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The Word and the Voice

The Word and the Voice

First Sunday in Lent

Genesis 3

February 13, 2005

Rev. Dave R. Garwick

This last Wednesday evening of course was Ash Wednesday which was kind of the starting gun for the trek to Easter. So, for the next six weeks or so, we begin each Wednesday evening with soup supper at 6PM followed by Lenten Evening Vespers at 7:00. Then after six weeks of Lent, we will enter Holy Week beginning with Palm Sunday, leading four days later to the Last Supper of Maundy Thursday, to the next day’s crucifixion of Good Friday, and then three days later to the Resurrection on Easter morning. Throughout this Lenten journey, our travel guide is going to be a book by Max Lucado called “And the Angels Were Silent.” In the narthex you can purchase this as one of his three-books-in-one for the low, low price of just ten – count them, ten! – dollars. But wait ! There’s more!

Each Wednesday evening we will be looking at the next day in Jesus’ last week leading to the Cross. This Wednesday we’ll be thinking about the first of those last day, the Friday before Palm Sunday. He is in Jericho, about 13 miles northeast of downtown Jerusalem, about where Shoreview is from downtown Minneapolis. That is where his last hike into Jerusalem begins. But in his book, Max Lucado says something that haunts my imagination:

“[Actually] the journey to Jerusalem did NOT begin Jericho. It did not begin in Galilee. It did not begin Nazareth. It did not even begin in Bethlehem. The journey to the cross began long before. As the echo of the crunching of the fruit was still sounding in the garden, Jesus was leaving for Calvary.”

Think about that: “As the echo of the crunching of the fruit was still sounding in the garden, Jesus was leaving for Calvary.” THAT is why the very first Scripture lesson on this first Sunday in Lent is about the crunching of that fruit in that garden. THAT is where the Lenten journey to the cross really began for the human race. And that is where the Lenten journey to the cross really has to begin for each of us – at that place where we choose, like our very first parents chose, to question God’s Word, to ignore His Word, to reinterpret His Word, to confuse His Word.

You know precisely where those places are. They are every place where your conscience bothers you; every place where you KNOW what God desires and you STILL find ways to do what you want to do. These are the places of the so-called “controversial issues” in the church. These are only controversial issues in the first place because of a voice that still whispers in our soul, “Yeah, but did God REALLY say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?" ….You will not surely die, for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

THAT is the place where the Lenten journey really began for Jesus – that is where and that is when and that is why He began that journey to the cross - to sacrifice himself …. and all because of how our first parents chose to respond to God’s Word in the first place.

Our Father has therefore now sent His Word in the flesh., again to save us from death, again with the offer of Paradise to pay the price that could have kept all humanity out of heaven. Again He allows us – in fact, requires us – to make essentially the same choice: how to respond to His Word – His spoken and now also the Word made flesh. But more than ever before, there is that same voice whispering in our souls, with these so-called controversial issues and personal decisions of the heart: “Did God REALLY say …..?” “God didn’t mean it THAT way.” Or, “Who really knows what God is thinking?” Or, “I KNOW what He said, but ….”

Here is my question: if the Bible is the cradle that holds the Christ Child, as Luther liked to put it, can we tamper with one and still claim the other? Can we question God’s spoken Word and still worship the same Word made flesh which is revealed through the spoken Word? What Jesus died to purchase is offered to everyone but is received only by those who receive the Word – the written Word and the Word made flesh. For when the Word made flesh, Jesus, was himself tempted in the wilderness His answer to Satan time and time again was simply, “It is written ….” “It is written ….” “It is written ….”

If the seductive voice that tempted Adam and Eve in the Garden also tried its hand on Jesus himself in the wilderness of temptation, it is just as true that Lutheran worshipers have always had to struggle with these voices since the very first Lutherans. In one of his earliest sermons (1525 “Where the Spirit of the Lord Is There Is Liberty”) Martin Luther himself preached these words:

“We should by no means ever let doctrine be manhandled according to the pleasure and fancy of the individual who adapts it to human reason and understanding, Nor should we let men toy with Scripture, juggle the Word of God and make it submit to being explained, twisted, stretched, and revised to suit people or to achieve peace and union; for then there could be no more secure or stable foundation in which consciences might rely.”

And then he wrote the words to the Hymn of the Day we now sing (“Lord, Keep Us Steadfast in Thy Word”). I dedicate it this morning in memory of Adam and Eve and in honor of what it cost Jesus, in hopes that we who sing it may also live it … that we may stop questioning God’s Word and start trusting it.

Amen. May it be so.