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First Sunday of Lent, Year A, February 10, 2008

First reading, Genesis 2:7-9, 3:1-7

Our Liturgical Setting: It's Lent, originally the season when those about to be baptized repented their lives of sin and sought to know the Lord Jesus more intimately. Then Lent became a season for the baptized to do the same. We search ourselves honestly, and pray earnestly, to know where we must become open to God's grace of ongoing conversion. The church begins the season with a reflection on the origins of sin among us. Good preparation for the lector would be to read all of chapters 2 and 3 of Genesis, not just the selected verses in the Lectionary.

A Theological Conjecture: There are many ways to interpret this oft-told story. Dan Nelson's is a good example. In my own judgment, the pivot is what I call the Original Temptation: "You will be like gods, knowing what is good and what is evil." (As Nelson says, this last is a figure of speech with the meaning "knowing everything from A to Z.") We're still tempted to put ourselves in God's place. Most of our sins, be they public, private, corporate, or individual, can be reduced to this: we arrogate to ourselves godlike status, and treat others like subordinates with few or no rights. We resent every limit on our freedom, every way we need the help or support of another creature. We don't want to be responsible for the consequences of our choices. Our trying to become gods upsets our relationship with the only real God, and brings a great imbalance into our relations with everyone else, to whom, of course, we don't grant divine standing.

Proclaiming It: I recommend telling this as a story, whether you accept or not the idea of original temptation. If you favor the interpretation in the previous paragraph, then emphasize the serpent's words in your proclamation. Make it sound cunningly attractive to become like gods. In any case, tell the story as if you're an observer at the creation, one who has never heard the story. Let the assembly share your amazement when you say, "and so man became a living being," because you've never seen anything like this. The garden, as you describe it, should delight your hearers, and they should almost taste the foods that they envision. When you describe the serpent, make him seem attractive, but sound a little suspicious. The woman, perhaps, should seem naive.

Now the climax sounds deceptively simple, not nearly as dramatic as we readers of John Grisham novels like our literary resolutions. But there is a ton of theological and psychological implication in "Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized that they were naked." Everything has suddenly changed for humankind. Let the lector make it sound momentous and tragic.

Second Reading, Romans 5:12-19

The Theological Background: Romans is a complex letter in which Saint Paul works out a number of questions. His major theme is that it's Christ who grants us a right relationship with God. That justification, to use Paul's term, is not our doing, but comes to us as undeserved grace, to which we become open by our faith in Christ. Throughout, Paul contrasts faith in Christ with every other possible stance of humanity before God.

Proclaiming It: Contrasts mark today's sentences, too. Let's look at this challenging passage sentence by sentence, and identify the contrasting elements.

As if to make sure we get this subtlety, Paul repeats himself in the last few sentences. This makes this one of the rare occasions when I would consider using the short form of the reading. Confer with the preacher before deciding.

Several other commentaries on these passages. All are thoughtful, all quite readable, from the scholarly to the popular.
Links may be incomplete more than a few weeks before the "due date."
Lutheran pastor and college teacher Dan Nelson's notes for a study group (Heading might say February 17, 2001, but the page is about our readings on February 13, 2005.) Father Roger Karban's 2002 reflections on these readings

and his 1999 column on the same readings
The Text This Week; links to homilies, art works, movies and other resources on the week's scripture themes Saint Louis University's excellent Sunday liturgy-preparation site

The Lectionary selections in the frame at the left, if any, are there for your convenience. The publishers of the page in that frame have no connection, except for membership in the one Body of Christ, with the publisher of this page. Likewise the publishers of the pages on the links above.

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Last modified: Wed Jan 12 21:49:45 CST 2005