I preached this sermon April 15, 2018, at the Park Hill Presbyterian Church in North Little Rock. It is Eastertide and the texts were about belief, sin, repentance and the new creatures that we are in Christ. It is my belief that we have tried to fit sin in a box so that we can not only manage it but manage behaviors related to sin as if that is a possibility. And in trying to manage these behaviors we have forgotten that sin is really more than certain behaviors and beliefs that help us decide who is in and who is out and/or what our eternal reward and destiny might be. When we do this we completely lose the redemptive power of the cross that says “it is finished” I hope these words on sin are good news to all of us as we ponder the notion that anything that divides us is sin because God has redeemed us all and placed a divine spark within each of us that only grows by uniting with the divine spark in others. Blessings of Eastertide. ALLELUIA!.
What the Text Says:
Acts 3:12-19
3:12 When Peter saw it, he addressed the people, “You Israelites, why do you wonder at this, or why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we had made him walk?
3:13 The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our ancestors has glorified his servant Jesus, whom you handed over and rejected in the presence of Pilate, though he had decided to release him.
3:14 But you rejected the Holy and Righteous One and asked to have a murderer given to you,
3:15 and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses.
3:16 And by faith in his name, his name itself has made this man strong, whom you see and know; and the faith that is through Jesus has given him this perfect health in the presence of all of you.
3:17 “And now, friends, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers.
3:18 In this way God fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets, that his Messiah would suffer.
3:19 Repent, therefore, and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out,
1 John 3:1-7
3:1 See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God, and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.
3:2 Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.
3:3 And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.
3:4 Everyone who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness; sin is lawlessness.
3:5 You know that he was revealed to take away sins, and in him there is no sin.
3:6 No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him.
3:7 Little children, let no one deceive you. Everyone who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous.
The S Word
I grew up in a very small town. A very religious town. My mother’s parent live a block in one direction. My father’s parents lived a block in the other direction. I walked to school for 8 years. I had to cross the street. The hills of Tennessee were my playground.
You could walk out the back door of the house where I grew up, down the alley, go past one house and into the back door of the Richard City Cumberland Presbyterian Church. This is where my parents, both sets of grandparents, cousins, various aunts and uncles, both blood relations and family of faith, all worshiped.
You could walk out the back door of the Presbyterian Church, across the alley, and into the back door of the church of Christ. you could, if you chose to and were allowed, walk through the Church of Christ, 0ut the front door, walk two doors down to the corner, past my grandparent’s house and into the front door of the Baptist Church.
The Baptist and the Presbyterians managed to share some things in common. Bible School and summer revivals. The Presbyterian’s had Bible School one week and the Baptists had Bible School the next week. When it came time for summer revivals, the Baptist would begrudgingly dismiss their service and come to the Presbyterian church because the Presbyterians would dismiss church on Wednesday night of that week that the Baptists had their revival service and attend service there.
The Baptist relished the opportunity to save us Presbyterians from our sins. It was as if the Baptist were predestined for this task. With many long alter calls and more verses of Just as I Am than have ever been published in a Presbyterian hymnal.
But we Presbyterians, steadfast in our salvation ,Would not go down front until so many invitations had been given that some of the backslidden Baptist would go down front, followed by those who were steadfast in their faith finally followed by the Presbyterians when it became clear that if you were a Christian you should be at the front of the church.
Of course, the Church of Christ held fast to their own worship no matter what with no dalliance in these foreign religions. Although they were fervent in their invitations to the Baptists and the Presbyterians, both refused to bow to the notion that only the Church of Christ would enter the pearly gates. I would have to say that the Baptists and the Church of Christ were actually aligned in their beliefs of who would be in heaven. The Presbyterians were the only ones who would NOT be surprised to see their church neighbors just beyond the pearly gates.
As a child summers were a smorgasbord of theological discussion among the neighborhood kids and I’m sure our parents tired each year of reinforcing the various sin doctrines regarding Sin, salvation and who would and would not make it to the pearly gates based on following various rules of behavior. My own parents never excluded anyone from the peace of heaven and assured me and my sister that despite what others might say, we were safe from the gates of hell.
But all three churches were fervent in the desire for the confession of sin, the salvation of souls and the eternal joy of heaven. As a child, for me, this raised many questions about sin because it seemed the recognition of sin in our lives was important to the salvation of our eternal souls.
We were all familiar with the sins:
Cussing
Disobeying parents
The 10 commandments were
All high on the list.
When puberty came along a very brief foray into the sexual sins was lightly touched upon and basically, all that included was don’t do it or you will die and go to hell if you are not married.
In some families there might have been a brief mention about the use of alcohol again, abstention was the only choice if you expected to enter the joy of everlasting heaven.
In those days, smoking, and we are talking tobacco here, was not a particularly Christian thing to do for us kids although most of the men smoked and I had seen a few women emerge from the bathroom in what looked like a cloud from heaven but smelled like cigarettes. Even in the church house of the Lord, I had observed this.
By the time we got to high school most of the folks I had grown up with were trying out the sins in wild abandon. I was pretty naive. had heard that some of my High school classmates were actually having sex AND I knew people, within my circle of close, Christian friends who not only smoked but drank.
By the time I got to college, I too was doing my own research regarding the various prohibitions that were guaranteed to send us straight to hell. This is what happens when you give people a list of things they are NOT supposed to do. The natural tendency is to do them anyway and see what happens.
Although perhaps not as bad as in times past, the church as we know it still doesn’t have very good sin language or an understanding of sin. It seems it is still pretty much limited to a list of what you can and can’t do, who is in and who is out based on various lists of behaviors and beliefs.
Our world is torn to pieces by conversations related to who is in and who is out based on prescribed behaviors and beliefs.
Don McKim writes in his book Presbyterian Beliefs, This about sin: “While Humans are created in the image of God the Bible and Presbyterian theology, in particular, recognize that the relationship of love that humans were created to share with God and with each other has been broken. That disruption has been called sin.”
So, whatever causes a disruption in the love between God and ourselves could be considered a sin.
In the Mirror Bible, which I highly recommend, Francois duToit, looking at the Greek text explains sin this way:
The word “sin” is the Greek word hamartia, from ha, negative or without and meros, portion or form. Thus, to be without your allotted portion or without form, pointing to a disoriented, distorted bankrupt identity. The word meros, is the stem of morph the word metamorphe, with form which is the opposite of Hamartia without form.
Therefore sins is to live out of context with the blueprint of one’s design. To behave out of tune with God’s original harmony.
And what was God’s original harmony? I think it was love. Specifically to love God, with our entire being along with our neighbor and our self.
Given what Dr. McKim says about what we as Presbyterians believe about sin and what Dr. du Toit says about sin, I am going to propose to you perhaps a heretical way of thinking about sin.
My working definition of sin and this is not original to me, I learned this from my Spiritual Director Jane Lee Wolfe.
The definition Goes like this:
A sin is anything you
Think
Do
Or say
That makes it difficult to love
God
Self
And neighbor.
Now, I’m not asking you to agree with me. but I would like for you to think about that as a definition of sin and how that would affect the way you live relate to God yourself and your neighbor.
What are the obstacles you face in loving God?
What are the obstacles you face in loving yourself?
What are the obstacles you face in loving your neighbor, the person next to you on the pew, family members, and just to bring it home:
What obstacles do you face when it comes to loving the one who is different from you be it the alcoholic drug addict, the homeless person, the gay/lesbian person, the Muslim the convenience store, and the Hindu who runs the hotel out by the interstate?
Those barriers are what need to be confessed and forgiven for us and our neighbor.
A sin is anything you
Think
Do or
Say
That makes it difficult to love
God
Self
Neighbor
AND
The one different from you
That the Bible calls enemy.
Our notion of sin Reminds me of the tangled mangrove’s in the picture all mangled together not making much sense but a part of the tangled web we often weave for ourselves.
I’m hoping that if we can think of sin a little differently it will be less complicated something we can wrap our head and heart around in such a way that we can know more clearly what it means.
In our passage from Acts, we have the story of a person healed. We read Luke telling the people that it was their ignorance, their lack of knowing their true identity, that caused them to choose a criminal over Jesus. And it was their ignorance that had Jesus crucified because they failed to realize that all are one in Christ, so they too were a part of this crucifixion. AND that it was the power of Jesus that healed the man. In other words, the people, in their ignorance, had behaved in such a way that it had become difficult and complicated to love God, self, and neighbor. They were without form, they had lost contact with their original design as children of God.
They didn’t love the lame man because he was different he was lame. They didn’t love Jesus because he was different. He broke rules and was on the side of the downcast and downtrodden. They were out of harmony with their original design. That was the sin.
I want to share with you, how the passage from I John has been translated in the mirror Bible:
3:1 Consider the amazing love the Father lavished upon us. This is our defining moment: We began in the agape of God the engineer of the universe is our Father!! So it’s no wonder that the pPerformance-based systems of this world just cannot see this!! Because they do not recognize their origin in God.
3:2 Beloved, we know that we are children of God to begin with which means that there can be no future surprises; His manifest likeness is already mirrored in us! Our sameness cannot be comprised or contradicted. Our gaze will confirm exactly who he is and who we are.
3:3 And every individual in who this expectation echoes also endeavors to realize their own flawless innocence mirrored in him whose image they bear.
3:4 Distorted behavior is the result of a warped self-image!! A lost sense of identity is the basis of all sin!!
3:5 We have witnessed with our own eyes how in the unveiling of the prophetic word when he was lifted up, upon the cross as the Lamb of God, he lifted up our sins and broke its dominion and rule over us!!
3:6 To abide in him in uninterrupted seamless oneness is to live free from sin. Whoever continues in sin has obviously not perceived how free they are in him they clearly do not really know him.
3:7 Little children do not be led astray by any other opinion. His righteousness is the source of our righteousness.
These are unbelievable BOLD claims!
What is being said here is that we sin when we forget that we are already in God by design from the very beginning and no performance-based system, no system of rules to define who is in and who is out will ever work. By the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we are saved not by some rule or behavior system of do’s and don’ts.
Imagine, the impact on our lives personally if we accepted the fact that from the very beginning we were designed to mirror God. We are designed to reflect, to shine, to show the God stuff within ourselves and our neighbor. Whenever we lose sight of this divine spark within each of us that is always seeking to connect to the divine spark in the other, then we sin.
How would your life change, how would the life of this congregation be changed if we simply accepted that God is with us, and we begin to look for and celebrate the way God is with us and our neighbor. What if we went about uncovering the salvific love of God within our own lives and begin to look for ways to connect that divine love within ourselves with the divine love that is in the other, especially the ones who are different from us. Or dare I say it, yes even our enemy.
This passage from I John would suggest that to do otherwise is sin. And that, brothers and sisters, is the sin that we must confess to God, ourselves and our neighbor. God, forgive me for not loving you, for not loving myself and my neighbor.
In this way, sin takes on a whole new dimension. Because in this sense sin is not confined to a list of do’s and don’ts, a list of who is in and who is out.
Now just to throw you a curveball, It is NOT loving God, love Self, and love neighbor. It is love God. Love self and neighbor. There is no hierarchy of love.
This is Eastertide. Easter proclaims the reality of it is finished. Our sins are forgiven. The work of redemption is complete. Now the task for you and me and the church is to reveal the completed work of Christ in me and you and when necessary, confess those things that keep us from doing that.
This is radical news the world needs to hear. This is radical news that the church needs to affirm and demonstrate. This is the news your neighbor is waiting to hear. God is in you.
As they say in AA, live as if… It is time for us to live as if this is true and to give up performance-based systems, stop judging ourselves and others on whether we are good enough, have done enough or are enough. Today we are reminded we are.
May the divine that is in me connect to the divine that is in you.
May the divine that is in us shine brightly into the world that we may all incarnate the already completed work of God’s redemption in the world
Alleluia Amen.
