of God.

In the Garden, Satan in the form of a serpent tells Adam and Eve that God is just afraid that they will become like him, and that there is no need to fear death when eating the luscious fruit of the tree, usually thought of as an apple. Satan points out how good the fruit is, how beautiful the tree is, and how wise Adam and Eve will become if they disobey God and taste just a little.

          In the desert, Satan twists God’s words again and tells Jesus that it is OK for him to turn stones to bread, if he’s hungry—think how good that bread will taste! Satan says that it’s OK for Jesus to throw himself off the temple, because God’s angels will catch him. Satan tries to get Jesus to misuse his power for selfish reasons. Satan even tries to get Jesus to worship him in exchange for power over all the kingdoms on earth.

Adam and Eve, sadly, believe the serpent’s lies and eat the forbidden fruit, wanting to be like God. They are not content to serve God and do his will, obeying what he says. Instead, they want to be little gods of their own lives. Jesus, on the other hand, is totally committed to God his Father. He refuses Satan’s lies. He refuses to do anything other than what his Father has sent him for, namely to die to save everyone.

Jesus will not yield to temptation, and in Jesus Christ, Satan has met his master. Jesus is the only one who can stop the evil and the lies that Satan tells. He is the only one who can redeem Adam and Eve, and all of us their descendants, from the original sin that kills us. And he does that by resisting the temptation of the Devil and dying on the cross. He sheds his innocent blood, so that we who are guilty can live forever. Jesus becomes the new Adam.

          Adam’s disobedience made us all sinners, but Christ’s obedience makes us righteous. Jesus erases Adam’s sin and becomes the new Adam, the firstborn of the dead. Jesus makes paradise for us again, so that we can regain what Adam and Eve lost when they were expelled from the Garden.

As Lent begins, we are powerfully reminded of the images of Adam in the Garden of Eden eating under the tree, and Christ becoming the Tree of Life as he hangs on the cross. Two sides of the same tree.  We like to kneel on both sides of that tree.  We like that apple. We want to be in charge of our own lives. We want to be God, or at least have God on our own terms.

And sin is always with us. We try and try, but we can’t get rid of it. You know what I mean. You know those things that you struggle with, that you can never be free of. Those temptations, impulses, ways of being. All those things--and they are usually things--you think you need. That brokenness, despair, grief. Those things which pull at you, that come at you in the dark, that you can never quite outrun.

And yet, yet—God is in our flesh. God got down in the dirt with us. God is literally wearing us. He doesn't just put on our flesh like a shirt that he can take off later and go back to being the naked God. No--Jesus is forever melded with us. He is us and we are him. God is the New Adam, the New Eve.  

Those ashes on your foreheads on Thursday were not just any old dirty smudge. They were deliberately in the shape of the cross. You may have come from dirt and you may be going to dirt, but you are stamped with the sign of the New Adam, and so you will not be dirt forever. The Cross is his tree of life, and your tree of life, too.  It's not planted in a Garden, but it is  planted smack in the middle of your dying lives, right in your open graves--you will be with him in Paradise. The dirt of the first Adam surrounds everything you do, but Jesus humbled himself, became human, and in humility rescued you. The tainted blood of the first Adam runs in your veins, but the blood of the new Adam, Christ, washes you clean. Amen.