July 3 - Proper 9, Year A (RCL)
It’s not the most cheerful of readings,
our second reading today
from the Paul’s letter to the church in Rome,
with its talk of law and sin and death.
Yet it’s probably one of those times
when much as we don’t want to read it, much as we want to argue
that his language is to convoluted to make sense of,
we can’t help
but recognize ourselves in it.
You know how it is. You have some idea in your head,
something you want to do, something you know is the right thing to do,
and you don’t do it.
Or you know you shouldn’t do something,
but you do it anyway.
Any of you
who have ever been on a diet, know how it works.
There is the food you’re supposed to eat, the food you plan to eat,
and then there’s the other stuff.
The food that’s not on the diet.
Day one and the diet starts well.
You eat breakfast according to plan.
By mid morning, you’re tempted to stray, but you stick to your plan,
Lunch is the same.
and so on, through the day.
Then there’s day 2, and day 3.
And then you go grocery shopping.
And you stick to your plan. And you’ve lost two pounds already.
But by day five, it’s beginning to get tougher, and the weekend has arrived,
and you have to make another grocery run
and you think, it wouldn’t hurt to buy that chocolate, just in case I need it. After all, it’s the weekend.
And you pick it up, and then put it back again.
“No, I don’t need it.”
And then, by the checkout, you succumb,
and it goes back in the basket.
And you get to the car, and suddenly you have to eat that chocolate, right now.
And get rid of the evidence
before you get home.
And afterwards, you wonder, “Why did I do that? I didn’t need it, I didn’t even particularly want it.”
I do
what I do not want.
Or there’s the fruit issue.
This time of year, every second week, I receive a large bag of fresh vegetables and fruit
from a farm.
The vegetables I eat, mostly.
But the fruit, it’s another matter.
I like fruit. I enjoy eating it.
And it’s good for me.
But somehow, when I get hungry in the middle of the day
I’ll eat chocolate, or ice cream, or a bagel...
and the fruit, it grows fur
somewhere in the back of the fridge.
I don’t do
what I want to do.
Of course, those two examples
are relatively minor.
Choosing to eat or not to eat
might affect my own body, but you’d hardly call it
sin.
But what about those other times.
Perhaps it’s a phone call
to a family member or friend.
You want to call them,
you know you should call them.
But you don’t.
Or in a conversation,
and someone asks something
about how someone else is doing,
and you begin to say you don’t know
and then you add in, “but I heard...”
and next thing an honest inquiry has turned
into red hot gossip.
Or you’re in a somewhat heated discussion with someone,
disagreeing about some issue,
and then it becomes personal,
and you get to the point
where it’s clear you’ve one,
and yet you can’t resist that last word,
that last twist
of the knife.
We do
what we don’t want
and we don’t do
what we want.
We can explain it in terms of the brain,
the hypothalamus and the frontal lobe
in competition.
We can use the metaphor of heart and mind
in a constant tug-of-war.
Or we can go with the traditional theological explanation,
original sin.
Most times, I suspect, when we hear the words
original sin
we think of babies,
and how inconceivable it is
that these incredible gifts
could be labelled sinful.
It makes no sense.
What has a baby done
to deserve this?
The ides that we are guilty of sin
simply by being born
seems cruel, unfair,
and so we relegate the idea of original sin
to the category of superstition
and want nothing to do with it.
And yet, if we’re honest with ourselves, there is something to it.
We think of children as innocent,
but anyone who has watched a child grow up knows
that there are times when they are just plain nasty.
When they bite, or hit, or pinch,
or disobey for the sake of disobeying.
Kids can be bad, as well as good;
and it’s not something we teach them.
And so deep down
we hate to admit it, but maybe there is something
to this original sin.
Not in the sense of being born bad,
but in the sense of there being something inherent in us
that allows us
to do wrong.
A tendency
to go our own way.
And that’s where original sin
began.
Because of course it’s rooted in that first story after the creation of the world,
the one where the woman, aided and abetted by the snake
takes the one piece of fruit
that God told them not to eat,
and ate it, and gave it to the man to eat.
It was a clear act of disobedience, in retrospect,
but at the time
it probably felt like such a small thing.
I doubt they intended
to disobey God;
they just wanted
to taste a piece of fruit.
But that one decision,
and the die was cast.
God gave human beings
total free will,
and sometimes
they chose to do what was wrong.
And that tendency
has persisted
throughout all of history.
That’s what original sin is.
That capacity, that tendency, we see in ourselves
to mess up.
The traditional confession from Rite 1 describes it this way:
“We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; and we have done those things which we ought not to have done.”
We don’t do what we should, and we do what we shouldn’t.
But even that
doesn’t go quite far enough.
Because in Paul’s description, it’s not just the things we ought to do or not do,
it’s the things we want to do.
Sometimes
we know we ought to do something, and we want to do it,
and still we fail.
It’s kind of depressing.
So is that Paul’s point? To make such a good argument
that we all go away
depressed about
the state of ourselves
and our sin?
Of course not!
Because this is just the preliminary, the introduction
to what he really wants to say.
And that is
“Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
Thanks be to God
because we’re not trapped in this mess
of doing what we don’t want to
and not doing what we want to.
Thanks be to God
because in Jesus Christ
we’re not condemned for our failures.
Thanks be to God
because in Jesus Christ
we are forgiven,
we are forgiven
for the things we do that we don’t want to and ought not,
and the things we don’t do
that we want to and ought do.
Through Jesus Christ
the burden of our failure
has been lifted.
Today’s reading
doesn’t say much about how that all happens -
that has to wait for next week -
but what is clear
is that it doesn’t happen.
We’re not locked into
a cycle of failure.
Christ has freed us.
And there’s a other piece to it as well.
Because it’s not just that Christ saves us, Christ forgives us
at the end,
leaving us with no consequences
and wreckage of our mistakes strewn behind us.
Because as Christians, the Spirit of Christ,
the Holy Spirit
lives in us,
and because of the Spirit’s help
we are no longer locked into that pattern of doing what we don’t want to
and not doing what we want to,
because of the Spirit’s help
we are no longer locked into
original
sin.
We have freedom, freedom to choose what is right and good and holy.
Of course we still have to choose,
day by day by day,
we still have to choose
to follow the leading of the Spirit,
to pay attention to its nudges,
but it’s no longer up to us alone.
It’s not just willpower;
we have the Spirit at work in us, helping us,
and every time we feel ourselves overwhelmed,
barreling down the track towards doing one of those things
we don’t want to do
or not doing
what we want,
we can stop,
stop and say to the Spirit,
Spirit of God, help me.
Help me not
have to have the last word.
Help me to stop
gossiping.
Remind me to make that call.
Even, help me eat my fruit and keep my diet.
Because we are not held captive,
we are not locked in
to the way of sin.
We have the Spirit,
God our help,
and Christ Jesus,
our rescuer and savior.
© Raewynne J. Whiteley 2010