Sermon on Sin, Lent I, 2011

“May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be always acceptable unto thee, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer.” AMEN.

The subject for today is SIN. Some of you mature folks will recall that we Christians went through about a 30 year period in the church, not too long ago, of trying to figure out a way of living that simply denied the existence of sin. The argument, put forward by good people, by thoughtful people, by theologians and laypeople alike, generally went something like this:

“And God saw what he had created and said that it was good.” That’s in the Bible!

There followed a sort of Oprah or other TV talk show theological stance that went something like this:

“I just think people are naturally good.”

And you can see that it wouldn’t take much of a leap to go from “good” to “naturally good” to “there’s probably no such thing as sin and we ought not to focus too much on it in the church cause it makes me feel bad.”

Is there anyone here who remembers this line from the Book of Common Prayer? “That our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls washed through his most precious blood.” ? Yup. That language vanished with the creation of what I STILL call “the new prayerbook”.

But you know what’s funny about this? As a little boy I knew there was sin in the world. It’s obvious. And I used to imagine receiving the sacrament and being made “all clean”. I fully grasped the idea, as a little boy, that I was certainly NOT “good” all the time . . . that I certainly DID need a good and thorough cleaning. As a young Christian leaving the altar rail, I

KNEW that my body and soul had been cleansed. And by the way, I still feel that way even now at communion. . . and am looking forward to it in about 30 minutes.

Oh well. The good news for you younger Christians is that you’re not being exposed to the “absence of sin” theology like we had in the seventies, eighties, and nineties. Common sense prevailed, and the pendulum is swinging back toward the middle again: focus too much on sin and you wind up with self-flagellation or even flagellating others; focus too little on sin and you forget that you need a redeemer! But as I said, the pendulum right now is, in my opinion, in a good spot.

So what is sin? Many of you may know that we got out of the “absence of sin” theology by answering this simple question. The word itself (at least the word that we use for sin in the New Testament) comes from the Greek, and quite literally means “missing the mark.” Most scholars agree that it is as simple as missing the bulls eye with your arrow. In fact, in Jesus’ day it was specifically an archery term. I was aiming for the bulls eye, I didn’t get it. I sinned. Period.

What? That can’t be right! Isn’t sinning doing a bad thing? Isn’t it turning away from God’s Truth? Isn’t it dancing on Sundays or playing cards for money, or breaking the commandments, or . . .

Well. Let’s see. Jesus would have used at least four different words to describe this concept . . . each slightly different from the other. Pesha would be a “trespass”, a sin done out of rebelliousness; Aveira would be a transgression of the law; avone or “iniquity” would be a moral failing; but the most common word would have been het. Het refers to a simple straying from halakha (the “way” according to Jewish tradition).

Our Christian theology, as you know, is built upon Jewish theology. The Jews teach that we have free will – the freedom of choice in how we conduct our thoughts and lives – but that we have competing tendencies

toward what is commonly thought of as “good” and “evil”. This black-and-white understanding in most Westerns and, indeed, in the Star Wars Saga, is very Judaic. But in Islam, Khatia (sin) is pretty similar: it’s anything against God’s will. The Qu’ran goes so far to say that the human soul can be prone to evil unless God bestows his mercy. This is quite similar to the Jew’s word “inclination” to sin.

And as for us, we hold to a doctrine of Original Sin . . . that is, how sin came into the world . . . Adam’s fall . . . and basically follow this concept handed down to us: that free will allows us to choose wrongly . . . and that we often do! We may be inclined to sin or inclined to holiness. Remember what we used to say in the Decalogue? The priest would recite the 10 commandments, and at the end of each one we would respond, “Lord have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law.”

But you know, this whole subject is a course in some seminaries. The New Testament word for sin is “hamartia”: missing the mark. The branch of theology that deals with sin is actually called harmartiology. Christian churches have, of course, split over sin discussions. The Bible doesn’t specifically mention “original” or “ancestral” sin, but it’s implied by the psalmist and St. Paul. Oh well.

At the end of the day, however, you and I both know what sin is, don’t we? Would you take a moment to consider your definition? [pause] Is it something like, “not following God’s will?” “Doing something contrary to God’s will?” “Violating a moral rule”?

In your definition are you making a distinction between venial (what the Dutch call “daily”) sin and mortal (damnation) sin? My priest when I was a child told me that the little, daily, venial sins were more dangerous to my soul than the mortal sins. His reason: my conscience doesn’t hurt when I steal a penny, but it does when I steal a hundred dollars. Since it doesn’t hurt, it becomes easier for me to steal 2 cents, then 3 cents, and soon my soul has eroded. The lesson? Venial sins lead to mortal sins.

We are now at the beginning of another reflective season of the church year. Lent is a 40 day period (not including Sundays. Why? “Because every Sunday is like a little Easter!”) that begins on Ash Wednesday and ends according to many sources at noon on Holy Saturday, the day before Easter. To find the precise ending of Lent you’d have to be a better Pharisee than I am. Some, like the Roman Catholics, actually now count Good Friday and Holy Saturday as part of the Easter Triduum, but let that pass. In any event, it ends with the celebration of the Queen of Feasts, the most important day of the Christian year, and the ONLY reason that we are Christians. The Great Sunday of the Resurrection, or Easter, makes sense to us because of . . . .

Sin.

Without sin, as I said earlier, we have no need of a redeemer.

I also said earlier that you and I have a pretty good notion of sin. Sometimes I’m just “off the beam”. Think of this beam as a walkway, and I’m wandering off the path. I’m not doing anything particularly bad . . . but I’m certainly not heading toward righteousness. At other times I do something that I know is just plain wrong: anger, greed, pride, lust, sloth, envy, gluttony. Pick one. And whether I’m wandering away from the path or endangering my immortal soul with one of the seven deadly sins, there’s one big thing that I need to do. And as Pastor Scherry reminded us in her homily on Ash Wednesday, that thing is . . .

Repent.

And true repentance puts me in a right relationship with my Creator. I become reconciled. Reconciliation is the theme of our Lenten Learning series here on Wednesday nights this season. There’s my plug for that.

Now in today’s readings we have Adam’s fall recounted in Genesis.

Next we have Psalm explaining how confession, repentance and forgiveness lead to a reconciled relationship. Then Paul tells the Romans (and by the way, that’s you and me today) that Jesus sacrificed himself in order to make our righteous pilgrimage possible. Finally, we hear the highly dramatic temptations of Christ in the Wilderness that (interestingly enough, as pointed out to me by Pastor Kim) occurs AFTER he had fasted for 40 days. Did you pick up on that? I’m also interested in the fact that Jesus was not just a little bit hungry. The Gospel writer says that he was famished.

First the devil offers food. Then Jesus is tempted with absence of any pain, and finally he is tempted with worldly power. As you know, he rejects the temptations, and his needs are immediately met by “ministering angels.”

I wonder how hungry I am for a right relationship with God. Do I feel famished like Jesus? Lent is the time for me to really wrestle with these questions. No matter what the definition of sin may be, I know that my sin needs to be confessed if I have any hope of recognizing my Savior. Another way of saying this is, if I have any hope of understanding the Glory of Easter, I’d better get a good understanding of the nature of my sins. And brothers and sisters, there is really only one deadly sin the way I see it: that’s the unconfessed sin.

So let me put in a plug for one more thing: In high Episcopal Churches and in most Catholic and Orthodox churches you will still find confessionals. In these boxes, the priest sits on one side, the penitent on the other. They speak to each other through a screen for anonymity. Although the confessional boxes are rare, we still have a service in our prayerbook . . . yup . . . the same one you have right there in your pew . . . called “the reconciliation of a penitent.” So, yes, we do this thing that you’ve seen in movies, heard about in jokes, and maybe even seen in a recent ad for Red Bull. Protestants generally have never liked this idea,

using the argument that you don’t need a priest when you can go right to God through Jesus for your confession. And while that might be true on the highest spiritual plane, I would argue this:

As human beings, we need the presence of another human being if we really want to know, at the deepest level, that our confession is complete. Maybe it doesn’t have to be a priest. Our friends in 12-step programs actually do something like this with their sponsors . . . who, like priests . . . have heard it all before. Who has the courage to do this? Who has the courage to go head to head with the Devil? It really just depends on whether or not you are, like Jesus, famished. If you really want to follow his example of recoiling from temptation and seeking God.

So my final plug is for you to be fearless in searching your conscience for your sins this Lent. Confess to God and to another pilgrim. Be reconciled. And I’ll promise you this: the whole time you are looking at your own sins you won’t have time to point out mine. And an even more blinding thought: on Easter morning you will say “He Is Risen” and really know what this means.

That’s really Good News.

And now unto God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, be ascribed as is most justly due, all might, majesty, power, dominion, and glory, both now and evermore. AMEN.