Words of Wonder: Sin

Sermon

During the season of Lent, the pastors are doing a series called “Words of Wonder”—different theological words in the Christian tradition that come with some baggage. Words like “salvation” or “atonement.” Sometimes it’s because they seem so abstract; what could they possibly say to us in a time of COVID and war in Ukraine? With other words, the baggage is more the misuse of the word by Christian tradition itself, including today’s word: “sin.” I hope to treat with pastoral care all the misgivings folks have surrounding this word while still trying to see what wisdom and truth—and perhaps even good news—we can glean.

I invite you to pray with me.

Patrick Cheng, a theologian in the field of queer theology, remembers the first time he saw himself as a “sinner.”

As he writes in his book From Sin to Amazing Grace, when Cheng was a teenager, he started recognizing his attraction toward other guys. So, he searched his Catholic school library for answers and found a book that told him that folks who lived out same gender attraction were living in sin. Filled with shame, it took him years until he could interact with Church again.

This is a common story, including in our very own church. No wonder the word “sin” carries a lot of baggage for people.

I hold this in tension with the fact that there is merit in trying to name the actions that really do hurt people, in a way that really does call for accountability. The mass bombing of innocent civilians is not just a mistake – it is sin. In a recent interview on the tenth anniversary of the murder of Trayvon Martin, former President Obama rightfully calls slavery America’s original sin. Patrick Cheng’s book is about how even liberation-minded Christians need to have sin talk to name collective and individual sin.

How can we recover our tradition’s wisdom behind sin talk while shedding the baggage of its misuse? For starters, in our Bible story today, Jesus seemed to also be upset about misuse of sin talk.

We start with Jesus going up to a toll booth and calling this toll booth worker to “Follow me.” I’m not going to go into specifics, but just note that folks labeled “tax collectors” were often seen as corrupt and morally dubious.

And yet Jesus goes, not only calling Levi to follow him, but then inviting a whole dinner party of these “sinners.”

And so, they’re just having this party, eating a good meal, having a good time. Jesus getting his dab on, I’m sure. Then here comes the Pharisees, the party poopers. Side note, what’s with the Pharisees just, like, wandering around random houses, waiting to crash sinner parties? Seems pretty sus to me.

Anyway, the Pharisees barge in and go, “Jesus, if you’re so holy, how could you be eating with these sinners?”

I want to pause right here, because this gets at the heart of our baggage with sin talk. And it has to do with hitting us at our sense of belonging. These religious leaders are using the label of sinner to decide who and who doesn’t belong.

You have these people who say they speak for God tell you that you are living in sin, you’re bad, and you can’t really get back in the holy club until you conform. And God is keeping score, and if you do too many sins when you die, you are kicked out of the holy club forever, in hell. And by the way, what they emphasize as sins are NOT racism or sexism or financial exploitation or oppression – no it’s having sex in icky ways, mainly so they can control women and gay people.

The irony of Christians weaponizing sin to exclude others is that Jesus himself leads with belonging. “I have come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance.” Being labeled a sinner doesn’t keep you out of the dinner party, it’s your VIP pass in!

And what you have to understand is when there’s a meal in the Bible, there’s usually huge significance. This isn’t just a dinner party, this is an overarching parable of God’s plan. No, not Drake’s plan, Dean, God’s plan.

This story—Jesus going out, calling people like Levi, then gathering them all together to this dinner party—is an echo of God’s ultimate plan, Ephesians and Colossians, in the fullness of time to gather all things in Christ, to bring all of humanity and creation together with the divine in love.

Everyone’s invited, but the Pharisees want to play bouncer. What if sin talk was not about deciding who is out, but about recognizing who is already in? Based off this passage, here is how you could define sin:

Sin is denying who belongs to God. Sin is denying who belongs to God.

 That is what sin looks like. The sin is not being gay. The sin is power telling gay folks created in the image of God they are wrong for living.

Sin defined as denying who belongs to God acknowledges the severity of the action. We treat fellow human beings like they don’t already belong to God when we hurt them, when we use them, when we deny their dignity.

But in this model of sin, you are safe to actually admit your sin, because your belonging is secure. And, it offers a way out, a way to actually deal with sin. What do I mean with this? Here’s the mantra I would love folks to take away from this sermon:

If you want to deal with sin: Accept grace, and choose growth. If you want to deal with sin: Accept grace, and choose growth.

 First: Accept Grace –

 No matter how far you try to stray, every time you fall, every part of the journey, Jesus offers us the same invitation of grace he offers Levi – “Follow me.”

Often what prevents us from trying to do better for others is because we won’t accept that grace. Sometimes, that looks like pride, not admitting you did something wrong, so you double down. If you just allowed yourself in those moments to accept grace, to accept that your belonging in Christ is secure, you could be vulnerable enough to admit fault.

For others, that looks like the opposite of ego; you are so consumed by your feelings of shame and guilt, you feel you do so many things wrong. And for you, accepting grace means accepting that you are worth that invitation. You are! You belong!

So Accept Grace. And Choose Growth –

 Grace does not mean there are no consequences, there is no hardship, there is no accountability, that people cannot set boundaries against you even if you’re forgiven.

True recognition of our belonging in Christ means choosing NOT to hurt others that we belong with. See, this is an understanding of sin not rooted in individualism: Not “I need to be good and lower my sin tally or I go to hell.” It’s about saying, we all belong to God, God is gathering us together, and so we need to take care of one another.

The words “follow me” from Jesus are both an invitation of grace and the choice to grow. To go from the toll booth to the dinner party is to choose to GROW in character. It’s why Jesus depicts following him not as a one-time thing but as a journey, the Way, right? “This is the Way.” No, that’s The Mandalorian, but Jesus does call following him “The Way.”

And The Way means growth. And growth means owning the “sinner” label—because who here among us is without sin?—owning that we are not perfect and then moving forward. There are so many things happening in the world that are out of our control. But how we act with the people we are with, how we choose to nurture our character, that we have control over.

Our race conversations actually give us a pretty full picture of what this looks like. We recognize we are all racists, in that we all participate in white supremacy. And rather than be consumed with white guilt—’cuz no one is helped by you being afraid of racist hell—we have grace offered to try to grow, to change within ourselves, and to organize with others to restructure systems of oppression, not because you’re afraid of “looking racist” but because you want to do better for your fellow human beings.

Take that model, and replace race with sin.

Dean Lillard, who talked about Drake, also had this to say at a youth group when I asked, Why is church worth it?  Dean said, “I appreciate Church, because Church is a community where people are trying to grow and do better.”

I hope at our best that’s what we can be. People growing toward God, rooted in the sure soil of grace.

Because sin is denying who belongs to God.

And if you want to deal with sin: Accept grace, and choose growth.