PROPERS: 1 LENT, YEAR A
TEXT: GENESIS 2:15-17; 3:1-7; MATTHEW 4:1-11
PREACHED AT HOLY TRINITY, PENSACOLA, ON SUNDAY, MARCH 1, 2020.
ONE SENTENCE: The chasm between God and humanity is so great and God seeks to bridge that chasm, and Jesus did so in his wilderness sojourn.
We have entered the great season of Lent. Forty days and nights of penitence and preparation for the Feast of the Resurrection.
Many of us heard the words this past Wednesday that “You are dust and to dust you shall return.” The message implicit in those words and in this season is that we are not god or gods and that there is, in the words of a gospel passage, a great chasm which is between us and the eternal realm in which God abides.
In the first lesson today, we have the prototypical human beings, a man and woman unnamed at this point, seeking to bridge that chasm. They are seeking to become like God, and the end result is something we know too well. That lesson is repeated day-by-day as we seek to substitute our will for the will of the Divine One.
Admittedly, the Divine Will is not always clear. We face temptations from many different directions – and we feel pulled in those various directions. It is an aspect of the human condition – being “a little lower than the Gods” and placing our desires and self-reliance at the center of our lives.
Bridging the chasm – to fully know existence in both realms, the human and the divine – was a reason Jesus was driven into the Wilderness. This came right on the heels of his baptism by John in the River Jordan.
The baptism of Jesus is one of the mysteries of the gospels. John the Baptist was offering a baptism for the repentance and forgiveness of sins. He offered it even to the faithful people of the religious community. It was different from the baptism of conversion.
This, of course, raises the issue of Why Jesus needed to be baptized, since we profess belief and the church has proclaimed down through the millennia that he alone is without sin.
Jesus’ response to John’s challenging of his baptismal request is telling: “Let it be so for now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.”
A way of looking at the baptism and the movement into the wilderness is to acknowledge that both events allowed Jesus to know the full experience of his human followers. Jesus was, after all, in the teaching of the church, both fully human and fully divine.
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So, after his baptism in the cool waters of the River Jordan, Jesus is driven by the spirit into the arid, desolate wilderness. There he is tempted by Satan – multiple times. And he resists. But in that experience, he comes to know the vast chasm which exists between this realm and the fullness of the kingdom.
It is a chasm we acknowledge in this season of Lent. We are reminded of our sinfulness. We lay claim to our shortcomings. We name our failures – shared with the first man and woman, in the Book of Genesis. We turn to head in a new direction. But, we know we cannot do it on our own.
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In the days before the turn of the 20th century, the seeds of a theological upheaval were being planted.
Leading theologians had been espousing theories that human nature was on an upward trajectory. The world was being made a better place, and true progress was being made. Humanity was creating a new, better world. All along the world’s frontiers, human progress was evident. The theological perspective was known as Liberal Theology.
But something had happened that changed all that. World War I had come. The bubble of idealism was burst. There was devastation and staggering loss of life. Human progress was halted. The voices of optimism went silent. The Western World – mostly Europe – descended into an economic, social and political dark hole.
And, of course, in spite of being victorious, the United States soon followed with the Great Depression. Even though Franklin Roosevelt had plans for recovery, a strident strain of populism began to sweep across the country. It was a dangerous time – both here and overseas.
An ominous caldron began to boil in one European nation – and it cast a broad and portentous shadow. Its leader had a sinister charisma. The movement metastasized like a cancer. The chasm between the realm of humanity and the full Kingdom of God was growing deeper and more perilous.
In the midst of this, a theologian emerged. He was Swiss. His name was Karl Barth. He challenged the assumption that humanity could span the chasm or that the world had anything to teach God.
He emphasized the Word of God – Holy Scriptures – as the sole means by which the chasm could be bridged. He believed that God, reaching across the dark gulf, was the only manner in which human beings could find the good of God’s kingdom.
Karl Barth, from Basel, Switzerland, became the voice of what was known as Neoorthodoxy. His commentary on the Book of Romans was read widely, and during his life, he published a 12-volume work of his theology, known as Church Dogmatics. He was also the principle author of the Barmen Declaration, which was the confession of faith of pastors who resisted the dark movement – Nazis in Germany.
Karl Barth, born in 1886, had seen the folly of theology through the experience of World War I. He knew human pride and destructive evil, too. He also saw the great chasm, in broad relief, in light of Germany’s descent into the abyss of the Third Reich.
There was an emphasis that politics should not be preached and that the Word of God was the appropriate focus for the pulpit. That had a cutting edge to it, because, as the Letter to the Hebrews notes, “For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” The Word of God cast the shadows.
Barth and others believed that the Word of God – and it alone – could banish the forces of evil and allow God to enter the world of human beings. The Word, faithfully preached, would emphasize the differences in broad relief. We are utterly dependent on God’s action to bridge that deep abyss which separate our world from his.
That is, from my perspective, why we baptize infants in the Episcopal Church. The primary and most important movement is God’s, not an individual accepting that relationship. God, first and foremost, reaches across to us to establish a covenant. No relationship would be possible without that action. We ratify and acknowledge it.
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The example of Karl Barth does not end with his Commentary on the Book of Romans, his 12-volume Church Dogmatics, his authoring of the Barmen Declaration, or his preaching or teaching. In fact, it was from a particularly different direction.
Karl Barth believed in the Word of God. He was a strong proponent of how that word should impact our lives. But Karl Barth was unfaithful.
He violated his marriage vows to his wife. He had a long-time, illicit relationship with his assistant. It went on for years, even while he continued in marriage. Even with his wife’s knowledge of the betrayal.
That sad, bitter example is instructive to us. Even at our best, we are afflicted with the human condition – which theologically comes to us down through the millennia from the First Chapter of Genesis.
In this season of Lent, we acknowledge that truth. We are broken. We hurt others. We betray sacred vows. We place ourselves in the rightful place of God. We are prideful.
But here we are – seeking to bridge the chasm which separates us from our Creator. The truth for Karl Barth is the same truth for us: God loves us anyway. That is the repeated story found throughout the word of God – that God continues to bridge the chasm to come to us; not in our perfection, but in our brokenness.
By his life, he knows the road we travel.
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