40 days with a liar

Occasionally the pastor will preach without a manuscript, or read from other sources, and so the sermon will not be readily available in a blog-worthy format. Nevertheless, the notes one might take from this morning's sermon may go something like the following:

Genesis 9:8–17
Psalm 25:1–10
1 Peter 3:18–22
Mark 1:9–15

Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness, with the wild animals, where the angels waited on him, and where he strove with Satan. Just after hearing from God those long-awaited words 'you are my Son, the Beloved,' Jesus is thrown into the wilderness by the Spirit, where that very word of God is tested by the accuser, which, in Hebrew, is pronounced 'ha-satan,' and that's where we get the word 'Satan.' No, the Accuser is not a red devil with horns and a tail and a pitchfork. But the images of Satan have changed throughout time, so it might be helpful to remind ourselves what Jesus was up against in that wilderness.

At this time, the pastor read the first two stories out of what is called "The Jesus Bible Storybook." It's a wonderful resource, fully illustrated re-telling of the major Scripture passages. Those first two stories, then, are the retelling of the first, well-ordered Creation narrative, where God finishes up each day by saying to creation, "you're good!" and it is. Over and over again, each and every day, God wraps up the work by saying 'you're good!' and it is. Lovely because God loves it all. And when God creates people, it's like they're going to live happily ever after, because now creation is perfect for that Never Ending Love Story... until the second story, that is. The second story where Satan creeps in, disguised as a serpent, and poisons it all. The problem isn't that Adam and Eve disobeyed. The problem is that they didn't trust God's word of love, that the serpent knew that eating the fruit would mean Adam and Eve would try to make themselves good enough on their own and think they didn't need God to live, and not only did their eating the fruit break the entire world, it broke God's heart. Which is a great image, that God's heart is the entire world, and that the entire world is God's heart. In any case, the story continues with Adam and Eve leaving the garden, and God promising to come and Rescue them, to come and live with them, so that they would Never Ever be apart.

Which brings us back to Jesus in the wilderness of that first chapter of Mark. Jesus is God as Rescuer, God Among Us, Beside Us, With Us. And Jesus goes into that wilderness to face down Satan and stand up to each of those accusations, and, as the letter to Peter reminds us today, to give us a clean conscience about where we stand with God. Because nothing, NOTHING, will get in God's way when it comes to getting back to us. No lies about who we are and what we're worth. No accusations about what we've done wrong and how hard it will be for us to 'earn' God's love back again. God in Jesus is reconciling the world to God's Self, ultimately dissolving those accusations and erasing those lies that have kept us running from God for so long. Jesus faces Satan's accusations about himself, and about us, and calls them what they are: lies. Jesus alone is the ultimate Truth, the living, breathing, Love of a God who will never EVER let us go.