Already Here, but Not Yet

1st Sunday in Lent, Year A - Feb 22, 2026

Rev Sarah Colvin

You can find this week's readings here.

I have a self-help book from the 90s called the Pain of Being Human. It could be retitled as the Sin of Being Human because it addresses little sins or transgressions that we all face- injured pride, lack of belonging, excluding others, self-pity, etc. If we subtitled biblical texts, we could go back and subtitle this passage of Genesis as the Sin of Being Human. However, rather than each little transgression like my self-help book, it instead gets to the root, the descriptive state and fact of sin.

We have in Genesis the story of how sin comes into the world. These stories of the patriarchs are often referred to as myths, which does not make them un-true. What I mean by that is there can be truth in something and it is not necessarily factual. There is an anthropomorphism of God wandering around the garden, and more importantly a talking snake. Not to say miracles can’t happen, but more to the point, the core truth of the story is about how human will, curiosity and self-justification gets humans in trouble with God. It is from this story that Augustine gets the concept of “the fall” and “original sin.” Augustine gives his theological explanation of how God did not make something sinful but created a state that it was possible to sin.

The Gospel represents another mythic passage. Here I want to be very careful that you understand what I mean by myth. The first definition in Merriam Webster for myth is a usually traditional story of ostensibly (or plainly viewed) historical events that serves to unfold part of the world view of a people or explain a practice, belief, or natural phenomenon. So, I am NOT saying the Gospel is false, au contraire (which is another definition of myth), but I am saying the story is a traditional story that helps to show us who Jesus is. For most, if not all of us, this passage is not new. We have read it before. And in proverbial 20:20 hindsight we already knowing who Jesus is, we are not surprised at all that Jesus did not succumb to temptation by the devil, the tester, the tempter. It is one of those passages that helps us know who Jesus is. and yet, it is much like the reading from Genesis in that there were no witnesses.. this is a mythic story. Again, no less true, but we believe this story because of our faith and that it fits with who we know Jesus to be.

Generally, an individual is never going to face the kind of temptation illustrated in the Gospel, but in many ways an organization can and it is with heavy irony that often it is the very church that faces the challenge of these temptations. All of the temptations presented to Jesus by the Devil are temptations of power. They are all affronts to God.

The first temptation that the church falls to is to attempt the miraculous. It is when we try to give easy answers, sometimes in the name of growth, it is the preaching of the Easter without the Good Friday. It is the already without the not yet. We want to be in charge and welcoming with feel good messages, rather than life is hard messages. Life is both--- life is both.

The second temptation that the church falls to is one of glamour. The temptation Christ faced was an attempt to test God’s love, to save Him as if God were a superhero. (Throw yourself down and God will save you.) We too want to be superheroes or heroines. I have learned over the course of time this axiom: “You have to watch out for those priests who actually WANT to become bishop.” It’s similar to how television or blogger pastors get wealthier and wealthier. These are examples of individuals pursuing the power of stardom. The church itself can do this; we really have to look at what is the purpose of the church? Is it to make disciples or to achieve something? Members? money? budget? Will God let us fail? Are our purposes even aligned with God’s purposes? We have to ask the questions.

The third way the church falls is in a quest for political power. We must be ever mindful when we are too cozy with politics. Which is not to say that the church does not have a role being political. I saw a great meme- “If the church is not political then it does not serve the marginalized; if the church is partisan, it serves the empire.” Which is to say, the church cannot look for power in politics but must make its voice heard.

It is in Corinthians that Paul likens the church to the body of Christ, each of us having gifts, like different body parts but together we make one body. Sometimes the church looks in a fun-house mirror, and things are not as they should be. I believe this happens when we make God in our image rather than allow us to be in God’s image.

What does this to do with All Saints Sharon Chapel? The world has changed a lot since the founding of this church. The world has changed since the heyday of US church attendance in the 1950s. We will not remake that. But let us be clear that the purpose of the church is to bring people to Christ, to make disciples.

I don’t need to remind people that since the founding of this church before the civil war, there is a lot of societal change. There have been and remain a lot of national tensions and ethnic/ racial tensions. All these tensions mix together to create a very different America and world than when the church was founded, but a church both then and now, always in need of healing power of the Triune God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Yet, the mission of the church, more accurately, God’s mission for God’s disciples, all wrapped in our baptismal vows, does not change. We don’t get to pick and choose. If we never again have a full church here at All Saints, it will be okay, but regardless, let us be real authentic Christians. Let us care, let us do the right thing in the world, let us be disciples.

So instead of looking for an easy miracle, or the glamorous role in society or the right political position, we can keep it simple: we must stay with the crucified, the marginalized, and still have joy. We don’t get one without the other. We need humility and to pray for God’s vision, and we must do the work that God has given us to do in the world as Christians. Paul’s letter to the Romans has the theme of the second Adam, who is Christ, making everything right… Although Adam was responsible for bringing sin into the world, Christ’s act of righteousness sets things right…. The early church figures, such as Iraneus, focused heavily on this… that in Jesus, God redoes humanity into what it was meant to be. What was broken in Adam is redeemed and recreated in Christ. And so eschatologically (at the end times) creation attains its destiny. We live in the already and not yet, we are still broken and yet we are redeemed and recreated. This is where the church writ large, and where All Saints has space to be: still broken and yet working in God’s act of redemption and recreation.

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IMAGE ATTRIBUTION: Bruegel, Jan, 1568-1625. Mountain Landscape with the Temptation of Christ, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=57314 [retrieved February 25, 2026]. Original source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jan_Brueghel_(I)_-_Mountain_Landscape_with_the_Temptation_of_Christ.jpg.