February 22, 2026 "Why?"

First Sunday in Lent

Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7

Psalm 32

Romans 5:12-19

Matthew 4:1-11

Dear fellow ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ,

grace and peace to you

from the one who comes to bring justification and life for all, amen.

Why?

It’s the question that leads to other questions,

 especially from curious four year olds

such as the one who resides with me.

Why? is an important question

but after the fourth or fifth or sixth why? In a row

it is tempting to respond: “That’s just the way it is”

and try to move on,

 I try not to but sometimes “that’s just the way it is”

Now even if you don’t reside with a small human

 attempting to figure out the world,

the temptation is still there, when faced with a why?

Or an opportunity for a why?

To shrug our shoulders and dismiss the question with a

“that’s just the way it is” and move on with life

but sometimes we need to stop and listen

to our inner four year old and ask ‘why?’

especially if it is something we’ve never really wondered about

or something we’ve taken for granted for a long time.

Our readings for today,

at the beginning of Lent

offer us just such an opportunity to pause and ask why?

Why Lent?

Why baptism?

 Even why Christ?

Why do we need to repent and return to God,

why do we need to be baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection?

 Why did God in Christ need to come and live among us, die and rise again?

 Why? (gestures at everything) 

Our readings take us back to the beginning,

 we heard about the humans God created

and provided for in the garden,

they had everything they needed,

God’s one command

 is that they not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

And the humans trust God,

 until the serpent comes in

 and plants a seed of doubt about God’s instructions

 and therefore God’s trustworthiness

and the humans eat,

and while they do not die

 they are left feeling exposed and vulnerable

 and move to cover themselves.

 Now we could, as many over the millennia have done

just blame the humans, especially the woman

for giving in to the temptation and eating the fruit

and ruining it for the rest of us,

that certainly seems to be Paul’s perspective in Romans.

 But if we look closer as we ask why

 we realize that the story is about our relationship with God,

 our creator who provides everything we need

and asks us to trust,

and how when something comes along

 and questions God’s provision

we frequently try to take matters into our own hands,

we break the relationship, we sin,

the sin leaves us feeling exposed and vulnerable,

and when we try to hide our vulnerability

 we end up making things even worse.

We heard how in response to their nakedness

 the humans sewed fig leaves together to cover themselves.

 One interesting thing I learned about fig leaves this week

 is that the sap of fig leaves

contains something in it that when it comes in direct contact with skin

 creates an itchy burning sensation

and can even lead to 2nd degree burns of the skin (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6340245/)

so not the greatest material for clothes.

Actually wearing clothes when dealing with fig leaves is recommended.

 when we sin and try to cover it up

we end up just making things worse for ourselves,

 and yet God responds with grace.

Yes there are consequences for this break in relationship,

the humans are exiled from the garden,

 but as they leave

God makes clothes for them out of animal skin,

 clothes that will actually protect them instead of harm them. 

And God continues this pattern

 of offering grace to those who fail to trust God.

God tries rules for living together

and leaders that speak from God

and other things to try to help rebuild the trust,

until God realizes

 that God is going to have to rebuild the relationship from the ground up,

 become human, live with humans,

the full human experience,

but as a human who exhibits full trust in God.

 and so Jesus is born, and grows up

and then when it is time he comes to John and is baptized,

and as he comes up out of the water

“the heavens were opened to him and he saw God’s Spirit descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from the heavens said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” (Matthew 3:16-17)

and right away the Spirit sends Jesus into the wilderness

to be tested by the devil,

he fasts forty days and forty nights

and is famished

and even this is consistent with how God has acted in the past. 

The number forty in the Bible

cues the music for a training montage,

during the stretch of forty

whether it is days, months, or years,

the protagonist of the story

learns some hard won lessons

 preparing them to prevail on the other side of the forty.

Noah is 40 days in a rainstorm in the ark,

 Moses is 40 days on Mount Sinai receiving the law,

the Israelites wander for 40 years in the wilderness,

 in what Dan Erlander in his book “Manna and Mercy” calls “wilderness school”

 it’s not that the Israelites were so directionally challenged

 that they kept getting lost

on their way from Egypt to the promised land,

 it is that there were certain lessons they needed to learn

before they got there:

 the lesson of God’s provision

 learned through the daily gathering of manna,

 the lesson that failing to trust God stinks

 remember the Israelites were to collect only the manna

 they would need for the day,

 any extra rotted and smelled foul,

and they needed to learn the lesson of sabbath,

 that rest was good and important

for their relationships with one another and with God,

 rest which God provided for

 with a double portion of manna on the sixth day

so that all could rest on the seventh.

They needed to learn these lessons

before entering the promised land

to help maintain the relationship,

as Moses in his farewell explanation of the law to the Israelites in Deuteronomy says “Take care that you do not forget the Lord your God by failing to keep his commandments, his ordinances, and his statutes that I am commanding you today. When you have eaten your fill and have built fine houses and live in them and when your herds and flocks have multiplied and your silver and gold is multiplied and all that you have is multiplied, then do not exalt yourself, forgetting the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” (Deuteronomy 8:11-14).

 Of course we find that eventually the Israelites do forget these lessons

 as they try to take matters into their own hands,

 are left feeling exposed and vulnerable

and try to cover it up only making things worse.

Jesus knows all this

as the Spirit herds him out into the wilderness

 and the training sequence starts,

and despite being hungry and tired at the end of the forty days

 it is a lesson Jesus remembers

when the devil comes to test him.

In fact he even responds to the temptations

 with quotes from the life-giving teachings in Deuteronomy.

The Devil tempts Jesus with providing nourishment for himself

which Jesus rejects,

 then questions whether Jesus really trusts God to care for him

 tempting him to test God,

 but Jesus replies that true trust means there is no need to test God,

 and finally the devil tries offering power and glory-

 at a cost of turning from God to the devil.

And Jesus responds, I don’t need the kingdoms of the world

when the one I serve already has them,

 and that takes care of the devil, for the moment.

In the words of Matthew Meyer Bolton “ For Matthew, Jesus is the Child of God, and also the Child of Humanity, the Human One. What emerges from this story, then, is a picture of the human being not as an independent actor set apart-from and over-against God, but rather as a humble creature made for symbiotic reliance on God. Relying on God for what? For nourishment, for loving-kindness, and for instruction. This story’s central theme, then, far from heroic “self-reliance,” is rather humble communion and trust in God. Indeed, the devil tempts Jesus toward supposed “fortitude” and “self-sufficiency,” at least as the world often defines them (sustain yourself, prove yourself, rule the world!). Jesus declines to pursue this path, testifying instead to his own “insufficiency” apart from God, the fountain of blessings at the center of his life…In short, the devil’s temptations are an attack on Jesus’ baptism, on the very idea that Jesus is God’s beloved child, made for a life of humble, open-handed reliance on God.” (https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/trust-saltlectionary-commentary-lent-1-year-a)

So, why?

Why Lent?

Why baptism?

 Why Christ?

We need Christ because he teaches us that we cannot do it on our own

We need baptism because that is how God shares with us the work of Christ

justification and life giving us an identity as child of God,

the promise and the reality that we don’t have to fix it all ourselves

an identity that grounds us when the devil, the world, try to tell us otherwise.

We need lent because we need to practice this radical truth

We need to practice relying on God rather than ourselves

Preparing when the forces that defy God calls this reliance into question.

Lent is our training ground,

a return to God who richly provides for us,

a return to humbly follow the one who cares for us,

 a return to serving the true power of the world,

 a return to justification and life. Amen