Eternal God, throughout these forty days of Lent, enable us to prepare
ourselves, our hearts, and our minds to receive the new life that you have
for us in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
I feel so sorry for poor Adam. He takes a bad rap. I mean, he gets blamed for
all human sin just because he ate one apple, for heaven’s sake! He is portrayed
as a real loser. Not only that but Eve gets her share of blame too. After all
she is the one who told Adam to eat the apple. However, I’ll bet she would tell
us it was the only time in their whole marriage he did something she told him to
do, on the first suggestion. Yet there it is, Paul makes it blunt: one man’s sin
led to sin for all. Through Adam, death spread to the whole human race and all
have sinned. Not only is Adam a loser, because of him we all are losers. It is a
dark and winding trail down into the abyss of human sin and it is all Adam’s
fault.
Although it hardly seems fair to put so much blame on Adam, we know the
pattern. It is prevalent all around us. We say, “One bad apple spoils the whole
barrel.” We aren’t just talking about apples, but many aspects of life.
Tradition has it that Christopher Columbus introduced small pox to the new
world, with almost catastrophic results to the native populations here. He also
gets blamed for taking smoking and syphilis back to Europe. As we heard on the
news this week, one child in a school classroom with measles, and the whole
class and school are exposed. The same goes for mumps, chicken pox, and other
contagious diseases. We have witnessed that one school shooting, or one teen
suicide often is followed by copy-cats, and we see once again the power of
imitation. Cancer starts in one little place in the body, but it can metastasize
to more and more places so very quickly. We know all too well that not so long
ago it was one case of AIDS in one country, and now it’s a pandemic. Or consider
one dandelion or one clump of crabgrass in a lawn. Soon the pesky stuff is
everywhere. Or one prejudicial statement enters a conversation, or is overheard
by a child, and soon suspicion, distrust, hatred, and violence are on the move.
One malicious statement about another person can spread and turn a whole
community against that person. One falsehood posted on the Internet can spread
so a teenager can see no reason to keep on living.
We know the song from the musical, South Pacific: “You’ve Got To Be Carefully
Taught.” It is a song about the ways we spread suspicion, prejudice, and racism.
One of the ways we are taught is by the power of example. It is most effective
with our children, and so abusive, hurtful and violent feelings grow.
Paul states, “Just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came
through sin, so death spread to all because all have sinned.” We know the
pattern of which Paul speaks all to well. We can see it in nature, in our
bodies, and in our relationships. Sin spreads not because of genes or
chromosomes, not because of genetic mapping or biological determination. Sin
spreads because of human inter-relatedness. It spreads because we are
inter-connected, because our lives are inter-woven with each other.
Paul draws on our imagination and we can picture a bleak snapshot of reality,
all is death, sin, and anguish. Yet, just to paint this picture is not Paul’s
point. He wants us to know that through Jesus Christ, God has worked a great
reversal. Humanity is no longer a teaming mass of losers all because of the
sin of Adam. We are no longer subject to sin, but have been blessed by the
outpouring of unmerited love in Jesus. Paul states, “But the free gift is not
like the trespass. For if the many died through the one man’s trespass, much
more surely have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the one man,
Jesus Christ, abounded for the many…. so one man’s act of righteousness leads
to justification and life for all.”
Paul is saying that even more than evil, sin, and death, God’s goodness,
righteousness, and kingdom abound in our lives because of Jesus and are spread
through our inter-relatedness. We have seen ivy and other ground covers plugged
into the soil of hillsides grow to cover entire areas. We have seen one farmer
in a valley plant wheat, or corn, and soon the valley is full. We know from
early church history the amazing spread of our faith throughout the known
western world because of a single Christian person or congregation plugged in a
community, and soon there are many others, and they are reaching out and
plugging in other areas. We know the profound good a single teacher, missionary,
Peace Corps volunteer, or doctor can have on so many lives, and those lives
affect good in so many more. Paul is saying sin is strong, but the grace of
Jesus Christ is much stronger. God is never penurious. God is never stingy. One
translation states, “All have received God’s abundant grace.” When the word
“abundant” is used, it always precedes the word “grace.” The love of God is
always so much more than anything else.
Paul’s message to the Roman congregation is a most appropriate word for the
beginning of Lent. In this season of examination and confession we can easily
get down on ourselves and all of life. However, getting depressed is not the
purpose of the season. Lent is a time for honest appraisal. It is a time to
recognize the reality of our spiritual lives. However grim such a reality may
be, the grace of God abounds for you and me. Paul’s word here is a call to never
give up hope, to never despair of the grace of God. There is much that is rotten
in life, but the righteousness of God always offers hope.
Paul states that what Christ does is much more than what Adam did. Adam’s sin
ends life. Christ’s act extends life, quantitatively and qualitatively. The
great missionary, E. Stanley Jones, was not a big fan of the term “eternal life”
because he thought too many people would just perceive an endless number of days
in the next life and not make any substantive efforts in this life. Jones
preferred “abundant life.” For him what Christ offers is a multivalent richness
of life now and in the life to come. Because of Christ, our relationship with
God and our neighbors is opened now, in this life, to new dimensions of wonder
as well as in the life to come. The great reversal from Adam to Christ offers us
grace instead of guilt, righteousness in place of sin, and life in place of
death. Relationships with God and each other of mutual well being bring infinite
hope, grace, and possibility to our lives.
I still think Adam gets a bad rap. However, from this one man, and his children,
and the rest of the human family, we can see the spread of sin and death. But
thanks be to God through Jesus Christ we can see the spread of righteousness. As
Mark Price told us on Wednesday night, the season of Lent is a time for us to
come home to God. It does not matter where we are, or what we have done, or how
far away from God our sin has taken us, God’s love reaches out to us and says,
“Come home.” At home in the love of God we then can offer love to others. We
come home to God, then we go out to share God’s love with others.
Today we share in the Sacrament of Holy Communion. In the bread and cup,
symbols of Jesus’ love for us, we experience the unlimited love of God in Jesus
Christ, and we never give up hope.
Several months ago I was standing out in the memorial garden having just placed
the ashes of one of our members in the columbarium. He had been a very
successful American military officer in World War II. Another of our members, a
close friend to the deceased, came up to me, his eyes red and his chin
quivering. He said, “I can’t help but think that sixty-five years ago I was on
the other side in the war and our friend here was trying to bomb the life out of
us. Now here today we stand in deep, deep grief at the death of our very best
friend.” It was both of these men’s faith in Christ that drew them together. The
great reversal is that our separation from God and each other is overcome in
Jesus Christ our Lord. Life is given to us, even in death, and because of Jesus
we never give up hope.
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