OK. I'm going to play a piece of music for you. It's
very short, so I want you listen very carefully because I'm going to ask
you some questions about it. [Play Since by Man Came Death from Handel's
Messiah] OK. Who can tell whether that was happy or sad? How sad was it?

Think of a sad song. Was this sadder than ? [Play
second portion.] OK, who can tell me whether that one was happy or sad?
How happy was it? Music isn't just happy or sad. It makes us feel happy
or feel sad. And if it does, the person who wrote the music has done his
or her job, and given us a very special gift. Have you ever watched a
movie with the mute button turned on? When you can't hear the sound
track, it can be hard to tell what's going on. The music help intensify
the experience, whether it's tension, or fear, or love or sadness or
joy.

When Handel wrote that piece he was trying to help us feel both the
sadness of sin and death entering the world through Adam and the joy and
exhilaration of grace and salvation entering the world through Jesus.
Whether or not you liked the piece by Handel, I hope that someday you
all will feel both the tragedy of sin and the joy of salvation deep
inside you.

Lent: Exploring the Depths and Heights of Human Experience
by Michael Sherer Given at Berkey Avenue, 2002

Life can change in an instant. Overnight. In the twinkling of an eye.
This reality hit me on Monday when one of my co-workers confided that
she was going in for a heart catheterization. The following day, as we
waited for the results of the procedure, we worried because we knew
that's a situation where things can happen very quickly. In this case,
the news was very good, but it was still a reminder that life can change
in an instant.

I believe this truth is also central to our fascination with the
Olympics. Were you watching this week? Five minutes of seemingly perfect
skating vaults 16 year old Sara Hughes into the global spotlight. A
momentary mental lapse sends Michelle Kwan tumbling to the ice, ending
her dreams of Olympic gold. We experience these victories and defeats
vicariously and we relish them.

Most of the time, however, these defining moments are not through sport,
but through everyday occurrences--a car crash, a doctor's visit, a
careless word, a moment of passion, a chance meeting, a brilliant idea,
and life is changed. The future is altered irrevocably. Sometimes for
the better and sometimes not.

Our scripture passages for today deal with this kind of defining moment,
but it is change on a cosmic scale. Adam's sin and Christ's resurrection
changed the course of humanity. Life can change in an instant. Now, I
only get to preach about one sermon a year and I want you to know that I
did not pick these texts. They come from the lectionary, actually for
last Sunday. But let me tell you, these are great sermon texts.

Periodically throughout the Bible, you'll find passages that just seem
to sum up the whole Bible in just one or two brief verses: John 3:16
For God So Loved the world. Matthew 22:37-40 'You shall love the Lord
your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your
mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like
it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two
commandments hang all the law and the prophets. Mark 16:15 And he said
to the disciples, Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to
the whole creation.

For me, the Romans 5 passage is right up there, but it's not a passage
that you encounter frequently. I can't say that I've ever heard a sermon
on it--certainly not recently. Let's take a look at what's going on
here. Reading again from Romans 5:18-19

'Therefore just as one man's trespass led to condemnation for all, so
one man's act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all.
For just as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so
by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous.' The two men
in question are, of course, Adam and Christ. And the events referred to
are Adam's Fall and Jesus' passion and resurrection.

We have the Apostle Paul to thank for this literary and theological
comparison. Jesus, as far as we are aware, never compared himself to
Adam. But as a literary device, this is brilliant. It sets up a
structure that invites the believer into a whole raft of comparisons--
Adam/Jesus, Sin/Obedience, Law/Grace, the fall/the resurrection, Old
Testament/New Testament, Old Covenant/New Covenant, the Garden of
Eden/the Kingdom of Heaven, Condemnation/Justification.

Paul is driving home the point that in Christ, something new, something
different, something important is going on.

This passage is theologically important as well. The Christian
understanding of Adam's sin as affecting all humanity grows out of this
passage and 1 Corinthians 15:22, the text that Handel used in the
chorus I played for the children. The phrase 'The Fall' and notion that
Adam's disobedience doomed humanity to a cycle of sin and death is
deeply ingrained in the Christian psyche. I remember being surprised to
find that the phrase 'The Fall' does not appear in scripture and that
the traditional Jewish interpretation of Genesis 3 is less cosmic in
scope.

And so, we see that in Romans 5, Paul is making an original and
important contribution to Christian thought. In doing so, he is
tackling the fundamental question of the New Testament--How is Jesus,
his life, death and resurrection, saving for me? How does Jesus save me?
It's easy to forget that the survival of the early church hung on the
answer to this question. We clearly owe Paul a debt of gratitude for
providing this theological framework for understanding both our own
fallenness and God's gift of grace through Jesus.

In Romans 5, Paul is interpreting the Christ event for us. And while
it's frowned on in some circles, I have to ask myself: does this
interpretation work? For me the answer is, it works very well.

Paul undoubtedly had our other two scripture passages in mind when he
was writing this text. The comparison between the fall in Genesis 3 and
Jesus' Wilderness Temptation in Matthew 4 is very compelling. In both
stories, you have the tempter and the tempted. In both stories sin and
temptation is presented as an opportunity. In Genesis, the serpent tells
Eve: "You will not 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." And
in Matthew 4 Satan 'took Jesus to a very high mountain and showed him
all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; and he said to him,
"All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me."

The contrast between the two passages is that Adam and Eve are such
pushovers. The loss of human innocence takes just a single sentence.

'So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was
a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one
wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her
husband, who was with her, and he ate.'

Not one word of protest from Adam. Not 'You're sure you know what you're
doing here, Eve,' Not 'You know God told us not to eat this stuff.' Not
'Do you think maybe we should check with God first?' He just eats it.

Jesus, on the other hand, has been without food for forty days and turns
down the opportunity make bread and satisfy his bodily hunger. He
resists the temptation to abuse his Christly power. He resists the
temptation of worldly power. Each time he parries the devil's clever
deceit with scriptural truth and emerges unblemished--victorious.

But the Act of Righteousness and the one man's Obedience Paul refers to
in vss. 18-19 is the cross. Again the contrast is striking. God's
command to Adam is pretty light weight--eat anything in the garden
except the fruit of that tree. That doesn't seem too tough. On the other
hand, God's command to Jesus to go to the cross is costly. It hurts.
He's just 33. He's got friends. He's got a promising career as a
teacher ahead of him. But he obeys. He suffers and dies and rises and in
so doing ushers in the Era of Grace.

Paul's presentation of Jesus as the cure to Adam's curse is about as
clear and concise as it can be. But if we stop here, something very
important is lost.

We are now in the season of Lent, the forty days preceding Easter. The
observance of Lent grows out of today's passage on Jesus' wilderness
temptation. Jesus spent forty days fasting in the wilderness prior to
beginning his ministry. Marking of Lent by giving up some food or
activity is an act of identification with Jesus' wilderness sojourn.
Lent is a season for self-examination and reflection, designed to bring
the Christian closer to God.

And so, in this season of Lent, I invite you to contemplate Romans
5:18-19 or the full section of vss. 12-22. Contained in these verses
are the depth and height of human experience--the tragedy of sin and
death entering human experience through the fall and the triumph of
grace over sin and death through Jesus; the agony of the cross and the
joy of the resurrection. It is the truth of human nature, the truth of
human experience, the truth of human destiny. But in the end even
knowing the truth is not enough.

There once was an old man who farmed an arid plot of land in west Texas.
He eked out a living year after year, but eventually died, penniless. In
his will, he requested burial on his own property--a request which his
neighbors honored. In his back yard, they began digging hole six feet
deep and at about five feet down they struck oil. The question arose,
was the man rich? [find a child to answer this question.]

Truth is a lot like that oil well in the back yard. If we don't know
it's there or it doesn't make a difference in the way that we live our
lives, we are as impoverished as the person who has never heard the
gospel.

Even, and perhaps especially for those of us who have grown up in the
church, it is far too easy to gloss over these passages and be
unaffected by them. But the reality of sin and the necessity of grace
are so central to Christian faith that it is imperative that we go
beyond a kind of intellectual assent to these ideas. We must experience
the tragedy of Sin and the joy of Grace down to the depths our souls.
The point at which we can truly say ìI am sorry for my Sin and grateful
for God's forgiveness, that is coming to faith, that is conversion, that
is regeneration.

I believe I know the arts play an important role in deepening our
understanding and appreciation of scriptural truth and stirring the
embers of faith. How many of us can look back and identify a hymn or a
choral work, or poem or painting that is associated with our deepest
spiritual experiences? The chorus I played for the children--there's a
story behind that:

Soon after Patsy and I were married we moved from Goshen to Lancaster,
PA. You need to know that I'm a violinist and in Goshen at that time
the Messiah was perhaps overplayed. We string players would joke about
how many Messiahs we'd played this year. But in Lancaster, there was no
such tradition and after a year or so break I found myself missing the
piece and the way it deepened my understanding of Christmas. We looked
around and discovered that a group at Lancaster Bible College was
preparing to sing the Messiah. To my disappointment they were doing it
with piano and organ rather than strings, so if I wanted to participate
I had to sing, so both Patsy and I joined the choir. Despite the fact
that it was Christmas, at the Bible College there was a theological
imperative to do the entire Easter portion of the Messiah as well. It
turned out to be a very long, but very wonderful experience. I brought
away two abiding memories from that performance, one was some poor
soprano belting out Hallelujah during the grand pause at the end of the
Hallelujah chorus. But the other memory is the rush of emotion that
came from singing 'Since By Man Came Death' in the midst of a hundred
voice choir. I can feel the emotion welling up inside me just thinking
about it. It's just incredible.

To conclude this morning's message I want to again play this Chorus, and
I want you to close your eyes and contemplate the reality that if you
let the tragedy of sin and the joy of the resurrection and grace touch
your soul, your life can change, in the twinkling of an eye, forever.

[Since By Man Came Death plays over the PA] Amen.