In the name of God ☩ Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
St. Anselm once wrote, “You have not considered the weight of sin.” Obviously, we were not the audience he had in mind, but the shoe fits. Ash Wednesday is a day on which we, more intently than we usually do, focus on sin. One of the questions that I often get as a priest is “What does it mean to sin?” The question behind the question is often “So, I did this thing, how bad is it?” If we are going to consider sin today, we need to have a working definition to start from.
Sin can be understood in a lot of ways. Sins can be personal or communal, though there is always overlap. Sins can be things done or things left undone. Some will tell you that in Greek, “sin” is a word that comes from the sport of archery and means “to miss the mark.” So we might say that sin is making a mistake, whether it’s violating a rule, acting in ignorance, failing to do what is necessary, or straining a relationship. But understanding sin in this way might lead us to think that sins are a bunch of relatively small errors that we make. And to that, the words of Anselm haunt us, “You have not considered the weight of sin.” Sin is more than the sum of our mistakes. Just look at the Cross and you’ll realize that. Sin is not a small problem of morality, rather it is a crisis in the relationship between God and Creation.
Our natural tendency is to diminish the effects of sin. Our “I’m okay, you’re okay” culture is built upon this. We’re not going to talk about our problems, and least, not our real ones. I remember the boss character in the television show The Office was asked during a performance review “What is your biggest flaw?” He says “I care too much,” thereby turning a weakness into a strength. It’s comical, but also rings true. We’ll say that political division is a problem in Washington, but we don’t want to admit that we contribute to it. We’ll say that it’s such a shame about those Syrian refugees, but we aren’t going to talk about how we benefit from globalism. We denounce racism, yet we are surrounded by institutions built upon inequality. We say that God is the most important thing in our lives, and yet little evidence can be found in our checkbooks or calendars to back up such a claim.
Now you might say, “This is depressing, I come to church to hear an inspiring message and feel good about myself.” CS Lewis once said “I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.” As if that wasn’t obvious enough, our central image is a corpse hanging on the Cross. Imagine that you went to doctor to have a bump checked out. Turns out it’s an aggressive late-stage cancer. Do you really want her to say “Oh, that? That’s nothing, you’re a great person and this is just a small setback. Why don’t you put some Neosporin on it.” That would be medical malpractice, and it would be spiritual malpractice to ignore the words of Anselm and not consider the great weight of sin.
And considering the weight of sin is not only important, but it is also the path of holiness. As our opening Collect prayed, it is by worthily lamenting our sins that we find perfect remission and forgiveness. The thing that we must never lose sight of is that we are always held in the grace of God. On Ash Wednesday we acknowledge our mortality and confront our sins, but we always do so while standing on the foundation of God’s gracious mercy. The first verse of Psalm 51, which will immediately follow the imposition of ashes, says “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your loving-kindness; in your great compassion blot out my offenses.” The Psalmist understands that God has mercy on us not because we’re particularly good at lamenting our sins. Tormenting ourselves over our sins with weeping and gnashing of teeth doesn’t lead to forgiveness.
In fact, nothing leads to forgiveness because forgiveness is not a transaction. Rather, God shows mercy because God is merciful. It is God’s compassion that blots out our offenses, not the quality of our apology. We have already been given grace, so we do not repent in order to get it. What happens though through our repenting and acknowledging our manifold sins is growing and thriving in that mercy, a process sometimes called “sanctification.” One theologian has said that sanctification is nothing more than us getting used to our justification.
And this is hard work. The most difficult thing to believe in Christianity isn’t that God exists, or that God created the world, or that God took on flesh in Jesus, or that Jesus healed people, or that Jesus rose on the third day. No, the hardest thing to believe is that the words of the Collect for Purity are true, that to God all hearts are open, all desires known, and no secrets are hidden, and yet, God still loves us and forgives us. It’s the hardest thing to believe because it’s so hard for us to realize that we are enough. You wouldn’t be any better if you lost 15 pounds, you wouldn’t be any better if you had $15 million dollars more, you wouldn’t be any better if you read 15 more books.
Each of us was created out of love to grow and thrive in this love. Sin messes that up. Sin makes us value the wrong things, pursue the wrong things, love the wrong things. Sin makes us look for shortcuts. Sin makes us to dwell in the past or the future and ignore the present. Sin distorts our priorities and disorients us in growing in grace. That is why we must consider the weight of sin, because it is what stands between us and the abundant life intended for us.
Certainly, in Christ, God has defeated sin so that sin no longer has ultimate power over us. Sin may well be defeated, but it has not yet been vanquished. St. Augustine once said that “Without God, we cannot; without us, God will not.” God has bestowed upon us the opportunity to participate in God’s grace, but that means we are a part of the battle between righteousness and sin. Holy living is enabled by the grace of God, you might think of it as the dance music. But we’ve got to move our feet to the beat of grace.
Confessing our sins really is a spiritual discipline that needs to be cultivated in our lives and in the Church. Can you take a hard look in the mirror and recognize your sin? Sure, that other person contributed to the situation, but can you take responsibility for your sin? Reading Scripture and coming regularly to worship will help us in this spiritual discipline, as Scripture attunes us to God and the Church, at its best, gives us a community to not only find examples of holy living, but also gives us a safe place to say those words that our litigious society has trained us to never say, “I was wrong.”
It’s one thing to acknowledge your sins, but it’s something else entirely to Confess your sins. And so I commend the Sacrament of Reconciliation, sometimes called Confession, to you all this Lent. The Sacrament is available in our Chapel from 4-5pm on Wednesdays, or by appointment. Yes, Episcopalians do Confession (and Methodists are welcome to it). You come to Confess not to me as a person, but to me as a priest, as someone who God has called to hear the sins of his people and remind them that they are forgiven. As someone who hears Confessions, I think it’s vital that I actually make Confessions; just like you’d only trust a personal trainer who actually exercises. So I know, from experience, that acknowledging your sins to yourself isn’t the same as Confessing them to another person.
A reason why this Sacrament is so helpful in our getting used to our justification is because it requires us to work on another spiritual disciple – that of receiving mercy. Being good at Confession but lousy at receiving forgiveness is a dangerous mix. Confession isn’t about self-loathing or self-deprecation. Confession is not a hopeless or joyless activity. Rather, Confession prepares us to be remade in the love of God. Just as Confessing your sins to another person is more liberating than doing it alone, hearing God’s forgiveness be declared in the name of the Church is transformative.
As the Psalmist says “Purge me from my sin, and I shall be pure; wash me, and I shall be clean indeed.” The effect of Confessing our sins is being made clean by the mercy of God. The Psalmist also says “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” The discipline of Confessing our sins and receiving the mercy of God makes us a part of Christ’s new Creation.
One theologian has spoken of this spiritual discipline of confession as acknowledging that the scaffolding of self-reliance and pride that we’ve been using to climb has fallen and we are stuck under the rubble. Our faith is not about ascending to God, because in Jesus, God has descended to us. We are never alone in our sin. As the Psalmist says “God will not despise a broken and contrite heart.” It’s not that God wants us to be broken-hearted as in a state of depression, but rather that Confession leads to our hearts being broken open so that God’s mercy can find a way in. So we as get used to our justification, we work at the spiritual disciplines of Confessing our sins and receiving mercy so that we can grow in holiness and dismantle ourselves from all the things that pull us away from God.
Today we enter the season of Lent, which has historically been a season in which prepare ourselves to more joyfully celebrate Easter. Easter, of course, is that great feast of the new Creation, of God’s love conquering sin, of God’s mercy for us. As you prepare yourself to celebrate the Resurrection of our Savior, let us not forget why it is that we need a Savior, let us not forget the weight of sin. Therefore, in the name of the Church, I invite you to the observance of a holy Lent through the spiritual disciplines of Confession and receiving the mercy of God into your hearts, so you will be all the readier to with rise with Christ on Easter morning. Amen.
