THE FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT
Year A
March 9, 2014
Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7
Psalm 32
Romans 5:12-19
Matthew 4:1-11
Pastor David Tryggestad
Concordia Evangelical
Lutheran Church
Duluth, Minnesota
I fell into a hole of my own making. I was carrying
groceries from the car. I had not walked more than a few feet when I went down
like a ton of bricks. There I was, sprawled out on the ice and snow, my sack
torn and the contents strewn all around.
The hole I stepped in was of my own making. Our driveway is
gravel with a layer of thick ice—like most of the residential streets in Duluth—and after the last
big storm two weeks ago Thursday, my little Ford Focus was stuck in the ice,
and we had been out of town. Even though we were shoveled out, I could not get
the car to move; the wheels only spun. I shoveled more, I got out the cat
litter, I used an iron crow bar to dig down into the ice to finally free my
front wheels. I was left with two fairly large craters where the front tires
had been.
On Friday, I stepped in one of them, twisted my ankle, and
went down.
I’ve told this story before. It was fourteen years ago.
The phone rang in my study here at church. It was my friend,
Tom. He was weeping.
Tom and I had served together on the staff of a large
congregation in Eau Claire.
He was in youth ministry and I in worship and music. Tom was fresh out of
college, and the first time I met him he had his guitar strapped over his
shoulder. We hung out together a lot. He’d come over to our house—he loved
playing with our kids. Tom fell in love with a daughter of the congregation and
their wedding was one of the big events of the year. I played the organ for
their wedding. After five or six years, Tom went to Luther Seminary in St. Paul to become a
pastor. Three years later, I followed. Tom’s wife, Lynne, was our youngest
son’s preschool teacher and helped teach Soren to talk. A year later, I played
the organ for Tom’s ordination service. Tom and Lynne moved to Fargo for his first call, where their
children were born, Isaac and Rachel. We visited them on our way out to Holden Village,
the Lutheran camp in Chelan, Washington,
after I graduated from the seminary three years later.
Tom was weeping over the phone. “I’ll never see my children
graduate from high school. I’ll never see them get married. I’ll never see them
have children of their own.” Tom had testicular cancer that had metastasized.
Tom was weeping, and through his weeping, he was also
singing. He was singing a melody without the lyrics, because he could not
remember them. Tom was insistent: “What are the words? I can’t remember the
words!” For Tom, there was something about the lyrics to the tune that he knew
was important, but he couldn’t remember.
Tom was singing the melody of our Kyrie hymn that we sang a
few minutes ago, a Kyrie that has been used in the Slavic churches, in
particular. We had sung the hymn through the season of Lent one year when we
were together in Eau Claire.
As Tom sang, I filled in the words:
Your heart, O God, is grieved, we
know
by ev’ry evil, ev’ry woe . . .
These are the words Tom was especially groping for:
. . . upon your cross-forsaken Son,
our death is laid, and peace is won.
Yesterday’s Duluth
News Tribune reported that Amy Senser will be out of jail on work release
beginning next month. She was the driver of the vehicle that struck and killed
a 38-year-old man on an exit ramp off I-94 in the Cities in 2011. The man’s car
had run out of gas. It was dark. The ramp was narrow.
Senser expressed deep regret over what happened. She apologized
to the parents of the man who died. She had the man’s name tattooed on her body
so as never to forget.
There is no end to the “what-ifs” in a situation like this.
“What if Senser had been more attentive? What if the victim had not allowed his
vehicle to run out of gas? What if the civil engineer who designed the ramp had
allowed more room? What if the highway department had provided better lighting
for night driving?”
How do we find meaning in reckless death? How do we find
meaning in a death like my friend Tom’s.
When Tom called me, he wasn’t asking “Why?” Perhaps he had
gone beyond that. Perhaps he had never asked that question. But he was groping
for the words to that hymn:
. . . upon your cross-forsaken Son,
our death is laid, and peace is won.
Tom was groping for meaning in his death.
Our choices have consequences. Some of the consequences are
minor, even insignificant. But other consequences can be tragic, catastrophic.
During the season of Lent, we often talk about “giving
something up.” One man I talked with on Thursday is giving up Diet Coke during
Lent. He’s quite addicted to it, and he said that giving it up is for him a
daily reminder of the sacrifice Jesus made for us.
I like to think of Lent as a time to embrace more deeply the
practices of the faith. On Ash Wednesday, we were invited to embrace the
disciplines of Lent: self-examination and repentance, prayer and fasting,
sacrificial giving and works of love.
In light of our texts for today, what if we more
intentionally considered the consequences of the decisions we make. How will
our decisions affect those around us? How will our decisions affect the
environment? How will our decisions reflect the love of Christ?
Sometimes we fall into holes of our own making. Sometimes we
fall into holes of someone else’s making. Sometimes we fall into a hole that is
just there.
The man and woman in the Garden in our First Lesson want
life without consequences. The serpent tempts them with life without
consequences. The serpent says, “Did God say, ‘You will die’? You will not die!” Life without consequences is a
lie, perpetrated by the Father of Lies. I wonder if original sin might be wanting
life without consequences.
The Apostle Paul in our Second Lesson is contrasting Adam
and Jesus. Because of Adam’s sin, all
sin. Adam is a representative of all humanity. In contrast to Adam, Jesus is
righteous. Because of Jesus’ righteousness, all humanity is made righteous. In
our Second Lesson for Ash Wednesday, Paul makes the astonishing assertion that
God made Jesus to be sin—taking our
sin upon himself—so that we might be made righteous: “For our sake, [God] made
him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness
of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).
Sometimes we fall into holes of our own making. We find
ourselves sprawled out in the driveway, on the ice and snow, with our groceries
strew around us. Sometimes we fall into holes of someone else’s making. A man
standing next to his car on an exit ramp off the freeway is struck and killed.
Sometimes we fall into holes that are just there.
A 45-year-old pastor, husband, and father dies of cancer.
Whatever the consequences of whatever holes we step into,
our God is grieved:
Your heart, O God, is grieved, we
know
by ev’ry evil, ev’ry woe . . .
Whatever the consequences of whatever holes we step into,
Jesus our Lord bears our burdens:
. . . upon your cross-forsaken Son,
our death is laid, and peace is won.
Thanks be to God!
