St.Alban’s Epping, 11th September 2016
Rev. Paul Weaver
“SIN, JUDGEMENT AND THE REST”
(Jeremiah 4:11-28; Psalm 14; 1 Timothy 1:1-19a; Luke 15:1-10)
There are apparently some people who read whodunnits by finding out what the crime was and then jumping straight to the back of the book to discover exactly who did it! It seems to me a fairly unsatisfactory way of reading a book! The journey through to the solution in a good book is part of the attraction: the twists and turns, the clues and the red herrings – they are all meant to make the ultimate answer to the puzzle all the more rewarding to discover.
However, when I looked through the readings for today, it was tempting to bypass the first three, and to go straight to the Gospel with its simple and beautiful parables of Jesus about the lost sheep and the lost coin, and their wonderful message of the love and devotion of God.
There seems so much sin and judgement in the other readings, and I’m not all that comfortable preaching about sin and judgement. There are preachers who major on these subjects – peering over the pulpit, thundering forth with lurid images of hellfire and brimstone and worms, shaking their finger at the dreadful sinners in front of them, thinking that they can terrify people into the kingdom of heaven. That’s not really my style!
The problem is that the Bible has a great deal to say about sin and judgement. And Jesus certainly had much to say about these things: his message was certainly not all sweetness and light. So if we are going to do justice to today’s Gospel, we need to set it in the context of these other more difficult readings.
Let’s start with Psalm 14, a Psalm so significant that it is virtually repeated word for word in Psalm 53. The real fool, says the Psalmist, is the one who says that there is no God. Not that he or she was likely to actually be an atheist: that would be very unusual in those days. No: the fool is the one who lives as if there is no God, the one who takes no account of God at all. This is ultimate foolishness, says the Psalmist: not only because God does exist, but because God knows people inside out. He sees what we do and how we live. He sees people’s sins and their rebellion.
But the Psalmist goes further. He says that when the Lord looks for people who really live their lives the way they ought to live, who consistently live their lives in obedience to God, he finds no one: no one at all! There is a sense in which we are all spiritual fools. Remember that the fool lives as if there were no God. We were made to live God’s way: but all of us, to a greater or lesser extent, live our own way instead.
Nevertheless, the Psalmist acknowledges that there are people who make up “the company of the righteous”. They have a hard time from the hardened rebels against God. These people are not perfect, but they actually do take seriously God and his ways. Nevertheless the message from the Psalmist is that really we are all sinners. We are all guilty before God. And God is well and truly aware.
Let’s move then to those heavy words from Jeremiah 4. It is a frightening picture of judgement: a hurricane coming to wreak havoc and bring destruction. God’s own people are so terrible and ungodly that he will bring this desolating fury upon even them. He will certainly do it, and yet the destruction will not be absolute, it will not be a full end of Israel. But if this is how he judges his own people, Israel, how will it be for those who are enemies of his people? If the Psalm tells us that we are all sinners, then Jeremiah tells us that God judges sinners.
It is an uncomfortable message. But as you may have heard me say some weeks ago, the idea of judgement is essential. God cannot allow evil to triumph, and he cannot treat it as if it really is not all that important. God must put things right, and that involves judgement in some form.
And then we read Paul’s words in 1 Timothy 1. Paul says that he had been “a blasphemer, a persecutor, a man of violence”. He was “the foremost of sinners”. Clearly he was worthy of God’s judgement.
But what happened? Paul “received mercy because he acted ignorantly in unbelief”. Perhaps Paul is thinking of those words of Jesus from the cross: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Paul says that “The grace of the Lord overflowed for him with the love and mercy which are in Christ Jesus.” Jesus showed immense patience with Paul, making him an example, so that others would find faith and forgiveness and life in Jesus Christ.
God knows our failings, he knows the worst about us, but he also understands us. He understands why we do the things we do. He understands our weaknesses and failures and mistakes. He understands when we head down the wrong path, when we let ourselves down and others down, when we let him down. He understands our uncertainties and confusion.
And he even for instance understands that anger and confusion and weakness and gullibility that can turn some people into terrorists. Of course, understanding these things does not mean that he condones it any more than we would condone it. But it does help us towards a much wiser response to these people. Yes, God understands the best of us and the worst of us. And he reaches out to us even though he knows the worst of us.
So these readings tell us that God knows sinners, God judges sinners, and that God understands sinners. And Paul’s personal experience points us towards our Gospel. For our Gospel reminds us that God rescues sinners.
Sin puts us out of touch with God. That is its nature. Remember how Adam and Eve hid from God after that initial act of sin. Remember how that first sin brought a sentence of death: for sin cuts us off from the God who is the source of life. Because of our sin, there is a sense in which we are all lost, lost to the open presence of God. And these two simple stories in the Gospel tell us God’s reaction to our lostness. As the shepherd goes searching for the lost sheep until he finds it, so God goes all the way to rescue us from the destructive power of sin. As the woman sweeps out the dark house, searching carefully until she finds that lost coin, so God in Christ goes all the way, to restore us to himself.
To be a sinner is in a real sense to be lost. But through Christ, we are found, because of God’s love which reaches out to us, even when we pull ourselves away from him. The cross, where God bears in his own being the results of human sin, shows us how much he loves us; it shows us how much he values us, how precious we are to him.
When I acknowledge or confess my sins – as I do in the liturgy Sunday by Sunday, but as I have to do much more regularly as I recognize my failings and weaknesses – I am simply being real. I am not denying the wonder of my humanity.
I can say that I am unworthy of God: but that is a very different thing from seeing myself as worthless. That sheep, that coin was not worthless: when they were found, there was reason for great celebration – almost over the top, I might have thought. But God rejoices when we come back to him, when we are restored to true friendship and fellowship with him. Yes, we all have our failings – but we matter immensely to God.
Luke tells us that Jesus told these stories in response to the religious people who saw Jesus letting the side down by mixing with disreputable people. “They are real sinners: we should not mix with them” was the attitude.
Yes, they were sinners – like the rest of us – in need of forgiveness. They were lost: needing to be found. But they were precious to God, and therefore precious to Jesus. And the rest of the chapter brings us the parable of the Prodigal Son, and its second half there is that dutiful older brother, who finds it so hard to accept the return of his disreputable and ungrateful younger brother. That is not Jesus’ way.
To be an Anglican is to be a sinner – just like other human beings. That ought to make us a very open church: we acknowledge that we’re all in the same boat, all in need of God’s forgiveness, and all rejoicing that forgiveness comes to us through Jesus. Let’s beware of the temptation to put any people into a different class because of their background or their different beliefs, because of their lifestyles or their failings. Let’s try never to think of others as less than us, to think of others as less worthy of God’s love. No one is beyond the scope of God’s love; no one is beyond the scope of God’s forgiveness and acceptance.
It’s not for us to sort out whose sins are greater or less than ours. That is God’s job. What he calls us to do is to be realistic about our failures, and acknowledge that we do fall short. And then we are free to be people who welcome all others, just as God in Christ has welcomed us. Amen.
Paul Weaver