I was a snot of a kid ... but

SERMON PREACHED AT ALL SAINTS’ GLADSTONE

FIRST SUNDAY OF LENT (1^st March) 2020

READINGS:

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

Psalm 32

Romans 5:12-19

Matthew 4: 1-11

I don’t want to dwell heavily on this day on the interrelationships between sin, torah, death, those myriad deep concepts that underscore the readings. Most of us are familiar with the concepts – Paul would argue and does elsewhere that all humanity is basically saturated with the concepts of wrong and right that dwell at the heart of human sin. While some forms of psychology, and some forms of theology, too, want to dismiss the language of sin, most of us get the concept that we humans are not as good as we ought to be, that the human race is deeply flawed, that planet earth and its inhabitants, humans and other species are living an increasingly precarious and damaged existence. We only have to turn on our various forms of news feed, or lean in the bar in a pub, and very soon we will hear the latest examples of flawed human behaviour and its impact on human neighbours and indeed all animate and even inanimate ingredients of the earth.

So let’s put that safely away in the parking space. I’m not going to spill my guts over my flaws, or make public confession – though acknowledging and addressing them in an appropriate sphere is an important part of growing into a deeper humanity and, as servants of Christ, a greater likeness of him in whose footstep we plant our stumbled shuffles.

My sins aren’t particularly spectacular anyway. The times I have succumbed to temptation, sinning in weakness, ignorance or my own deliberate fault, these are all a bit passé, really, and it’s possible you have a  few of your own. Let me instead tell a couple of stories from a little bit long ago – examples of temptation, perhaps – with which we might relate, and in which we might find the footsteps of our Lord.

So, yes, a long time ago. These are both stories from my experience, but I don’t think for a moment I’m the hero in the narrative. Far from it. But let’s see how we go.

Some of you may know Whanganui, and know that one finger of the town spreads a little way up the Whanganui River – my awa! – to an almost disconnected suburb called Aramoho. In the winter it can be a damp, foggy place, in the summer a rather mosquito-blighted place, but not without some beauty. There is still, about forty years later, a motor camp / Holiday Park in Aramoho, and that’s where our simple tale takes place.

I might add that as a boarder at an elite private school I was always mortally embarrassed that my mother, by the time of this story a widow and sole parent, stayed in such a place. All my friends had parents who stayed in flash motels or the grand hotels (one indeed called the Grand Hotel)  that were the backbone of accommodation in a town that spent a lot of time accommodating the families of young males with over-developed senses of entitlement. I was mortified. Mortified, too, that my solo mother was a widow, was driving a Vauxhall Viva, and staying in a … well, if asked where she was staying I would cough something about “friends out of town” and change the subject.

I was a snot of a kid. I was also a rabid atheist. And one night as my mother backed the Viva out of the car park she collected one of the power outlets, on a pole, that were the electrical feeds for parked caravans. Minimal damage if any, to the car – which I wished to hell anyway as I hated it for being embarrassing – but the power stand was decidedly ex. Decidedly horizontal. And the night was dark and damp, for it was winter, and no one was around.

And said mother wrestled out loud with her conscience. No one was there, no one had seen it, all was quiet.  She was, I knew, a pious Christian. That was embarrassing, too. And slowly conscience won. Ugh. She took herself off to the motor camp office, confessed her embarrassing sin, and returned, grinning. The proprietor had run the place for years, lost power plug poles to errant drivers weekly, and had never before had someone ’fess up.

For a moment I wasn’t embarrassed. For a moment I was proud. I was of course a horrible son so I didn’t tell her that, but I was. Only for a moment of course, before I slumped back into a stormy teenage stupor. But it was a moment and I have never forgotten it.

Years later I was at a student party in a Palmerston North flat. My motorbike was parked in at the time I had to slip out. I glared at the snazzy looking Ford Escort that was in my way – then realised that I had just enough room to squeeze the bike between the house and the car. Or would have done, if I had had a drink or many. The bike leaned to far, I lost control, fought it, regained it, but heard the clutch lever scrape the side of the car. The night was dark, the party was raging, no-one had seen.

And so I wrestled, by then incidentally a convert to Christianity, with my conscience. No one knew. The owner would see the scratch in the dark, wouldn’t know how it happened. I moved the bike the rest of the way down the drive, went to start it, and paused. Could I really go without ’fessing up? Slowly I decided, and slunk back to find the owner. I ’fessed up. He came out with a torch but never found a scratch. As it happened the time the expedition took was long enough for me to realize I shouldn’t be riding anyway, and I stayed the night.

In both cases a tiny microcosmic form of Temptation was battled. By – and I would argue at least in my case only by the grace of God – conscience won, and wrongs were righted, situations resolved. Neither would make the news of the world. But each represented our everyday battle. Lead us not into temptation.

I haven’t always lived up to those lessons. But pray God you and I are slowly being moulded to the place where the voice of truth and justice is far louder in each of our souls than the place of deceit or injustice. May God strengthen us through the Spirit of the Christ who resisted temptation to be bearers of integrity in our every wrestle.