Politicians these days can’t agree on how to define "family." What exactly does it take to make a family? I’ll tell you. It takes stories.

One of the best stories in the Laybold family was about the dresses Lavina made for her three daughters – two complete sets every year – one for Christmas and one for Easter. However, being a busy teacher, Lavina didn’t always get started until the night before. The girls would go to bed on Saturday night with their Easter dresses all in pieces, cut out and still pinned to the pattern paper. On Easter morning they would wake up – and there would be the complete ensemble.

Well, almost complete. Sometimes the hems were basted, not sewn, and there was the Christmas Eve when time ran out to put in zippers. Lavina had to stitch all three girls into their dresses on their way out the door to church. When they got home they had to be cut out before they could got to bed.

What makes family? Stories do. Stories form us; they tell us who we are. Better put, we learn who we are by hearing and telling stories.

Stories also form Christians. Surely you’ve noticed that by now. Each week we gather round this big book and from it we hear the stories that form us into God’s people. Some of the stories are happy. Some are sad. Some make you want to cry out loud. Several are extremely embarrassing – so embarrassing that you wonder why our ancestors wrote them down. Taken altogether, over time, told and retold, set to music and sung over and over, these stories tell us who we are – and even more important, who God is.

Today, on this first Sunday in Lent, we revisit two of those family stories. Both are hugely important for understanding who we are and who God is, and from the beginning our forebears in the faith have understood that they go together. You can’t really hear one without the other echoing in your head, and vice versa.

The first story is about our ancestors Grandpa Adam and Grandma Eve. (This story also involves sewing dresses, but we’ll get to that in a moment.) Grandpa Adam and Grandma Eve were tenant gardeners. Gardening was their calling. You might say they were made for it. God got the garden started for them, and then handed it over for them to manage. That was an important job. Gardens, after all, don’t take care of themselves.

"Every tree in this garden has good fruit to eat," God said, "except that one in the middle there, which I call ‘the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.’ Help yourself to everything else, but stay away from the fruit of that tree. It’s a killer."

Now, in the garden was a snake. Why God put that snake there I can’t tell you. That’s another story. On his own, the snake wasn’t much to worry about. He didn’t bite. He didn’t have any power. He wasn’t like God or anything like that. He was just a snake, but there are two things that made him interesting: he was crafty and he could talk.

"Now about the ground rules," the snake said to Grandma Eve. "God said you can eat anything you like, right?"

"Anything – except the fruit from that tree in the middle of the garden. Right over there. God said, if we eat that, we’ll die."

"You must have heard wrong, my dear," the snake said to Grandma Eve. "That’s the best fruit in the whole garden. If you eat that, you won’t die. You’ll be like God – knowing good from evil, calling all the shots, smarter than all the professors at Florida State University."

"Hmm," said Grandma Eve. "Looks safe enough. Looks really tasty, in fact. And I am very hungry." So she ate the fruit. "Say," this is great. "Adam will love this. I’ll take him some." And she did. He ate it and liked it, too.

But after they had eaten the fruit, Grandpa Adam and Grandma Eve didn’t feel very smart. In fact, they felt discombobulated. Up to that moment, they had felt in sync with God – doing God’s work, tending God’s garden, chatting with God on long strolls in the cool of the evening. But now, when they thought of God dropping by that evening, they felt awkward -- embarrassed, ashamed.

"Adam," Eve said. "Do you realize you aren’t wearing any clothes?"

"Now that you mention it, you’re right. That never bothered me before . . . Eve! Neither are you!"

"O my! And God’s coming this evening for a walk. He’s bound to notice. We’d better make some clothes out of these fig leaves!"

That evening God came for a walk. "Adam! Eve! Where’d you two go!"

"We’re here. Hiding."

"Why are you hiding?

"Well, because we’re naked."

"Who told you were . . . Say, you haven’t been eating the fruit from that middle-of-the-garden tree, have you?"

"Well, yes," said Grandpa Adam. "But it’s Eve’s fault. She gave it to me."

"My fault! It’s that snake’s fault! He gave me the idea."

After that, Grandpa Adam and Grandma Eve couldn’t live in the garden anymore. God still loved them, and wanted to keep them in the family, but it was clear they didn’t want to live according to God’s best hopes for them. They wanted to live on their own, by their own rules, no matter how much that hurt God or how much havoc it caused to the garden. So God let them do just that – let them try, anyway.

Just before he shut the gate to the garden and locked it, God got out his needle and thread and made our ancestors some better clothes.

That family story of ours says a great deal about who we are. We’re creatures who like to pretend we’re God. One of the ways we do this is by acting as though we owned the garden. We treat the whole earth as though it were our possession. It’s a silly way to behave, and it hurts everybody in the long run – especially our neighbors -- but we do it anyway. Prophets and scientists – even a Vice President -- have been telling us for quite some time that this won’t work. The earth isn’t ours. It’s God’s, and we’re not being very good stewards.

But we don’t listen. As you can tell from our stories, pride and pigheadedness have been running in this family for generations.

I told you that story because it’s the one Uncle Matthew must have had in mind when he told that other story – the one about Jesus and the tempter. The tempter sounds a lot like the snake in that first story. Same approach. Same craftiness. Same lack of power. Same penchant for twisting the truth. He’s got other names – "the devil" and "Satan" being two of them. No doubt about it. He’s a slithery customer.

So here’s the second story.

Brother Jesus has been fasting for 40 days and 40 nights. Right after cousin John had baptized him in the Jordan River, Brother Jesus went into the wilderness to fast and pray. God had called him his "Son" when he came up out of that water, and Brother Jesus wanted to fast and pray in order to figure out how to live up to that calling.

As you can imagine, Brother Jesus was hungry. Up comes the tempter. "Hey there, Son of God. If you’re hungry, tell these stones to become loaves of bread. They’ll obey you, since you are the Son of God."

Those stones did look tasty. Just like those loaves Kathleen Engstrom bakes for Wednesday night suppers. But Brother Jesus knows his Bible. "Scripture says, ‘People don’t live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ If I’m going to be the Son of God, it won’t be that way."

Then the devil takes Jesus on a sightseeing tour. They end up on the pinnacle of the temple in Jerusalem.

"Look down there in the temple square. See that crowd? Those are tourists with cell phone cameras. Since you’re God’s Son, you could jump off this temple. You wouldn’t get hurt, and you’d be an instant world-wide sensation. A squadron of angels will catch you for sure, for Scripture says, ‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone.’" (Give the devil his due; he knows his Bible, too.)

"Right back at you," says Brother Jesus. "Scripture also says, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’ If I’m going to be the Son of God, it won’t be that way, either."

So the devil takes Brother Jesus to the top of the highest mountain there is. "Look down there, Son of God. All that real estate is in my name. All the kingdoms of the world and all their splendor. I’ll give you the whole package. All you have to do is to bow down and worship me."

That did it. Old Satan had gone too far. He let his hand show by telling the same lie Grandpa Adam and Grandma Eve fell for. The devil doesn’t own a thing. Not the kingdoms of the world and all their splendor. Not the oil under Alaska. Not the red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico. Nothing. It all belongs to God. The Devil’s only asset is his skill at asking questions and telling lies.

"Away with you, Satan," Jesus tells him. "Scripture says, ‘Worship the Lord you God and serve only him.’ If I’m to be the Son of God, it’s got to be on God’s terms, not yours."

Pretty good stories, aren’t they Do you hear what they’re saying? They’re saying that, no matter what the devil and his cronies tell us, "The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof." They tell us that we’re stewards of the earth, not owners, and God expects us to live up to our calling.

They tell us that Jesus lived up to his calling as the Son of God by putting God first. Among other things, that meant not having everything he wanted at the touch of a finger. It meant living in some discomfort in order to listen to God. It meant rejecting the lie we are called only to be consumers, living only in the moment, only for ourselves.

Think about it. Our entire economy is built on the story that human beings exist in order to consume. You and I know better than that. We are called to live by a different story.

The ecological crisis that confronts this generation is profoundly theological. Who owns the earth? Are human beings stewards or merely consumers? When God comes to share fellowship with us, will we cower in shame, or welcome God’s company?

Jesus, the Son of God, our brother, shows us the way. We can live by his story, or we can live by any number of other stories, all of them tempting, and all of them false.

May God grant us grace to live the story that tells the truth.