February 22, 2026 | Word Out!
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READINGS AND SERMON
First Reading: Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7
15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. 16 And the LordGod commanded the man, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.”
3:1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?” 2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, 3 but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’ ” 4 But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die, 5 for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6 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. 7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.
Second Reading: Romans 5:12-19
12 Just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned—13 for sin was indeed in the world before the law, but sin is not reckoned when there is no law. 14 Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who did not sin in the likeness of Adam, who is a pattern of the one who was to come.
15 But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died through the one man’s trespass, much more surely have the grace of God and the gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many. 16 And the gift is not like the effect of the one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the gift following many trespasses brings justification. 17 If, because of the one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one, much more surely will those who receive the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.
18 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. 19 For just as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so through the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.
Gospel: Matthew 4:1-11
1 Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tested by the devil. 2 He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterward he was famished. 3 The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” 4 But he answered, “It is written,
’One does not live by bread alone,
but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ ”
5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, 6 saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written,
’He will command his angels concerning you,’
and ‘On their hands they will bear you up,
so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’ ”
7 Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’ ”
8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory, 9 and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” 10 Then Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written,
’Worship the Lord your God,
and serve only him.’ ”
11 Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.
Sermon: On Sin
Grace to you and peace from God, our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus, who is the Christ Amen.
I have a confession–which is probably appropriate, for the first day of Lent. I was somewhat overwhelmed by the texts we have for this Sunday in particular. The Second Reading is one that I have studied again and again. I’ve taught classes on it. I’ve read articles and books about it, and I’ve even written on it. So for me, the amount of material that’s in this text makes it difficult to condense or consolidate into one brief sermon.
So what I’m going to do, in order to make it intelligible, is to follow a set of steps so that you can see the argument I’m making, and then invite you to think about the topic for yourself.
“’Here at Christ Church, we don’t have sin.’ Stunning as it may be, this statement was made to a pastor of my acquaintance early in his current pastorate,” writes the New Testament scholar Beverly Gaventa. “What precisely the statement was intended to convey remains obscure, but it conjures up the range of ways in which contemporary Christians convey their discomfort with talk about sin, at least as it pertains to them.”
“A friend,” Gaventa continues, “told me she ‘could not “Amazing Grace,” as she had never been a “wretch” who required saving.’ Congregations seeking a more positive worship experience relegate Prayers of Confession—when we confess, for example, that we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves—relegate Prayers of Confession to the dustbin, with the explanation that people prefer not to talk about sin. People prefer not to think about sin.
I wonder how much of this sentiment applies to us at Queen Anne Lutheran Church.
How many of us, for example, find ourselves uncomfortable with the language of sin because it’s too negative; it’s too self-effacing? Or, by extension, how many of us find ourselves uncomfortable with the Confession I just quoted, where we confess that we are “in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves?” And what about the devil? This language appears throughout our Gospel Reading for today; is that not talk that also sits not well with us? That’s the problem.
Now, have you ever wondered why this is? I mean, Christians, you might say on the right of the spectrum, seem comfortable talking about sin, evil, demons, the end of the world, and the devil. Tucker Carlson, for example, freely admits on more than one occasion that he was confronted by a demon.
Yet for Christians on the left, and that probably includes most of us, this is problematic. It’s problematic for a couple of reasons.
For one thing, the language of the devil, or a demon, sounds mythological, antiquated, and in that regard, it’s almost embarrassing. It’s a relic, it would seem, of a bygone, pre-scientific, superstitious age. As the famous 20th century New Testament scholar Rudolph Bultmann once said, “We cannot use electric lights and radios, and in the event of illness, avail ourselves of modern medical and clinical means, and at the same time, believe in the spirit and wonder-world of the New Testament: demons, devils and all.”
Obviously, when you’re sick, you don’t go to an exorcist, you go to a doctor or a therapist; you take medication. That shows that you and I live in a world very different than the world out of which this language came—the language of sin, the language of devil, the language of demons.
Gaventa, however, takes this issue a step further, explaining that our dislike of the word “sin” is because we assume it’s a behavior.
We assume that it’s primarily something we have done, or, as one of our Confessions says, we have not done. In so doing it not only sounds negative—which is a big no-no in an officially optimistic culture like ours, where we can’t even talk about a funeral or a memorial, we can only talk about “celebrations of life,”—it also sounds a bit puritanical, doesn’t it? The kind of language that has been weaponized to judge and harm marginalized groups, particularly members of the LGBTQIA+ community.
And so we find ourselves confronted with two extremes: Christians on the left, who don’t like the language of sin because it sounds too negative or too judgmental; and Christians on the right, who use it, but reduce it to individual phenomenon, a behavior, which easily becomes a sort of judgment they wield against others, as evident in phrases like, “Love the sinner, Hate the sin.”
Friends, I have good news for you this morning. The Apostle Paul inhabits neither of these extremes.
He’s certainly not afraid to talk about sin. My God, he mentions it over 40 times in chapters 5–8 of Romans alone! But in almost all of those references, he does not reduce sin, in the singular, to a behavior or an activity. Instead, he uses “sin” in the singular, to refer to a cosmic power that has entered the world and enslaves us, such that we are no longer capable of living as God intended, by loving our neighbor instead of serving ourselves; such that we find ourselves easily divided from other people; and such that we are ultimately subject to death itself.
In other words, sin as a power comes into the world; it subjects the world to decay and death; it makes it impossible to fulfill God’s standards; and most importantly for Paul, it introduces conflict by invading and tearing apart communities.
But don’t take my word for it. Let’s take a look briefly at Romans 5, our Second Reading for the day, and I’ll show you what I mean. (And now it’s time for middle-aged reading glasses...)
There are three things I’d like to point out in this text. One, notice the first verse, verse 12: “Just as sin,”—so Paul is using the word “sin” in the singular, deliberately,—“Just as sin came into the world”—So sin has a quality, like an entity or a force, or again, a power ,that came through the world “through one man.” Who is that man? Adam, (if you said, Jesus, I would knock you down three points on your midterm), “Just as sin—understood here as a power, or a contagion, or a disease— came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all, because all have sinned…” —So sin, as a behavior, stems from sin as a condition under the power of this particular entity. So, sin enters the world and leads to death.
Now the best way, I think, in modern terms, to describe sin, the way Paul is talking about it, is addiction. In addiction, we do things we don’t want to do, as Paul says in Romans 7. Do you know, we have a support group now for people who have digital screen addiction? I have it. I was up till 2 a.m. writing this sermon last night, and afterward, instead of going to bed, I sat in my chair in front of my television and doom-scrolled—and I couldn’t stop myself. Have you ever had that experience? That’s the kind of experience Paul seems to be alluding to, when he talks about doing something you don’t want to do; the kind of experience we name in today’s language as “addiction.” And addiction, as Paul says, or sin, leads to death. In other words, it’s a self-destructive behavior. I gave you a light example, but a self-destructive behavior like alcoholism, that can, and sometimes does, lead to death.
So the first thing to notice in Paul’s letter here, is that he uses the word “sin” in the singular, and he does so for the vast majority of times that word appears. The next thing I want to point out is in verse 17. Paul writes, “If, because of one man’s trespass—So again, we’re referring to Adam. And by the way, Adam is an abstract noun. It’s not a proper name. It means “humanity”— So, sin entered the world through humanity, when humanity disobeyed God. Kind of like Pandora’s box, right? You open up Pandora’s box and all of these destructive spirits are unleashed and enter the world—“If, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned,”—So that suggests that death is also a power or a force—“through that one, much more surely will those who receive the abundance of grace,”—which is a counter-cosmic power that is unleashed by the crucifixion and death of Jesus Christ, a counter-power that Gaventa describes as ‘God’s reckless, abundant love.’—“who received the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.”
So, where sin brought death through the power of addiction, the power that enslaves not only individuals, but community, Jesus Christ unleashes the power of grace, which is an antidote to sin, the antidote that frees us to live as God intends, and invites us to live together as God intends. “Therefore,” Paul concludes in this argument, “just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification for all.”
We have been made righteous. We have been set free from the power of sin.
And what I love about that language there at the end, is that it’s universal. Sin overtakes the world, but in Christ, God’s grace ultimately overtakes sin.
Now that’s a lot to take in, so let me summarize it in three ways. Sin is an enslaving cosmic power that is manifest three-fold:
personally, as in an addiction. It compels us to do what we do not want to do, like doom-scrolling;
cosmically, as in the power of death, it subjects all creatures to the bondage of decay, Paul says in Romans 8, and ultimately leads to death;
and then collectively or socially, the power that separates us, the power that divides communities, which explains why Paul is always in his letters, with one exception, focused on church conflict. That’s the power of sin: tearing communities apart.
This explains why Paul condemns behaviors like drunkenness and anger. These are behaviors, the result of the power of sin, that divide communities.
And it explains why Paul, by contrast, uplifts other behavior, what he calls “works of the Spirit,” like kindness and generosity, because they unite communities, because they make us one in the body of Christ, all of which shows how the Apostle Paul cuts a middle path between Christians on the left, who don’t like to talk about sin, and Christians on the right, who reduce sin to individual behaviors.
Yes, sin is real. No, sin is much more than behavior. Sin is a social reality, ultimately, that separates and divides us from one another, the worst form of which is a collective kind of madness that descends on groups of people, and tears them apart. The former Congressman Adam Kinzinger describes, you might say, sin this way, as “a mass psychosis.”
Now I tried to think of examples of where sin, understood as a social power that divides and tears apart community. I tried to think of an example for that, and I came up with two. So listen closely:
One example comes from the Gospel of Luke. When Jesus is crucified, they seem to be under sin’s spell, under its power, and we have evidence for that, because they yell at Jesus, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” only to realize, Luke concludes, after what they’ve done, in horror, how wrong it was. Luke says, “Their eyes were opened, and they beat their breasts.” So that’s a biblical example of how sin, understood as a power, manifests itself collectively and compels people to do what they don’t want to do, namely, crucify an innocent man.
Fast forward 2000 years: we see another example of this when it comes to what happened five, six years ago, on January 6, when a kind of collective madness descended upon a group of people and drove them to storm the Capitol and use violence, which ultimately led to multiple deaths. The kind of violence that is a result of this collective madness, or mass psychosis, is a perfect example, I think, of what Paul meant by sin as a power that overtakes groups of people.
And of course, we see that going all the way back to the 1930s and 40s, with what happened in Germany; that sin was the kind of collective madness that broke apart the German nation, and ended in the destruction of millions of people.
But here’s the good news; here’s the great news; here’s the amazing news:
Jesus is with us in all of this. Jesus was tempted by the power of sin, which the devil personifies. He overcame it. He could have ruled by force. He could have been an agent of conflict, separation, and destruction, but he refused. He could have condoned violence, shortly before he was killed, but he refused.
When he’s arrested, his disciples say, “Lord should we strike with the sword?” And then one of them struck the slave of the high priest and cut off his right ear. But Jesus says, and I think this is remarkable, “No more of this.” And he touched the ear and healed him.
And that same Jesus, as we’ll sing about in today’s Hymn for the Day, walks with us. He walks with us, not only as a king, but especially in Lent, as a companion. He invites us to be one, to overcome the power of sin through His grace, to be in unity, as He and the Father are in unity.
And in so doing, he enables us to resist sin, the divisive power that always lurks behind the door, as Genesis 4 says, and threatens to divide and separate groups of people—particularly in Paul’s case, the churches that he served. But also, sin is a collective madness that threatens to divide and conquer the United States, a power that is so evil, it can tear apart communities and lead to all kinds of death and destruction.
This Lent, you’ll be hearing a lot of language about sin, but I invite you to see it as Paul sees it: not simply as an individual behavior, but a force, or a power of separation, that divides us from one another, in sometimes very destructive ways.
Yet more importantly, I also want to point you this Lent to Jesus Christ, whose grace heals our divisions and makes us one, as we practice every Sunday in the Sharing of the Peace. In those moments, in the reunion of life with life, and life with God, we testify to the power of grace that has come into the world through Jesus Christ; the power that enabled Paul to say, that where sin, the power of separation, abounds, grace, the power of reunion, abounds all the more.
May Christ walk with you this season of Lent. May Christ unify us as a congregation. And may the power of God in Christ unify all kinds of broken communities beyond these walls, including a divided nation.
In Jesus’s name, Amen.