A Sermon for the Third Sunday after Pentecost
Sin. We don’t like to talk about it very much. And I get that. I don’t like to talk about it very much. It makes me uncomfortable. Sometimes feelings of guilt and shame might start rising within us as we think about what it is we have done wrong. We might get defensive. It just seems easier to avoid even thinking about our sin than dealing with it. Additionally, we have a history of misnaming sin, of calling things sin that aren’t, and not calling things sin that are. And sometimes in that misnaming we have weaponized sin language to use it against people, abusively, hurtfully. Dare I say, sinfully. So it is easier not to talk about it.
But here’s the thing: Jesus talks about it. The Bible talks about it. And they talk about it because it is a real thing. The longer I live in this world the more I realize the truth that scripture says, “If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” Sin is a problem, and despite the uncomfortableness, we need to talk about it. Sin gets in the way of God’s dream for this world. As Jesus says in the Gospel today, “Do not be afraid of that which can kill the body but not the soul. Be afraid of that which can kill the body and the soul.” Sin does just that.
One of the ways we avoid talking about sin is to talk about grace. Now, don’t get me wrong. I love talking about grace. You know me, you have heard my sermons, and that grace is one of my favorite theological concepts of faith. I have talked about it and I will keep talking about it. And yet, what good is grace if we cannot also confront the question of sin? “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.” But grace is only amazing because of the sinfulness involved. The moment of wonder, the moment of grace is found in the contrast between the sin and the forgiveness, between the wretchedness and the grace. So to understand the grace we have to understand the sin.
Do you know the story behind Amazing Grace? Do you know what the wretchedness is? Do you know the sin with which the grace is contrasted? It is slavery and John Henry Newton’s complicity as the captain of a slave ship. We cannot really understand the grace that taught his heart to fear and the grace that relieves those very fears without talking about the sin he was committing, the sin of slavery, the sin of racism, the sin of taking other people into bondage, the sin of treating beloved children of God in whom God’s very image dwells as somehow lesser in any way. It is a sin with which we still struggle today.
St. Paul, in today’s Epistle reading from Romans, addresses one of the great paradoxes of our faith. If grace is so great, and sin is what allowed that grace to blossom, should I just remain in my sin? I’m doing some good for the world. How humanity has been able to justify all kinds of evil. No, no, no, is Paul’s answer. Don’t excuse the sin that way. That’s a perversion of the very grace the sin brought about. That turns the grace back into sin. Grace is meant to transform us out of sin. A baptized life means a life in which we are raised with Christ to walk in newness of life. Life in Christ is a life transformed to put, or at least try to put the sin away. Both individual acts of sin and those great systemic sins we theologically call “original sin”, sins that are not our intentions or even our explicit actions, but the large sinful structures that have shaped us and in which we participate, knowingly or unknowingly, intentionally or unintentionally, sin that is the very air we breathe.
Racism as sin is both of these. It is the individual acts of racism, intentional ways that someone harms another based on their race. But it also the larger systemic situation we find ourselves in and in which so many of us benefit, knowingly or unknowingly, intentionally or unintentionally, this long history of racism that shapes our world today.
A baptized life is a life that resists that sin of racism and all other sin in this world. And there are many things that are sinful. Anything that makes us turn our back on God or the image of God in another. A baptized life is a life that tries to resist individual sinful things we do, and the larger systemic sinful things of this world.
A baptized life is transformed by grace to try and bring about new life, to practice resurrection, to transform this world to make it reflect a little bit more of God’s dream.
It does not mean that we who are baptized are always going to get it right. When we fall into sin we promised to repent and return to the Lord in our baptismal covenant. When, not if we sin. The baptized life is a life that is still willing to try even when we know we are going to miss the mark. It is a life that is going to be humble and to learn and to change.
This won’t be easy, but that is where the grace kicks back in. “Twas grace that taught my heart to fear and grace my fears relieved.” The grace that teaches our heart to fear, the grace that transforms us to turn away from the sin and back to God and back to our neighbor in love, is the same grace that supports us as we try. As I mentioned earlier, the scripture says that if we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. But that verse goes on to say that if we are going to fess up and confront that sin and stop ignoring it and try to do something about it, that our gracious and faithful and loving God will forgive us and will cleanse us from all unrighteousness. That is the sweetness of grace. Grace that does not ignore the bad bits, but grace that confronts them and sees them as the path to new, transformed, and risen life in Christ.
AMEN
