Sin and Repentance
Wolf Kirchmeir
[Joshua 5:9-12; Psalm 32; 2 Corinthians 5:16-21; Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32]
O Holy Spirit, assist us we contemplate your word, that we may be enlightened by your truth. Amen.
Dear Friends in Christ,
All our readings today are about sin and repentance and forgiveness. God tells Joshua that he rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you. The Psalmist meditates on the blessed gift of forgiveness of sin. Paul reminds Corinthians reminds that in Jesus God has reconciled sinners to himself. Luke records the story of the Prodigal Son, one of the best known parables.
Nowadays, sin is not a popular subject for sermons. Hellfire and brimstone sermons have gone out of fashion. Even the evangelical churches don’t preach sin and repentance as much as they used to. The emphasis nowadays is not on the punishment of sin, but on God’s loving forgiveness.
It’s in many ways a good thing that we don’t talk about sin as much in the past. We take a great deal of pleasure in thinking about the awful things that other people do. Enumerating the sins of the flesh can be a little too entertaining to be healthy. That may be why scandal has become a staple of the tabloids and YouTube videos, which enjoy a large audience, even though nobody admits to paying attention to them.
Well, today I’m going to talk about sin. I’m going to talk about what sin is, what repentance is, and what forgiveness is.
We’ve all heard the tagline, The Devil made me do it. That’s a common excuse, based on the notion that the Devil is the source of sin. He isn’t, you know. In the Bible, Satan makes three important appearances: to Eve, in the book of Job, and to Jesus.
In the Garden of Eden Satan doesn’t tell Eve to do anything. He just has a little conversation with Eve in which he plants the seed of a desire – the desire to become like a god. Eve doesn’t have to fulfill this desire – she chooses to do so. And Adam, faced with the same choice, makes the same decision.
When God comes to find out what Eve and Adam have been up to, Adam tries to shift the blame to Eve, and Eve tries to shift the blame to the Serpent.
Did the Serpent make Adam and Eve disobey God? No. It was their choice. Did the Serpent make Adam and Eve shift the blame? No. It was their choice.
In the story of Job, Satan talks with God, who is pleased with Job’s righteousness. Satan claims that Job is righteous only because he is a very fortunate, very rich man, with a loving family, many friends, and good health. Take those away, says Satan, and Job will curse God.
Well, God lets Satan take away all those things and more. And Job curses his fate. Whereupon God speaks to Job out of the whirlwind, and reminds him of his littleness and lack of understanding. Job repents, and submits to God’s will.
Last, we see Satan tempting Jesus. Jesus’s response to every suggestion and offer is to quote Scripture, and every quotation he uses underlines the same idea: that we are to obey the Lord our God, and to do his will.
What we see in these three stories is that Satan offers choices. The same kind of choices over and over again: just do what you want to do.
Sin is very simple to understand: it’s doing what you are not supposed to do, and not doing what you are supposed to do.
Supposed to do, not what you want to do.
Supposed not to do, not what you don’t want to do.
There may be some argument about what we are and are not supposed to do, but that doesn’t affect the nature of sin.
There may be doubts about whether we properly understand what God does and does not want us to do, but that doesn’t affect the nature of sin.
We may be mistaken about what is and what is not a sin, but that doesn’t affect the nature of sin.
Sin is what happens when we choose not to do God’s will. That’s it. It’s our choice.
It’s not what the Devil does, so don’t blame him.
It’s not what other people do, so don’t blame them.
It’s not what society expects you to do, so don’t blame society.
It’s your choice, and only yours.
And that means it’s your responsibility, and yours alone.
Well, having gotten this far in our thinking about sin, we come up against an unfortunate fact. There are several names for that fact, such as original sin, or human nature, or moral weakness. Each of these names expresses a different understanding of this unfortunate fact. I won’t go into that part of the issue. For regardless of what we call it, the fact is that sooner or later we will make some bad choices.
What’s more, we will know that we have made bad choices. And we won’t like that knowledge one bit. The Psalmist puts it this way:
When I declared not my sin, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of the summer. (Ps32:3-4)
No wonder that we will try to shift the blame. We will blame anyone and everything except ourselves. That’s not good, for trying to shift the blame prevents repentance. And repentance happens to be necessary if we want get past that sin that we are blaming others for.
What is repentance? It’s accepting blame, no matter how painful that is. In fact, the word means feeling pain. Repentance begins with remorse, with feeling the pain of knowing you done wrong. It continues with declaring my sin.
It’s very fashionable these days to apologise. Politicians, hockey players, movie actors, anyone in the public eye – they fall all over each other apologising.
And what do they apologise for?
They apologise for making a mistake.
It was a mistake to say something that gave offense.
It was a mistake to act in the heat of the moment and clip someone with a hockey stick.
It was a mistake to get so drunk you lost control of what you were doing.
But these apologies strike me as rather odd. They all say or imply that it wasn’t me that did that bad thing.
It wasn’t me, it was a lapse of judgement.
It wasn’t me, it was my anger.
It wasn’t me, it was the alcohol.
And so on.
In all of these apologies the apologiser more or less obviously passes the buck. In all these apologies, there is a shifting of blame. Just like Adam shifts the blame: It wasn’t me, Lord, it was Eve, she gave me the apple.
It’s not how the Psalmist does it:
I acknowledged my sin unto Thee, he says, and I did not hide my iniquity.(Ps 32:5a)
He does not say, Sorry, I made a mistake.
But there’s more. Repentance, feeling the pain of knowing you have sinned, then acknowledging that you have sinned, is just the beginning. Now you seek forgiveness from those you have wronged, and from God. You want to make amends. Those you have wronged may demand restitution or compensation.
But God takes a different tack. He forgives without demanding restitution.
Now, the Psalmist is quite sure that God will forgive:
I said, “I will confess my transgression unto the Lord”; then thou didst forgive my sin. (Ps32:5b), he says.
That certainty that God will forgive is repeated many times in the Old and New Testament. One of the best known illustrations of this is the parable of the Prodigal Son. We all know it.
The younger son asked for his share of the property, and had a great time paying for what the Revised Standard Version calls “loose living.”
When a famine struck, he hired out as a swineherd, and he came to himself and realised that he would be better off back home as one of the hired hands. So he returned, and said to his father, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son. But his father had him clothed in a new robe, and ordered the fatted calf to be killed, and there was a party with music and dancing, because this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.
The older son was of course annoyed by this. The father says to him, Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. It is fitting to make merry and be glad, for this your brother was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.
Here we have the whole of the biblical teaching about sin. The younger son does what he wants to do, not what he should do. He comes to himself, and feels the pain of knowing he has sinned. He acknowledges his sin to his father, and is willing to do whatever he can to make amends. But his father rejoices and forgives him. And when his older brother, who obeyed the rules, complains, the father repeats his words of forgiveness: This my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.
The father’s forgiveness of his wayward son’s waywardness is the point of this parable. Jesus intends that lesson to apply to us too. We too are wayward children who too often do what we want, sometimes thoughtlessly, sometimes through sheer cussedness, sometimes for reasons we don’t admit to ourselves but which are only too obvious to those who know us. And like the wayward son, we too may come to ourselves and feel the sting of remorse. And like the wayward son we may believe that we are no longer worthy to be a child of God, and must make amends.
But God doesn’t operate with our human notions of worth. God forgives. He forgives because we were lost, and we are found again. All we have to do is return to him and admit that we sinned. More, God had himself made amends for our sin.
In our Anglican tradition, we return to God in every worship service. We say the Confession, and receive the assurance of forgiveness in the Absolution. May we accept the promise that this part of our worship gives. Amen.