1st Sunday of Lent – 2017

1st Sunday of Lent – 2017

L1A.  Genesis 2:7-9; 3:1-7.  The devil wins this round over humanity.  In Adam & Eve, humanity was given a choice by God to be obedient or disobedient to him: the tree of life to remain in a childlike faith & innocence, totally dependent on an all-loving & caring God the Father OR the tree of the knowledge of good and evil so as to live independent of God as a little god dependent on oneself, able to choose good or evil, opening the door to self-destruction and death.

“Now the serpent was the most cunning of all the animals that the Lord God had made.” The problem here is that the serpent advocates disobedience to the will of God to Adam & Eve, yet everything  that God made was good.  How did the serpent, though cunning, become evil?”  “It is only about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden that God said, ‘You shall not eat it or even touch it, lest you die.’” “But the serpent said to the woman:  ‘You certainly will not die.’” We think of the serpent as being the devil, as the angel Lucifer who tried to overthrow God and become God himself.  This Scripture does not say that.  Nevertheless, the serpent gets Adam & Eve to acquiesce to the temptation and so they were expelled from the garden in Eden, which God had planted for them.

Matthew 4:1-11.  The devil loses this round against Jesus . “At that time Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil.”  This may be why Jesus’ Our Father  Prayer says, “And lead us not into temptation.”  I think that God requires  that we do not remain static in our spiritual life; but demands that, by responding to the challenges of temptation and other difficulties, we are forced to depend more and more on him and to grow to be more fully the holy people he wants us to be.  Jesus is tempted by the devil, after he fasted 40 days and 40 nights, basically to be separated from God and even to reject God as the God over him.  At the end of this Gospel, it says, “Angels came and ministered to him.”  I have wondered if that may meant they gave Jesus the meal he needed to be relieved of his hunger.

Romans 5:12-19.  St. Paul writes, “In conclusion, just as through one transgression condemnation came upon all, so, through one righteous act, acquittal and life came to all.”  Jesus undid what Adam did.  The obedience of Jesus negates the disobedience of Adam.  Now we have the grace of God to journey passed our sins and consequent death to eternal life as one of the holy ones in heaven.  All we need now is to take advantage of the “gracious gift of the one man Jesus Christ” to gain heaven.