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Here is a sermon by a
person I highly respect (Victor Shepherd) on the subject of defining sin.
Enjoy.
Crucial Words in the Christian
Vocabulary: Sin (3) Genesis
3:1-7 Romans
1:28-30 Ephesians
2:1-10 Mark
Some people enjoy restoring antique
automobiles. Some people enjoy
driving them. Most of us enjoy
watching others drive the antique automobiles which they have restored. We smile when we see an antique car
chugging along in the village parade.
But none of us would want to contend with rush hour traffic or a highway
trip in an antique car. Yet this is what the church
persists in doing, many people tell us, whenever the church speaks of sin. Surely the notion has been antiquated,
we are told. Surely it belongs to
the era of the Model “T” Ford.
Let’s be honest: outside the community of faith the notion of sin, the
word “sin”: these are out of
fashion. How did it all come to be
unfashionable?
For one,
thanks to some zealous but uninformed Christians sin came to be associated with
innocent pastimes, like card playing or dancing or theatregoing. To speak of such matters as sin is
ridiculous.
For another, sin became associated with lurid immorality, with a
degradation (admittedly) that was also secretly coated with juicy, lurid
lewdness. Since very few people are
luridly immoral, and since no one will admit to finding it juicy, few people
today understand sin as pertaining to them at all. Finally, sin was rendered
unfashionable by the self-confident secularism of our society. Years ago a European who thought
autosuggestion to be the key to self-improvement urged people to say repeatedly,
“Every day in ever way I am becoming better and better.” We smile at the naiveness, even the
arrogance. Yet we smile too soon,
for any society that worships the myth of progress (and the myth of progress is
the mirage that North Americans chase) most certainly believes that it is
getting better and better. We shall
progress, we are told, only as we jettison such antiquated encumbrances as
sin. Nevertheless, the church, in her
singing, preaching and praying continues to use the word. Profounder people
among us won’t let it drop. Karl
Menninger, internationally known psychiatrist and founder of the Menninger
Clinic in [1] Since the community of faith isn’t going
to drop the word, we should be sure we know what it means. Sin, at bottom, is as simple as it is
dreadful: sin is simply telling God to “buzz off.” The telling may be explicit and
conscious. More often, in fact
nearly always, it is implicit and disguised because unconscious. It makes no difference. God is told to get lost. He claims us for himself. We say, “Leave me alone.” He insists that he wants only our
blessing, and the obedience he wants from us will prove to be our blessing. We reply, “Everywhere else in life
obedience is something we have to render a boss we can’t stand. Why should we think you are
different?” He grounds his claim
upon us in his love for us. We say,
“I didn’t ask for your love.
Furthermore, I resent your love; it’s an intrusion; I want my life to be
mine.” The root Sin (and the fountain of all concrete
sins) is a self-important, proud posture
of defiance, of rejection, of disdain and disobedience. The posture pretends to be a
sophisticated looking past God born of a sufficiency without God. Our sufficiency, however, is only a
ridiculous figment of our imagination, and our innocent sophistication in fact
culpable contempt. We read children’s stories where
someone highborn, aristocratic, sets out on a walk. He steps around peasants and paupers,
disdaining them. From his position
of aristocratic aloofness he never really sees them, never takes note of them,
never engages them, so far beneath him he does he find them to be. As the children’s story unfolds one of
the peasants or paupers was in fact a prince or a princess. The aristocrat’s proud aloofness, his
groundless superiority, has caused him to forfeit something precious. Men and women strut like aristocrats
disdaining the God who in his Son is lowly and humble, the God whose
condescension to us for our blessing we regard as weakness in him. In our posture of proud aloofness we do
not apprehend the God whose coming among us at Christmas and [2] What are the consequences of this
posture? The first consequence,
obviously, is estrangement from him. God isn’t indifferent to our postured
superiority. He reacts. He thrusts us away from him. He won’t allow us to denounce him, defy
him, and at the same time remain on casual terms with him. On account of his judicial reaction to
our disobedience an abyss opens between God and us. The one who is eternally Father now
looks upon alienated sons and daughters.
The rightful ruler sends away rebellious subjects. Created to be God’s covenant-partners
and co-workers, we relentlessly conspire against God and his truth. We sabotage God’s work. We deafen ourselves to God’s word. We trade on God’s kindness – or think we
can. The second consequence is
estrangement from our fellows, those who were given us to be our brothers and
sisters. When I was very young and
warring with my two sisters my mother would say in exasperation and
bewilderment, “Why can’t you just get along?” Why couldn’t we? Why can’t people throughout the world,
in any era or culture, “just get along”?
A Samaritan woman says to Jesus, “You are a Jew. I am a Samaritan. Samaritans and Jews: we get along like
cobra and mongoose.” The first
question in scripture is addressed to Adam and Eve, every man and every woman,
after they have alienated themselves from God: “Where are you?” God says. The second question in scripture is
addressed to Cain after he has murdered his alienated brother: “Where is your
brother?” That’s a question God is
forever asking all humankind all the time: “Where’s your brother? Where’s your sister?” An abyss has opened up between those
given us to be brothers and sisters with the result that we are all hauntingly
estranged from each other. If the sociologists could
eliminate the social conditions that are the occasion of human conflict (I said
“occasion” not “cause”) would we then be living in a utopia? Tell me: if the Garden of Eden were
reconstructed and repopulated would we all then be living in Lotus Land – or
would we wreck the garden (again)?
There can be no utopia just because improving our social environment may
change the _expression_ our sin takes but it won’t change us profoundly; it may
change the manifestation of our sin but won’t eliminate sin itself. For the cause of humankind’s wrecking
itself is that profoundest inner disorder rooted in our defiance and
disobedience concerning God. The third consequence of God’s
judicial reaction to our root sin is alienation from ourselves. An abyss opens up, somehow, between me
and myself. You see, God can always
be refused. Still, our persistent
refusing him doesn’t change the fact that he has made us for himself and
therefore we are going to be most authentically human, most authentically our
“self” only in him. To refuse him
is always somehow to refuse ourselves.
To be estranged from him is to be estranged from ourselves. To think we can get rid of him but
continue to possess our “self” by means of our “self” – this is folly twice
over. The self we’ve lost can’t be
the means to possessing a self we are trying to find. It’s no wonder we are chronically
discontent, dis-eased, ill-at-ease,
self-alienated. It’s no wonder we
keep asking “What’s wrong with me?” when in fact everyone is suffering from the
same ailment for the same reason.
It’s no wonder we keep trying to anaesthetize ourselves with adult toys
and trinkets and playthings. Yet
every so often the anaesthetic breaks down and we are startled to find “it’s
still there” – the haunting, non-specific but undeniable apprehension that
there’s something of the innermost “me” that I’m missing yet can’t quite
find. [3] Do you think this sermon is a
“downer?” Have the last ten minutes
been pessimistic and therefore depressing?
Then what I’m going to say next should send you home rejoicing: “Today’s
sermon is the most optimistic I have ever preached.” Why? Because the most optimistic thing to be
said of any of us is that we are sinners. If we don’t say that we are
sinners then what _expression_ are we going to use to describe, ultimately
explain, the outer and inner wreckage we can’t deny? Are we going to say that humankind is
sick? But “sick” has dubious
connotations today, and they aren’t going to help us at all. Besides, if humankind as a whole is
sick, then are there some among us who are considerably less sick than the rest
and can therefore “cure” everyone else?
The history of the world tells us that whenever a group in any society
thinks it can “cure” everyone else it behaves with conscienceless savagery. On the other hand, if we say that
there’s no privileged group in the
society that can cure the rest of us, then there’s no physician adequate to our
disease; there’s no physician with curative powers equal to the disease. At this point someone will want to
say that the problem lies with the word “sick” as a diagnostic tool. Instead of regarding humankind as sick
we should regard ourselves as socially maladjusted. To speak of ourselves as
socially maladjusted, however, is to invite social engineering. The last ninety years, from the October
revolution in
Let’s examine this assertion more closely. When we say that humankind is a sinner
we aren’t using “is” in the same way as when we say a horse is four-legged. When we say that a horse is four-legged
we mean that a horse is supposed to be four-legged, has to be four-legged. It was never meant to be anything else
and is never going to be anything else.
But when we say that we are sinners we are saying just the opposite: we
are sinners but we aren’t supposed to be.
We are sinners but we were never meant to be. We are sinners now but by God’s grace we
shan’t be. To say that we are sinners now is
to say that we have falsified ourselves somehow, but by God’s grace we can
recover our true identity. We can
recover what we were made to be.
Our capsized situation can be turned right side up. Most gloriously, it can all begin
now. Now you understand why it is
optimistic to speak of humankind as sinner but pessimistic, hopeless and
dangerous to speak of humankind as sick or socially maladjusted. Under God we can begin our journey
toward the destination to which we’ve been appointed – which is nothing less
than the overcoming of alienation everywhere in life: reconciliation with God,
with our fellows, with our innermost, profoundest “self.” Many times today we have used the
word “alienation” to describe the threefold consequences of our root rejection
of God. Think for a minute of what
it is to be an alien. An alien is
someone living precariously in a country to which he doesn’t belong, living
precariously in a country of which he isn’t a citizen. Since he isn’t a citizen he lacks the
rights and protection of citizen; he can be deported at any time. To be a citizen, on the other hand, is
to belong, to have one’s life unfold in the security that one isn’t going to be
deported. To be reconciled to God,
and thereafter to fellows and self, is to know that we belong. It’s to know that life “fits.” The most optimistic diagnosis is that we
are sinners, aliens, for only as the diagnosis is owned are we going to ask,
“How do I become a citizen?” How do we become citizens of the Let’s return to the optimism of
the diagnosis. Optimism, if it is
to be genuine optimism and not mere wishful thinking, has to be grounded in
realism. The realism of the human
predicament is that we are sinners before God. The optimism of the human
predicament is that we have been appointed to embrace our Lord who is also
Saviour just because the forgiveness he pronounces he also effects. As we are forgiven and know ourselves
forgiven, our reconciliation with God begins to effect reconciliation everywhere
in life. Think of the Samaritan woman in
John 4. As a Samaritan she’s
alienated from Jesus, a Jew: ethnic alienation, virulent today. As a woman she’s alienated from him
because he’s a man: gender alienation, virulent today. As a five-time married woman who is
currently shacked up (what’s the point of getting married a sixth time?) she’s
alienated from Jesus because he’s sinless: moral alienation, virulent
today. Because of her reputation
she’s alienated from her townspeople (that’s why she’s at the well by herself at
high noon when everyone else indoors seeking shelter from the heat): social
alienation, virulent today. Jesus
presses upon her the living water, the profoundest thirst-quenching water, that
he himself is. In that moment,
without ever having heard of the apostle Paul (who isn’t even an apostle yet),
she understands what Paul means when he comes to say that forgiveness is nothing
less than resurrection from the dead. The church is entrusted with the message
of forgiveness, just because the church, the Christian community, consists of
those who have tasted forgiveness themselves. We know what it is to have been an alien
and what it is now to be a citizen of the Victor
Shepherd
February
2004
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