What became of sin?
On Sunday, I told one story about a
former parishioner. I thought today I
would share another. Dorothea Pletta was
a member of University Lutheran, in Clemson.
She died in December of 2002.
There are many occasions and reasons to remember her. For me, Lent is chief among them. I won’t say that Dorothea loved Lent – how
could anyone “love Lent?” But she
understood Lent, and she appreciated Lent, and she wanted Lent to do for her
and for others what she knew Lent could do.
I remember the January when she
came to the office, bearing a gift for me.
It was a book about sin. She
wanted to give it me, and to suggest that the Lenten season provided the
perfect opportunity to talk about sin. The
phrase she loved to repeat to me - the phrase with which she would challenge me
- was “What ever happened to sin?”
“What ever happened to sin?” It is a good question. We live in a world in which there is very
little encouragement to take responsibility for our transgressions. It is popular (and somewhat expected) that if
an error is detected we will find some way to blame another or excuse the
offender because of an earlier offense they had suffered. We are a society which is rapidly loosing the
ability to acknowledge our transgressions.
We are a society loosing the ability to confess. And as a result, we are a community in danger
of loosing the opportunity to hear a word of forgiveness.
Another saintly member of
University Lutheran would often remind me that there are enough things beating
us down without the Church constantly reminding us that we are sinners. I hear that critique as well - and I embrace it. There is nothing more important than for all
of us to be spared those humiliating, degrading situations in which we are
chided, ridiculed, and condemned. We need
a release from those voices which would attempt to reinforce in us a mistaken
notion that we are without value. We
need to be lifted up and aided in our attempts to stand on our own feet. We need to be surrounded by a community and
supported by a God who understands how important it is for us to know our
worth. We need to be forgiven, not
constantly reminded of our transgressions.
I could not agree more.
The learning to be gleaned form
both these voices is to understand that there are many things which do beat us
down and seek to destroy us. The gift
offered in the response is to realize that there is a way out of this conundrum
and that way is the way of Christ. It
is a way which calls upon to take seriously the sin which separates us from
God. It is a way which reminds us that
unless we acknowledge the sin it will elude our attempts to deal with it.
Far from holding us down and making
us captive to our transgressions, Lent is an opportunity to acknowledge. Acknowledging is the first step in overcoming. And overcoming is the gift God gives us in
Christ.
Somewhere along the way - probably
in our childhood - we got stuck on our understanding of sin. We identify it with the little, mischievous
things a child is prone to do. As we
became adults, we continued to think of sin in the same way. The only difference is that we begin to
associate it with the big, mean things adults sometimes do to one another. Stuck in this notion of sin, we think of Lent
as a time to identify and confess all the ugly jokes, all the stolen candy
bars, and all the little white lies we have told. We think of the sin(s) we commit. We fail to address the Sin which separates
us from God.
Between trying to lead the confirmation
ministry students and offering an adult course on Luther’s Small Catechism, I
have been reading a lot of Luther’s writings.
In preparing for one or the
other, I came across a statement which might be helpful to us tonight:
Luther said that sin is unfaith.
It is lack of trust in God and therefore a lack of willingness to
embrace God’s will for our lives. One
expression of unfaith, or sin, is trusting in one’s own virtue and moral
character rather than God’s grace and power.
Another is self-centeredness, which alienates us from God and each
other.
Sin is not merely the breaking of
some arbitrary rule set by some reigning tyrant. God’s complaint against us has nothing to do
with power or control – it has everything to do with receiving and celebrating
the fullness of life which God extends to us.
The transgressions which we are invited to lay at the altar are those
actions, inactions, words and thoughts which reduce life. To confess our sins is not an exercise in
identifying those miniscule half-verses which say to us “thou shalt not….” It is a chance to admit we do not live the
life God wants for us. It is an
opportunity to examine how we might more fully receive the grace of God.
The disciplines of Lent are not
designed to bring us down or make us cower.
They are intended to help us identify that which separates us from God,
from one another, and from ourselves.
The invitation of Lent is to acknowledge and then to lay these things at
the foot of the cross. It is there that
we receive grace and healing.
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment