Sermon on March 1, 2020: Lent 1

The personification of Death in Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (1957)

I am a lectionary preacher, which is to say that in my preaching I stay pretty close to the text of the Scriptures that are appointed for any given day. I assume that the world of the Bible is the real world, and that we are a part of its story, and that the goal of a sermon is to bring us to the point where we can see this truth for ourselves. And in order to do that, we need to stay close to Scripture. But today I’m going to break from my ordinary pattern, and start not from the Bible but from the liturgy—specifically, from the first proper preface for Lent. The proper preface is the short phrase that changes according to the season, that comes right before the Sanctus and right after the words, “It is right, and a good, and joyful thing…” There are two proper prefaces for use during Lent, and the one I am preaching about today goes like this:

Through Jesus Christ our Lord; who was tempted in every way as we are, yet did not sin. By his grace we are able to triumph over every evil, and to live no longer for ourselves alone, but for him who died for us and rose again.

Let’s start with the first statement in this preface: that Jesus was tempted in every way as we are, yet did not sin. I remember a time when I was in the youth group at my church, someone was explaining to us about the temptations that Jesus faced in the wilderness, and why he was able to overcome them. And the person explaining it said that, well of course Jesus was able to overcome them because Jesus was God, and God can’t sin. And I remember sitting there with my peers, and we all had the same thought in our mind, which was, well okay, if Jesus couldn’t sin, then was he really tempted? Was he really tempted in every way as we are, as the proper preface says?

Here’s another way to ask that question: was Jesus really a human being—was he fully human, as we are?

I don’t know about you, but I find it pretty hard to be a Christian. Being a Christian asks me to love my neighbor, when I would rather hate them. Being a Christian requires me to give and be generous with my money, when I would rather keep it all for myself. Being a Christian means disciplining my tongue when I would prefer to lash out, and being content rather than being envious, and being chaste when I would much rather to be lustful. I find it extremely hard to live up to the standards to which the Christian life has called me, and has called us all. Which is to say that I give in to temptation, all the time. Today’s opening Collect affirms that we are “assaulted by many temptations.” To my ears, that rings absolutely true. Temptation is an assault on the soul.

Is it possible that Jesus felt that way, too? Was he really tempted in every way, as we are? Does he know what it feels like to be one of us?

The answer has to be yes. Because if it is no, it means that Jesus wasn’t fully human and cannot, in fact, understand the struggle of being a human being. And as the ancient theologians were fond of saying, that which Christ did not assume Christ did not redeem. If he didn’t take on our humanity, then he has not saved it. If the Christian faith is to have any relevance to our lives whatsoever, it has to be true that Jesus was tempted in every way as we are. It has to be, or else we’re just wasting our time.

The good news of the temptations of Christ is that we are not alone in our temptations, because Jesus has suffered them already and knows exactly how it feels. We worship a God who is present with us in temptation, and in the struggle and suffering that comes along with it. Who knows temptation intimately. Who overcame it by the grace of God alone, by his oneness with the Father, in the unity of the Spirit. That’s why our faith is not in vain. Because Jesus Christ is one of us—and because he is without sin, he is able to save us from it.

But the Lenten proper preface doesn’t end there. It goes on to say that by [Christ’s] grace we are able to triumph over every evil, and to live no longer for ourselves, but for him who died for us and rose again. What this means is that we are not doomed to a life of failure, by giving in to all the temptations we face, but that by the grace of God we shall overcome them. We are able to triumph, and for someone who finds it hard to be a Christian, that truly is good news. We are not alone in temptation, nor are we alone in victory over it, for it is Christ who is with us from the beginning to the end.

Christ is with us. As individuals, yes, but even more, Christ is with us as a whole body, a whole people. The Gospel is not concerned so much about individuals and their individual morality as it is about the whole body of the faithful, living faithfully together. By the grace of God with us, we can triumph over every evil. And that can only happen if we represent Christ to one another, if we are in some way able to be Christ to one another. If we are to have any chance of victory over evil and lives that are about more than just ourselves and our own interests, it’s only because we have the presence of Christ, the tempted one, with us.

It is only by his grace that we can live as we are called to live, and be the people that God has created us to be.

It’s only a brief moment in the liturgy; a phrase, sandwiched between the sursum corda and sanctus, which probably goes unnoticed most of the time. But if we take the time to hear it, and sit with what it says to us, we won’t come away empty-handed. Because, as this Lenten proper preface tells us, Jesus knows what it’s like.

He faced the same temptations that we do.

He is one of us.

He has felt what we feel.

Which is why we can trust him, and trust in the power of his grace to touch our lives. By his grace, we can be about something more than just ourselves, and become free to love one another just as Christ has loved us; to the glory of his Name. Amen.