O God, the King eternal, whose light divides the day from
the night and turns the shadow of death into the morning: Drive far from us all
wrong desires, incline our hearts to keep your law, and guide our feet into the
way of peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
In our first reading this morning we
heard the wonderful story of the first meeting of Rebekah and Isaac. Isaac
needed a wife from his own people, and Abraham had instructed Laban to find a
woman with a compassionate heart for his son. He finds the prescribed woman at
the well one day, and they lived happily ever after. Except, they didn’t. As
the story continues, we learn that Rebekah is unable to conceive a child. And
though this was disheartening to the couple, it also put God’s promise into jeopardy.
Abraham was promised that his descendents would be as numerous as the stars, and
Isaac was the heir. The entire fate of the Hebrew people was dependent upon
this marriage between Isaac and Rebekah. As we all know, life is never quite as
simple as “happily ever after.” Life, for all of its joys and blessings, is
also full of trials and challenges. Most of us can handle good news, but how we
respond to the struggles of life will not only say a lot about who we are, but
will also dictate how we experience life.
St. Paul sums up this struggle which
we all know: “I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil
I do not want is what I do.” He is writing to the church in Rome, defending the
idea of justification by faith through grace. And as he does so, you can see
some of his own inner struggle. As you
know, for years he was a fierce Pharisee and saw the Law as the inerrant
and perfect will of God. If one simply kept the law, all evil and sin could be
avoided. It was simply a matter of the will. But one day, Paul was thrown off
his horse when the Risen Christ appeared to him and his life was never again
the same. He, like all of us, needed to reevaluate his life in light of the Resurrection.
And as he did, he saw that even the Law itself was susceptible to sin. As he
writes earlier in chapter 7, “While we were living in the flesh, our sinful
passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.”
Paul struggled with sin, and so do we.
There is a strip from the comic Calvin & Hobbs that shows Calvin
asking Hobbs “Do you think that babies are born sinful? That they come into the
world as sinners?” Hobbs responds, “No, I think they’re just quick studies.” And
so it is. Sin is pervasive, as Paul writes “when I want to do what is good,
evil lies close at hand.” Though we Christians proclaim that in the Crucifixion
and Resurrection of Jesus, our sins were atoned for, never do we proclaim that
Jesus put an end to sin. Sin very much remains a part of our lives.
What do I mean by sin? Consider the
Confessions that we use in our liturgy. “We confess that we have sinned against
you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left
undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors
as ourselves.” And, “we confess that we have sinned against you, opposing your
will in our lives. We have denied your goodness in each other, in ourselves,
and in the world you have created. We repent of the evil that enslaves us, the
evil we have done, and the evil done on our behalf.” The root of the word “sin”
in the Bible is “to miss the mark.” Sins are things that we do, but know that
we should not; and they are things that we do not do, but we should. And sin is
a part of the systems which we complicity live into. We see the plate of cookies,
and know we shouldn’t, but we do. We know that we shouldn’t fudge the numbers
on the tax return, but we convince ourselves that we’re voting with our
dollars. We know that we shouldn’t visit that website, but we do. We want cheaply
made goods, but neglet the rights of those who work in sweatshops. We want to
pray and read Scripture, but it doesn’t happen as often as we’d like it to. We
tell ourselves that we’re going to focus on being an optimist, but negativity
creeps in.
This is where the rubber hits the road
for discipleship. In his classic work, The
Screwtape Letters, CS Lewis writes of a demon who is coaching another demon
on the ways of leading humans away from God. When the human is getting closer
to God, the advice comes “as long as he does not convert it into action, it
does not matter how much the thinks about repentance.” Even the demons know
that our actions speak louder than words.
But
each of us echo the words of St. Paul- “I do not understand my own actions. For
I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” And it’s just not
that we have a tendency to slip up and stumble, but rather that we have an
active inclination to break things- promises, rules, moods, and relationships.
Sure, some sins are accidental and can be blamed on ignorance, but we’re only
fooling ourselves if we think those are the only sins that affect our lives.
So what do we do with this reality? Do
we lament that we are wretched and helpless sinners in the hands of an angry
God? Do we drop to our knees and pray that God spares us from the wrath that is
to come? Do we lock ourselves away in a room to avoid situations in which we
might encounter sin? Throughout history, many people have sought to answer this
question with the doctrine of Original Sin, making an excuse for sin as
something that is unavoidable. The very concept itself implies that there is a
logical origin to sin. But as one theologian has said “sin is not an event but
the failure of an event, namely, the event of choosing rightly.” Sin will not
be dealt with by understanding, qualifying, or judging it, but rather by our
response to it.
Let’s explore three possible responses
to sin. The first is confession. A good look in the mirror can go a long way,
but so can open and honest conversations with people you trust. We all sin, we
all fall short, but we don’t like dealing with the guilt and shame that goes
along with this fact, so we find it easier to ignore it. It’s interesting that
when we gather for prayer and we leave intentional time for people to add their
own prayers out loud, people often do- they say the names of family and friends
who are sick. But when we leave silence between the phrase “let us confess our
sins” and the start of Confession, you can hear a pin drop. Is it that we are
so deep in denial about our sin that we struggle to name one, or are we so
ashamed of them that we dare not speak them?
Many of you know that I was at a CREDO
conference recently, a great opportunity that the Episcopal Church provides for
its employees. While I was there, I attended an open meeting of Alcoholics
Anonymous. Now, before the rumors start to fly, I am not an addict. But one of
priests who was at the conference is, and she invited anyone who was interested
to join her, so I did. As a side note, from what I saw, AA does a better job at
being the Church than the Church does, but that’s another sermon for another day.
But what was striking about the meeting was the sincere and open confession
that happens. Each person introduced themselves by saying “I’m an alcoholic.”
And, as you may know, the 12 steps begin with the confession that we are
powerless over addiction and that only a greater power can restore us to wholeness.
It’s not a stretch to apply that language to sin.
Confessing our sins is healthy and
healing. I would commend the practice of Confession to you, and remind you that
our own Prayer Book has a service of Confession for individuals. I’d be happy
to talk to you more about that opportunity if you are interested, and would
also suggest, that if you feel more comfortable doing Confession with someone
that you don’t know, that you contact one of the other Episcopal priests in
town and avail yourself of this practice.
The second of our responses to sin is
to consider our habits. One of the major aspects of all CREDO conferences is
the creation of a rule of life. Rules of life are designed to help us to frame
our lives with a sense of order and purpose. You might include daily prayer,
intentional discussions over dinner, or exercising as a part of your rule of
life. But the theory behind the practice of developing a rule of life is to get
into the practice of keeping holy habits.
There is a story of Native American
origin in which an elder speaks with a younger member of the tribe about two wolves
that dwell within each of us. One wolf is full of light and goodness; the other
lurks in the shadows and is evil. They fight each other constantly. And the
young person asks, “which wolf will win the fight.” The elder says, “the one I
feed.” What do your habits feed? The good which you want to do, or the evil
which you hope not to do?
And the final response to sin is to
remember and celebrate the grace given to us by God through our Lord Jesus
Christ. St. Augustine wrote “Almighty God, himself supremely good, would never
allow anything evil to invade his works, unless he were so almighty and so good
that he can bring good even out of evil.” Again, this isn’t a question of why
there is sin, or why is it that God did not make us infallible, but rather the
question is- what is God doing to bring good to the fact that in our freedom,
we fall? How are you able to be an instrument of God’s peace and goodness? Though
the freedom that God gives us also leaves room for sin, God gives us
opportunities to grow more deeply into goodness through grace.
In the timeless words of John Henry
Newton- “Amazing grace! how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me! I
once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see… ‘tis grace that
brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.” The grace of God is not
a tool for us to use in combating sin. This isn’t about having enough faith in
Jesus or doing Christianity “correctly.” Instead, grace is about our identity, about
being found in Jesus, about who we are. We are the beloved of God. We are
redeemed. And we are called to be a blessing to the world.
Grace is knowing that the transforming
words of God, spoken through the prophet Ezekiel, are true- “A new heart I will
give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your
body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” In Jesus, we know the
love of God and have received the gift of the Spirit. And if we can know that
we are enough, that we are loved, that we are good, then sin will not find any
ground in us in which to take root.
Yes, there is sin out there, and it is
a force to be reckoned with. Jesus says, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from
me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”
When we walk with Jesus, we open ourselves to having grace rule our lives. As
we go through the ups and downs of life, striving to do the good which we want
to do, if we yoke ourselves to Jesus through Confession and holy habits,
indeed, his Grace will lead us home. 
