Homily – First Sunday of Lent (February 10, 2008)

Readings: Genesis 2:7-9, 3:1-7; Romans 5:12-19; Matthew 4:1-11

Richard Gula, in his theological work, Reason Informed by Faith, examines Hebrew Scriptural understandings of sin, of sin as 'Pesa' an act of rebellion, or sin as Hattah, a missing the mark. He examines as well Christian understandings of sin as Hamartia, a deliberate act that is both a missing a mark as well as an act of rebellion which destroys all levels of relationality. Sin destroys our own worth as children of God, destroys our solidarity with our sisters and brothers, and destroys fidelity with the God who has given us all good things, gives us life, and sustains us in our well-being.

Gula concludes, two things, first that we, need to retrieve this sense of sin, the reality of sin in our world and our hearts and stop denying its existence, and second, that sin in all its forms is based on an arrogance of power, that "rather than living in trust as creatures empowered with gifts to set one another free, we live in suspicion of another's gifts and abuse our power by controlling, dominating, and manipulating these gifts to serve our own self interests" (Gula, 99).

Genesis, Romans, and Matthew all attest to the reality of sin in the world. And even though we are well familiar with the story of Adam and Eve, we should not forget the story's message of how the effects of sin can destroy relationships and keep us from paradise – keep us from the good things of life.

In the story of the creation we are told of the great love and grace of God. We are told of a God who created all things good, things pleasant to the sight. We are told of God's many gifts of providence, the gift of a garden planted in the east, beautiful to behold, and filled with things good for food. We are told of a God who has given us his very own breathe so that we might have life. This gifts of a world created good, of a provident paradise, of life bespeak a deep intimate connection between God and that first couple, between God and us.

Yet through half truths and distortions of the serpent, Adam and Eve, after being given all good things, refuse to put their entire trust in God. They turning their backs on the commands of the Lord, and on this well-ordered harmonious world of gift, and in an arrogance of power, trust their own knowledge and judgment rather than God's. And so, in an act of rebellion, they eat of the tree of knowledge.

This act of defiance destroys the order of that paradise, breaks the harmony God establishes, and instead, brings feelings shame, and breaks apart relationships – for they both hide from God, hide from their own nakedness, and offer mistrust to one another. So, all they really learn, after eating that fruit, "is not only that they are still human, but now they are naked, unclothed, incomplete" (Paraphrased from and exegetical work by Rev. Eugene Hensell, OSB). Sin is real and the effects of their sin takes them away from the garden and eternal life from God.

Paul in Romans validates the reality of sin in the world and sees sin as not only a personal force of willfulness – of a "sin that entered the world through one human being and death through sin". Yet, sin, now given life in the world, has also become a force and power in its own right – a power hostile to God, hostile to all good things, and hostile to all relationships. Jesus, in Matthew, confronts this real power of evil, confronts the devil, confronts temptation and faces his own call to sin, to turn his back on God, to believe in the tempter and to rely solely on his own power in three acts of arrogance and defiance.

The reality of sin is not just found in sacred words written on a page but is truly present in our own hearts and in our world. I cannot deny in my humanness the moments of sin and the effects of sin in my life, but as someone who has been ministering to the good news for 14 years, I have in my journey with others encountered the real presence of sin at work in the world and its damaging effects.

In 1999, as a student chaplain, working in the emergency room of Loyola University Medical Center sin entered one morning in the death of two twin girls who died at the hand of their father. The father, in my conversing with him, and in the police's questioning of him, confessed to shaking, squeezing, and snuffing out the lives of these two souls because they would not keep quiet, and as a victim of abuse himself at the hands of his own father he only did, he claimed, what was done to him. This arrogance of power, his sin, destroyed the fabric of this family, destroyed life, destroyed relationships, destroyed love, and was the anti-thesis of a well-ordered, loving, harmonious family where parent's are called to love their children and to offer them care and protection.

So, this first lenten lesson for us is humbling. God presents to us a life and a world of good things, of family and friends, sisters and brothers, of things which are freely given. Yet, we are called to remember we are not and can never become God, nor deem equality with God. "Still this "original distortion" that Adam and Eve faced continues to have life in the half truths of our own time. Our quest for power, fortune and influence are just alternative ways of trying to eat from tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In the end, in our own acts of sin, "all we achieve is the same harsh lesson" that Adam and Eve learned – we are as well truly naked, unclothed and incomplete! (Henschell).

If the first lesson for us is humbling, our second lesson is profound. Despite the reality of sin, the world that God created as good, the world that is filled with all good gifts and filled with things with our own well-bing, endures. God still breathes in us, still gives us creation's first breathe of life, still sustains us in intimate union. Jesus, unlike Adam, shows us that sin can be overcome, temptations resisted. That God, not the devil, has the last word. That, through Jesus Christ the Lord, as God's love revealed, the free gift of grace, and not sin, abounds.

So for every sin present when parent's abuse their children, the witness to the world of God's grace present in families that love and care for one another with the love of God, we find indeed that grace abounds. So for every sin of corporate scandal, fiscal impropriety, and slavishly promoting profit over people, we find corporations who care for the environment, care for the people who work for them, and care for what they produce, and again we find that grace abounds. And for every sinful structure that oppresses, that keeps people hungry and homeless, that validates violence and war, there are people and organizations, that work to transform the world so the merciful justice of God is made manifest, and when that happens, grace abounds.

This Lent we cannot deny the reality of sin in our world and in our heart and so this becomes part of our reflection. Yet, we are also called to remember that the true reality, born out of our faith and trust in the Lord, is that despite it all, God continually reaches out to us in love and with grace upon grace. Jesus, in Matthew, is led into that desert experience of temptation by the Holy Spirit to a place of radical and steadfast trust in God's love. We also are called to trust with steadfast faith this truth of God's everlasting love for creation as revealed in Jesus Christ.

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Kent Beausoleil, S.J.
(513) 745-3005 (Office)