PEOPLE'S CHURCH OF DOVER

Ps. 65:1-3; Rom. 7:15-245                                   Our Sins Are Stronger than We Are

Sermon August 23, 2009:  People’s United Church of Christ, Dover, DE:  The Rev. Dan Griggs

 

            This morning I invite you to do a little theological thinking with me for just a few minutes.  Both the scripture lessons are rough—especially to Americans, because we middle-class, respectable people have a definition of the word “sin” that leaves us out.  It’s other people who are sinners.  We don’t actually come out and say that—we know we have our faults.  I was shocked to hear the story of a minister who was trying to introduce into his church’s worship service the Prayer of Confession and the Assurance of Pardon, and one woman refused out loud, saying, “We’re Christians!  We don’t have any sins to confess!”  But there’s something in what she was trying to say that resonates with our sense of ourselves.  So for a few minutes today, let’s think together about “sin.” 

            What brought me to this sermon is that line in Psalm 65, “Our sins are stronger than we are.”  As I prayed Psalm 65, those words touched something in me deeper than the intellect—they touched my heart.  “Our sins are stronger than we are.”  So what do you do about that?

 

            The word “sin” is complicated.[1]  When I was serving a church in Tennessee, I visited a woman in a nursing home one day—the first time I had visited her.  She had brought with her several pieces of her own furniture.  On her chest of drawers was a little television.  I asked her, “What do you do each day?  Do you watch TV some?”  She looked at the television, looked at me and said, “No, I don’t watch TV—it’s mostly about sin.”  What was she talking about?  The divorces, remarriages, unwed mothers, drinking, smoking, revenge, spitefulness that are the usual fare on afternoon soap-operas.  Those evening game shows where people get something for nothing.  TV movies about murders and theft and gambling.  Maybe even the evening news about bank-robbery, arson, shootings, spousal abuse.  She said, “It’s mostly about sin.”  What she meant by the word “sin” is what we usually mean in everyday conversations:  individual deeds that look bad, or feel bad, or violate the standards we were taught to live by.  Is this what we’re praying about when we pray, “Forgive our sins”?  Bad deeds? 

            If a person is a church-goer or a Bible-reader, the idea of “sin” as bad deeds resonates with what we were taught about the Ten Commandments:  “You shall not take God’s name in vain,” “honor your father and mother,” “you shall not murder,” “you shall not steal,” “you shall not covet.”  These commandments are so precise and so central to our reading of the Bible that our Confirmation Class teachers have us memorize them.  They are right up front in Martin Luther’s Small Catechism and also in his Large Catechism; and John Calvin put special emphasis on them in his teaching about the moral life.[2]  So for most of us the word “sin” focuses on violations of the Ten Commandments, and we pay attention to how we use the name of God, and how we relate to our parents, and leaving other people’s things alone. 

            The key to the proper interpretation of the Ten Commandments, though, is the question of how to maintain social order in ancient Israel.  There are two commandments that prohibit some form of lying, because a society that permits falsehood in business, in human relationships and in court won’t last very long—nobody can trust anybody.  Murder is not just a personal act:  it damages the community.  And right relationships between parents and children are essential to peace in the home, the community and the country.  Right now in Iran we’re watching a whole younger generation rising up and saying “No” to the Ayatollah and his strict legal system; and whether we agree with the revolution or the Ayatollah we have to admit that their society is in turmoil—“honor your spiritual parents” (as Luther said). That’s what the Ten Commandments in the Bible were intended to address—social order, and the responsibility of the individual within the community.  That’s morals, but it’s more complicated than the things one single individual does.  So here is another definition of “sin”:  the disturbance of the social order when the social order is what keeps everybody working and surviving.  If you disrupt that, you’re “sinning.” 

            This past week was the fortieth anniversary of the Woodstock concert weekend, and there has been a lot on television about it.  There’s even a new movie coming out, a comedy about Woodstock.  I was surprised to learn that Governor Rockefeller told the legal advisor to the concert operators that since there were a half-million young people on the Yasger farm, he was going to send in the New York national guard to keep order; and the attorney just barely talked him out of it.  But the whole country was shaken and grew nervous about the Hippy generation being so large and not following the rules.  Most people thought Woodstock was about “sin.”  And, in fact, Woodstock may have gone a long way toward changing American beliefs about what is “sin” and what isn’t. 

            So  here are two definitions of “sin”:  individual bad things a person does, and breaking one of the Ten Commandments. 

            Traditional Christian moral theology goes a lot deeper than these definitions.  By the fifth century the teachers of the church had a list of Seven Mortal Sins, or Seven Deadly Sins; and these aren’t so much individual bad deeds as they are attitudes, or the way you look at your life, or your habitual way of living.  The Seven Mortal Sins are:  pride, covetousness, lust, envy, gluttony, anger and sloth.  They’re easy to list, but some of them are hard to define.  “Pride” doesn’t mean that you’re proud of some accomplishment, or proud of your children, or that George Washington was a “proud man”—this use of the word “pride” isn’t sin; the sin of pride is the way we’re tempted to focus on ourselves, to bend the whole world in around ourselves, and to make all our choices to benefit me, my family, my dreams, my bank account, and so on. 

And the word “sloth” is also difficult.  We commonly use the word “slothful” to mean somebody who’s lazy; and if they work at all, their work is sloppy; and they don’t have any ambition to improve themselves or fulfill their responsibilities to their family.  That’s not the full definition of the sin of “sloth.”  “Sloth” means an inner dullness that makes you not want to pray, not want to do the right thing, not want to correct yourself or correct social wrongs.  “Sloth” is spiritual deadness in the heart. 

            “Anger” is a natural human emotion, and it can be used to give you the courage to do the right thing even though you’re anxious:  this kind of anger is not sin.  The sin of “anger” is the way your heart leads you to live in the world, to treat people.  It’s the man or woman whose habit is always to condemn others at the slightest difference, and maybe even to do personal harm. 

            So these Seven Mortal Sins take us to a completely different way of thinking about “sin.”  They are not so much about what you do as about who you are. 

            The great African theologian, Saint Augustin, summarized all this with his formal doctrine of “Original Sin.”  Original sin means that the human race is already “fallen” from God’s grace, even people who live good lives.  And there isn’t anything you can do about it:  you’re trapped.  Only the sinless Son of God, Jesus Christ, could do anything about Original Sin; and he did it on the cross.  So in Christ, Original Sin is addressed; and you benefit from Christ’s redemption by your baptism and by living as well as you can according to Christ’s commandment of love for God and neighbor.  But nothing you do can get your Original Sin removed:  God already did that in the cross of Christ.  Well, that is, again, a whole different definition of “sin.”

            So what does the psalmist mean when he sings, “Our sins are stronger than we are”?  He’s talking about all this.  And what a mess it is!  God has given you gifts and abilities, and you miss opportunities to become the person you could be.  God has called you to reach for some superior something in your life, the best you know; and you have failed.  God’s intentions for your life lie in ruins about your ankles.  This is “sin.” “Our sins are stronger than we are.”  What can we do to shake this guilt off?  How can we be saved? 

 

            Now I turn to the Second Lesson, Paul’s description of the mess we’re all in.  He wrote:[3]

 

I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate….  Sin that

dwells within me….  I can will what is right, but I cannot do it…. 

It seems to be my system of life that when I want to do what is good,

evil is right there.  In my heart I know how good and beautiful God’s

way is, but my daily living seems to be at war with my heart, making

me a prisoner to indwelling sin….  Wretched man that I am, who

will rescue me…?  Thanks be to God, who has done it through Jesus

Christ our Lord!

 

“Our sins are stronger than we are.”  Yes, they are!  What were you supposed to be that you failed to become?  What were you supposed to do that you made the wrong choices about?  And the worst thing of all is, you probably didn’t realize it until later—when it was too late.  “Our sins are stronger than we are.”

            But Paul says, “Who will rescue me from this mess?  I give thanks to God, who has done it through Jesus Christ.”  And he continues in the next paragraph with these words:[4]

 

Therefore there is now no condemnation to those who

are in Christ Jesus.

 

What Paul meant by “being in Christ Jesus” is a lot more than showing up in church and not breaking the Ten Commandments.  The phrase “in Christ Jesus” was Paul’s way of talking about who you ARE.  Scholars have called this Paul’s “mysticism.”  It is the life of the resurrection that is already at work in you.

            If Jesus had died on the cross and stayed dead, there would be no redemption.  The power of Christ’s redemption resides in his resurrection.  His resurrection means that Christ is alive; and his life dwells in you, so that you grow through your life in the process of being conformed to his life.  You yourself become, in some secret way, an incarnation of the love of God, which is “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”[5]  For such a person, growing in the life of Christ, “there is no condemnation.” 

            “Our sins are stronger than we are.”  So whatever definition of “sin” you use, God has provided the hope to overcome it.  You don’t overcome it:  God does.  And “the world to come” is already beginning to make itself real in your life.  Your part is to welcome it.  May Jesus Christ be praised. 

AMEN