Thorns and Thistles

​1st Sunday in Lent – A                                                                                               LSB #’s 561, 562, 387
Text – Genesis 3:17-18
 
And to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife & have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns & thistles it shall bring forth for you; & you shall eat the plants of the field.”  
 
THORNS & THISTLES
 
 
I was picking blackberries last summer, when I came across a particular spot where four or five of the blackberry canes were grouped together such that they formed an arch.    It was about six feet high & looked as if God had draped a blanket of blackberries over it.  And, unlike other places in the patch, all the berries were ripe. 
Also, unlike other places in the patch, I didn’t have to contort my body in order to reach around all the thorns.  Instead, I could simply stand there & drop handfuls of berries right into the bucket.  It was like God was saying to me, “I prepared this just for you!”  A blackberry patch full of thorns & prickers is not the kind of place you ordinarily expect to find a picture of heaven. 
The rest of the patch was ornery & challenging to pick.   It’s like the thorns have a mind of their own.   They reach out to grab a hold of you, & don’t easily let go.   In that sense, a blackberry patch is a rather accurate picture of life in this twisted world.   Sin is constantly clawing at you, looking to rip & tear   & draw blood. 
The serpent tempted Adam & Eve with a fantasy, “…you will be like God…”  (Genesis 3:5 ESV)   It didn’t go well.   Sorrow, sweat, pain & dust were the tragic result that eventually led King Solomon to describe it all with these words in Ecclesiastes:
“All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.  What has been is what will be, & what has been done is what will be done, & there is nothing new under the sun.”  (1:8-9 ESV)   And it’s not just weariness that life is filled with.  The curse of thorns & thistles extends beyond the field to all that humans do.   Genesis 3:19 tells us, “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground…”  (ESV)   All forms of work have become dangerous in a harsh & cursed world, even, at times, bringing death.   King Solomon wrote of that as well:
“He who digs a pit will fall into it, & a serpent will bite him who breaks through a wall.  He who quarries stones is hurt by them, & he who splits logs is endangered by them.”  (Ecclesiastes 10:8-9 ESV)   God put a curse on the dust because of Adam’s sin.  Work is now a hardship & a toil, burdened with danger, stress, pain & struggle. 
Eventually, as sin removes the breath of life from a human being, the body reverts to the dust from which it came.  It’s a somber topic that we dwell upon during this season of Lent.  How many of you, in the last week,   have had an in-depth conversation with someone about death?   It’s one that few people willingly seek to engage.  It’s not fun. 
Nevertheless, death is coming for all of us.  The thorns & thistles testify to that in a quiet & subtle way.  None of us here are farmers, but the aches & pains we endure also testify to that & usually in less quiet & subtle ways.  In our nation, around 600 billion dollars is spent each year on pain medication.   It helps us to put off any thoughts of death & dying. 
In Lent, the focus on the repentance needed for sin, is not meant to torture you, but to help you understand how repentance, as a gift from God, restores our relationship with Him.  That relationship was broken as the OT reading from Genesis 3 tells us.  The thorns & thistles & pain are symptoms of the brokenness of our relationship with our Creator. 
Every day on this earth is a Genesis 3 kind of day.  It’s a reality you cannot avoid & you cannot change.  Sin has corrupted the entire universe of God’s creation.  Genesis 3 is the inescapable fact that determines all the contours of every aspect of our lives.  The blessing of giving birth was stained with the pain of suffering.  The blessing of work was a responsibility in keeping the garden of God’s perfect creation.  Work is now a hardship & a toil, burdened with pain & struggle.  The Sabbath day is meant to moderate that & be a day of rest from the hardship & struggle of work.  The Sabbath also points ahead to God’s perfect & permanent solution. 
When the bondage of decay creeps through our door, when our hopes dissolve into despair, we wonder, “Why doesn’t God do something?”   Because we are impatient, we question why God is taking so long to accomplish what we desire.  In our pain & despair we often forget the fact that God has already done something. 
“And the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns & put it on His head...”  (John 19:2 ESV)   Because of Adam’s sin, Yahweh cursed the ground so that thorns it brings forth for us, but also He sent forth His Son to wear a crown of those thorns to His death.  With those thorns & with that death, God has paid the penalty for all the sins through all the history of all mankind. 
The victory has been won.  Suffering & death have been defeated.   If you endure Lent because of the coming joy of Easter, you should realize that you cannot have Easter without Good Friday.  It is in contrast to the cross that the resurrection takes on its full meaning.  It is in contrast to the thorns that blackberries take on their full value. 
It is in contrast to hell that heaven takes on its full joy & perfection.   Human history proves that we are entirely unable to eliminate suffering & death.  Christ Jesus has conquered them.   All He asks us to do, as we follow Him, is to be patient & kind while we wait for our resurrection from the dead. 
Yes, in spite of that promise, almost everything in this life is still weariness.  Our eyes are never satisfied with seeing, nor our ears filled with hearing.  That’s why the Holy Spirit gives us the gift of self-control.  We are to use it in resisting the urge to despair.  It is possible to live a life of joy even in this world because we know that God is working all things together for good for His children.  That doesn’t mean we should never grieve for the suffering in this world.  What it does mean is that we hold our grief & our joy in the tension that certainly exists between them.  We do not try to relieve that tension by claiming all is joy, or by claiming all is sorrow. 
We do live in a world that is totally broken, yet, we also live in world that has been, & is still being, redeemed from the lies of Satan.  Jesus bore that crown of thorns on His head to demonstrate that His love for us is real in spite of the suffering we endure.   And there are times even now when God reveals a glimpse of heaven to us. 
For some of us, that is in a perfect setting of blackberries to be picked without the risk of getting torn by thorns.  For others, it’s on the green of a magnificent golf course at sunset.  And for others it’s in the laughter of a child who feels secure in the love of its parents.  Wherever you see those glimpses of heaven, know that God prepared those moments just for you. 
Another aspect of living by faith & not by sight is to not allow the thorns & thistles to block our view of God’s blessings.  Human beings the world over love to focus on what is wrong instead of focusing on what is right.  Our Lord has given us more blessings that anyone can count, yet how often do we make any effort to count those blessings? 
One day, Jesus will return to make all things new.  Our Lord promises that until then, He will sustain us in faith & He will never allow anyone to snatch us out of His loving hands.  Lent is meant to remind us to keep on turning back to our Creator.  The Holy Spirit is at work in this very service to accomplish exactly that no matter how many thorns & thistles we see.  Amen. 
 
 
Joy to the earth, the Savior reigns!  Let men their songs employ, while fields & floods, rocks, hills & plains repeat the sounding joy.     No more let sins & sorrows grow  nor thorns infest the ground;  He comes to make His blessings flow  far as the curse is found,  far as the curse is found,  far as,  far as  the curse is found.  Amen.  LSB 387:2-3.