Saturday 8 March 2014

Lent 1 9th March 2014

On Monday in London on my day off I bumped quite remarkably into Eddie. I say remarkably since there are 9 million folk in London and its surrounds so it was extraordinary to meet someone by chance who’d been on my bus on our True Life in God pilgrimage to the Holy Land in September.

There’s something about Eddie - a social worker based in Highbury, mid 40s, who has a wondrous assurance of the love of God. A few years back he’d been persuaded to go on a pilgrimage to Medugorje, came back and on his birthday treated himself to a full English in a cafĂ©. He felt prompted by re-awakened faith to say grace for his meal. As he did so he was, in his own words, utterly zapped by the love of God. It still shows and it might show in me because his company is infectious.

During Lent we’re linking sermons to Tuesday’s and Thursday’s Talking Points for which this week’s two questions, at the end of your booklet, are ‘how do you see God?’ and ‘what light does Jesus Christ shed on God?’ The idea is we take away the service booklet, ponder the scripture and this teaching from the pulpit, maybe come and hear John Hall, Dean of Westminster Abbey on the Talking Points programme and one another’s thinking in the Tuesday or Thursday group discussion on these two questions. We might even like to start talking over coffee today – nothing stopping us!

How do you see God? Like Eddie I see him as all powerful-love surrounding me and you and all he’s made at all times, whether folk know or don’t know what Paul describes today as the free gift in the grace of the one man Jesus Christ. In Lent we centre, and the readings centre, on what God’s done for us in Jesus which is this week’s second question what light does Jesus Christ shed on God?  

With these two questions in mind I want to look with you at the first two readings this morning from Genesis 3 and Romans 5 which go to the very heart of Christianity.

Their truth was summed up in two verses of Newman’s hymn Praise to the holiest  we sang at the entrance procession for this morning’s eucharist:

O loving wisdom of our God! When all was sin and shame,
A second Adam to the fight and to the rescue came.

O wisest love! That flesh and blood, which did in Adam fail,
Should strive afresh against the foe, should strive and should prevail.

Those verses sum up the analogy between Adam and Christ presented in the second scripture reading building on the first which I invite you to look at again with me on p2 and p3 of our booklet.

First the Genesis 2 and 3 reading. It expresses in magnificent poetry the great truths of creation and fall.  If we find light on God from Jesus Christ it is, as the Romans passage indicates, in the saving significance of his death and resurrection we celebrate at Lent and Easter. Genesis tells us we are God’s creatures yet fallen creatures. Something has gone wrong with us. We’re not what God intended us to be.

Take a minute to read through the passage again on your own, Genesis 2.15-17 and 3.1-7.

I wonder what you felt? Especially the ladies? A few thoughts.
  • The Hebrew word for man is “adam” so even if the author intends it as the name of an individual first man we’re in order to see it as the personification of Everyman. Adam’s story is our story, as is Eve’s.
  • We should not press her role in the story as it’s been pressed in the past, when woman was blamed for the Fall more than man being the one deceived by the serpent. In the Romans passage Paul says nothing about Eve and actually blames all on Adam.
  • Man and woman are jointly responsible for their fallen condition and can’t blame God or the devil for it – we’ve made and continue to make wrong choices that head us away from what God intends us to be.
  • Whilst our wrong choices weigh against us, and our fallen condition makes it harder to choose rightly, scripture makes clear in this story that we’re still responsible for our actions.

Let’s go on to the second reading Romans 5 from the bottom of p2  which takes up the account of Adam’s fall we’ve just looked at and balances it with the restoration God has given us in Jesus Christ so that, with Eddie, we can experience his redeeming love.

It’s not an easy passage I’m afraid. Here are some thoughts:
  • It starts with a clear truth: Just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, [and ]so death spread to all because all have sinned and then there’s a massive digression which we could have removed for reading in Church, lines about the period between Adam and Moses when, since there was no Law people, weren’t technically accountable.
  • Reginald Fuller’s commentary on the Sunday Lectionary takes up this loss of thread in Paul’s argument in Romans 5 and suggests this helpful summary of the passage: As Adam began a history of fallen mankind, characterized by sin and death, so Christ began a new history of mankind characterized by acquittal, life and righteousness. Yet it is not an analogy in which both sides are of equal weight… Christ’s achievement is far greater than Adam’s… death was negative, life is positive. Death’s dominion enslaved man, Christ’s dominion sets him free.

All of which brings me back to John Henry Newman’s summary on the fall and redemption from Dream of Gerontius we sang earlier:

O loving wisdom of our God! When all was sin and shame,
A second Adam to the fight and to the rescue came.

O wisest love! That flesh and blood, which did in Adam fail,
Should strive afresh against the foe, should strive and should prevail.

What light does Jesus Christ shed on God?  Read Romans or sing Praise to the holiest to capture the light he sheds, or use this four liner:

God made us for friendship (hold hand upwards).
Sin came in as a barrier (place book on hand as symbol of the barrier),
Christ died to lift the barrier (lift book off hand)
Making us friends with God (raise hand up again)

To know that friendship, to sense the love that lies over us and around us and beyond us in heaven, we need Jesus! We need to see how in the words of John 3.16 God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son so that all who believe in him should not perish but have everlasting life.

The world around us finds it easier to believe in Genesis 3 than Romans 5. Reasonable folk admit the effects of our fallen-ness but they miss out on that which goes beyond reason, which is the very good news that brings us to Church on a Sunday. Paul describes this news today in Romans as the free gift in the grace of the one man Jesus Christ and elsewhere  in 1 Corinthians 15.22 he uses these words: as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive

We’re given the Lent challenge, forty days of training, to help us come more alive to Jesus Christ and see the power and direction of God coming more to bear upon the world through the exercise of our faith in prayer, study and good works.

As we go to his altar this morning we go mindful of Eddie seeking a fresh anointing in God’s love which seeks to touch the centre of our being in the consecrated bread and wine of the eucharist.

I leave you with this week’s questions How do you see God? What light does Jesus Christ shed on God? 


Take time to ponder these in the coming minute and the coming week for they touch on what is transformative for you, the church, the village and the cosmos!

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