Transfiguration

This sermon is posted here. It was written for the "Sermons That Work" series and also delivered in a modified form to St. John's in Silsbee.

Go on, Go back, or Sit still?

God, like Moses and Abraham, may we follow you, even not knowing the way. Amen.

You’ve heard it said... you shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not swear falsely

But I say... don’t even stay angry with your brother or sister. If you don’t reconcile with each other, the part of your heart that harbors resentment and animosity will start to abscess and become necrotic, and it will poison you from inside. Cut it out.

Jesus is making a distinction between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law.

The letter of the law tries to define the spirit of the law, which can be helpful up to a point, but after that point, the more specific the letter of the law gets, the more it sucks the life out of the spirit. Living your life strictly in accordance with rules (even the Ten Commandments) with no reference to what the law is for is like teaching to the TAKS – it makes the whole system a farce.

Not that basic skills are unnecessary or irrelevant. They’re absolutely foundational. For your spiritual development, keeping the Ten Commandments is like learning plus, minus, times and "guzinta," or like learning nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, and prepositions – its good to learn them, but knowing those things is not an end in itself. The goal is that we take those materials and start to create new things no one’s ever seen before. You teach kids grammar so the ones who are poets will be able to somewhat translate for us the songs they hear the angels singing. You teach them multiplication so they can chase infinity.

If the letter of the law hands you a paint-by-number kit,

 

 then the spirit of the law walks you into a sunlit studio and simply says....
Create something beautiful.

Yesterday at Council, Bishop Doyle told us that, not only in individual parishes like St. John’s, but all across the Diocese, we’re going to have to rethink our direction and our way of being Church, because we’re realizing that the map we’ve been looking at doesn’t match the terrain we’re moving toward anymore.

We may as well unplug the turn-by-turn GPS. We maybe should even stop the car and open the door and start walking through the grass. As the poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote in the Book of Hours, “Now you must go out into your heart, as onto a vast plain.”

The Bishop has invited us to start a process of inventing and imagining new things, but his invitation yesterday did not to me sound like a theoretical pathway-- more like a life and death kind of turning point.

He said:

Continuing this church economy, doing the things we have been doing for the last three decades leads only to greater conflict and loss. Continuing to be church, simply tinkering with efficiency and symptoms leads unequivocally to closure. However, at this very same moment we stand on the pass with a second thought not yet fully formed but forming. That thought is that you and I stand on the edge of a new missionary age – a new geography of hope.

His words sound like what Moses told the people of Israel as they were standing just outside the Promised Land, ready to cross over. After wandering in the desert 40 years, circling around and around in the same tracks, they were about to walk into a place they’d never seen, trusting God. Moses knew there was still hesitation, so he laid out for them what was at stake.

“See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity... Choose life that you and your descendents may live.”

The Egyptian people today are standing at a similar kind of gate. They’ve got the door down and a path open in front of them. Will they walk through it toward a different kind of future? Or will they get cold feet and revert back to the way things were before? It’s up to them.

It seems to me St. John’s is on that kind of a course right now; we’ve got some choices to make about our future and how we’re going to shape it. When the Bishop was here two weeks ago, he set some hopeful, life-giving options in front of us. Some of them are new things that we’ve not previously imagined – that even the diocese has only recently begun imagining. He told us we’ll have the freedom to choose how we’d like to do ministry in this place, even to create new ways of doing it.

We’re at a point where we can walk into a new territory or go back the way we came – or we can stand still and try not to move, waiting for someone who knows more, someone who has more authority, to come and tell us what to do. That would be ridiculous - and also not necessary. The Bishop is the head of this diocese and of this congregation as part of it; Fr. John, as the rector, is acting as the Bishop by extension, filling his shoes in this place when he’s not here. But when the Bishop is here, wearing his own shoes, that’s the most authoritative voice you’re going to get – nobody knows more about where he wants the Church in the Diocese of Texas to be headed than him. And he’s already told us... and given us a project to work on. The scary thing is, it’s not a paint-by-number; it’s a blank canvas. From what I’m coming to learn, this is a different kind of relationship than you’re accustomed to having with your bishop. It’s new for everybody – him too – start enjoying it.

If we choose, we can stop walking around in circles and set off toward a new land that God will show us. It’s not going to be easy to discern this; we have no map for where we may be going. But think of it this way: if we’re willing, we’ll get to help make the map of this new territory the Church is being called to inhabit.




Map of America - 1730 by Guillaume Delisle

 Amen.

Shine in our hearts

Shine in our hearts, Lord Jesus, and light us up so that you shine out of us as well. Amen

Readings
Let's reflect a bit today on theophany – that's a word for things like what we just read, Moses seeing God face to face and the disciples seeing Jesus transfigured into light and talking to Moses and Elijah, and God's voice coming out of a cloud.
Theophany is when God reveals himself in ways that we can't deny, when God shows up in ways that freak us out because they are so real, when something happens that moves us so deeply, we either say or do idiotic things trying to make some kind of response - or we don't' talk about it at all because we can't find any words that will work to really convey what happened.
You may not often talk about those experiences, or maybe you only tell one other person or a couple of people you really trust, but there is no way you can ever forget what you saw or what you heard or what you felt in that moment. And there's no way you can go back to how it was not knowing that things like that are real. Even though later, you may question whether you dreamed it or imagined it, deep down you know you didn't make it up.
And I think we hope that what we experience in moments like that is the true reality. We hope that what we see around us in mundane daily life is just a pale reflection of the way things really are, what life really is at the core. The difficulty in hope, though is it's a (seemingly) very fragile thing, and you hesitate to lay it out completely because you're not sure it could survive disappointment. Or maybe you know somehow deeply that if you completely hope for all you desire, there's no way you could stay in control – you'd be at the mercy of how God responds. And if you laid out your deepest hope to God, you couldn't stay aloof from him and safe from what you fear would happen if you found that God either doesn't want or isn't able to fulfill what you hope for – that your hope may in fact be foundationless. You think your hope is what keeps you alive, and you couldn't survive losing it.
So you hedge your prayers, you pray for what seems reasonable, for what God couldn't refuse; you pray in ways that give God an "out" in case he doesn't answer or doesn't want to or maybe isn't actually able to – because maybe he doesn't actually exist …
But why do you think we have hopes if there isn't actually a reality they're based on? Thomas Aquinas hashed this question out from both the theological and philosophical point of view, and he says we're right to hope - because God does exist and God is good – and he hasn't made a desire without its object. We have hope because there is such a thing as its fulfillment. Aquinas says that if we have a desire, not only does its object exist, but it's attainable and it's also good – in fact, it's intended. God isn't cruel – he hasn't made us so that we hope for things that don't exist or are bad for us or that he has no intention of giving us – so that we'll eternally be frustrated in our deepest desires.
No, God is good, and he's given us good desires, and he's also put in us a desire for himself as the greatest good, so when moments of theophany happen, we are getting a glimpse, a taste of what is most deeply true about God's relationship to us and his love for us.
So, if what we hope for is predicated on a real object, then its fulfillment is possible, and if in fact, this fulfillment was designed and intended by God and is in God's power to grant, then we should have no fear in asking for it – because it's already what God also wants: our wholeness, our integration. What you most deeply desire… already is – and is in God's power to give you.
Are you willing to risk asking for it?
And I mean hopes – those things you most deeply ache for, that you don't think are even reasonable, that you don't think you have any business asking God for because there's no way they could be accomplished. It would take a miracle…
That's what I'm talking about –what kind of church is this if it's not about miraculous expectation? So I'll tell you what I've started doing as a result of this thought process: I've started asking God for what I hope for St. John's: for you as a community and you as individuals. I invite you to do the same… Hope everything you can imagine for us and ask God to do it. And don't hedge or make qualifications to "let God off the hook" in case it doesn't happen – that is your fear and attempt to control the situation so that you can't be disappointed. Instead, try risking disappointment on God.
I'm praying that God starts to breathe on your hearts so that the little embers of hope in there start heating you up inside and even starting to hurt – some of the prophets have said God's word can feel like a fire in your bones. I'm hoping that what he desires for us begins to burn inside us also, until it starts to shine out in our faces and in what we say and what we do. What are y'all waiting for anyway? "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you'll return."

An interesting thing about fire, which I've learned from the firefighters in Vidor, is that it doesn't even have to touch its fuel to ignite it. A fire in one spot can gradually heat an entire area, and anything that can be fuel, when it reaches its ignition temperature, will spontaneously combust at that point. So, in a room where there's a fire in one corner, when the entire room reaches a certain temperature, will completely erupt in flame everywhere.

It's called flashover. Here is another video showing fire behavior leading up to a rollover (burning across the ceiling) and then a flashover (everything erupting in flame).

You know somebody's been burning churches in east Texas, and the interesting thing about that, I think, is they're confusing a symbol of God's power with the thing itself, as though a fire in a church building would destroy the Church. It's the same mistake people make when they try to kill Christians – when they tried to kill Christ. In our worship, fire represents to us God's presence with us in the Holy Spirit, and at Jayde's baptism last week, we lit a candle to symbolize the light of Christ in her heart. Fire is a symbol of God's presence because, like fire, God is not safe, not predictable.
Talking about flashover, maybe Pentecost was something like that. My prayer is that during Lent, God will breathe on you and start a little fire in a corner of your heart, and we'll see what happens by Pentecost.
Amen.

Given to St. John's, Silsbee

February 14, 2010

Is it lawful...to divorce?

18th Sunday after Pentecost - Year B

Readings: OT, Psalms - Job 1:1; 2:1-10 Psalm 26 or Genesis 2:18-24 Psalm 8 NT- Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12 Gospel- Mark 10:2-16

O gracious and everliving God, you have created us male and female in your image: Look mercifully upon [all married people], and assist them with your grace, that with true fidelity and steadfast love they may honor and keep the promises and vows they make; through Jesus Christ our Savior, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Amen. (BCP p. 425)

“Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”

Wow, let’s just tackle that question, shall we? Because I’m super-well qualified to do so. And I’m sure it’s what you were hoping I’d pick to talk about.

But, it is an issue that affects probably most of us in some way or another, and it’s something Jesus addressed. That in itself is reason enough, but in addition, I think we can see, in the forcefulness of Jesus’ words, what God’s hopes for us are relationally and what we’re meant to be to each other.

When you’re listening to this passage, did you notice who Jesus was speaking to when he got all upset about this? The questioner is not someone in the middle of a painful crisis, sincerely needing and seeking guidance and help. No, who we have here are the Pharisees coming up “to test Jesus” and this is where they’re coming from when they ask “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”

Now, these men spend most of their day every day studying the law; they know what the law says about divorce.

So Jesus answers their question with another question: “What did Moses command you?”

By tradition, Moses was the one who gave Israel the Torah – the Law – one passage in the Torah related to the issue of divorce is in Deuteronomy.

Here’s what it says:

“Suppose a man enters into marriage with a woman, but she does not please him because he finds something objectionable about her, and so he writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house; she then leaves his house and goes off to become another man’s wife. Then suppose the second man dislikes her, writes her a bill of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house (or the second man who married her dies); her first husband, who sent her away, is not permitted to take her again to be his wife...” (Deut 24:1-4)

So the Pharisees answered, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.”

Jesus comes back at them – “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

Strong words.

Later, when they were back at the house, the disciples asked Jesus about it again, and he framed the situation from both sides – if the husband divorces his wife and remarries, it’s adultery; if the wife divorces her husband and remarries, it’s adultery. Even stronger words.

Now, I don’t know this, but I’m imagining that possibly some walls are going up right now if they weren’t already up just at the reading of this Gospel. Please try to keep listening.

For one thing, remember the point at the beginning: who is he talking to? People who are asking for a generic ruling on a generic subject, looking for loopholes, justifications. And he gets mad.

Contrast that with the way he treated the woman who was caught in adultery, when everybody wanted to stone her. Here’s a specific situation, with specific people. If the question was about the law, the law was clearly broken. But what did Jesus do? He pointed out that no one was without sin, so no one can rely on the law to justify themselves. We all depend on God’s mercy to forgive us and restore us to right relationships with God and with each other.

I think one point Jesus was making with the Pharisees and with the disciples in speaking so forcefully about divorce is that divorce destroys relationships and creates distance, not only between people (those directly and indirectly affected), but also between us and God. It’s not about what’s lawful, what people are allowed or permitted to do; it’s not primarily about he law at all. It’s about people. It’s about what God intended for us and wants for us in our relationships with each other and with God.

The Pharisees’ question was framed from the perspective of someone looking at divorce from outside of it. The question is generic, hypothetical: “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”

You want a rule? You already have a rule – what does it say? “It says we can divorce.” Okay, so there’s your rule. But the rule is because you’re hard-hearted; when you use it for your own convenience or to hurt the other person, you’ve missed the point of what this relationship of marriage was created to be. Marriage is a relationship between people, specific, individual people, not generic/hypothetical people. Don’t reduce the relationship to rules and loopholes. Marriage was meant to put people together to make them something new, in themselves and in relation to the community.

Marriage is sacramental: it’s a vehicle through which Christ offers grace to both people, and to others around them, including children – what is the gift of life itself if not a supreme grace from God? If you’re married, you yourself are one manifestation of God’s grace to your spouse. In the covenant of marriage, you love and serve your husband, your wife, as Christ loves and serves the church. You are an image of Christ, potentially the clearest image your spouse sees of who Christ is. If your wife had only you to judge from, what would she think Christ is like? If your husband had only you to judge from, what would he think Christ is like?

One of the most powerful witnesses of our Christian belief in Christ’s incarnation, for those who are married, is that, when Christ’s grace is at work in your marriage, you can see him in each other. This is the point, at least part of the point of Jesus getting so upset with the Pharisees for trying to find justification and permission for divorce. The point is not what’s permissible under the law – what can we legally get away with in our dealings with each other. The point is that, in our relationships with each other we can come to know God in ways that we can’t know him on our own. Our relationships, particularly the bond of marriage, are avenues of God’s grace – that’s why marriage is a sacrament – that’s why the community of the church itself, as a body, is a sacramental thing and why just being here together for the purpose of worshipping God is beneficial to us - it’s a way God is tangibly at work in us, visible to us. God is present to us through each other. Those of you who are married not only offer God’s grace to your spouse in your relationship, but you also spread it to your family and everyone who knows you, including your church family. Marriage is a gift to the church, and the church has a responsibility to support people in their marriages; when people are married in the church, in fact, we all promise to “do all in our power to uphold these two persons in their marriage.”

Sometimes things in a marriage go haywire and become destructive. God created marriage, and marriage is a good thing, but it can be warped into something awful to the point that, in comparison, divorce is better. If one or the other or both people don’t want to change their destructive relationship, divorce might be necessary to save the people. This doesn’t mean that divorce is good. I have never heard anyone say, “I love getting divorced – I hope it will always be this way!”

No matter what the precipitating situations were, divorce is a terrible loss. It’s a loss of relationship, and also a loss of identity, because of what we heard Jesus quote from Genesis – when two people marry, they aren’t two separate individuals anymore; they’re one.

Have you ever super-glued your thumb and finger together? What happens if you pull them apart? 

I’ve been told that divorce is like that.

Divorce laws exist because individual people are of infinite value and shouldn’t be destroyed, even by marriage. But divorce was never anybody’s plan or goal, least of all God’s. The plan for a sacramental relationship between two people is marriage. So the point is not to find legal justifications for divorce but to understand what the intent of marriage is.

What does God want to do in you that he can best do through your marriage? Many things, probably. This would be a good question to take up with him – you can also take it up with your wife or with your husband, because, if you will recall what I said a minute ago, your marriage is an avenue of God’s grace – it’s one of the ways God speaks to you.

Amen.

Come Eat Supper

Easter 7 - Year B

Readings:  Acts 1:15-17, 21-26   Psalm 1   1 John 5:9-13   John 17:6-19

Lord Jesus, thank you for reuniting us with God, our Father. Amen

There’s a podcast I subscribe to called “This American Life” from NPR in Chicago. Each broadcast, they have a theme, and they tell three or four different kinds of stories based around the theme. The last one I listened to, the theme was “Reunited, and it feels so good…”

Jesus is reuniting God, the Father, with his children. The first step was when he became one of us, when he was born as a baby and became our brother, growing up in a family and seeing from the inside what our lives are like. Then, he started talking to us about God, his Father – our Father - what he’s like, what he wants to say to us and how he wants to relate to us.

Finally, he started telling us he was going to leave, but that we wouldn’t be alone – we wouldn’t be left comfortless, as we prayed in the collect – because we would be able to talk to God, to Our Father, directly now.

Earlier on, people had become afraid to talk to God. When Moses went up on Mt. Sinai to receive the law, there was fire and thunder, and the mountain smoked, and everyone was terrified. They told Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen, but do not let God speak to us or we will die.” (Ex 20:1819)

After that, God communicated to his people through the law and then through the words of the prophets, priests and kings, but it was not a perfect system because a good many of those folks were not dependable and garbled up the message or ignored it or said whatever they felt like. So, finally, God sent his own Son to bring the message – to communicate with us, and the way he chose to do that was by becoming one of us.

While that is hard to comprehend in itself: that God’s Son would become a human being – the even more astonishing thing – which is also the more important thing about Jesus coming to live with us, is that in doing so, he brought us back into a relationship with God – and a closer relationship than we had before.

The Exsultet – the hymn at the beginning of the Great Vigil of Easter, says “How blessed is this night/ when earth and heaven are joined/ and man is reconciled to God”

Being reunited to God was a difficult process, certainly not without pain. First, there was the pain of the initial separation – and then a prolonged period of estrangement that was also painful for both us and God. Then, God had to be separated from his Son in order for his Son to enter our lives. That separation was painful for both of them, even though it brought Jesus into a closer connection with us.

Then, once Jesus had reestablished a connection with us, in the bonds he formed with his disciples and followers, he had to leave to go back to God, “And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you.”

And that meant a separation of one type of closeness with us, even though it began to bring us all back to a closer connection with God.

“The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures but will tell you plainly of the Father. On that day, you will ask in my name. I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf, for the Father himself loves you…” (Jn 16:25b-27a)

Jesus has been telling them he’s going to have to leave, and that things are going to get pretty hairy when he leaves, but that, through him, they have the same access as he does to seek help from God – his Father and their Father.

Then, while they’re sitting there, he begins to pray for them. It’s like he’s bringing God in the room and introducing Him to his disciples and introducing them to Him.

“I have told these folks about you; I told them what you said, and they’ve received it and know you’re the one who sent me. Now, I’m asking you – protect them, and unify them, just like we are. While I’ve been here, I’ve looked out for them, but now I’m coming back, and so I’m asking you to look out for them now.”

And pretty soon after this prayer, he gets arrested and killed, and things do get pretty hairy for the disciples, and they don’t understand what’s going on at first, but gradually they realize that Jesus has reunited them with God, his Father and their Father – Our Father.

When you’ve been separated or estranged from someone, even just briefly, reuniting is difficult – and sometimes it takes some help.

Imagine you and your dad having a fight, and you get really mad and go lock yourself in your room. He tries to talk to you through the door, but you won’t say anything.

After a while, here comes your brother… “Dad says come eat supper.”

“No!”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing!”

“Can I come in?”

A brother is different than a dad. Your brother can talk to you in a different way than your dad can – and there are things your brother can tell you that you won’t hear from your dad.

That’s kind of the situation between God and his people. There had been a lot of fighting between us and God, and we’d become estranged and weren’t talking to each other. We had locked ourselves in our room, kind of. So Jesus came into the situation from our side. At first, he ferried messages back and forth like a mediator. He would tell us what God said and explain what he meant by it and he would also listen to our grievances and see what we were upset about and then go out to the kitchen and talk to God for us.

So you’re in your room, feeling a bit better and thinking maybe you’ll come out in a while - and your brother says, “Okay, I’m going – it’s time for supper and I’m supposed to set the table; you should talk to Dad.”

And maybe you feel ready for that and maybe you don’t, but he opens the door, and there’s God, standing in the hall. “I told her that you’re not mad and that you just want her to come eat, and she said she believes you and she’ll come out.”

Then he goes down to the table – and God’s there in the hall, and you’re looking at each other for a while, not knowing what to say – and he says, “Why don’t you come eat with us…”

Amen.

Taking away sin

Year A - Epiphany 2
Readings: Isaiah 49:1-71 Corinthians 1:1-9John 1:29-42Psalm 40:1-12


John the Baptist points to Jesus and says 'Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.'
This is a really central part of how we understand who Jesus is and what he does for us.
Jesus is the Lamb of God
and he takes away the sin of the world.
But it's kind of a complicated idea, and it requires some background to get a grasp on what it means and how it works.
I want to look at three things mainly:
What does 'Lamb of God' mean?
What is sin?
How does Jesus take it away?
First, what does it mean to say Jesus is the Lamb of God?
It's an image that takes a lot from the context of the society in which Jesus and John the Baptist lived. For many thousands of years, people have made their living raising animals for food and other benefits. In the area where John and Jesus lived, many people raised sheep, which were a key component in that society's economy. It might be like the buffalo for the Plains Indians or whales for people groups living around the Arctic. Or it might be like oil or timber for this area.
Many people during the time of the Hebrew scriptures raised sheep, so there are a lot of stories relating to shepherds and sheep. Back in Genesis, Abel, one of Adam and Eve's sons, brought a lamb to offer God. It represented the return on his work, and he was giving it to God. We still do that; it just looks a little different. We don't bring live animals up here and put them on the altar, but we do bring offerings to God from the return on our work - and in a money-based economy, what we usually bring is some form of money. It's even still called an 'offering'.
This idea of an offering of thanksgiving was one association John's disciples could make when John pointed at Jesus and said, 'Here is the Lamb of God...'
Depending on the kind of offering, sometimes the priests and the people who brought it would eat part of it. Today, a lot of people brought food also to celebrate another year at St. John's and hear what the church has been able to do with its resources and time, so if someone brought deer sausage, that would maybe in some way be similar.
Another association is that of a sin offering. Later Jewish laws for worship included an elaborate system of sacrifices to pay for sins. For one kind of sin, if you were the king, you'd have to bring a cow; if you were a prince, you might have to bring a male goat. If it was for a sin you did on purpose, intentionally, you'd probably have to pay extra for it, along with a sin offering. If it was a sin you did unintentionally or just by being careless, the penalty would be less. Under this system, a lamb was one type of offering made to pay for sin.
So, when John pointed at Jesus and said, 'Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world,' this was part of the meaning.
Another very important story relating to Jesus as the Lamb of God is the Passover story in Exodus. The people of Israel became slaves in Egypt for a long time until God sent Moses to lead them out of slavery. The only problem was that the Pharaoh didn't want to let them go. God send 10 plagues on Egypt to diminish Pharaoh's attachment to the Israelites. Part of the story of the plagues is the story of the Passover, when God sent the final plague, which caused the first-born of every household to die.
God instructed Moses to tell each family to sacrifice a lamb and put its blood on the door of their house, and they were protected from the destruction of the plague. On that night, Pharaoh let them go, so they were protected from death and also freed from slavery. For more than three thousand years now, since about the 13th century BC, the Jews have celebrated Passover each year, re-enacting and remembering God's deliverance. This story is also part of our story as Christians.
When John pointed at Jesus and said, 'Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!' his students who heard him could relate it to many things: an offering to God, a sacrifice to pay for sins, and a reminder of God's deliverance from slavery and death.
So, on to the second question - What is sin?
Sin is a kind of slavery and also a kind of death, and Christ's sacrifice delivers us from these. But thankfully few, if any of us have any direct experience of slavery, and though we have experience with death, it's still very hard to understand on this side of it.
Sin has also been described as a separation - separation from God. It's a broken connection, a missing relationship that ought to be there, an estrangement.
Sin can be defined in many ways.
One way to think of it is that sin is a kind of debt.
What is a debt?
A debt is when you owe something, like when you borrow money or finance something, or when somebody buys you something and you promise to pay them back.
Now, I should clarify that I'm not saying that debt is a sin. I'm saying that sin can be thought of as a kind of debt. Debt is one metaphor to understand what sin is.
So, if you're in debt, I'm not saying that makes you a sinner. A lot of people are in debt, including me. Probably almost everybody either currently is in debt or has been at some point. That's partly what makes it a good metaphor, because people can relate to what being in debt means. We know what causes it, what results from it, what it feels like to be in debt and hopefully also what it feels like to get out of debt.
So, sin can be thought of as a kind of debt. And a debt is when you owe something.
On a ledger, it's a negative number. It's negative both in the sense that nobody likes it and also in the sense that it's the opposite of a positive number. To cancel it out, you have to put an equal or bigger positive number in there.
Because what is a negative?
It's a lack - an absence - something is missing - it's like a hole.
Here's another way to think of it.
This glass is empty.
How do you get it not to be empty? Do you remove the emptiness? Take away the emptiness?
No, but you can put something in, and when you put something in, it's not empty anymore.
A few weeks ago in Sunday school, we were talking about evil, and there's one idea that says maybe evil is a kind of lack - a kind of emptiness or a kind of nothing - where there ought to be good, there's not. It's similar to the way darkness isn't exactly a thing itself - it's just how we describe where there isn't any light.
How do you get rid of darkness? You bring in a light.
So to get rid of evil, you don't exactly take it away; instead, you put something good there.
How does Jesus take away sin?
He puts himself in the place of the sin - and even after all that the payment of sin takes out of him, Jesus is still infinitely good.
Infinite good minus the sins of the whole world is still infinite good.
What is happening when Jesus 'takes away' the things where we're lacking?
Something positive happens.
How does he remove a separation? By making a connection.
How does he take away emptiness? By filling it.
How does he subtract a debt? By paying it.
Sin is a debt, and Jesus pays the debt of the whole world by becoming a sacrifice. He takes away what's lacking in us by filling it with his Spirit. He dispells our darkness by making himself a light that shines inside us.
Like the Psalmist, who was lifted out of the desolate pit - pulled out of a depressing hole - and God put a new song in his mouth. 'Great things are they that you have done, O LORD my God!...Oh, that I could make them known and tell them! But they are more than I can count.'
And also similar is the way Paul describes God's grace given to the members of the church in Corinth.
'I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus, for in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind -- just as the testimony of Christ has been strengthened among you -- so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift..'
In a minute, we're going to re-enact a lot of this story by telling it again. We do this all the time - every week, because it's important and we need to learn it and remember it. So pay attention.
It's a good story.
Jesus is the Lamb of God and he takes away the sin of the world.
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Given to St. John's, Silsbee
Jan. 20, 2008