Scripture: 1John 1:5-10, Matthew 9:10-13.
I’m shifting gears today. I want to talk theology today. I want to talk about sin. The question, I guess, is why—why would I want to do that?
Somewhere among the materials that SP assembled for me to introduce me to the Sojourners community, there is a survey which asks people to give their opinions on various terms that are part of the Christian vocabulary, such as God or salvation or…sin. The results of that survey said to me that generally speaking people around here do not find “sin” a very important, helpful, enlightening, or inspiring part of Christian belief. So why preach on it?
Well, for one thing because it is has historically played a rather large part in Christian belief, and it’s good to revisit some basic concepts now and then.
For another thing, because there seems to be a wide agreement that we in the Christian community aren’t talking about sin much anymore. All sorts of people from psychologists to radio talk show hosts to theologians have noted how gun shy we seem to have become when it comes to talking about sin. People look for some other word to use, the way we try to avoid saying words like death or cancer out loud. Often when we recognize that we’re avoiding something, that is a good reason to pay attention to it.
Also, it’s Lent, or it’s about to be Lent, and Lent is traditionally a time to confess sin, to repent of sin, and to be restored into a right relationship with God. The origin of the Lenten season is that it was a time for people who had been excommunicated from the church to complete a time of penance and then to be restored to the community so they could celebrate Easter along with the rest of the faithful.
So there are several good reasons why I might choose to talk about sin today, but what matters most to me is not so much these formal reasons—that it’s an important and neglected topic or that it’s that time of year—but that this area of our spiritual lives is important if our faith is to be filled with life and hope.
But before I get around to telling you why I believe that is true, I first want to acknowledge that sin has often been used by Christians in hurtful ways. It’s important that we be clear about this.
My parents left the Methodist church and Christianity because the churches they had grown up in (which was all they knew of Christianity) had been very strong in condemning smoking, drinking, dancing, gambling, and going to the movies but had been very weak in condemning racial bigotry, religious intolerance, corporate greed, or public corruption. My parents joined a Unitarian church where the minister was known for the very strong voice he raised when a cross was burned on the lawn of a black family moving into a certain part of Arlington, Virginia or when Marian Anderson was prevented from singing in Constitution Hall. When the church misdirects its moral outrage, it is hurtful to those who are condemned for what are at most minor transgressions; it is hurtful to society because attention is diverted from the real evil; it is hurtful to the Christian faith because the Christian faith is thereby trivialized.
Sometime in my young adult years, before I was too firmly set in my Christian identity, I remember attending a Lutheran church that was very dark, in both a literal and symbolic sense. The space was large, the lighting was poor, the window glass was stained, the colors were muted, and the words of the worship service said again and again that we were miserable sinners, unworthy of being loved. I had to get over that experience in order to continue on the path I was on that was leading me toward the Christian faith.
You and I know people who struggle, and sometimes have to struggle very hard, with a sense of unworthiness. Perhaps it is not just people we happen to know but we ourselves, you and I, who have that struggle. When the church reinforces those feelings of unworthiness and makes that struggle even more difficult than it already is, it is hurtful.
It is hurtful when women who are in abusive relationships are told that it would be sinful to seek divorce or that it is their Christian duty to be understanding and forgiving and any other attitude would be sinful. (This is not hypothetical; it really happened). Such advice from the church not only distorts the meaning of sin. It distorts the real meaning of forgiveness. It is hurtful when the church condemns homosexuality as sinful and labels homosexual persons as sinful. It is hurtful of course to persons who are thus labeled. It is also hurtful to the Christian faith, which in every way is made smaller by its unloving actions.
So I do completely agree that sin has been used often in the Christian church as a weapon…a weapon to humiliate, threaten, and oppress people. The way some Christians have distorted and misused the concept of sin is itself sinful. But having said all that, let me try to say why I think this whole topic also contains seeds of hope and life.
When I was talking last week about the will of God, I said that for me the will of God is rooted in this very deep-seated belief that there is a way things are supposed to be, that there is a way we humans are supposed to be together, that there is a way we are supposed to be in relation to God, and in relation to the earth. I assume that most of us here have some such deep-seated belief, or we would not be here.
It is a very short step from there to being able to say: Things are not the way they are supposed to be. And that, it seems to me, is all that’s necessary for us to recognize and confess the brokenness, the sinfulness of our world. Things are not the way they are supposed to be.
Nor is it exactly a giant step to get to the next point: I am not the way I am supposed to be. The scripture from 1John reminds us that this is true too, for all of us. To think otherwise would require us to have a very rosy picture of ourselves, to have very poor spiritual eyesight when it comes to seeing certain parts of ourselves, and to fail to realize how connected we are to the world we live in. Even if our hearts were absolutely, 100% pure goodness, we could not be the way we were supposed to be so long as the world is not the way it is supposed to be.
And then there is one more very short step we need to take, and this is the hopeful one. Things are not the way they are supposed to be. I am not the way I am supposed to be. But things do not have to be this way.
For me, to confess our sin, my personal sin and our common sinfulness, to confess our sin is to strike a blow against cynicism. The completely cynical view of life would say: Maybe things aren’t so great, but the way things are is just the way things are, the way they always have been, the way they always will be. Call it sin if you want to, but nothing’s ever going to be any different, not really. So get adjusted. Get used to it. Get over it.
When we are told in the scriptures, as we are in many places, that it would be a good thing to confess our sin and to repent, what is not being suggested is that we beat ourselves up as much as we can and wallow in as much guilt as we can find. It is rather that we adopt a view of the world that says that things do not have to be this way. Human beings have done things that have made the world less than it was intended to be. And even though it may be a slow and difficult and uncertain process, human beings can do things that will make the world more like it is supposed to be. Confessing and repenting of sin is, in this sense, a very simple, very human, and very hopeful thing to do.
But it is only this way if we get specific. If we confess sin without being specific about it, then the message that comes through is more likely to be that we are, to put it bluntly, scum. With a broad sweep, we can say we are all sinners, or I can confess that I am a sinner. But then all that does is attach a label to us and describe the complicated creatures that we are with a single word. That is what is not helpful and often hurtful.
But when we are specific, then we identify those parts of ourselves or our world that we intend to do something about. Not only that. When we name those parts of ourselves or our world that are not the way they are supposed to be, we begin to clarify the way it is supposed to be. When we complain about injustice generally, our words carry very little moral force. When we give a name to specific kinds of injustice, we begin to build a vision of what a just world would look like. When we name in specific terms the brokenness of our world, we begin to see more clearly what a world would look like that had been restored to wholeness. When we begin to name and describe the hurts, we begin to understand what healing will consist of. In the next several weeks during Lent, in the sermons, I hope to contribute to this process by doing some of my own naming of the sins that are part of us, inside and out.
The Matthew passage this morning is one of those many passages where Jesus seems to show a preference for the company of sinners as opposed to the proper and righteous people of the community. I do not believe Jesus had this habit of hanging out with tax collectors and sinners just because they were more fun to be with (though my guess is they were) or because he had sort of a liking for the underdog. Sinners, people who understood themselves in this way, were people who understood at some gut level the need for a new creation and were often people who saw, even if only dimly, a vision of that new creation. Those who were pretty pleased with themselves and who thought that the world probably didn’t need a whole lot of change, who thought that everything was just fine thank you, those people felt no real need of a new creation and had no vision of one.
Too bad. Jesus knew that what he had to offer they had no need of, that is they thought they had no need of. Certainly one of the things Jesus had to offer was a vision of God’s reign on earth, a vision of shalom. The communion table that is before us is a reminder that God is present in the midst, in the very center of our brokenness. It is a reminder that Jesus himself became broken because he would not stop loving. But also contained within this bread and wine is the vision of God’s new creation. May we receive that vision that Jesus offers us. Even if sometimes it must come to us through the confessing and repenting of sin, may we receive that vision as a gift, and may it nourish our souls. Amen.
Jim Bundy
March 5, 2000