Let's Talk About Sin

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent, Year C

Saint Peter's | Arlington, VA

Ps. 32; 2 Cor. 5:16-21; Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

*Final sermon before departure

“Great are the tribulations of the wicked,” says the Psalmist.

Well, good morning, Saint Peter’s—and a Happy Lent to all...

As always, it is good for us to gather together. I have to say: each time I gaze out from

this grand perch, I am so humbled to see a room full of deeply faithful people—sharing your laughter and longing with one another, and bringing the fullness of your lives into this room. What an immense privilege it is to ascend these steps.

On this morning, with this final opportunity to share a few moments of reflection with you, I thought it would be appropriate to offer something light and breezy—something true to my signature style... So, let’s talk about sin.

Has it ever struck you how strange all of this is? All this talk of sin and forgiveness, the kneeling and confessing, the somber tones. It’s all just a bit unsettling, right?

When I was especially young I went through a phase of using a pocketknife to carve my initials into various surfaces—including an antique table my grandma had gifted my mother. Now, I can’t really give any reason why, either then or even now in hindsight, but what I can say is that it’s pretty difficult to deny responsibility for a transgression after literally leaving a signature at the crime scene...

At around the same time, I committed to memory Paul’s sobering reminder in Romans: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Eventually, this would come to mind alongside my Mother’s reminder of Jesus’ words in Luke: “The one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.” So, just to make sure I wouldn’t ever become one who loves little, I honed in my practice over the years: ensuring there was never any lack in opportunity to receive forgiveness. That’s what I call gaming the system.

Have we really not progressed beyond this old, worn out talk of sin? Hasn’t this idea caused enough harm and devastation? Perhaps rightly then, talk of “sin” is out of vogue.

But for much the same reason that this notion doesn’t pass the vibe check anymore, the act of confession is so profoundly odd and radically countercultural.

So, I can’t help but wonder what’s at stake if we discard notions that are uncomfortable or perhaps inconvenient. Apart from acknowledging that not all behavior is life-giving, how can we possibly talk about ethical responsibility or accountability in the wake of wrongdoing?

In much the same vain I have also wondered—and perhaps I put myself out on a shaky limb here—whether a God who is incapable of kindling anger could possibly bring to a hurting world the deliverance so celebrated in our scripture?

To describe what is meant by “sin,” some theologian use the word “estrangement.”

I think this is helpful framing. Because we tend to think of sinful actions as neatly outlined “thou shalts” and “thou shalt nots”—perhaps in the Ten Commandments or the Levitical code, or even those of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And as long as we live within the guardrails of whatever fixed moral code we’ve chosen, we can rest assured we are the upstanding ones—that it’s really those other “sinners” who are the source of the problem.

And maybe this is what sin is. But in my experience, not much is ever so dogmatically black and white as we might prefer it to be.

“Estrangement” describes separation from God; it is anything that turns us away from Love. But lest we think this is merely a soft solution, expanding our notion in this way is rather unfortunate. Because, at least for myself, it only makes me more aware of ways I have fallen short. Truthfully, when the challenges of being fully human are just to much to handle, I am all-too-prone to give myself away to countless heart-numbing distractions conveniently void of substance.

In a much heralded book titled Exclusion and Embrace, the Croatian-born Protestant theologian, Miroslav Volf, reflects on the work of reconciliation from the context of the Yugoslav wars. The harrows of ethnic cleansing inform Volf as he writes:

“Sin is here the kind of purity that wants the world cleansed of the other rather then the heart cleansed of the evil that drives people out by calling those who are clean ‘unclean,’ and refusing to help make clean those who are unclean.”

A “ministry of reconciliation”—like that which our lesson from 2 Corinthians calls us and Volf describes—is surely never a straightforward task. It is all the more challenging though when there is an ever-increasingly blurry line between those who have been harmed and those responsible for perpetrating that harm others.

In any protracted conflict—whether it be on a personal, national, or global scale, pick whichever comes to mind—todays victims all-too-often become tomorrows perpetrators.

When exclusion becomes the ethic of a people, it merely creates ever-widening ripples of estrangement—that is until, as Volf suggests, the cycle is broken by an ethic of embrace.

It is to this especially powerful image that Jesus turns. When a group of Pharisees and scribes come along grumbling that Jesus would dare dine with sinners, he does not concern himself with their impulse to cast out and separate. Instead, he upends the premise altogether.

These disgruntled parties are offended that Jesus would belittle himself through exposure to those deemed unclean—according to their own definition, it is worth adding—because it undermines their own claim to be those considered clean. Their piety is insulted because preserving their elevated standing in the hierarchy of human beings depends on it.

But Jesus doesn’t play by the rules because he has come not for the “righteous” but for “sinners.” Because, after all, “Those who are well have no need of a physician.”

As Miroslav Volf helpfully summarizes, “By embracing the ‘outcast,’ Jesus underscores the ‘sinfulness’ of the persons and systems that cast them out.” Embrace is the heart of the Gospel.

The story Jesus tells in response is perhaps even better summarized by the theology in one of my absolute favorite books, which I brought along this morning...

Where the Wild Things Are tells the story of Max: a little boy who “made mischief of one kind / and another.” After throwing a temper tantrum, Max is sent to bed without dinner. And, as the film adaptation interprets it, he runs away from home.

In the wild place, Max the Prodigal declares himself king and relishes freedom from any consequences for his actions. “Let the wild rumpus start!,” he declares. And it’s a good time, too: until it’s not, anyway. Eventually, Max gets lonely living where he does not belong. So he returns home.

And when he arrives—despite his self-indulgence and the fear he surely causes his mother—he finds supper waiting on a table for him. “And it was still hot.”

This is what God’s love is like.

Well before the Prodigal Son has opportunity to repent or make any meaningful restitution, he finds himself seated at the table: embraced in the wideness of God’s mercy.

Despite our desire for belonging’s embrace though, it may take time and some internal wrestling for such unexpected love to melt way our resistances.

Such is the case in the poem Love (III) by George Herbert:

Love bade me welcome. Yet me soul drew back Guilty of dust and sin. But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack From my first entrance in, Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning, If I lacked any thing. A guest, I answered, worthy to be here: Love said, You shall be he. I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear, I cannot look on thee. Love took my hand, and smiling did reply, Who made the eyes but I? Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame Go where it doth deserve. And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame? My dear, then I will serve. You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat: So I did sit and eat.

In working its way into us, love upends our understanding. And this is the story Jesus tells.

It is not a story about sin—not the selfish indulgence of the younger son, nor of the bitter

resentment of the older son. It is neither.

Central to the story Jesus tells—to the Pharisees and to you and me—is the love of the Father. And if this language presents barriers to you, I would invite you to read it instead using the image of a Mother. Because what the story aims to invite us into is an understanding of the love of God.

Everything exists in orbit around this strange, unforeseen love... Sin, estrangement, sibling rivalry, hospitality, cultural offenses and the expectational norms of patriarchy: all of it gets redefined by God’s merciful embrace.

This is precisely the “ministry of reconciliation” to which we are called, friends.

It is through us and our life together as Christ’s Body that God makes his appeal to the lost and lonely. Each and every one of us, gathered around a feast as worthy guests with the many different particularities of our pain, pulling up a chair where everyone is welcome...

Those overwhelmed by the demands of parenting and children of all ages in need of

parental love...

Retirees and the unwillingly unemployed...

Divorcees and recovering addicts...

Gay, straight, and nonbinary...

Grieving widows and would-be mothers...

Seniors, middle-aged, young adults, teenagers, newborns...

This is who you are, Saint Peter’s: Ministers of Reconciliation rubbing elbows together,

passing dishes of the divine back and forth at the Eucharist and at Coffee Hour, through Meals That Heal and Foyer Groups and Rebuilding Together, and in rising up to respond to many of moments of one another’s need.

This is who you are: a people forgiven, healed, renewed by a God who beckons all into the goodness of relationship and then show forth that bountiful grace, together..

So then, draw the circle wide—and may you continue to draw it ever wider still.

Amen.