Henrietta United Church of Christ

Rev. David Inglis June 26, 2005

Romans 6:12-19

Sin–A New Look at an Old Problem, Part 1.

Sin. It’s been messing up people’s relationships with each other, causing death and destruction, and estranging people from God since Adam and Eve helped themselves to the forbidden fruit. When some vigilantes caught a woman in the act of adultery, hauled her in front of Jesus and demanded that she be stoned, Jesus said, “Let the one who is without sin cast the first stone.” And you know, if all of humanity had been standing there watching, there still wouldn’t have been any stones hurled that day. Sin lives in all of us. But talking about our sin is about as popular as talking about the dietary preferences of house flies. Talking about other people’s  sins–now that’s a whole different story. That sells newspapers and magazines and air time. Sins in the plural when applied to someone else can sound racy. But “sin” as a sermon topic sounds stodgy and judgmental.

But I decided not to duck today’s lectionary reading from Paul, even though it’s peppered with the word “sin.” And once I started letting his words get inside me, I found them opening up the path to liberation, not taking me into a cesspool of condemnation. So I want to share this liberation with you. In fact, I’m going to break my message into two sermons–one this Sunday and one next Sunday.

To really get somewhere with this passage, I think we need to get beyond the mindset that sin is a violation of a law or moral code that is external to us. The eighth of the Ten Commandments is, “Thou shalt not steal.” To steal is a sin, because God said not to. But then, what about a destitute mother who steals a loaf of bread to feed her starving children? Or what about the fourth commandment, to keep the sabbath day and not do any work on the seventh day of the week? Are all the doctors and nurses caring for sick patients in hospitals sinning today? Are we sinning if our sabbath day is the Sunday, the first day of the week, and not Saturday, as the Bible prescribes? These are the kind of fruitless arguments that can tangle you up when you see sin simply as a violation of an external law or moral code.

That was exactly what Jesus was saying about the Pharisees, who tended to be obsessed with keeping the letter of law, but missed the deeper truth the law tries to point us to. And Paul’s great gift to us is the insight that we can’t get liberated from our feelings of guilt by trying all the harder to conform to laws and moral codes. Our liberation and salvation don’t come from the law, but from grace–from receiving God’s all-embracing, forgiving love. As we just read in verse 14, “You are not under law but under grace.” But he goes on, “What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace?” This is the other trap that some Christians get stuck in. “Well, if I’m already “saved” by grace and by Jesus’ sacrifice, what I do now doesn’t really affect my eternal destiny. That’s been assured.” That’s called “cheap grace.” It’s obvious what that’s worth in terms of liberating us from the destructive power of sin.

So we need to bring our understanding of sin down to the spiritual level–the level where it affects our own spirit.

The perspective I want to approach sin from today comes from people who have had near death experiences. One thing that most people who have died and been brought back describe is a life review. According to their accounts, when we die, we will suddenly review many, many scenes from our life in rapid succession. Not only will we feel again how we felt at the time, but we’ll also experience in our spirits how what we did or said affected other people. If we said or did something that hurt someone, we’ll feel the pain, humiliation, or anger that person felt, just like it was happening to us. And if we said or did something that helped someone, we’ll feel the appreciation and lift and gratitude that they felt in response. Some people report seeing how their negative actions and their positive actions rippled out from one person to another to another, creating either more pain and fear and resentment in the world, or creating more love, peace and joy.

So what is sin from this perspective? Maybe sin isn’t as much the violation of a law or code as it is the violation of what’s most precious in someone–their mind, their heart, their soul. Have we done that to people? Yes, even the people we love. What makes us injure people like that? It could be our pride, our greed, our fears, our lusts, our need for control, or just our carelessness that comes from being preoccupied with ourselves.

In Jesus’ description of the judgment in Matthew 25, he said, “Whatever you did to the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you did to me”–whether it was feeding them when they were hungry or turning our back on them. A mature understanding of sin sees that we are all spiritually interconnected with each other, and Christ is connected with all of us. When we violate another person’s soul, we violate our own soul, and we violate Christ. We are all part of one spiritual whole.

When our own needs and fears blind us to other people’s soul, when our lust for power or control takes away others’ power, we are living in sin. This is what creates arguments and slamming doors and tears of frustration in our relationships. This is what creates things like the Middle East conflict, and the atrocities in Darfur, and terrorist attacks, and to one extent or another the war in Iraq. This is what creates strip mining and the destruction of rain forests and global warming that we all contribute to.

But I believe that our purpose as souls going through this experience of mortality is to find the path to salvation. “Salvation” has the same root as “salve,” which means “healing.” I see salvation is a healing of our separation from each other, our souls and God. As we move along this path toward salvation, we inch the world a little closer to the kingdom of God here, and we prepare ourselves to enter the kingdom of heaven when we move on from here.

Each of us has to find that path for ourselves. In that sense it’s a personal path. But we can’t follow that path in isolation. Our decisions and actions affect other people and the world around us, and theirs affect us. We’re all on this path together.

In a few minutes we’ll be participating in an ancient ritual that can help us move forward on our path to salvation. It’s the sacrament of baptism. There are many ways to interpret this ancient rite, but this morning I’d like to invite you to think of it this way. Think of the water of baptism as representing the vast ocean of God’s love for you and for everyone. This ocean is so deep we will never touch its bottom. Yet there is nothing to fear. We can’t get lost in it, because this ocean is our true home. We can’t drown in it, because it is the ocean of life and we were made to live in it for eternity. To immerse ourselves in the waters of baptism is to come home to God, come home to ourselves, come home to all of the others whom God holds in a loving embrace–and there are no exceptions.

Entering this ocean means releasing our illusion that we are our own separate person whose purpose is to meet our own needs in our own way. It means releasing our pride that we are better or more worthy than others, our shame that we are inferior or less worthy than others, our fear that we will lose if we don’t put ourselves first, our resentments from when others have injured us, our guilt from when we have injured others. We all carry things like this that keep us from wanting to enter this water.

But this ocean has a wonderful ability. We don’t have to be clean and holy to enter it. If we go in anyway, just the way we are, this water can cleanse us and just float away all the things that keep us separate and lonely and at odds with the world.

So close your eyes for a moment, and ask your soul if it wants to enter this ocean of unconditional loving grace, that has been there for you since the beginning of time. If you are willing, feel yourself saying Yes to God’s love for you and Yes to God’s love for all humanity and all creation. And then release into the ocean anything that has kept you lonely, separate, fearful, guilty, or ashamed. And feel yourself preparing to live in this ocean more fully–being more humble, more compassionate, and more generous with a love that draws from the depths of this ocean and never runs out. Prepare to live as a child of God and a reflection of Christ.

As Kate sings, I’m going to bring some of the baptismal water to you. As you feel the drops of water on your skin, let it be for you a reminder of God’s ocean of love that invites you to swim freely in it every moment of your life, with all the creatures God has made.