Sin Is Not About Sex or Dessert

What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? 
Romans 5:1

In Paul’s letter to the Church in Rome, he argues that God’s grace is always greater than our sin.

Sin and grace are ancient words of the faith.  But they sound oddly out of place in modern life. “Amazing Grace” is not only the most popular hymn for Christians, it is probably the most popular song on the planet.  But that does not mean we are comfortable with grace.  And before we can really understand grace, we need to understand sin.

Contrary to what we see in the popular culture, sin is not about dessert and it is not about sex.

Paul Tillich, one of the greatest theologians of the twentieth (or any other) century, argues that another word for sin is separation.  In his famous sermon, “You Are Accepted,” he contends that to be in a state of sin is to be in a state of separation: separation from God, from others, and from ourselves.

Just as we cannot be born without separating from our mothers, so we cannot exist without separation from our essence, which is with God.  Existence necessarily means separation and estrangement.  We are not only separated from God’s being, we are also separated from God’s will.  And we know that.  If we were not separated from God’s will, then we would never do things to hurt others and ourselves.

We know that we are also separated from others.  That is obvious physically.  But it is more than that.  

Immanuel Kant once said with courageous honesty, that there is something in the misfortune of our closest friends that does not displease us.  When something bad happens to someone else, we are sad, but we are also relieved.  Somewhere deep inside a voice echoes: “Thank goodness it wasn’t me.”  “. . . it’s not my child.”

But our situation is deeper than that.  Our separation is greater.  

One of the hardest things for those who have lost a loved one is that life goes on all around as if nothing had happened.  Even close friends soon go back to their own business.  

Those who have lost a parent, or a child, or a spouse, or a close friend are left alone.  Sometimes people ask why he or she doesn’t “get over it.”  When we are grieving, we feel as if the world should stop, at least for an instant.  But it goes on, as if nothing had happened.  We are separated from one another.  We are estranged.

We are also separated from ourselves, from our best selves.  Sometimes we experience this acutely and we say that we don’t know who we are.  Or when we do something which we know is wrong, we say, “I don’t know what’s the matter with me.”  In the story of the Prodigal Son, Jesus tells us that “when he came to himself” the son decided to return home.

Grace is the opposite of sin.  If sin is separation, then grace is union, or more accurately, reunion.  By God’s grace we are reunited with God, with others, and with our selves.

The word which Paul Tillich uses to help us understand the working of grace, is acceptance.  To experience God’s grace, is to be accepted by God.  God’s acceptance of us enables us to accept others, and even to accept ourselves.

For many years I have used this concept of acceptance as the basis of a benediction.  The general idea came from my late friend and mentor, Bill Ziegler.  To be honest, I cannot say precisely how what I say differs from what he said, and I don’t think that the differences are terribly important.

It begins with the proclamation of God’s grace:

I send you forth with Good News.

That God loves you.

And accepts you just the way you are.

This acceptance is not something we have earned.  It is not something which God will give us after we fulfill certain requirements, after we have been to counseling, or lost weight, or conquered our bad habits.  It is a gift.  And real gifts have no conditions.  God takes us as we are.

This does not mean that we should not change and grow.  I have a long list of things I want to change or improve about myself.  And my family could probably give me an even longer list.  There are plenty of things in our lives that we ought to change in order to become what God calls us to be, but that change and growth is not a condition of God’s acceptance.

The same thing is true in our personal relationships, with children and parents, with spouses and friends.  It is hard for people to change unless they are accepted as they are.  It is that unconditional acceptance, that gift, which gives us the freedom to change and grow.  The gift of acceptance makes me want to change and grow, and that gift also makes it possible.

God’s acceptance is personal.  God loves you and accepts you.  This is not just a general statement.  It is specific and personal.  It is addressed to individuals.

And by that love and acceptance,

calls to you and to me

to accept this day

and this life

as God’s gift.

This is the challenge.  God’s gift calls for a response.  As God accepts us, so we are called to accept, and affirm, and claim, the life that God has given us.

That is not easy.  Unless we are remarkably comfortable, it is not always easy to affirm life as a gift.  When I look out on Sunday morning and see the hurt and grief that people bring to church with them, and realize that there are other hurts that I don’t know about, it would not surprise me at all, if, from time to time, people looked up and thought to themselves, “easy for you to say!”

There are many times when life does not feel like a gift.  And at certain points in my life as a pastor, I have thought that perhaps I should send folks out with some other word.  When people are hurting, what right do I have to tell them that life is a gift?

I felt that concern acutely during the many months that a young friend was struggling with cancer.  But when we were planning his memorial service, he told me specifically that he wanted me to use that benediction.  “I love that,” he said.  “I want you to remind people that God loves them.  And life is a gift.”

We are often more comfortable with yesterday, and we may be more hopeful about tomorrow.  But today is what God has given us, and today is what we are called to live.

To live it to the full.

And we are called to “live it to the full.”  Jesus came that we might have life and have it abundantly.  The apostle Paul said that we are more than survivors.  Our challenge is not simply to endure.  He insisted that we are “more than conquerors” through God’s love.  The great Methodist evangelist, E. Stanley Jones, said that Christians are called to “victorious living.”

Several years ago Bishop Dale White gave a wonderful sermon at the Memorial Service at Annual Conference.  He used Paul’s letter to the Philippians, and his text was “Rejoice, and again I say, rejoice!”  

He recalled hearing Dr. Christian Barnard, the pioneering heart surgeon talk about joy and suffering.  Dr. Barnard spoke of visiting two children in South Africa.  One little boy had lost his eyesight when his father, in a drunken rage, threw a kerosene lamp at him.  Now the plastic surgeons were rebuilding his face.  The other little boy could not walk and had both legs in a cast after several operations.  

When he opened the door to the children’s ward, the nurses were out of the room and these two boys had commandeered a food cart.  One could not see and the other could not walk, but together they careened around the ward at high speed, to the squealing delight of the other children.  

Before Dr. Barnard could think of how to restore order, they crashed into the brick wall at the far end of the ward.  The dishes clattered to the floor and it was a mess.  But the boys were thrilled.  

As he pulled them up, they were laughing and smiling, and one of them proclaimed, “Did you see that?  We won!”

They were winning the race of life.  They were living victoriously, in spite of the odds.

To share God’s love and hope and joy 

with one another.

Finally, we are called “to share God’s love and hope and joy with one another.”  We do this poorly, even on our best days.  But it is still what we are called to do.  And we know that there are times, when we look at one another, when we listen to one another, that God’s grace comes alive for us. What more important work could we have than that?  What greater witness could we give to the Gospel?

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome. Please feel free to share on social media as you wish. 

A Summer Sunday Traffic Jam Reminds Me of Jonathan Edwards

Jonathan Edwards 1703-1758

Then I heard another voice from heaven saying, “Come out of her, my people, so that you do not take part in her sins, and so that you do not share in her plagues; for her sins are heaped high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities. Render to her as she herself has rendered, and repay her double for her deeds; mix a double draught for her in the cup she mixed. As she glorified herself and lived luxuriously, so give her a like measure of torment and grief. Since in her heart she says, ‘I rule as a queen; I am no widow, and I will never see grief,’ therefore her plagues will come in a single day— pestilence and mourning and famine— and she will be burned with fire; for mighty is the Lord God who judges her.”

Revelation 18:4-8

Yesterday after church I drove north and east to Georgetown, Maine, for a week of vacation.

In  our part of the northeast corridor there is always some traffic but on a Sunday afternoon most of the traffic was headed south and although I had some slowdowns, there were no delays.

At the northern end of Route 128 the southbound lanes were stop and go. And then from the Merrimack River north into the Maine Turnpike the southbound lanes looked more like a parking lot.

Mile after mile of bumper to bumper.

I thought about how frustrating it must be. I wondered whether it would be better or worse for the folks in those cars to know exactly how far the road would be clogged.

And then.

Although I knew it was not right, I could not help feeling an unreasonable delight in the contrast of the open road heading north in front of me and the parking lot heading south in front of them.

It reminded me of the great Puritan theologian Jonathan Edwards’s perverse contention that, “When the saints in glory shall see the wrath of God executed on ungodly men, it will be no occasion of grief to them, but of rejoicing.”

The major difference being that what I saw as a moral failing he counted as righteousness. The righteous, he argued, rejoice in the punishment of the ungodly precisely because they are righteous. It is not a vice in them, it is a virtue.

Edwards meditates on this in a sermon titled, “The End of the Wicked Contemplated by the Righteous” and subtitled, “The Torments of the Wicked in Hell, No Occasion of Grief to the Saints in Heaven.” In his reflection, those verses from Revelation cited above should be understood as good news. Although the wicked might stand back in alarm, the righteous should rejoice at God’s judgment.

He tells of the righteous in glory observing the fate of those who are damned.

“When they shall see it, it will be no occasion of grief to them. The miseries of the damned in hell will be inconceivably great. When they shall come to bear the wrath of the Almighty poured out upon them without mixture, and executed upon them without pity or restraint, or any mitigation; it will doubtless cause anguish, and horror, and amazement vastly beyond all the sufferings and torments that ever any man endured in this world; yea, beyond all extent of our words or thoughts. For God in executing wrath upon ungodly men will act like an Almighty God. The Scripture calls this wrath, God's and the fierceness of his wrath; and we are told that this is to show God's wrath, and to make his power known; or to make known how dreadful his wrath is, and how great his power.

 “The saints in glory will see this, and be far more sensible of it than now we can possibly be. They will be far more sensible how dreadful the wrath of God is, and will better understand how terrible the sufferings of the damned are; yet this will be no occasion of grief to them. They will not be sorry for the damned; it will cause no uneasiness or dissatisfaction to them; but on the contrary, when they have this sight, it will excite them to joyful praises.”

In glory, the righteous will joyfully praise God’s righteous judgment.

What he calls virtue is at the center of the very worst in so-called Christian thought. The people who study Jonathan Edwards tell me that he was a genius, and for the most part I take their word for it. But on this point I think he has it upside down.

Sadly, for many Christians, this is where we are. We embrace the image of God’s judgment and are skeptical of God’s grace. 

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome. Please feel free to share on social media as you wish.

Feeling Hope Today: But Where Will It All End?

When the invited guests did not come to the banquet, “the owner of the house became angry and said to his servant, ‘Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.’ And the slave said, ‘Sir, what you ordered has been done, and there is still room.” Then the master said to the servant, ‘Go out into the roads and lanes, and compel people to come in, so that my house may be filled.’”
Luke 14:21-24

Yesterday a friend posted about hearing news of the Supreme Court ruling on Gay Marriage while on vacation with her family in Provincetown:

Today, June 26th 2015, my family and I had the amazing experience of celebrating the Supreme Court decision in Provincetown, MA. It was the state (and town!)that the first same sex marriage was recognized. My children had the unique experience of witnessing history being made. My grandchildren will never know a world where you couldn't marry whomever you want to. Feeling hope today!!!

Hope. With exclamation points!

How different this week seems from last. A week ago it seemed like such deep darkness. And today, like my friend, I feel great hope.

On Monday came the decision by Governor Nikki Haley to ask the South Carolina legislature to remove the Confederate flag from the Capitol grounds. And other leaders across the South followed suit.

On Thursday I attended a local memorial service at Allen African Methodist Episcopal Church in Providence. It was a beautiful service. Amazing prayers of grief and comfort and hope. A wonderful sermon. But beyond the content of the service, I was filled with hope when I saw that half of the congregation that night was made up of white people. And outside of the church, in between the anthems and the preaching and the prayers, we could hear the sounds of children playing.

And then there was the Health Care ruling. Whatever one may think about the Affordable Care Act, health care ought to be a basic right. Taking health insurance away from millions of Americans would not have been a good thing.

And finally, on Friday the Supreme Court ruled that equality under the law requires the right to equal marriage for gays and lesbians. And President Obama delivered an inspiring and challenging eulogy for the Rev. Clementa Pinckney that ended with him singing “Amazing Grace.” It was amazing. And it was grace-filled.

Of course, not everyone sees the events of this week the same way.

Some see the events of this week as signs of moral decay and an assault on their worldview. 

Publicly and privately, on television and radio and all over social media, they ask, “Where will it all end?”

Rush Limbaugh predicted that once the Confederate flag goes, the American flag will be next. The opponents of gay marriage had all sorts of dire predictions. Most of them are not repeatable in polite company, but they believe we are on a slippery slope and they believe that God will destroy the country in righteous judgment unless we reverse course.

But seriously, where will it all end?

Jesus had an answer to that question. 

It will end in that strange and wonderful place called the Kingdom of God. It will end in a place where the poor are lifted up, the lame walk and the blind see, where everyone has enough and no one has too much, where the stranger is welcome, and everyone has a place at the table.

We are not there, yet. But this past week gave us reason to dare to hope that we are moving in that direction.

Nothing Can Separate Us

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8:37-39

Can anything separate us from the love of God?

No, at least according to the Apostle Paul.

In the last verses of the eighth chapter of Paul’s letter to the church in Rome he declares with absolute certainty that nothing can separate us from the love of God, not “hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword” (v.35).

Yesterday the General Conference of the United Methodist Church voted with Paul, but it was closer than you might think.

In the morning session they were revising the Preamble to our United Methodist Social Principles. The Rev. We Hyung Chang, pastor of the Belmont UMC in Belmont, Massachusetts, one of the clergy delegates from New England, proposed that they add this sentence, “We stand united in declaring our faith that God’s grace is available to all, that neither belief nor practice can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.”

This might seem like basic Wesleyan theology. In fact, it might seem like basic Christianity. But among some of the delegates there was a fear that this would somehow soften their declaration that homosexuals and non-Christians really are (by their own choice, of course) separated from the love of God.

The Rev. Lisa Dianne Schubert, a clergy delegate from Indiana proposed that the word “nothing” be substituted for “neither belief nor practice. As she explained, “I want to say like in Romans 8, “nothing can separate us from the love of God.”

But that didn’t stop the debate.

This would be funny if it were not so sad. On the floor of General Conference they were actually debating whether they believed the central affirmation of Paul’s theology.

One delegate from Liberia argued that, “Putting that in there is telling us as Christians that our belief and our practice do not separate us, and that can be far from the truth because then we deny God’s judgment at the end of the ages.” A delegate from Florida argued that Paul was not talking about everyone, he was only talking about “those who are in Christ Jesus.”

But a narrow reading of Paul is just that. And it goes against the inclusive sweep of Paul’s understanding of God’s grace.

One of the deep ironies in the debate is that those who claim to believe the Bible literally (that is a generalization, of course) were willing to sacrifice a literal reading of Romans 8 in order to preserve a literal understanding of a few verses in Leviticus.

In the end, they decided that Paul was right and “nothing can separate us from the love of God.” I’m sure the Apostle was relieved. But as I said earlier, it was closer than you might think; the amendment carried by a vote of 532 to 414.