"Othering" - Lent 3A

Saint John 4:5–42

Dr.  Fred Craddock remembers returning from a conference and being seated next to a couple on an airplane who were everyone’s worse nightmare.  They had an opinion about everything none of which were positive.  

As they paged through the airline’s magazine, the husband remarked to his wife about the obligatory column from the company’s CEO touting some accomplishment by an employee, an enhanced service, or an improvement to the fleet.  Few things in the world are as benign as these articles but this couple noticed something that set them off.  

“Remember,” said the man to his wife loudly enough to be overheard six rows back,  “when this article would have only been published in English?  Look!  Now they have to have it in Spanish and even in Japanese.” 

It should not have been a surprise because the flight was coming from California on an airline with primary routes to Japan and the rest of the far east.

When they were done with that rant they turned their attention to Dr.  Craddock and asked him the standard questions about where he was from, what he did while he was visiting California, and where he was going.   

He said he was going home to Atlanta and that he had been at a conference at Yorba Linda University.

“That’s a Seventh-Day Adventist School isn’t is?” they asked.  “Are you a Seventh Day Adventist?” 

 “No,” he said, “I’m of the denomination Disciples of Christ.” 

“Never heard of it,” the husband said. “So what are you doing with the Adventists?”

 Dr.  Craddock  explained they were working together on sermons, church, things like that. 

“You’re not a Seventh Day Adventist, but you spent time with them?” the woman said. 

“Yes.” He said.  

She said, “Then you were ‘othering.’” 

“I’m sorry,” Craddock said, “I’m not familiar with the term.” 

The husband explained, “Our preacher uses it all the time. He just making us sick with it. Go out and be with others. We ought to get acquainted with others. We ought to relate to others. Others, others, others, just always ‘othering.’ If I hear it one more time, one more sermon on ‘othering,’ I think I will just throw up.” 

“It’s just a fad, dear.” The wife replied.  “Soon he’ll  be on to something else.”

Dr.  Craddock had heard enough.  “So you are Christians, are you?” he asked. They nodded smiling. 

“Go to church?  Read the bible?  Believe in doing what Jesus did?”  Again smiles and nods.  

“Then you know the stories about Jesus and how one day he met a woman at a well who was a Samaritan.”  Now they were right with him and hanging on his every word.

“You know what he was doing?  He was ‘othering,’ he said, “is not just a fad it goes all the way back to Jesus.  It’s what Jesus was about.  He was always ‘othering.’ Let’s hope his attitude toward others never goes away any time soon.”

Craddock, who in his life was one of the kindest, gentlest of men, reported with great glee that he returned their sugary sweet smiles with one of his own and never heard another word from them during the rest of the flight.1

During this time when we fear an unknown virus we especially need each other.2  

On the web sites of churches who have had to cancel worshipping together for the next few weeks out of an abundance of caution one of the things they universally mourn is the fellowship that is going to be lost.  They won’t get to raise their voice in song.  They won’t get to sit together to listen and pray.  They won’t get to see old friends and welcome new people.  They won’t get to “other” and it makes them sad.

We loose something, we loose a lot, whenever we see “the other” as a threat.  We loose something when we worry that our friends, or people we don’t know who are visiting our church home might bring a “bug” in that might cause us to catch something and have to stay at home for at least two weeks.  We loose a great deal when we can’t ‘other.’

For whatever reason the woman who came to the well at midday was not big on “othering” and her relationships suffered for it.

I’m sure you have heard sermons on this passage in which her reputation was not only called into question but completely besmirched all because of the multiple husband business.  Scholars, even women scholars, have portrayed her as some sort of floozy, a loose woman, flitting from one relationship to another. 

They speculate that the reason she had to come to the well in the middle of the day is because she is embarrassed about her past and wanted to avoid the dirty looks and snide remarks from the other woman.    The picture is painted of a woman with glossy nails and heavy mascara who just can’t seem to settle down with one man.

Have you ever heard of Occam’s (Ockham’s) razor?  You can’t buy it in drugstore, online, or through the mail because it is the rule in logic that the simplest of competing theories be preferred to the more complex.  Let’s apply this rule to rehabilitating the woman’s reputation.  

Perhaps the reason  she was at the well at high noon was because she had been there earlier and had been so busy cleaning her house all morning that she didn’t notice she had run out of water.  She was there because she needed more.

She could learn a thing or two from some of our fellow Americans who have decided that the thing to do during a health crises is to stockpile toilet paper.  Have they no friends who would be willing to share a roll or two or shop for them if they found themselves quarantined?   

It’s the same principle that causes some people to stock up on bread, milk and eggs before a snow storm.  Really?  Two days later, when the roads are clear and life is back to normal, how much French toast will they be able to eat?

Back to the woman and about her multiple husbands.  

The cause might have been  death.  I can imagine the pain in her over outliving one or two husbands might have made her want to avoid crowds and retreat into herself. 

And remembering the ease of a husband to divorce his wife in those days she might have suffered abandonment.  Watch the old coot go out for more hand sanitiser one day and never come home.  Even if all the women were completely on her side and thought the guy a cad who would want to talk about what a jerk he was day after day?

Any of these reasons are far more probable and much more kind than pinning a label on her, calling into question her morals, and having it stick through the centuries.

The important part of this story for us is that Jesus did not see her as an “other” although he could have.

There are countless more “others” between these two strangers.

The first was that he was a man and she was a woman.  In that culture, as in some now, unrelated men and women were forbidden from talking to each other in public. 

The second, however, was even more important.  He was a Jewish man and she was a Samaritan woman.  These two groups had a history of social distancing that dated back at least seven centuries.   To apply Ockham here the differences were a matter of the Samaritans’ willingness to marry non-Jews; their rejection of any of what we would consider books of the Old Testament except the first five and their belief that the place where God was rightly worshiped was Mount Gerizim and not Jerusalem.

So deep were these divisions that they wouldn’t even use each others kitchen items.

“Nevertheless, Jesus neither flinches nor flees from the Samaritan woman at the well.  Jesus and the Samaritan woman carry on conversation at some length at midday.  His radical inclusion of a historically dreaded ‘other’ speaks volumes about Jesus.”3

I think it was Jesus’ willingness to see her as something more than an “other” that brought about her realization that he was something special.  He saw her for who she really was, another child of God  and it touched her deeply.   It had to have been a beautiful moment when she discovered, as it is for all of us when we discover, that we are loved by God.

I think that is what caused the woman to drop her water bucket, leave Jesus standing by himself at the well with cup in hand, and run into town with her proclamation that was really a question.

“In her, ‘He’s not the Messiah – is he?’ I hear a playful openness, a wonderful willingness to consider that God was larger than her preconceptions. [It is a] first step, a courageous willingness to be shocked, surprised, intruded upon”4 and included.

That’s why she went back to town!  She wanted to include others in this love she had found.  And look at what happened.  

On the strength of her word the people decide to include others too.  The people of her village don’t throw Jesus and his equally Jewish followers out of town but rather they ask them to hang around for a couple of days. 

This would have been unheard of!

It would be like the Democrats and Republicans not only having their conventions at the same time, in the same city, but in the same building.  It would be like FOX News and MSNBC sharing the same headquarters.  It would be like tea with Bernie Sanders and Donald J.  Trump.

It would be like Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and  Antonin Scalia having dinner together, and going to the opera together, and going on vacation together. Oh, wait! That really did happen!  And so did this!  

A Samaritan town welcomed Jewish guests all on the strength of one woman’s witness.

Imagine what this “othering”must have looked like.

The Samaritans invite the Jews to stay with them for a while and, remarkably, they do, for two days. What a picture—Jews and Samaritans, men and women, walking back to town together, eating together for two days, sleeping under the same roofs together.5

People who had believed each other to be so socially and theologically different that they would even use the same set of dinnerware were now having a party.

Nothing like that had ever happened before. Ancient enemies, people who believed in the very depths of their hearts that the others were so wrong, so outside orthodox definitions of morality, that contact with them was repugnant, unthinkable—those people spent two days together. They must have eaten together. They must have shared dishes and utensils and cups even. They had never done anything like that in their lives. They must have slept under the same roofs. I’ll bet they had a party. I’ll bet they had a banquet and drank a little wine—men and women, Jews and Samaritans. And I’ll bet before Jesus and his friends left to resume their journey to Galilee, they embraced.6

I am neither a profit nor a sage but I can tell you that we will get through this current crises.  

We will take precautions, of course.  We will heed the advice of local and state officials.  We will listen carefully to the wisdom of the likes of Dr.  Anthony S.  Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and others who actually  know what they are talking about.  We will mute those who don’t know or don’t care to know anything but preconceived notions and conspiratorial ideas.  

We will wash our hands and be kind to one another and care for one another until this goes the way of  the Swine, Avian, Sars, Ebola, and H1N1  scares.  It’s not the Black Death, Cholera, Leprosy, Small Pox or even the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918.  This too shall pass.

Until that day comes I hope we remember how much the fear of the other is costing us not only in dollars but in the emotional toll this isolation brings. 

We need each other and some day we will look back at this difficult time and remember what that unnamed woman who came to draw water and Jesus who needed a drink taught her town, his disciples, and now all of us.  Namely: “othering” is a good thing.  It is a very good thing indeed.

When that someday comes – as it always has and always will – maybe we’ll even be able to say: Thanks be to God for this hard earned lesson.  

__________

1.  Fred Craddock, The Renewed Homiletic, ed. O. Wesley Allen Jr. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010), 47-48.

2.  This sermon was preached at the outbreak of the Covid-19 virus.

3.  Andrew Benson-Nagy, “Saint John 4:5-42. Commentary 1. Connecting the Reading with Scripture.” Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship. 2 (Louisville: Westminister|John Knox Press, 2019): 72–74.

4. William H. Willimon, “Ordinary Revelation.” Pulpit Resource 33, no. 1 (2005): 37–40.

5. John M. Buchanan, “Astonished.” Sunday Morning Worship.  The Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago. February 27, 2005.

6. John M. Buchanan, “Included.” Sunday Morning Worship.  The Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago. March 3, 2002. 

"Lifeline or Plumline" Lent 2A

Genesis 12:1-4a 

Saint John 3:1-17 

Mny of you are or will be reading soon the very fine book by Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World.  

Dr.  Taylor was called from her life as the parish priest in Clarksville, Georgia to become a professor at Piedmont College where she became the professor of World Religions. 

Dr.  Taylor is an Episcopalian and they, like Lutherans, affirm that while the presence of God can be found everywhere it is especially found at the altar in church when we are receiving Holy Communion.   The problem, she says, is “the moment we step out into the parking lot we lose that sense of intimacy.” So, her book she not only encourages us to look for God’s presence here in church but everywhere we go in everything we do.

She invites us to discover the sacred in the small things we do and see, the simple practices such as walking the dog and wondering how they are experiencing the world.  She encourages us to really make eye contact with the cashier at the grocery store and allow it to become a moment of true human connection.  Even getting lost, according to Dr. Taylor, can  lead to new discoveries.

In her first chapter she calls our attention to Saint Francis of Assisi who “loved singing hymns with his brothers and sisters that included not only Brother Bernard and Sister Claire but also brother sun and sister moon.  For him  . . .  a single bird was as much a messenger of God as a cloud full of angels.”1

Francis’ story could be all feel good all the time were it not for one thing. 

Taking the Bible quite literally, picking up whatever Jesus said or did and putting it on his to-do list for the day, Francis divested himself of his advantages, including his exquisite, fashionable clothing, which he gave away to the poor. His father, Pietro, a churchgoing, upstanding citizen, took exception, locked his son up for a time, and then sued him in the city square.2

It wasn’t a very nice thing for a churchgoing father to do to his bible-practicing son.  Lock him up and then sue him?  Most of us would say “no” but the church has a long history of excluding people who do not worship at the same altar we do.  We have had a long history of excluding people who should have been included.  

It is a primary sin of the church is to divide up people and put plumblines where there should be lifelines.  

One of the primary questions we use to divide people is the way they have come to God.  Was it suddenly or over time?  Did they realize the presence of God in nature or in church?  Barbara Brown Taylor tells us in her book that the answer to both choices is: (spoiler alert!)  “Yes.”

Scripture itself tells us that there is no one way, no right way, to discover God’s presence.

God may seem to come to us suddenly, out of nowhere, for no reason, as in the case of Abram.

Without much fanfare or fuss on God’s part or even a faith-life resume on Abraham’s he receives a call from God to go.  And, much to our surprise, he does.  Abraham accepts an invitation that wouldn’t take more words than three tweets on a Twitter account.  

We wouldn’t do that.  In the current climate we are not even taking a brief vacation without finding out whether the place we are going to is safe.  Even if it is, we still might be tempted to stock up on anti-bacterial soap and even, in perhaps the strangest behavior of all, toilet paper, before we go.

Abraham is not given a task to do other than listen and go.  He is not asked to do a job or told that he has to be a model of anything.  God simply says, “I’m God, and I want you to go, and I’ll show you where it is when you get there.3

The late Dr.  Lewis B.  Smedes of Fuller Seminary, speculated on how the news of this sudden move might have been received by the rest of the family.

Yes, I can imagine Sarah waking up about four in the morning, hearing the bustling noises of Abraham packing.  And Sarah says, “What are you doing, Abe?”  “Packing.”  “What for?”  “Well, we’re leaving.”  “Where are we going?”  “I don’t know.”  “Why are we going?  “Because He told me to.”  “Who’s he?”  “He didn’t tell me.”  And then I could imagine Sarah calling her father: “What am I going to do?” Her father says, “I knew you should have married this nut.”4

If you Respond quickly to a call from God can find yourself being labeled as impulsive.  Take your time to understand God’s claim on your life and you may be called too pragmatic.  If Abraham was spontaneous Nicodemus was deliberate. 

Careful of his place and position in the community he arranges a late night meeting with Jesus. 

This was no accidental meeting.  It had to have been prearranged because, in those days, individuals did not go out at night.  You’ve heard it said in our age, “Nothing good happens after 3:00 in the morning” when these two were living saying might have been, “Nothing good happens after dark.”

We have no idea what this clandestine meeting  looked like but it could have come straight out of a scene from a film noir.  We can picture what is going on.

You can see a man sneaking past his family and out the front door.  He makes his way down a very dark street with the lamp in his hand barely lighting his path.  He peeks around every corner and turns around often to be sure that no one is following him and that he won’t be discovered.  Finally he catches sight of another man who is waiting for him, watching for him.

Like in the picture above the two shadowy figures meet.  However, instead of clarity there is confusion.  Jesus’ reply to Nicodemus’ very complimentary and kind greeting leaves him baffled and has kept countless biblical scholars employed ever since.

“Believe me,” [says Jesus seeming out of the blue] “a man cannot even see the kingdom of God without being born again.”5

To this Nicodemus replied, “Huh!”

Jesus is being far more obtrusive with Nicodemus than God was with Abraham.  God at least gave a command and a promise, “Go!” And, “I will make of you a great nation.”

Jesus asks Nicodemus to do something he couldn’t do in a million years causing the scholar asks a perfectly reasonable question:  “Born again!” exclaimed Nicodemus. “What do you mean? How can an old man go back into his mother’s womb and be born again?”6

The obvious answer is we can’t but  Jesus is using a physiological example to make a theological point that many miss. 

Some of you who are fathers were there in the delivery room when your children were born.  Many of you who are older were perfectly happy to sit in the waiting room and chain smoke cigarettes with the other nervous fellows.  

The closest many guys like me will ever come to the experience is watching “Call the Midwife” and that is perfectly fine for there seems to be a lot of yelling, and screaming, and general messiness involved in the process that I would rather not be a part of, thank you very much.

“The heart of Jesus’ surprising notion of being born again is this: you can’t grit your teeth and get born the first time, and you can’t when you’re born again either.”7

On that cold, snowy, winter afternoon in December, longer ago than I care to admit, I didn’t decide to leave the comfort of my mother’s womb and see what was going on in the world outside.  I was entirely passive in the process.  It was my mother who did all the real work assisted by the doctors and nurses.  I just let it happen.

So it is with encountering God.  You can’t program how God will come to you, it’s all God’s doing so you might as well let it happen.  

It doesn’t matter if you spent all of your life in a parochial school, went to a Christian College, studied the scriptures, went to chapel five times a week when you were in a seminary, or never did any of those things at all.  We’re here because there was a moment in our lives when we felt something and what we felt was nothing less than the love of God.

It was like the wind.  It could have been a heavy gust that almost knocked us over or it might have been a gentle breeze that had been blowing over the pages of our lives for a long time.  Long before we could have named it and claimed it, it was claiming us.

Barbara Brown Taylor and her kind are right.  There is no one, certain way to meet God but there is something of which we can be sure.  Whether our altar be in a fresh field of flowers somewhere or in a church there is no pre-programmed way for God to touch our lives but when God comes  it will be all God, all grace, all love.  

I love the way Eugene Peterson paraphrases the words, “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”8

Here is how Peterson phrases it: “God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again.”9

God may come and we might answer quickly and follow like Abraham did.  Or, it may take awhile as it did for Nicodemus who went away after his late night encounter, for the most part, unchanged with only something to think about.  

There is no plumline that can measure the moment when God reaches out to touch our lives but  when it will be nothing less than a lifeline from the hand of God itself.  

Of that you can be sure.  Amen.

____________

1.  Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: a Geography of Faith.  (New York: HarperOne, 2010.

2.  James Howell. “What Can We Say March 8? Lent 2A.” James Howell's Weekly Preaching Notions. Myers Park Presbyterian Church, January 1, 2019.

3.  Bill Moyers, Genesis: A Living Conversation.  (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1996.)  p.  158.

4. Moyers, op. cit., p.  162-163.

5. St.  John 3:3.  (PHILLIPS) [Phillips=J. B. Phillips, The New Testament in Modern English.  (London: HarperCollins, 2000.)

6.  St.  John 3:7.4. (TLB) [TLB:The Living Bible]

7. Howell, loc. cit.

8. St.  John 3:17.  (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version]

9. St.  John 3:17.  (MESSAGE) [MESSAGE=Eugene H. Peterson, The Message: the New Testament in Contemporary Language.  (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress Pub. Group, 2003.)]

"What's So Original About Sin?" - Lent 1A

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7
Saint Matthew 4:1-11

Almost every week a friend of mine, who is a psychologist, and I have lunch.  It is a mutually therapeutic time in which we talk about the perils of each other’s professions.  We also have a wide-ranging conversation about sports, politics, travel, and other events in each other’s lives. 
 

One day we were talking about the occasions when people would come into our offices and say: “Doctor, Pastor, I have something to tell you about myself that is going to shock you.”
 

Don’t try this because it won’t work!
 

We both agreed that, at this point in our careers, we were un-shockable.  I’ve done this for a very long time and to become a licenced psychologist he has had to work in some very dicey places with some pretty “interesting” people.
 

He said that when people open a session with the suggestion that something they are about to tell him is so shocking that he won’t believe it his internal reaction is to say to himself: “Bring it on!” 
 

It is well that he makes his living at counseling and I don’t because once when an upset parishioner came to me and proclaimed, “Pastor, I’m in the most sinful state I’ve ever been in” I asked her if she had ever been to Nevada.  Undeterred by her puzzled expression I continued, “I’ve been there and it’s a really sinful state.” For some reason it was at this point that she excused herself.
 

We agreed that, after years of doing our respective jobs, we were like the guy in the  Farmer’s Insurance Hall of Claims commercials who after every unspeakable catastrophe says: “Seen it.  Covered it.  At Farmer’s Insurances we know a thing or two because we have seen a thing or two.”
 

During the course of our careers the good doctor and I have seen and covered so much ground in the foibles and shortcomings of the human condition that very few “sinful states” are able to surprise.
 

Mark Twain famously said “I don’t know why Adam and Eve get so much credit. I could have done just as well.”  There is nothing so original about their sin that it should surprise us in the least.

Sin is the all too human condition in which all of us spend a lot of out time in and then trying to get out of.  There is nothing new about it.

Remember old Adam? God put the first hominids in a lush garden  . . .  rich and bountiful.  God said, “be fruitful and multiply” (The most gracious command God ever gave us). Oh, and one other thing, “Stay off that tree over there. You can eat fruit from the hundreds of other trees, but not that tree.”

Well, you know the story. The minute God’s back was turned, Adam saw the forbidden fruit looking tasty and even more appealing because of God’s prohibition.

“Did God really say,” asked the serpent, the first theologian, “you won’t die?” So Adam took and ate, and Eve did the same and let’s just say human innocence (if that’s what it was) lasted for maybe fifteen minutes.1

What was the sin?  Eating the apple?  No.  Their sin was believing that the rules didn’t apply to them. 
 

We can think of countless major examples of how this works but, since spring training has just begun I am going to use our National Pastime as an illustration.

The Houston Astros won the World Series in 2017 after scoring the most runs in baseball in the regular season. They also had the most total bases and the highest team batting average.

[This was because] according to a report by The Athletic  . . .  they often knew what pitches were coming because of a scheme using a camera and a trash can.2

The camera was mounted in center field and transmitted a feed to a television near the Astros’ dugout.  A player would watch the television and bang on a nearby trash can or blow a whistle to signal if an off-speed pitch or fastball was coming.
 

Anybody who watches baseball at home can predict with reasonable accuracy what kind of a pitch is coming when the shot of home plate is coming from the center field camera.  Not only the signs flashed but where the catcher sets up behind the plate will tell  the pitch and the desired location.

Try this when you are watching a game with a novice.  Watch carefully and then say to your partner, “Curve balls inside” or “a fast ball at the letters.”  I did this to poor Lowell and he was amazed!
 

Sign steeling is something that has gone on forever in major league baseball.  It won’t take long for a runner on second to pick up the signs and try to relay them to the batter  which is why the catcher often will walk out to the mound  to change signs.  This is a part of the game that takes more coordination than a camera and a trash can.
 

A good batter will watch a pitcher to see if his motion, or the way he holds his glove, is different for every pitch but this takes careful observation.  Watching a television and blowing a whistle takes no skill at all.
 

Former major leaguer Gregg Olsen, in his list of unwritten baseball rules pushes the idea of rules almost to the limit saying: “Stealing signs is OK, just don’t get caught. If your signs are easy enough to steal, it’s your fault. If you get caught sign stealing, someone gets hit.“3
 

That statement is a perfect example of how sin works.
 

Sin tells us that what we are doing is perfectly fine, so long as you don’t get caught.  Go ahead Adam and Eve, eat the apple so long as God doesn’t find out.

 Sin also tells us it’s somebody else’s fault anyway.  Just as if your signs are that easy to steal, it’s your fault everybody in the garden is busy blaming ever one else. Adam blames Eve, and Eve blames the serpent, and the serpent just smiles knowing that these two have been duped.
 

Just as sign stealing results in somebody getting hit by a pitch (Entering Thursday night’s game against the Washington Nationals, Houston Astros batters had been hit by more pitches this spring than any other team.)  the creation story’s sin results in the first couple getting the old “heave ho” from the garden.
 

At least Adam and Eve were after something worthwhile!  The diabolical one, the tempter, tells them that if they ate of the fruit they would be like God.  That is a very high prize because having all the powers of God is something worth possessing. All the Astros received for their efforts was, in the words of Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred, “a piece of metal.”
 

Winning the World Series would make them, for a year at least, the gods of the baseball world.  They were, but at was cost?  Cheating cost them their reputations and in some cases even their jobs. 
 

Sin is like that, sometimes it can cost a lot and sometimes it can cost you everything when it veers you off course and beckons you to follow its tempting ways.
 

Jesus knew what he was doing and he knew what was at stake when he was tempted in the wilderness.  What was at stake was nothing less than your salvation and mine.
 

Even when he is famished and the tempter comes Jesus knows it “is better to remain hungry than to take the bait.  He knows he is the Beloved; there is no need to call upon angels to prevent his crash into the temple courtyard.  He has no need of worldly kingdoms and their splendors, he knows who holds the future” and it is no less than God, the real God!

Ultimately what we have before us this day are two stories.  

One is our story.  It is a story of our falling and failing.  It is a story of our trying to “be our own god” and ignoring the written and unwritten rules of baseball and of life.  We may hate to admit it but we know that if left to our own devices our lives often descend into chaos and confusion.
 

We know that Mark Twain was right and that we could have done just as well if not better than Adam and Eve.  But we also know that our ways can lead us into a state more sinful than Nevada.  Our ways can lead us into a state of separation from God and from each other.  That, like it or not, is our story.
 

The second story is God’s.  It is a redemption story that looks at all we have done and all those times when we have given in and says, “Do you think what you’ve done surprises me?  Not in the least.  I’ve been there and done that.  Because of Jesus,” God says, “I know temptation too.  Never-the-less, I love you and you are mine.”
 

That kind of love triumphs over temptation every time and it is worth more than any piece of metal or anything else in the whole word.  And we never have to do anything for it because it is ours in Jesus Christ our Lord.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.