Into Courage

Lent 1A: Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7; Psalm 32

Romans 5:12-19; Matthew 4:1-11

The Rev'd Cameron Partridge

February 22, 2026

https://vimeo.com/1168680127

One afternoon well over a decade ago, I was driving somewhere in the Boston area. Our oldest was in the back, buckled into a car seat. We chatted about various things as I navigated traffic and the area’s notoriously aggressive drivers. I came to a red light and, after a stop, turned and continued down the block. Out of nowhere the little voice in the back seat started talking about getting in trouble. I was confused. What was this about? I came to another red light and waited. “Are you going to go?” the voice asked. “No, I replied. The light is red.” “But you went go last time and the light wasn’t green.” “Oh, I replied,” I went right on red. You can do that after you come to a full stop, but you have to actually stop first. Then you can go, but only if you’re turning right. Or left if it’s a one-way street.’” We drove on. A few blocks later I put on my right turn signal as we approached a red light. I stopped and waited. “Are you going to turn?” the voice asked. “Actually no, not this time. Because you see that sign? It says ‘No turn on red.’ So this time I have to wait. Even if someone behind me honks.” My turn signal clicked away the seconds. The light stayed red. No one honked. But then the voice said, “Are you thinking about it?” “Thinking about what?” I replied. “Turning anyway.” “No, I’m not!” I replied. “The sign says I can’t, so I’m not even thinking about it. I’m just waiting.” Another long pause ensued. Finally, the voice said, “Now are you thinking about it?”

“Come quickly to help us who are assaulted by many temptations,” our collect for the first Sunday of Lent intoned. “As you know the weaknesses of each of us,” we prayed, “let each one find you mighty to save.” From the cute to the terrifying, the trivial to the deadly serious, temptation comes to us in a dizzying array of forms. How to keep our heads level, our moral compasses steady, our hearts grounded? As we fully enter the season of Lent this morning, having passed through the gate of Ash Wednesday this week, a forty days journey in the wilderness stretches before us. On its other side, through the valley of the shadow of death, lies the promised land, the glorious, death-bursting liberation of resurrection life which we will embrace afresh at Easter. This season is a time to intentionally make our way toward, and more deeply into, what our tradition calls the Paschal Mystery, the emergence of new life out of death. This is the mystery into which we are immersed in baptism, buried with Christ so that we may be raised with him, so that already, even on this side of the grave, we may walk in newness of life. We walk this journey together as members of this mysteriously expansive collective body, encouraging one another when we grow weary or overwhelmed, when pain, discouragement, or despair knocks at our doors. For the Paschal Mystery does not simply await us at the end of all things. It is meant to strengthen us in and for the here and now, to give us courage as we navigate the tests and temptations, the deep challenges that assail us.

Our readings depict such challenges in several ways, but distinctively through encounter with and resistance to deception. In our passage from Genesis (2:15-17; 3:1-7) the first humans are enjoying their beautiful garden context when they are famously tested by the serpent. Here evil takes on a crafty guise. It asks them if they are allowed to eat of the trees of the garden, and the answer that comes straightforwardly explains that indeed they were allowed, except for the one in the middle, lest they die. This story has been used to depict the woman, later called Eve, as somehow more gullible or weak than the man, and as the sex through which death became endemic to humanity. Much critical biblical and theological scholarship has rightly taken this misogynist theological reading to task.^[1] One could push back – and some indeed have – that, far from naive, the woman sought after wisdom and invited the man to do the same.^[2] Yet at the same time, the story clearly does depict both humans stepping over a line that God had drawn, tempted into doing so by a crafty creature. How not to be drawn into such a web becomes part of the challenge the story issues to us.

Our gospel passage (Matthew 4:1-11) also famously depicts temptation, in this case of Jesus by the devil. In this case the setting is not a garden but a wilderness or desert into which Jesus had journeyed following his baptism and the launch of his ministry. He fasts during this time and is in a weakened state, famished, as a crafty creature assaults him. In three different ways the devil seeks to entrap him. First, he reminds him of his hunger and tempts Jesus to turn stones into bread. Then he lures Jesus to prove his favored status by forcing God’s protection. Finally, he evokes Jesus as the pinnacle of worldly power if only he would switch his allegiance. Jesus resists all three scenarios with biblical rejoinders. But lest we think our wellbeing rests on being infinitely scripturally nimble, proof text always ready to parry, the rock on which Jesus’ resistance stands is something much more fundamental: trust that God was with him. That, as our Psalm put it, “mercy embraces those who trust in the Most High” (Psalm 32:11). Trust in God’s presence with us in moments of uncertainty and fear, in the face of deception or danger, lends us one of the most important spiritual qualities that life can call out of us: courage.

In the novel The Screwtape Letters, the twentieth century Anglican theologian C.S. Lewis depicts courage as uniquely positioned among the various qualities, or virtues, that Christians are called to carry out in the world. The Screwtape Letters feature missives from a demon called Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood. Lewis first published these letters in a periodical in serial form in 1941 and then collected together as a novel in 1942 as the British people reckoned with both outward and inward dimensions, moral and spiritual, that World War II was drawing them into.^[3] They were struggling, and The Screwtape Letters gave them a forum to spiritually wrestle with where they were in that deeply challenging time. In entertaining, satirical, everyday language, the letters envision demonic strategy sessions over how to get human beings to succumb to various temptations. In one such letter Screwtape write to Wormwood about how he can draw humans into hatred through fear:

Hatred is best combined with Fear. Cowardice, alone of all the vices, is purely painful – horrible to anticipate, horrible to feel, horrible to remember; Hatred has its pleasures. It is therefore often the compensation by which a frightened [person] reimburses [themselves] for the miseries of Fear. The more [one] fears, the more [they] will hate. And Hatred is also a great anodyne for shame. To make a deep wound in [a human being’s] charity, you should therefore first defeat [their] courage.^[4]

Charity, or love, can be undermined, disarmed by Wormwood by assaulting the human victim’s courage. Intriguing that it is courage that needs to be targeted as opposed to another of the virtues. But courage, explains Screwtape, “is not simply one of the virtues” alongside faith, hope, charity or love, mercy, justice etc. Courage is also, he writes, “the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality.”^[5] A virtue such as “honesty, or mercy, which yields to danger will be… honest or merciful only on conditions. Pilate was merciful till it became risky.”^[6] Courage enables us to be true to the virtues called forth in us even as they are put to the test.

And so as we make our way into Lent, as we engage in our own moment of reckoning at this time in the life of our world, our country, our region, whatever may be sifting through in our own life, whether trivial or challenging, deep and highly consequential, our invitation is to consider courage, to reach for courage. Because courage is the envelop through which our other virtues are secured when they are put to the test – which they are and will be in all manner of ways. Courage sustains us in trust, the trust we place in God: God who created us; who redeemed us; who in Jesus Christ walked our wilderness way with us; God who raises us to newness of life. Courage is to accompany us on the way as members of this body. And when we feel our courage faltering, we can encourage one another – that is part of the beauty of this tradition that is communal and not only individual. We are meant to strengthen one another, knowing that God is working through us, kneading us as leavened dough rising together.

I felt that courage yesterday, as several of us marched in San Francisco among families, allies, and transfolks, pushing back against those who would curtail access to gender affirming care. We stood together with jubilant hope, and a sense of radiant courage that I heard in speakers – both parents and trans youth, folks in the wider trans community who have been in this work for decades – a sense of all being in this together, and encouraging those around us to keep theircourage, to stand their ground against headwinds that would erode the need to keep access to such life affirming care.^[7]That encouragement is something that I carry with me as I make my way into this season.

I invite you to seek out courage in whatever way you can. We will have a formation series this season, starting Wednesday and continuing for the next five weeks on the theme of courage. Each week we will lift up individuals, or movements, who have witnessed what courage can look like in their times, for us to take into our own. And so, friends, this morning be of good courage. From wherever you are, whatever life is bringing your way, let us make our way into this holy season of Lent strengthened with trust in the God who calls us ever close to God’s heart, people of good courage, encouraging one another.

^[1] This work has been unfolding for decades. Classic pathbreaking examples include Phyllis Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1978); Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1983); Rosemary Radford Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1983) and Ruether, ed. Religion and Sexism (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1974); and Kari Elisabeth Borresen, ed., The Image of God: Gender Models in Judaeo-Christian Tradition (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1991, 1995).

^[2] Mieke Bal, Lethal Love: Feminist Literary Readings of Biblical Love Stories (especially the final chapter, “Sexuality, Sin, and Sorrow: The Emergence of the Female Character”) (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1987)

^[3] C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, Preface to 1961 edition (New York: MacMillon Publishing CO, 1961, 1980), i.

^[4] C.S. Lewis, 147. Italics in original, bracketed language added.

^[5] C.S. Lewis, 148

^[6] C.S. Lewis, 148-9

^[7] Roland Li, “‘Grow a spine’: S.F. protesters target California Democratic Convention,” San Francisco Chronicle, February 21, 2026: https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/sf-california-democratic-convention-protests-21421282.php