Sermon - February 10, 2008: First Sunday in Lent

Pastor Heisley

“Agnus dei, qui tollis peccata mundi. Miserere nobis.” “Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, have mercy on us.” Every Sunday we sing these or similar words. Every Sunday we sing about sin, about how Jesus, the Lamb of God, takes away our sin, takes away every sin, takes away the sin of everybody. 

And yet, I have to wonder. I have to wonder, along with many other Christians, it’s my guess: what IS sin? We used to know what was a sin and what was not. 

I can remember that when I was growing up I knew for sure that drinking alcohol was a sin, but being overweight was not. Playing cards was a sin, but killing people in a war was not. Premarital sex was a huge sin, but abusing your wife or husband or child was certainly not. Now, I’m not so sure. The understanding of sin that I have always taught, that I was taught in seminary is, “Sin is alienation from God.” And we feel like we’ve come to an understanding of what sin is. 

But then we remember that there are people who believe that we as sacramentally and liturgically oriented Lutherans are most certainly alienated from God. We as cultural westerners are absolutely alienated from God in the minds of some. What is sin? 

In today’s second lesson St. Paul uses the word sin seven times, and five of those times happen in just the first three verses. Paul believes that “sin came into the world through one man.” And we recall Adam and Eve and the story that we heard earlier in this liturgy from Genesis. We learn that Paul believes teaches that “death came through sin.” And we see that Paul understands that before sin there was no death. Only life lived eternally. 

And then we read that death spread – I envision a disastrous wildfire here – death spread to all “because all have sinned.” It is our sinful nature that kills us. And that opens the door to believing that cancers that afflict us and our loved ones are caused by sin, not cells that divide abnormally. That the AIDS killing a poor African mother is caused by her sin, not by a virus that invades her cells. That various types of bodily failure are caused by sin, not by parts simply wearing out. That’s probably why people have thought through the centuries that sin causes disease. “I’m sick. What did I do wrong and how can I undo it?” 

Paul refers continually to the story of Adam and Eve. In that story we see that our progenitors were hungry. They had everything they needed to make their lives happy in the garden that God had planted for them. They had food in abundance. There was just one tree whose fruit they were not supposed to eat. Why? God said so. Eat anything else! It’s OK. Just don’t eat from this one. Why? Because I say so. So, of course, they ate. It’s like saying to small children that they should not touch the beautiful cake that’s on the table within their reach. “Eat these other goodies. I’ll be out of the room for just a minute.” And when you come back, there are chunks of cake missing and frosting on happy faces. We want what we want, and we want it more when we’re not supposed to have it. 

Adam and Eve ate from the forbidden tree because they weren’t supposed to. They weren’t supposed to so that God could establish order and discipline, not because the fruit was bad for them. And because they took it upon themselves to make up their own minds, because they ate, they separated themselves from God. They did not follow God’s laws and they alienated themselves from God. They sinned. 

Paul looked at the story of Adam and Eve and he looked at the people in Rome and he saw the same sinful tendencies. Alienation from God. The power of alienation, the power of sin, destroying lives by taking away hope and by blocking a vision of peace and by drawing people into enmity with each other. 

So what is the sin that St. Paul would talk about today? How do I sin? How do we sin? 

I sin as a baptized person, as a member of the body of Christ, by not placing faith in God’s power to direct my life. Whether it be eating too much or exercising too little, whether it be feeling bad about the aging process or having no hope for the future, whether it be fear of what is happening to us as a nation or distrust of the power of God to work through human culture, I alienate myself from God. 

And so do you. I see it. I know it. Your manners of alienation might be different, but they are nevertheless real. It is the way we live. We are surrounded by intemperance in the use of the earth’s resources. A man leaves his car idling while he goes into SuperAmerica or a lone woman drives a huge SUV. Both are doing damage to God’s creation. One person has no regard for people outside of his family and another neglects her family to care for strangers. Both are signs of alienation from God. Both are signs of human sin. 

But sin is also corporate. Americans use far more than our share of the earth’s resources. We have no humility in the face of and little or no respect for the cultures of other nations. We assume that we are always right and they are always wrong. We bomb innocents in order to get their leaders to talk instead of talking to leaders so that innocents might be protected. Our corporate sins are as multifarious as our personal sins. All is alienated from God. 

But St. Paul reminds us that our sinful nature is not, will not, cannot be victorious. “Just as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.” There is hope. We who are alienated from God are joined to God again in the obedience of Jesus the Christ to God’s power of love. 

The gracious love of God in Christ abounds far in excess of our sinful natures. We are accepted and our alienation is put behind us. When he was tempted by the devil to choose his own power over God’s power, he three times chose to love God above all things, to be obedient to God’s in his live, to be one with God and not alienated from God. His obedience becomes our forgiveness, our eternal life. 

Jesus had just been baptized. He went from receiving the power of the Holy Spirit to confronting every power of evil in the universe in the person of the devil. He fasted for 40 days and 40 nights. This was the Lent of Jesus’ life. And so we too who have been baptized face Lent. Face it in the temptations that draw us away from the love of god and the love of neighbor. 

But we do not face it alone. We do not face it without hope. At the end of our 40-day sojourn in the wilderness of our own alienation from God we are joined anew to God as we reaffirm our baptismal vows. The full and certain knowledge that at the end of our 40 days there is nothing but an empty tomb promises us life in every one of our heres and nows. And that means that even in the heart of Lent, even in our wilderness of alienation and seeking forgiveness, there is joy. 

As we sing together “Agnus dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis,” we sing our hopes and we sing into the heart of Christ. We are God’s people. Forgiven and whole. And happy. Amen.

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