1 Peter 1:17-23; Acts 2:14, 36-41; Luke 24:25-35
People are telling me that when I retire, I have blanket permission to say, “I remember when....” Permit me a practice go at that. I remember reading a newspaper column in the 1980s called “Thanks a Million” written by a man named Percy Ross. Mr. Ross was a millionaire who decided that he wanted to give away his money to people with need and to do it while he was still alive.
Mr. Ross published a syndicated column, each one including several requests and his answers to them. At one point he was receiving over 10,000 letters a week. Here’s one he received, postmarked Newark, NJ:
“Dear Mister Percy Ross:You are so generous to help so many people. I am poor too but I get bye. I don't need money. I live under a bridge and it has a steam pipe under so I am warm in winter. There is a diner close bye and the dumster is always got food in that trukers don't eat. So I got every thing and don't need money. But I see you in the papers and I think if I was rich like you I will help people too. The other day I helped some buddy and he gave me $20. that is nice but there is some buddy that needs it more than I do I'm shure. $20 make me rich so I share and try to help you to do good. Please give this $20 to some buddy that realy need it.Yours truly, Wilson Demarest”[Grammar and spelling unedited] (1)
I don’t know how that letter strikes you, but I can imagine any number of emotions evoked:
• Anger and outrage at a society that allows people to live such a marginal existence.
• Pity for a man who has come to expect so little from life that he cannot even take advantage of good fortune when it is handed to him.
• Sadness at the realization that for some people to have $20 is to be “rich,” while for others it is hardly worth noticing in their pockets.
• Disgust at the continual “queue up and beg nicely” behavior that Ross' attitude and column invited.
• Delight at him getting knocked down a peg or two from his omni-economic perch by the gentle generosity of Wilson Demarest.
• A strange gnawing knowledge at the corner of the conscience that I am somehow strangely jealous of this man who has nothing, wants nothing, and can peacefully part with such a “fortune.”
Analysts of charitable giving will tell you that people who don’t have a lot of money tend to give a greater percentage of what they have than people who have more money than they know what to do with. A full-time minimum wage job grosses about $15,000 annually. A ten percent tithe would be $1,500. A person making $150,000 might make the same monetary gift, but it is only one percent .
You will remember that Jesus saluted the widow who put her two pennies in the temple offering box while people much richer were putting their large gifts in. Wilson Demarest, like the widow, put his whole living in the offering.
You know how the Centers for Disease Control like to talk about second-hand smoke – what we inhale when other people smoke? I like to say that I suffer from “second-hand Depression.” I am not old enough to have lived in the 1930s. But growing up I heard so much from my parents about the Great Depression, that I thought I was living through it. We didn’t have a lot of nickels to rub together, but we weren’t poor. It just seemed that way. I still track every penny, lest they slip away.
We are always living in times of scarcity and insecurity. Remember when Johnny Carson made a joke about toilet paper and the store shelves were emptied? The weather person calls for a big storm and bread and milk disappear. We worry about a government shutdown. We worry about ethnic and religious terrorism but we are more likely to have trouble with things related to local drug dealing. If we don’t have something to worry about, we feel that there is something wrong.
The author of 1 Peter gives us a wake-up call.
“You were liberated by the precious blood of Christ . . . . This was done for you, who through Christ are faithful to the God who raised him from the dead and gave him glory. So now, your faith and hope should rest in God.”
Where is true security to be found? In reverence for God and in holy love for each other. Most of us are content enough to mouth “our hope is in the name of the Lord” in church on Sunday morning as long as this attitude doesn’t sneak into the rest of the week. On Monday our hope is in our physical and emotional strengths and abilities. Our weekday faith is set in the knowledge we have worked hard to master, and the niche we have carved out for our life and lifestyle. Instead of trusting in God, we tend only to trust that which we can hold in our hands or fold into our wallets. Jesus said, “Stop collecting treasures for your own benefit on earth, where moth and rust eat them and where thieves break in and steal them” (Matthew 6:19).
Our gnawing sense of insecurity is what makes Wilson Demarest’s generosity and simplicity stir such a chord within us. There is no romanticizing poverty. The living conditions Demarest describes are deplorable and no human being should be reduced to such a meager existence when others have so much. Nonetheless, Demarest’s spiritual satisfaction must be taken seriously. He has a personal sense of trust and faith that overrides all the frightening uncertainties that buffet his life. Wilson Demarest’s soul knows deprivation. But it also knows contentment. That simple fact exposes the sand-filled foundations of our fragile hopes.
The 1 Peter letter writer knew that for the Christians spread out through Asia Minor, there would be no escape from the storms of persecution. What the writer could assert with joy, however, was that Christians can fully trust that the God who ransomed them through the blood of Christ is and will be standing beside them, no matter how violent the storms are.
What would it mean if the Christian church of Chicago, or Los Angeles, or southern Ohio took 1 Peter’s counsel just as seriously as did those first century believers in Northern Asia Minor? The church has learned too well from the corporate world how to plan its way forward to the next quarterly report, instead of prophesying its way into the future God has prepared for it. What if the church placed its trust not in their programs, money, numbers, facilities, or pastors, but in the Lord?
If God could raise Jesus from the dead, isn't it just possible that God could be trusted to raise the church from its nearly moribund state? The trouble with trusting God is that we have to dare through our skepticism, our disbelief, our insecurity, our fear. Because we are liberated by the precious blood of Christ, we are called to live. Our motto could be, “Go on or Else!” God calls Christians to actively witness to this world, not sit in th bleachers and wait for someone else to do Christ’s work, all the while wringing our hands.
The church of Christ is called to dare and do. If it fails, try something else. If it succeeds, keep at it until it fails and then try something else. Failures don’t mean that the church has “failed” to be a witness to Christ's presence here on earth for all people. The church only fails to do that when it puts its faith and hope and trust in the policies of people instead of the power of God.
The church that has forgotten how to dare is a dying church. The church that has forgotten how to dare has forgotten who its Lord is. The church that has forgotten how to dare has put its light under a basket.
This is the table of action. Jesus and the disciples didn’t sit around the table in the upper room and swap stories into the wee hours of the morning. Christ broke the bread and they ate. Christ shared the cup and they drank. Then they went out to meet head-on the events that would ultimately result in an empty tomb and a risen savior revealing himself in bread and cup. This is the table of daring, for Christ calls us to go out from here to be the church in the world.
As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup you dare to proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes again. Alleluia! Thanks be to God.
General Resource: Homiletics, April 25, 1993.
(1) Quoted in USA Today, 2 September 1992, D-1.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright © 2017 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
Matthew 28:1-10; Acts 10:34-43; Colossians 3:1-4
Our world is filled with signs. There are store signs and billboards. There are utility poles covered with staples where yard sale and lost dog signs once hung. The season of political signs is over, although one or two remain, gloating. There are historical markers for a variety of places and events. Of course there are traffic signs. They come in a variety of colors: brown for attractions, green for directions, orange for construction, blue for medical facilities.
Then there are the informal markers along side the roads. Usually a cross with a name on it and perhaps some artificial flowers. There are lots of these roadside memorials for victims of traffic accidents. The markers not only memorialize the dead loved one, they mark the location where their life ended. While not really legal, most of the time the road crews are careful of the memorials for an considerate amount of time.
There is something about grief that often requires actions like the roadside memorials. Outpourings of grief take tangible form when someone important dies. Impromptu memorials pop up as people, often strangers, express their feelings. Much of the pavement at the main gateway of London’s Buckingham Palace was covered with flowers, stuffed animals, notes, and other things when Princess Diana died in the Paris auto accident twenty years ago this coming August. Daily U. S. Park Service attendants remove, catalogue, and store the items that family, friends, and total strangers leave at the base of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C.
We don’t know if the two Marys were bringing flowers or other things to mark the tomb where Jesus had been interred quickly late Friday afternoon. They could well have been going to finish the burial preparations which Joseph of Arimathea had hurriedly taken begun before the sundown began the Sabbath. All the resurrection stories in the gospel have different details describing the one event on which they all agree: Jesus is not in the tomb. He has been raised.
The responses vary. There is fear. There is disbelief. There is confusion. In Matthew’s account both the angel and risen Jesus himself tell the women, “Don’t be afraid.”
Fear. People who study human psychology tell us that the part of the brain which is the oldest in terms of specie development and individual development is the part which processes fear. Whether the fear is real or imagined, it all happens in split seconds of mental processing. Fight or flee. Faster than it takes to say “fight or flee” adrenaline races through our systems and our heart’s pulse rate revs up considerably.
At a distance of space and time, and having heard the story so many times, we don’t experience what the women and the others who came to the might have felt. The bright music, the colorful flowers, the rest of the commercial Easter goodies might give us a little boost, but nothing like those who first found the tomb empty and heard the news.
The women didn’t know what to think. We don’t either, but that’s because we are trying to dissect the details with our heads. The women were using their hearts, their souls, their spirits to figure out the resurrection. The first fear for them would be that someone had taken Jesus’ body. Matthew notes that tomb had been sealed and guarded.
When the guards reported what had happened, the chief priests told them to lie and cover up the resurrection by saying that the disciples came in night while the guard was sleeping. There was fear that someone was going to try to make something out what Jesus had promised, that he would rise.
No one reports what Pilate might have thought when he heard the news of Jesus’ resurrection. Since Matthew had reported that Pilate’s wife had told him in the midst of the trial to leave Jesus alone, she might have said to him, “I told you so.”
In the midst of all this fear and confusion, the resurrection happened. Adam Erikson says that Jesus resurrection was dangerous.(1) That would add an entirely different kind of fear to the mix. If Jesus was raised, what would happen next?
People kept thinking that Jesus was going to be a military messiah who would lead an armed revolt against Roman occupation. A lot of people kept hoping that he would. While that was a concern of the religious authorities, they observed that the revolt he seemed to lead was one of love and grace and of words and action against the established system of religious expression which they managed. That had been their chief fear.
Now the resurrection came along and it was dangerous because it transformed how people related to each other, particularly enemies. Jesus’ resurrection also transformed our understanding of the divine.
Resurrection was a whole new concept. Yes, there had been miraculous healings from time to time, even before Jesus came along. As the man born blind said about his newly-gained sight, no one has ever healed someone born blind. For the gospel writer John, the final sign of Jesus’ ministry was raising Lazarus. It was a foretaste of what would very soon happen to Jesus.
In a number of ancient mythologies a god dies and then comes back with the purpose of revenge. One such myth is about an Egyptian god named Horus, who is portrayed as a good god that fought against the forces of evil, namely, an evil god named Set, who had killed Horus’s father, a god named Osirus. Fortunately, Horus and his mother were able to resurrect Osirus. But the question remained, what should they to do about Set?
The resurrected Osirus asked Horus a question, “What is the most glorious deed a man can perform?” Horus answered, “To take revenge upon one who has injured his father or mother.” Horus defeated Set in violent battle and was acclaimed to be “lord of all the earth.”(2)
That’s how humans react. Tit for tat, an eye for an eye, a life for a life, or more likely many lives for a few lives. We are good at revenge, but not so good at resurrection. The disciples were afraid that since one had betrayed him and other denied him and the rest abandoned him, a risen Jesus would be after them for revenge.
The resurrection of Jesus is very different. The risen Jesus did not seek revenge against his enemies. The resurrection of Jesus is the Good News that God isn’t out for revenge. Rather, Jesus was raised to reveal God’s radical offer of peace and forgiveness. Remember his parting words to the disciples, as John reported them: “Peace I leave with you. My peace I give you. I give to you not as the world gives. Do not be troubled or afraid” (John 14:27).
The trouble with a risen Jesus is that he is dangerous to our notions of life. We keep wanting to bury him and to put a tombstone over him to keep him from messing with our lives. We are willing one day a year to put up with the idea that Jesus was raised. But then we want him back in the tomb, out of the way.
Jesus will have no tombstone. We are stuck with a tombstone for Mr. Jesus. He doesn’t need it and he doesn’t want it. Where we need to put the tombstone is on violence. Jesus did not answer the ultimate violence with violence. His very presence in the world for three years was a living conquest of sin. His resurrection was a radical but peaceful conquest of death.
When we believe, really believe, in the resurrection of Jesus, when we allow it to change the internal core of our lives, when we allow it to redirect the way we relate to people close to us and to total strangers, immigrants of the world passing through our life moments, when we allow Jesus’ resurrection to alter our thoughts about God, that God loves us rather than merely puts up with us, that God calls each one of us to direct relationship to God through Christ and the Spirit, then we can throw away the tombstone we have reserved for Mr. Jesus. He is not there. He has been raised. He lives, and we can be living proof because he lives in us.
(1) Adam Erickson, “The Resurrection is No Myth, But It Is Dangerous,” www.patheos.com, March 26, 2016.
(2) Told in World Mythology, second edition, edited by Donna Rosenberg, pages 165-168.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright © 2017 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
Matthew 26:14-16, 31-38, 45-50; Isaiah 50:4-9a
Throughout the dark night of his soul in the Gethsemane Garden, Jesus begged his disciples to stay up with him, comfort him, pray with him, support him. But they couldn’t do it. On the night that Jesus was arrested, all of his disciples abandoned him. And two of them actively betrayed him.
Judas, the one who betrayed Jesus only once, almost immediately regretted his action. He boldly marched back before the powerful, corrupt officials and proclaimed Jesus’ innocence to their faces, throwing their bribe money back at their feet for good measure. Peter, the other fallen disciple, betrayed Jesus on three separate occasions. He hid in abject fear of the officials and then ran off seeking anonymity and seclusion. Yet that first disciple, Judas, has been named throughout history as the prime example of all that is contemptible, corrupt and deceitful in human nature. (Do you know anyone named Judas?) That second disciple, Peter, is honored as the father of the church and is designated a “saint.” (I suspect you know several Peters. I do.)
How come we treat these two fallen, betraying disciples, so differently? Why is Judas’ betrayal of Jesus taken in such a different direction than Peter’s?
Any competent investigator will tell us that we have to begin with motive. Judas’ treachery seems to have been built on long running conflict of expectations. Jesus wasn’t the militant messiah that many, including Judas, expected. Perhaps Judas thought that if he backed Jesus into a corner with the authorities, Jesus would show the aggressive side of salvation. If Jesus didn’t come out fighting then he would be out of the way for someone else to be the hero people wanted. Judas' plan was premeditated, calculated, even paid for.
Peter’s act of betrayal, on the other hand, was a cowardly, spontaneous burst of emotion that profited him nothing. He was prone to rash actions without thinking which exhibited both a childlike naivete and a cluelessness.
But it isn’t all that simple. Matthew reports the theory breaking fact that Judas returned the blood money, defended Jesus’ innocence before the tribunal, and realized his mistake. All this occurred while Jesus was still alive. In contrast, Peter sneaked back to the disciple's fold as a mourner after the crucifixion frenzy had passed and the tomb was sealed.
The only real difference between these two betrayers – Judas and Peter – was their perception of how Jesus must see them. Judas was overcome with guilt. Although “he repented” (Matthew 27:3), Judas could only envision a wrathful, judgmental Jesus declaring him cursed according to Deuteronomic law (Mt. 26:23-24, Deuteronomy 27:25). In his despair, Judas blocked out Jesus’ forgiving gesture in the garden (Mt. 26:50). Judas could only hear condemnation ringing in his ears, so he cut himself off from the healing capabilities of God’s grace and, in an agonizing fit of self-judgment, hanged himself.
Peter heard other voices. He replayed his three pitiful denials of Jesus over and over again in his head. Matthew says that Peter “cried uncontrollably” after leaving the courtyard (Mt. 26:75). Peter recalled himself strongly promising Jesus that he would never deny him, even if it meant facing death (Mt. 26:35).
Those weren’t the only conversations Peter remembered. There were some stored in his memory that gave him hope on that dark night. Peter was the disciple who had asked Jesus specifically about forgiveness. How many times should we forgive? Peter asked. Jesus declared “Not just seven times, but rather as many as seventy-seven times” (Mt. 18:21-22).
Jesus had singled Peter, asking, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter could recall he had boldly confessed, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Mt. 16:15-16). Of greater comfort to Peter was the memory of Jesus’ response to that confession: “Happy are you, Simon son of Jonah, because no human has shown this to you.” And then came Jesus’ playful pun, “I tell you that you are Peter. And I’ll build my church on this rock. The gates of the underworld won’t be able to stand against it” (Mt. 16:17-18). What a life-vest that must have been for Peter’s aching heart that night. Jesus had believed in him. Jesus had designated him to be something special in the life of the church. Whatever Peter had done in his past, Jesus had assured him he had a future.
Judas was no different from any of the other disciples and no different from any of us. We have all done it – fallen away from Jesus at some time or another, not for money but for safety, security, or anonymity. But Judas forgot one thing, the thing that makes a huge difference between life and death. Judas forgot that he wasn’t alone. He forgot that he was one person in a long, established, and distinguished tradition of God’s failed faithful. Jacob, Moses, Aaron, David, Elijah, Mary, Thomas, Paul all committed grievous acts of betrayal against God. But each one found their way back to God’s side through the back door of grace.
Judas died believing in his own heart that he was a betrayer. Why? Because he never even tried the door. He hadn’t gotten the message that Jesus had spent three years proclaiming: grace. Judas didn't want a gift of grace. He wanted to be in control of his situation. With those 30 pieces of silver, Judas thought he could buy his way into God’s presence. Judas thought the messianic age could be hurried along by forcing Jesus’ hand by confronting him with the military.
Faced with the consequences of his catastrophic mistake, Judas then tried to buy his way out of his betrayal by throwing that same silver back at the feet of the chief priests. But Judas could not control the tidal wave of events his actions had unleashed. In panic, Judas’ final attempt to control things was to take his own life. He never dared to check that back door of grace that God always leaves unlocked – and even pushes open for us.
Every one of us has seen someone squirming on the viciously barbed hook of some life calamity. And we piously thought, “There but for the grace of God go I.” Would that we never say that. It’s okay to acknowledge the saving nature of grace in your own life, but to deny the possibility of its presence in the lives of others is a “Judas-ism.” It is not “There but for God’s grace go I." Rather we need the redemptive cry of “There am I... with God’s grace” and then the missional cry of “There go I ... for God’s grace.”
L. Alexander Harper makes a remarkable observation about Johann Sebastian Bach’s musical representation of the Passion story in the Saint Matthew Passion: “Judas’ question to Jesus had always been a solo in other cantatas, because Judas is an individual. Not so for Bach. Breaking all tradition, he has the whole chorus instead sing that guilty question, ‘Is it I, Lord?’ The chorus represents you, me, the whole world. Judas is within us all, not 'out there' or 'back in history' somewhere comfortably remote.”(1) Judas is our middle name.
The message of the gospel is that God’s grace is available to all, that the back door to God’s loving presence is always open. Judas is the middle name of each one of us. Judas does not become our first name when we betray and deny Christ himself, but it does when we deny the redemptive power of God’s grace that Christ offers every one of us.
As we move through Holy Week, as our voices one by one give up the “Hosannas” and take up the call to crucify, as the skies darken and the clang of the hammers against nails assault our ears, may we know that “Judas” is our middle name. And may we know that Christ gives us a new name: filled with grace.
General Resource: Homiletics, April 4, 1993.
(1) L. Alexander Harper, “Judas, Our Brother,” St. Luke's Journal of Theology 29 (1986),102.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright © 2017 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
Romans 8:6-11; Ezekiel 37:1-14; John 11:1-45
No. NO. NO! I am sure that there was a time when Drew thought that “No” was the only word that Paula and I knew. That’s not true, but it did get a lot of use.
We have a lot of “No” in our times. No GMOs. No gluten. No trans fats. No running in the halls. No artificial colors. No fat. No MSG. No parking. No waiting. No texting and driving. No cost to upgrade. No deductible. No shirt, no shoes, no service. No down payment. No hidden fees. No in Congress to anything or anyone proposed by the other party. Remember a couple of decades ago when the public mantra was “Just say ‘No’”? I guess that a lot of people took it to heart in all the wrong places for all the wrong reasons.
The problem is that “No” for all its simplicity is complex. Yes, it is negative. But sometimes negative is good. The reason that we sterilize medical utensils is that no germs, bacteria, etc. is good thing. No internet is not good a good thing (witness the commercials from one provider demonstrating how bad that is; get a life, folks).
“No” often means “zero.” Zero can be a bad number. No one wants to get a zero on a test or performance review. We don't want to see a zero balance in our checking account or retirement fund. We don't want to be stuck in traffic going 0 miles per hour.
However, zero can be a good number. Like zero messages in your inbox. Zero payments left on the car loan, student loan, or house mortgage. Zero cancer cells detected. Zero interceptions (if you're a quarterback). Zero time left on the game clock and your team just won by one point. Zero mistakes on a project.
When we talk about negative things in life, zero is a very attractive number. No this or that, nothing, can be celebrated, like the toothpaste commercials from when I was growing up: “No cavities.” Yes, zero can great.
TED talks are 18 minute illustrated talks on “Technology, Entertainment, and Design.” The speakers address a wide range of topics within the research and practice of science and culture, often through storytelling. They present their ideas in the most innovative and engaging ways they can. Retired Microsoft founder, philanthropist, and innovator Bill Gates gave a talk to motivate some of the best and brightest minds in the world to a particular task. He called the talk, “Innovating to Zero.”
On the TED stage that day, Gates shared his dream of finding a way to produce energy for the planet with zero emissions or waste that is harmful to the environment. Reduction, he said, isn’t enough. There are no acceptable, tolerable levels. The goal must be total elimination. We need to innovate to zero, he said.
The “innovating to zero” initiative has spread beyond environmental concerns. The world of innovation has done “zero” work. Small pox was eradicated in 1977. A number of years ago Rotary International set a goal of eradicating polio. Former President Jimmy Carter’s Carter Center is working to eradicate guinea worm disease and river blindness in Africa. The auto industry is taking on accident fatalities. To achieve zero, it is developing cars with automatic braking and self-driving features. Towns and cities are innovating to zero poverty and zero hunger by housing and feeding those in need, and doing it in new and creative ways, such as tiny houses.
Other such projects exist:
• zero people without clean drinking water (Living Waters for the World is one organization working on that);
• zero children without access to education;
• zero domestic violence;
• zero security breaches;
• zero birth defects;
• zero waste;
• zero crime;
• zero bullying.
Just think how different the world would be if we could eliminate those things that cause harm to ourselves and others.
This includes sin. We must innovate to zero sin. “Go and sin no more,” was said by Jesus on a number of occasions.
The apostle Paul doesn’t use Bill Gates’ word, but he says the same thing. We should be working to eliminate sin from our lives. The world doesn’t see it that way. We are taught to manage it. It is as if there is some acceptable, tolerable level of sin allowed within our lives. “We can’t be perfect,” we tell ourselves. “We are only human.” In fact, the word “sin” never shows up in public discourse. A number of euphemisms are used to avoid the “S” word: mistake, misstep, blunder, gaffe, error, etc.
Of course, if we put our theological minds to thinking about the task of eradicating sin, we should quickly realize that we can’t do it.
Let’s not forget that sin is a powerful force that is impossible to control. Sin is not just something we do; it's an active and controlling impulse that is deeply rooted in our hearts. It’s an “attitude that comes from selfishness [and] is hostile to God.... People who are self-centered aren’t able to please God.” Paul talks about “the self” – frequently translated as flesh – our sinful selves. He argues that because of this disposition, we’ll never be able fully and completely to submit to the very high standards expressed in the law of God. We cannot please God on our own.
Anyone in Alcoholics or Narcotics Anonymous knows this very well. The first of the 12 steps is to admit to yourself that you are not in control of your addiction. “We admitted we were powerless over our addiction; that our lives had become unmanageable,” people in recovery say. It takes more than a Wharton MBA to manage addiction or sin. Sin takes over and we are powerless to manage it. Sin seizes our lives like a malware trojan software program seizes our computers and ruins everything.
The second reason we can’t manage sin is that, as the Bible tells us, all sin leads to death. Even if we do not see our sin, it is there doing harm, just like the toxic pollutants in the air that Bill Gates challenged his TED hearers to reduce. It’s an interconnected world. Those who produce the least amount of harmful emissions feel their effects the greatest, while those who produce the most feel them hardly at all.
Sin in our lives also has unintended and destructive consequences. While we may feel the pain directly, others are often deeply affected by our mess-ups: family relationships, professional lives, friends. What we do affects other people. Sin is dangerous. We must innovate to zero sin.
Zero sin seems like a “catch 22.” If we claim that we don’t sin, we are liars. Jesus told his mountainside audience, “Be complete, perfect, whole, as the heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). Without help, there is no way we can be what we are called to be.
The key to zero sin is to break down our lives into small parts, hours, minutes, seconds; paragraphs, sentences, words. Yard by yard life is hard, but inch by inch it’s a cinch. If we can take each moment, each relationship, each situation by itself and work with it to eliminate sin, then we will gain some momentum towards zero sin.
As every recovering addict will tell us, there are setbacks, there are relapses. Recovery from sin is no different. As Paul tells his Roman readers, “If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your human bodies also, through his Spirit that lives in you.” With Christ and his Spirit our perfect minutes and hours will come more often.
So, the more we can fill ourselves with the Spirit, the less room there is for our self-centered nature, the sin. We don't need to pray for more patience, more love, more joy, or more kindness. We need to pray for more Jesus, for more of the Spirit. It doesn’t happen overnight. Eradication of sin is never finished. It is a work in progress. But with the Spirit of Christ growing in us, we can be assured that the work of the cross and the empty tomb is not wasted. If Christ is in us, the Spirit is our life because of God’s righteousness. And God’s righteousness is zero sin.
Thanks be to God.
General Resource: “Innovating to Zero Sin,” Homiletics, April 2, 2017, 41-43.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright © 2017 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
