The Preacher's Lectionary Notebook - Thematic Connections

The First Sunday in Lent (Year A)

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7; Romans 5:12-19; Matthew 4:1-11

Taken together, these three passages tell one long, human story about trust, desire, and the strange pull of becoming something we were never meant to seize for ourselves. In Genesis 2, the human being is placed in the garden not as an owner or conqueror, but as a caretaker. Tend the garden, enjoy its abundance, but don’t cross this one boundary. It’s not arbitrary; it’s relational. The boundary marks trust—life lived by listening rather than grabbing. The tree is there as a reminder that humans are creatures, not gods, and that freedom works best when it’s received rather than taken.

Genesis 3 shows how quickly that trust erodes. The serpent doesn’t start with rebellion but with suspicion. “Did God really say…?” That question is still doing a lot of damage in the world. The temptation isn’t just to eat fruit; it’s to rewrite reality so that God looks stingy and humans look deprived. The promise is knowledge, wisdom, autonomy—“you will be like God.” And it works. The humans reach, eat, and immediately the world feels different. Eyes are opened, yes, but what they see first is their own vulnerability. Shame enters the scene, along with fear and hiding. The grasp for godlikeness doesn’t lead upward; it fractures relationship—with God, with each other, and even with the self.

Paul, in Romans 5, steps back and reflects on this pattern as something bigger than one bad choice in a garden. Adam becomes a representative figure, a stand-in for humanity’s bent toward mistrust and self-assertion. Sin spreads not just because people break rules, but because they inherit a way of being human that keeps repeating the same move: grasping life instead of receiving it. But Paul refuses to let Adam have the last word. He places Adam and Christ side by side. Where Adam’s act opens the door to sin and death, Christ’s obedience opens a new future marked by grace and life. Humanity’s problem isn’t solved by trying harder not to eat forbidden fruit; it’s healed by a different kind of human faithfulness.

Matthew 4 shows that difference clearly. Jesus enters the wilderness, a kind of anti-garden—no abundance, no easy provision, just hunger and isolation. The tempter shows up again, still working the same angles. Turn stones into bread. Prove yourself. Take power without the pain. Each temptation echoes Genesis. Meet your own needs, seize control, bypass trust. But Jesus refuses to grasp. He doesn’t argue; he quotes Scripture and stays grounded in dependence on God. Where Adam reached, Jesus waits. Where Adam listened to a voice of suspicion, Jesus listens to the voice of the Father.

This is why these texts belong so naturally to Lent. Lent is the season when the church steps into the wilderness on purpose, naming hunger, limits, and temptation instead of hiding them. It’s a time to notice how often we repeat Adam’s move and to practice, however imperfectly, the way of Jesus instead. Lent doesn’t deny human weakness; it tells the truth about it. But it also insists that the story doesn’t end in the garden with shame and fig leaves. There is another human way to live—one shaped not by grasping, but by trust, obedience, and grace.

FOR FURTHER EXPLORATION

Where do we notice the temptation to grasp control or self-sufficiency instead of trusting God, especially during this season of Lent?

In what ways do the stories of Adam and Jesus reveal two different ways of being human, and which way do we see shaping my own life?

How might practicing limits, silence, or fasting during Lent help us listen more closely to God rather than to voices of suspicion or fear?