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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
The cosmic struggle is the struggle between good and evil. Not the cosmic struggle as pictured in Hollywood movies such as Disney’s most-recent long-awaited Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, or Marvel’s earlier highest-grossing-ever Avengers: Endgame, or D-C’s even-earlier disappointing Justice League. But, the struggle between good and evil as pictured in the beginning in the garden of Genesis 3, in the later wilderness of Matthew 4, and in the current places of our everyday lives. There is no John Williams score for our ears, and there are no theatrical visual effects for our eyes, and we are no mere spectators munching on popcorn in reclining theatre seats, but we are participants in the cosmic struggle’s epic, life or death battles. This morning we consider especially today’s Gospel Reading, and we do so under the theme “The Cosmic Struggle includes us”.
Standing between the characterization of everything that God had made as “very good” (Genesis 1:31) and the first explicit mention of sin (Genesis 4:7), today’s Old Testament Reading, Genesis 3, narrates humankind’s fall into sin, its change from being holy to sinful, even though Genesis 3 does not explicitly call it that. The “serpent” tempted the woman by deceit (2 Corinthians 11:3; 1 Timothy 2:14), and she disobeyed God and also led her husband who was with her to disobey God. They were rightly afraid and hid, but God sought them out, nevertheless. God announced the consequences of their actions, including their eventually dying and returning as dust to the ground from which they were taken, as He had previously warned, but also including the woman’s Offspring’s injury from and eventual victory over the “serpent”.
At a minimum our three‑year series of appointed Readings, like others long before it, sees a connection between the “serpent’s” temptation of the woman and the devil’s (or Satan’s) temptation of Jesus, even though that connection is not explicit. Jesus elsewhere calls the devil a murderer from the beginning, a liar and the father of lies (John 8:44), which arguably puts the devil in the garden. A creature, the devil is not an equal to God, though he may have fancied himself equal to God and tried to be equal to God. We might like to know more about Satan’s fall from heaven (Luke 10:18), as well as about his tempting both the woman and Jesus, but we try to stick with what God reveals to us. In the case of His revelation through St. Matthew’s Gospel account, He tells us that, just after being baptized (Matthew 3:13-17), Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness in order to be tempted. With Jesus’s having fasted forty days and forty nights, like Moses on the mountain while receiving God’s law (Exodus 34:28; Deuteronomy 9:9), the devil’s first temptation that is narrated regarded the hungry Jesus’s trusting God to provide for Him. The second temptation that is narrated regarded Jesus’s testing God, and the third temptation that is narrated regarded Jesus’s worshipping and serving God. Jesus’s succumbing to any one of those three temptations, or any other temptation in the wilderness or throughout His ministry, would have meant that not the woman’s Offspring but the “serpent” would have been victorious.
To be sure, we are not victorious over the tempter, but too frequently we succumb to temptations that we face from him, from the world, and from our own sinful nature, whether those temptations are to not trust God to provide for us, or to test God, or to not worship and serve God, or to countless other sins. Certainly by the time of the flood, if not already long before, human wickedness was great in the earth, and every intention of thoughts of human hearts were only evil continually (Genesis 6:5). And, that is how we are conceived and born and would remain, deserving to die in time and to be tormented for eternity, if God did not call and so enable us to turn away from our sin, to trust Him to forgive our sin, and to want to do better than to keep sinning. When we so repent, then God forgives us our sin, for Jesus’s sake.
Jesus is true God in human flesh, Who, out of the Father’s great love for us, was led by the Spirit and died for us. As true God, Jesus was sinless and unable to sin, but, as true man, He was able to be truly tempted. But, unlike all others who are tempted, Jesus did not succumb to temptation, and so He lived the perfect life that we fail to live. Jesus’s heel was bruised by the “serpent” when He died on the cross, but in that same moment Jesus bruised the “serpent’s” head. Anticipated by God’s first sacrifice that provided garments of skins to clothe Adam and Eve, Jesus died in our place, the death that we deserved. Jesus did not throw Himself down from the pinnacle of the temple to see if angels would bear Him up, but He was lifted up on the cross (John 3:14; 8:28; 12:32, 34). And, once there, He resisted temptations to come down and so “prove” that He was the Son of God (Matthew 27:39-43). As we heard in today’s Epistle Reading (Romans 5:12-19), as one trespass led to condemnation for all people, so one act of righteousness leads to justification (or, “forgiveness”) for all. As we sang in today’s Psalm (Psalm 32:1-7; antiphon: v.7a), when we confess our transgressions to the Lord, He forgives the iniquity of our sin.
The Lord forgives the iniquity of our sin through His Word, especially through His Word’s sacramental forms—something for our ears to hear and our eyes to see. God the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit were present and involved in Jesus’s baptism and so they are present and involved in our Holy Baptisms of water and the Word, among other things, rescuing us from death and the devil. In the same Triune Name, sins are forgiven by our pastors in individual Holy Absolution (John 20:22-23). And, those same messengers of God, in the Sacrament of the Altar, distribute bread that is the Body of Christ given for us and wine that is the Blood of Christ shed for us, for the forgiveness of our sins. Like the food that God twice gave to Elijah that strengthened him to journey forty days and forty nights apparently without additional food (1 Kings 19:8), this heavenly food strengthens and preserves us in body and soul for our journey unto life everlasting.
The right use of God’s Word in all of its forms is critical for us in times of our temptation, as it was for Jesus. With Holy Scripture Jesus answered each of the devil’s temptations, even one temptation itself mis-using Holy Scripture. We will never be as versed in Scripture as Jesus is, of course, but we will not be able to use it at all, if we do not hold it sacred and gladly hear and learn it. In Genesis’s first explicit mention of sin, the Lord personally warned Cain against the sin Cain faced in regards to his brother Abel, telling Cain that he could rule over it (Genesis 4:7), though Cain did not. The Lord advises us through His Word. So, on the basis of our baptisms, with Jesus we tell Satan to be gone. We recognize our own weakness and pray for and rely on God’s strength. God does not let us be tempted beyond our ability to endure it with His help (1 Corinthians 10:13). And so, we can count trials of various kinds as all joy, for the testing of our faith produces steadfastness (James 1:2). And when we fail that testing and succumb to temptation, as we will, God forgives us as we again turn away from our sin in sorrow and trust Him to forgive our sin for Jesus’s sake. Even if we lose an epic battle, in Christ Jesus, we are ultimately victorious in the cosmic struggle between good and evil. For, more important than the outcome in our everyday lives is the outcome in the wilderness of Matthew 4, and most important is the outcome on the cross of Calvary.
“The Cosmic Struggle includes us”. St. Paul writes to the Ephesians that our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, authorities, cosmic powers over this present darkness, and spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places (Ephesians 5:12). Hollywood movies inevitably disappoint franchise fans or cinematic critics, but, for repentant believers, there is no such disappointment with God’s finale. We are strong in the Lord and in the power of His might, and so we stand against the schemes of the devil (Ephesians 6:10-11), until we are removed from this world of his power (1 John 5:19) and are confirmed in holiness by the saints’ vision of God for all eternity.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +