Midweek Lent 3 – Pr. Faugstad homily
Texts: Genesis 3:16,19, St. Luke 22:39-44

In Christ Jesus, who drank the cup of suffering to the very bottom, so we would be freed from the heavy burden of our sins, dear fellow redeemed:

When you go to work, whether in your home, at school, at your job, or in your community, do you think in terms of “get to” or “have to”? Is your work a blessing or a burden? In the beginning before the fall into sin, it was always “get to.” After the LORD God planted a garden in Eden filled with “every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food” (Gen. 2:9), He put Adam in the garden “to work it and keep it” (v. 15). We might think of a perfect life as one in which we wouldn’t have to work. But Adam worked. He joyfully tended the plants in the Garden of Eden. Work was not a result of the fall into sin; work was a gift from God to man.

And it still is. Work gives us an outlet for our energy. It gives us an opportunity to apply our skills and abilities. It gives us purpose and a way to “make a living.” Work is a gift from God. But we don’t get to work like Adam did. We don’t know what it is like to work with a perfect attitude and perfect abilities in a perfect world. We do our work with a sinful nature in a sinful world.

In the first reading for today, the LORD told Eve and Adam what the sin they had brought into the world would do to their work. Eve was destined for motherhood ever since God told her and her husband, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (1:28). But what would have been a glistening crown on her head—the bearing of children to populate the earth—now would also be a cross for her to bear. “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing,” said the LORD; “in pain you shall bring forth children.”

This is a unique burden for women, because only biological women can carry and bear children. Only women have a womb in which a fertilized egg can be implanted and grow. Only women have a body which can change and stretch to carry another person inside. Only women feel the pain and pressure of a child growing bigger and bigger month after month. Only women understand the anguish of bringing forth a child into the world.

Why would any woman go through this and endure this process that permanently changes how she is? The LORD said, “Your desire shall be for your husband.” It wasn’t as though Eve did not care for Adam before the fall. But her needs and his needs were so perfectly matched that one did not think about what the other needed. In their perfect love for one another, they only thought about what they could give each other.

Now that had changed. Woman’s desire would be for man. She would need his love. She would need his protection. She would need him to provide for her while she carried and nursed their children. And these things that she would need from man, he would never perfectly supply. In this vulnerable state, she would also understand the final part of the curse of sin, that her husband would “rule over” her.

This language shocks us. Outside the Church, this language offends people. There are plenty of women who say, “I care nothing about men. No man rules over me!” And yet there is both a physical and a psychological reality that women need men. God made man and woman interdependent when He formed Eve from Adam’s rib, and this interdependence has not changed. What has changed is that the relationship between the sexes is not perfect. It is strained by sin.

And Adam would have his own crosses to bear. The work that he had previously enjoyed and taken great pleasure in, which had always produced bountifully, now would be full of trouble and hardship. The LORD said, “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread.” He would have to work for his food; it wouldn’t come easy anymore.

And that work would take its toll. The very ground that God had shaped him out of, the very ground that he plowed, planted, and picked for his food, that same ground would become his grave. “[F]or you are dust,” God said, “and to dust you shall return.” This is true for every man. Whether a man is a poor farmer or makes it on the Forbes 500 list, whether he has many healthy years or many sick ones, whether he is considered a success or a failure—every man dies. That’s what he gets for his hard work, for his heavy toil, for the sweat of his face.

Women wear themselves out and spend themselves in childbearing and family life. Men wear themselves out and spend themselves in working to get ahead, in trying to do something that lasts. But what does it accomplish? What is it all for? King Solomon, the Preacher in Ecclesiastes, said, “I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun” (2:11).

King Solomon was right. The fall into sin turned beautiful things ugly, blessings into burdens, and joys into sorrows. If all we knew was life in this world—we live, we work, we die—that would indeed be “vanity.” It would be futile, worthless, empty. If all we are focused on is what we do, what we want to accomplish, what serves ourselves—that is vanity.

But God the Father did something to change the course of our vain existence. He planted His perfect Son in the womb of a poor woman. She did not ask for this, but she accepted it as the will of God. She told the angel who conveyed this startling message, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word” (Luk. 1:38).

Now we see her Son Jesus enter a garden. Like the first Adam who worked in the Garden of Eden, this Son of Man went to work in the Garden of Gethsemane. But He brought no shovel, hoe, or rake. What He brought with Him was your sin. He brought your sin of failing to honor your father and your mother. He brought your sin of fighting with your siblings, or of losing patience with your children and neglecting to teach them what is good. He brought your sin of not honoring and respecting your husband. He brought your sin of not showing love and making sacrifices for your wife.

Every sin that you have committed in your home, at school, at your job, and in your community, Jesus carried with Him into the garden. It was a heavy load. He pleaded with His disciples to keep watch with Him, but they slept. He pleaded with His Father to remove the cup of suffering from Him if He was willing. And while an angel from heaven appeared to Him and strengthened Him, there was no other way. Jesus had to do the horrible work of suffering God’s wrath for the sins of Adam and Eve and for all their descendants including you and me.

“And being in an agony He prayed more earnestly; and His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.” Adam deserved to do his work “by the sweat of his face,” because of the sin he brought into the world. We deserve the same hardships in our work, because we also have sinned. Jesus did not deserve this suffering; He committed no sin. Why should He be in such agony?

It was for His bride. It was to cleanse her who was unclean. It was to present her “without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish” (Eph. 5:27). You are this bride as a member of His holy Church. Jesus went through all the anguish of this suffering for your sake. He willingly took your trespasses on Himself.

Those great drops of bloody sweat falling from His face to the ground—those were for you. He shed His blood to wash away your sin, so that you could see your work differently, so you could see the people around you differently—so you could see them as He sees you.

Because of His suffering for sin in your place, the good work that He has prepared for you to do is not a burdensome “have to.” Your work is a blessed “get to” for the glory of His name. Amen.

+  +  +

(picture from Redeemer Lutheran Church altar painting)