The Rev’d Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
The First Sunday in Lent
February 26, 2023
When I was a young child of about 6, or 8, or 12—I really can’t remember when or where—my parish invited me to read the first lesson at Christmas lessons and carols. The first lesson is usually read by a chorister, and the readers go up in rank from there. In the college chapel they’d have gone from chorister to student to professor to dean to dean of the chapel—and so on. But as a child it was a great honor to read the first lesson.
And wouldn’t you know it, the first lesson is not unlike the first lesson we hear today—the moment when Adam and Eve, through their disobedience, become aware of sin and of evil in the world—the moment in which they realize that things are not as they were created to be. The moment that they realize that they are naked, and sew together some fig leaves, and learn about SHAME.
There was a joke in the South-- and maybe everywhere, I wouldn’t know—a joke popularized by the essayist and humorist Lewis Grizzard—about how Southerners pronounce the word N-A-K-E-D. Lewis said that the right pronunciation of that word, as it appears in our first lesson today, is naked. It just means that the person in question has no clothes on.
But, Lewis also said, there’s another way to pronounce that word—a pronunciation unique to the South—in which, by changing the initial vowel, moving the syllabic accent, and doubling the consonance, the word becomes nekkid, a word with much more power and insinuation. Naked just means that a person isn’t wearing clothes. Nekkid means that you’re up to something, Lewis says.
And so with that joke ringing in my ears, I read, over and over again, this passage from Genesis. I practiced for hours, for days, to be able to say the word naked out loud, without laughing. Over and over and over.
I’ve never been so nervous before. And thankfully I’ve never been so nervous speaking in public since. But I’ve also not had to read that passage again since that fateful time as a very young person! So kudos to our reader today, and well done. I’m glad it wasn’t I who was reading.
My laughs as a child—and maybe some of our laughs today—at that word belie a certain kind of discomfort, a kind of anxiety, with our bodies, with the way we are made, with the very story of Adam and Eve and the snake and original sin.
For “the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.” Gen 3:7 Doesn’t the whole story seem to say that there is something wrong with Adam and Eve? I mean, they ate the fruit, they got some special knowledge about how tasty the fruit was, and how the world works, and suddenly they’re standing there nekkid, and they’d better do something about it. They’re bad. Let’s cue the fig leaves and some fast fashion.
Isn’t that how we’ve internalized this story of Adam and Eve?
Let’s look, for a contrast, and the story of Jesus and his temptation. Let’s look at what the very incarnation of God does when tempted by the serpent, by the devil, by evil.
Remember that Jesus has just been baptized. We talked about it on the second Sunday in January—the baptism of our Lord. We talked about how Jesus came to John and asked him to baptize him, and that in the very act itself, the heavens opened and something like a dove appeared and a voice proclaimed, This is my son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased. (Mt 3:17)
Now in our time a person might engage a process of formation, of catechesis, and maybe go on a retreat and pray and prepare for baptism. But Jesus does it the other way around. Immediately after his baptism Jesus goes into the wilderness for forty days (biblical parlance for “a very long time”), and while he’s there he fasts and prays.
In that period the devil—or evil—or the serpent—or our lesser nature, whatever you want to call it—evil comes to him and offers him things that, frankly, any normal human creature would want.
Jesus was hungry. The devil offered him food. “Make these stones become bread.” Evil invited Jesus, very God, to attend to his own needs before the needs of others—to focus on his own desires even in the midst of his fast. Oh come on, Jesus. It’s just a little snack. Treat yourself. You deserve it! Evil invites him to turn his own attention to his own needs, his own desires, to himself.
Isn’t this the advice we get every time we fly on a plane? Put on your own oxygen mask first before helping the children or others with you? Take care of yourself first.
In those situations perhaps it’s right to attend to one’s own needs so that one may then help others, but the devil invites Jesus to take care of himself only. And Jesus turns back towards God. Life isn’t in bread but in the words of God alone.
The devil isn’t done, though. Evil offers Jesus a chance to focus on himself as opposed to God—to take his trust away from God and put it in his own hands.
Come up to this high place, and just jump! It’ll be fun! Besides, you’ll prove you’re God’s son. God won’t let you fall.
What an offer. This could have been a useful miracle, right? A proof of Jesus’s power—that he could jump from a high place and not be hurt.
But Jesus’s reply stays true. He refuses to test God, to need even for a second to have God prove God’s own self. He refuses to put the emphasis on himself over God’s own being: Do not put God to the test.
And finally Satan, the serpent, evil, the small voice that promises us the world, does that exact thing to Jesus. Just bow to me, and I’ll give you the entire world, evil says.
Now this could be useful. Isn’t Jesus the king of all of creation? Wouldn’t this have been expedient? Why not—for just a fraction of a second of a bow—why not get things sewed up then and there? But Jesus puts his focus back on God. Worship only God. Serve only God.
And evil is thwarted and leaves. And angels attend to him.
I have to be honest, what the devil is offering here isn’t violence or murder or degradation. He’s offering things that, frankly, we say we want.
Can’t you imagine a meeting in a boardroom high over Manhattan with a McKenzie partner promising wealth, recognition, and market share to David Solomon at Goldman? Or market research consultants in a meeting at Yale New Haven—or even at the Corporation—or even on our social media feeds. “Be your best self.” “Make the most for yourself.” “Show the world what you can do.” “Get all that you deserve.”
Friends, the devil isn’t the exotic purple snake in the Kempe window in the chapel. The devil is the evil in our own hearts that leads us to choose ourselves over others—ourselves over God. The thing that says we are more important than anything else. And also the thing that tells us that we are not okay, that we are unloved, that we should be ashamed—that we are nekkid before the world.
What Jesus in his encounter with deep evil shows us is that evil is mundane, normal, ordinary. It’s the easy things to assent to. And that Jesus, not because he’s a superhero but because he knows the truth of who God is, that Jesus can say no to evil.
And so can we. We’ve met God in Jesus Christ. We know that God says that we are beloved when we come up out of those waters of baptism. We know that God chooses us. And also we can still, because we have free will, just like Adam and Eve, we too can eat that fruit. We can jump from that pinnacle. We can grab all the bread for ourselves and try to own the whole world.
But we, like Jesus, can also say no. We can keep our eyes and our hearts and our lives fixed on the cross, on the loving arms of God, and we can say no to the lies the devil and the world tell us—and say yes to being the wholly authentic beautiful creatures that God has made us to be.
That’s what Lent is about. It’s about being aware of those choices. Being aware when the devil, the purple snake, the world offers us lies that are so seductive and that make such sense—but instead turning back to God and putting our whole trust in God. It’s about practicing loving God more than anything else, because only in loving God can we love one another—and ourselves.
And here’s what Lent is not: It’s not about being ashamed about our bodies, or our genders, or our orientations, or our colors or shapes or sizes, because God made all those things and loves them. These are my children, in whom I am well pleased, says God as we come up out of those waters of baptism.
No one is saying Adam and Eve are bad for being who they are. They’re unclothed, they’re not nekkid, for goodness’ sake!
They just made the rather unfortunate choice to follow their own wills, not God’s. To do what they thought was advantageous for them rather than trusting God’s providence and love. They doubled down on greed rather than on hope.
They’re not intrinsically bad. In fact, they, like we, are made for good! They just made a bad choice. And now everything else flows from it.
That, friends, is original sin. Not some weird tortured intrinsic evil in our bodies, in our composition, in our selves, but our dogged foolishness to make very, very bad choices. To choose selfishness, greed, pride, and lust over choosing God’s love for us. That’s all it is.
And here’s the worse news. We will probably keep doing it again and again. Jesus is the only person who has consistently said no to the devil, after all!
But like Adam and Eve we will keep practicing. We will keep trying. And we will keep fasting and praying and confessing and receiving again and again God’s grace.
I don’t know about you, but I’m still telling that six or eight or twelve year old that Adam and Eve are just naked, not nekkid. And maybe Eve and Adam are still figuring it out themselves.
And so, to put a point on it all, this Lent I pray for us that we will do three things:
1) Rebuke any sense of shame within our intrinsic selves. God has made us and loves us and invited us, like Jesus, to rise from the baptismal waters with the words In them I am well pleased.
2) Take seriously the reality of evil—that the things that seem like conventional wisdom can in fact be the work of evil, the work of separating us from God and one another and from ourselves, so that we must take seriously our own choices just as Jesus does. We can say no to evil. That’s part of how God has made us. But, to be honest and truthful,
3) We must also be honest that we will probably fail, and probably over and over again, to keep God first, to be in right relationship with God and one another and ourselves. We may let shame creep in and control us. We may let greed get the upper hand. We may even let our anxieties keep us from being the things God has made us to be. After all, only Jesus has ever been sinless. That’s all the Church means by original sin.
But even in our sinful state, God is not changed. God is still claiming us. These are my children in whom I am well pleased.
Friends, I am praying for us a holy Lent. And I am praying that we, cursed with the knowledge that Adam and Eve have, really take seriously our discernment—our awareness of evil in the world. I pray that we know how we participate in it—and how we can separate ourselves through our choices from it—and how it’s visited on us, regardless of our choices.
But mostly I pray that we know and claim and hold fast to the truth of our existence—that we belong to God, that we are made by God, and that God delights in us. That God has mercy upon us. That God forgives us.
That as soon as we see the things that separate us from God and one another, God laughs and forgives.
God loves a good joke, just like Lewis did. But God is faithful, and God will not let go of what God has made and what God loves.
With thanks for God who is all merciful, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit…
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