A Cycle – First Sunday in Lent 26

Rom. 5:12-19

As we begin this season of Lent, we begin with the story of the of Adam and Eve’s failure to trust in God.  We call it the fall or the sin of Adam, but it was much worse than that.  Their failure to abstain from eating the fruit from that tree revealed how easily we are prone to act on an impulse which is against God’s will.   

Our greatest failure is not appropriating the grace won for us by Christ’s death. No one is better at revealing this truth to us than Paul the apostle.  He adamantly denied Christ was the Messiah.  All his learning, all his knowledge of the prophecies and all his experiences would not allow him to acknowledge Jesus was the promised Messiah. His conversion was dramatic and we should this Lent pray for such an encounter with Christ.  That moment brought clarity to Paul and that experience solidified in his mind and heart what God intended for all of us to experience.

 Paul, in his letter to the Romans, is laying out a case for each of us to embrace the grace of the cross and to resist our tendency to earn God’s favor.  Paul states how sin entered the world by the action of one man and the impact of that sin was the loss of intimacy with God and immortality. Death is a certainty for all of us because of the sin of one man. It is amazing when you think about it.  At the creation there was no law to define what sin was, but their failure tells us a lot about our human tendencies to ignore what God tells us and how we hide our failures when we disobey God. Adam and Eve hid themselves and covered their nakedness and we have learned how to do the same.      

The church reminds us there is a constant need for repentance and Lent gives us an opportunity to regroup, refocus and examine our belief in what God did to restore our righteousness.   However, it seems our Lenten sacrifices have become attempts to ensure God is pleased with us.  The truth is, we can do nothing to make God pleased with us or displeased with us. God loves us and desires to have us experience that love. That is why we should rethink what we are attempting to accomplish during this season of Lent. 

Our actions indicate we have not learned anything about ourselves from the failures of Adam and Eve.  We know their temptation was to believe God had withheld something from them.  Thrust in God was destroyed by a simple question about why God would deny them the fruit of that one tree. How often do we wonder if God cares about what we are going through?  Why do we ignore what Christ has done and fail to seek a deeper union with God? But we repeat this sin and repentance routine repeatedly.  It is tiring and wears us down, so we like Adam and Eve, try to outwardly hide our failings and hide behind acts of piety.  We have become today’s Pharisees seeking God’s favor by strict adherence to the law.   We have grown up in a world plagued by sin, and we do desire to be pleasing to God, and we approach Lent as an opportunity to gain favor with God. 

What if we approached Lent with a different focus?  Paul in his letter to the Romans encourages us to “…remember sin entered the world through one man. But how much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of justification come to reign in life through the one Jesus Christ.”  Our focus should be to give thanks to God for the gift of Christ. To shift our thinking from performing works to a reorientation of our mindset to what Christ has done. 

From attempts to change ourselves to inviting the love of God to penetrate our hearts and to allow love to flow from us to God.  Give God what He desires most from us and it is to believe the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ has brough us back into God’s embrace.  We are the prodigal sons and daughters who have feared the retribution of God because of our sins against Him.  How long will we like the prodigal remain separated from God because we are aware of our failings and our willful actions we know are displeasing to God.

The real question for us is how much we belie Christs’ death freed us from the penalty of our sinfulness.  You should read Paul’s letter to the Romans this Lent. It is packed with reasons to trust in God’s goodness and His plan for our redemption.  It is not in our hands, but it is in our power to believe in God.  Paul said it clearly in today’s epistle when he said: “. just as through one transgression condemnation came upon all, so, through one righteous act, acquittal and life came to all.” 

It is simple, perhaps too simple and that makes it hard to embrace.  Do we believe Jesus when He said, “if you believe you will have eternal life?” 

 Come back to me with all your heart don’t let fear keep us apart is more than song it is an invitation God gives each of us.  Can we lay aside fear this Lent, as an offering? Can we rend our hearts as God invites us to expose our inner selves to His healing touch?  Can we seek God with all our hearts, instead of trying to sacrifice television time or internet time?

Can we redirect our intentions from sacrificial acts to becoming the sacrifice. Acknowledging what God desires most is a contrite heart which recognizes we were worth the sacrifice of Jesus. That at the end of Lent, when we attend the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, we have acknowledged God’s gift, and we receive it with joy.  We allow the death of Jesus to accomplish what it intended to accomplish – our place as sons and daughters enjoying the presence of God.  Knowing who we are and becoming living witnesses to an unbelieving world.