Tag: Sin

The Fullness of Time

Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?

“Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

John 3:1-17 (NRSV)

My long-time fascination with the idea of time travel recently lead me to a television series on Hulu called Timeless. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen this show before. Three people from different walks of life are recruited to be part of a team who travel in a time machine to stop the bad guys from altering events in history in order to allow them to rise to power and basically run the world. In the course of doing this, a couple of the characters decide they want to try to use the time machine to alter the past in order to save family members who had historically died in one way or another. They thought if they could go back in time and change the outcome of certain events that lead to the deaths of their loved ones, then when they returned to the present time, they would find their lost family members alive and well since the events that lead to their deaths were stopped from ever happening.

Much to their frustration, these time travelers discovered that no matter what they did to try to change past events, they were not successful in preventing the death of their family members. One of them finally succeeds, but not because of trying to do so. You will have to watch the series yourself to see what happens.

The point I find relevant in all of this is that we often wish we could go back and change things. I’ve heard people say, “If only I had a time machine, I could go back and do that differently.” We all have things we would like to change about ourselves, our past and present behavior, things we have said and done, our relationships with others, etc. Unfortunately, time machines do not exist, so we can’t go back in time to change things. Even if we could, there is no guarantee that it would change the present situation by doing so.

The only sure thing we can turn to is the power of God to transform us, to renew us through rebirth in Jesus Christ. In the fullness of time God came into the world and became one of us in order to set us free from sin and death (Galatians 4). We can allow God’s grace to take away the guilt of our past and present sin, born of the Spirit, as we repent and commit to living for God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. We can’t save the world, nor will our technology ever be powerful enough to invent a machine that can, but God can and has, and God invites us to be part of the new thing God is doing in the world.

Lent in the Desert

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.”
But he answered, “It is written,
‘One does not live by bread alone,
but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ ”
Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple,
saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written,
‘He will command his angels concerning you,’
and ‘On their hands they will bear you up,
so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’ ”
Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’ ”
Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.”
Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written,
‘Worship the Lord your God,
and serve only him.’ ”
Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.

Matthew 4:1-11 (NRSV)

The Church traditionally observes the season of Lent each year for a total of forty days beginning with Ash Wednesday and ending on Easter Sunday. The Sundays in Lent “don’t count” as fast days during Lent because they are considered “little Easters” when we celebrate Christ’s ultimate victory over sin and death through the corporate worship of the gathered people of God – in other words, Sundays don’t count ’cause that’s when we go to church!

However, the rest of the days in Lent, we are thrust out into the big bad world with all of its trouble and nasty surprises just waiting to jump out and get us. It is during our time in the extreme, unforgiving conditions of the desert of life that we are tempted. Temptation may take different forms, but there is more to temptation than just the common physical things we think of when we hear the word temptation. It can be much more subtle than we might expect. For example, we all have that little voice in our head that likes to criticize us all the time. We get the idea to do something that we think would be a good idea, something that has the potential to help others, make a difference, and the little voice speaks up, “That won’t work. Why even bother trying?” Some people hear that voice a lot, and hear it enough that they are tempted to listen to that voice instead of the voice of God calling them to do a new thing.

New things don’t seem to happen out here in this desert – at least, not very often. Things tend to go along as they always have. It’s one of, if not the, universal habit of human nature: the habit of resisting change. We’ve lived our whole lives in this desert, this wilderness, and we know how things work. It’s tempting to allow that sense of superior knowledge seep into our relationship with God and convince us that, somehow, we know better because our past experience tells us so.

Maybe that’s why Jesus fasted from food from so long in the wilderness before the tempter approached him. Reminding himself, preparing himself to meet the tempter with the first words Jesus spoke to him about not living by bread alone.

But bread (understood as referring to food in general) is how we survive. We know that from experience. We have to have it or we will die. We need to make getting it and making sure we have it a priority. We better store up extra just in case. Does this sound familiar? Yet, God calls us to give it away. It is tempting to listen to the first voice and ignore the second, especially in the midst of all the threat of ruin we encounter while living in the desert.

So now we are observing Lent in the desert, since we have established that we can’t remain up on the mountain. We have chosen whatever it is we are going to give up or, alternatively, what we are going to take up as our Lenten discipline this year. We have attended Ash Wednesday and received the imposition of ashes, the stark reminder that dust we are, and unto dust we shall return. We are all prepared and ready to keep a Holy Lent, even in the midst of the wilderness and all of its nasty threats.

When the feeling of hunger (real or metaphoric) sets in, let us remember whose voice to listen to during these forty days, and may we live by every single word that voice speaks.

Amen.