Pastor Paul E. Hoffman

Midweek Lenten Eucharist, Lent 1

Beloved in Christ, grace and peace to you in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In the hallway by the main office, there is a piece of art, a gift from the estate of Paul and Ruth Manz. It is flanked by a simple placard that says, Mary and Elizabeth, artist unknown.

There they are, faithful women, in near-fetal positions, nestled like twins in a womb, held in a circle of God’s enveloping love. It turns out that this is a case of mistaken identity.

Today’s texts, as well as the first promise of the baptismal affirmation liturgy, call us into just such a circle of God’s enveloping love. It is a simple, though not easy, invitation: to live among God’s faithful people. It is an identity we are invited to embrace, and there is no mistaken identity about it.

Each text in its own way gives witness to both the joy and the task of living among God’s faithful people. Ruth is challenged by a trial too great for her sister-in-law, Orpah, to leave her own land and people and strike out in a way that she perceives is faithful – the way of care and compassion for an elder whose prospects are as good as dead.

The psalmist paints a cheerier picture of life among the faithful. It is almost a dance – a joyous and messy frolic – oil running down the beard and robes of Aaron.

Paul being Paul gets more cerebral, comparing our kinship with one another to a human body, driving home the point that we are not clones, but more like complimentary organs whose individual functions contribute to the health and well-being of all.  And then Paul, again being Paul, adds a coda to his body-symphony reminding us that whether we are a hand or a foot, a heart, a lung, or maybe even an armpit, it is always a gift to let love be genuine, hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good, love one another, and so on.

Finally, Jesus comes in like a closer. Love one another as I have loved you. That’s all. Actually, not quite. Bear fruit that will last. There you go. Love one another a Christ loves you. And bear fruit that will last.

Do you intend to continue in the covenant God made with you in holy baptism? To live among God’s faithful people? Think carefully. Because while one day it may be as joyful as a dance of oil running down the beard and onto the collar of one’s robe, the next it might be as complicated as being ripped from your home and people to follow a relative that you hardly know but who seems to have some sort of hold on you. Living among God’s faithful people can be as beautiful as a body working together in perfect harmony and as disastrous as fruit you thought would last that is rotting on the vine.

The Bible is a great book and all, but one of the things it continually lays before us is the bane and the blessing of life together in the body of Christ. It might be everlasting. But it’s not always beautiful. Or accurate. And rarely what we planned.

Just last week our administrative assistant, Cha, discovered – through some research on the Internet that that really isn’t Mary and Elizabeth in the artwork that hangs outside her office at all. On the artist’s website, it clearly identifies the women as Ruth and Naomi.

But here’s the thing. It doesn’t matter.  It doesn’t matter if it’s Ruth and Naomi or if it’s Mary and Elizabeth. Because either way, they are part of a larger story. They are part of the story of living among God’s faithful people. And so are you. So are you.

That picture is the picture of all God’s faithful people. You’re in that loving womb-like bubble of God’s unending love. And I’m in there, too. And whether that is Mary and Elizabeth or Ruth and Naomi, the grace of God is surrounding them like the oil that runs down the beard of Aaron and onto the collar of his robe. In that amniotic grace of God, the waters of baptism pulsate with life that is as ancient as Eden and as recent as the morning news.

To promise to live among God’s faithful people, as Ruth and Naomi did…

To promise to live among God’s faithful people as Paul imagines us doing as a body working in perfect harmony with itself….

To live among God’s faithful people, as Jesus calls us to do in deep and abiding friendship with one another and with him…

To live among God’s faithful people is not so much a commitment that we are expected to try to live up to as it is a way of life into which our baptism invites us.  God desires so deeply that we come inside the picture where Ruth and Naomi are recalled, where Mary and Elizabeth are, where Esther and the woman at the well and Aaron, Moses and Miriam, Peter, Mary Magdalene, Augustine, Luther and Calvin, the hymn writers George Herbert and John and Charles Wesley, Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, George Floyd, the faithful of this and every place whose songs still resonate deeply from these walls each time we lift our voices to join them…

That is the picture into which God invites us. And it is an amazing picture of an even more amazing grace, where charity and love prevail, if only we will let it.

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

We will not be perfect in the face of temptation and we will mess up–yet we will continue to be loved, and chosen by God.

Vicar Mollie Hamre
1st Sunday in Lent, Year A
Texts: Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7; Psalm 32; Romans 5:12-19; Matthew 4:1-11

Beloved in Christ, grace and peace to you in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Our readings from today are two different stories of temptation. 

One, coming from the first reading in Genesis. The other is from the Gospel according to Matthew. In Genesis, we hear the story about humanity in the garden. God asks humanity to not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil and as we know, they do. Trust is broken, the pain of the world is exposed, and our tradition looks back on this story with a guilty conscience. The world that God hoped to shield humanity from comes into full view and it is full of struggle and suffering. Humanity becomes ashamed, full of remorse, and hides from God in the coming verses. 

The other passage, from the Gospel, takes place after Jesus is baptized. 

Jesus is sent into the wilderness and tempted three times. Each time Jesus denies the temptation and answers faithfully with scripture. This sometimes feels like a no-brainer. We know that Jesus will not give into temptation. Might I remind you that the man in question is Jesus, the son of God. So when we hear this Gospel, it feels like a clear ending: Jesus, God with us, will perfectly follow God when tempted. He will have the right answers. The wisdom to see through the tricks. The strength to stand up against corrupt forces. But us, on the other hand, as much as we try, some days we don’t have these same characteristics. 

It feels a little obvious that the response from humanity and the one that Jesus gives are drastically different. We hear the story about humanity messing up big time, while Jesus has the perfect answers. 

The comparison that is set before us is not great. 

We want to walk in the guided steps of God, but sometimes we fail, get confused along the way, and make choices that would have been better with hindsight. So when Jesus does all the right things, what does that tell us about when we do the wrong things? What else is there to this? 

To start with, the big difference between Genesis and the Gospel is not giving into temptation, but the part that involves our connection to God. See, when God creates humanity and begins a relationship with creation, God shows the truth about relationships: they are messy. And in that messiness, that human-ness, is where we connect with God. 

And in response to that messiness, our messiness, God does not abandon humanity, but instead Jesus comes to be human in our world. 

“For if the many died through the one man’s trespass, much more surely have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus, who abounded for the many.” In the face of temptation, God chooses to be with us and leans in closer. Jesus, God with us, experiences what it means to be human.

So, when we see Jesus face temptation, his answers are in connection to God. 

Living on the bread that God gives. Trusting in God, not testing. Worshiping only God, not worshiping one’s self. The Gospel today does not tell us that we need to perfectly follow the path of not sinning, but to help us consider what forms of temptation are present today and that we are held amidst them.  

When we are convinced that our guilt and brokenness dominates ourselves more than for who we are: beloved, held, and in relationship with the Triune God. That is the relationship the Psalmist speaks about today when saying they “acknowledged their sin to God and did not conceal their guilt.” 

But it is hard to consider that we can be loved when we mess up. 

Especially when we identify with the ones in Genesis that mess up. The ones amidst the pain of the world. The ones that would rather separate ourselves from the shame of the story. The ones that can easily separate from the suffering in our world today. 

Questions and curiosity are wonderful aspects of our faith lives, but the difference is the way the situations go forward. In Genesis, humanity hides and decides that holding that guilt is more important than being open and vulnerable. This is not a story that we should look back on with disdain, but as a coming of age story. A coming of age story that we all experience in different ways. One that brings into view the first times we witness the pain in the world and have to be brave to see that God is loving us amidst it too. But this kind of life asks us to be honest. To reconnect with ourselves. To awareness to change. All scary aspects of life because it asks us to go outside of ourselves. To see our polluted earth. To see the shootings. To see our neighbors suffering injustice. It hurts. 

And yet, simultaneously believe that we know God is there too. 

That Jesus, God with us, experienced life’s temptations, sufferings, and struggles to understand us. As the Body of Christ, this is our coming of age story–one that can not be ignored, but opened up. Changed. And rising once again to new life.  

The coming of age story that tells us we will not be perfect and still continue to be loved by a God who knows this. We will not be perfect in the face of temptation. You will mess up. But you can not ignore the world that you are called to be open to either. You will be challenged through all of it. You will have a community through all of it. And you are loved, dearly loved, through all of it too.  

In the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.