Today's Bible Study Reflection is unusual in that it doesn't come from a specific piece of Scripture. Rather it's a topic that arose both Sunday morning in our study of Romans and Wednesday morning in our study of Isaiah. And by the way, let me say this again: if you're not in one or another of our Bible Studies you are missing a TON. I cannot describe to you what's happened to them this year, left and right, every one of them. My goodness, I am amazed!
Anyway, the topic that spanned our two studies concerned judgment and sin. The issue here isn't that we make judgments about sin. We have to do that every single day. If we weren't called to make any judgments about good or bad we wouldn't have gotten the Law in the first place. We'd also be blundering into all kinds of situations which would hurt ourselves and our neighbor, a severe discredit to God whose name we serve. Several spots in the Bible call us to judge acts and philosophies and words by their effect on the world, to balance them against what we know of God's plan for salvation and act accordingly. We are meant to be discerning. We are meant to weigh things. We are meant to judge.
The problem arises not with the impulse to judge but the way we go about it. When sin is described in the Bible our instinct leads us to stand above it, to say, "Oh how foolish those people were! I can't believe they were doing that!" In doing so we make two critical mistakes. In lifting ourselves above God's Word as if it--even in this small section, even in this small way--doesn't apply to us we have inverted our relationship with God, making ourselves the ultimate boss and/or judge. Second, we have absolved ourselves of the sin in question without ever admitting it applied to us in the first place. These two impulses cause us to miss the entire point of large swaths of Scripture. You don't have to look much farther than the modern church--at least in the way modern churches conduct themselves practically and see their relationship with the world--to see the damage. For years we have read passages about the Pharisees while clucking our tongues and marveling how dense and wrong-headed they were. In denying that those texts are critiquing our behavior as well we have become exactly like the Pharisees. Read me any passage involving them and I pretty much guarantee I can point to a practice or mindset we have that reflects the wrong of that passage perfectly. And these are things we're proud of!
Another curious thing: when reading a list of sins we will instinctively lift out and jump to the ones that we perceive being committed by other people while skipping over the ones that most closely resemble our own behavior. Do you know how many times I've sat around a church table (thankfully not in current company much) and heard, "Well THOSE people are doing THIS and it's just WRONG!"? Now compare that to the number of times I've sat around a church table and heard, "Pastor, I'm doing this in my own life and I need to admit it and talk about it." I have a suitcase full of the first memories. I can count the second on one hand and still dial two phones with it.
What, then, is our public witness about sin? In a nutshell: other people commit it and we don't. Even if you can pin us to a sin the ones other people do are worse.
Yuck.
This isn't judgment, it's judgmental. There's a big difference between the two.
I only know of two ways to get on the right side of that equation...not perfectly right (as I'm not sure that's possible) but at least headed in the right direction and hopefully giving a decent public witness as to the way to go. The first is embracing the cross, throwing yourself on its mercy every day. You are saved because Jesus died for you. If you had no sin that wouldn't have been necessary. You did, so he did. That's your only life ring in this awful storm. Stop clinging to it and you're going to drown no matter how strong of a swimmer you think you are. You can't cling with just one hand either, saying, "Yes he died for me but I didn't do anything that bad..." He died for you, my friend. That there is indicative of something wrong. Naturally the cross is our great sign of redemption, not just condemnation. We believe in the power of resurrection over death, of forgiveness over confession and sin. But you can't get to the good end part if you don't start from the proper beginning. That beginning is always grounded in your inability to save yourself because of sin and your tendency to embrace it.
The second step is to follow up that realization with a new way of reading these texts from Scripture. When reading about sin the proper response isn't, "How dumb were those people?" or, "Isn't it horrible what my neighbor is doing?" Those aren't the right questions. Their answer won't lead you a bit closer to God, truth, or anything good. Instead the proper response is to ask how this text--yes...THIS one--describes what I'm doing here and now and the way I fall short in these matters. Reading the Bible isn't a selective experience of, "All the parts about love and redemption apply to me while all the parts about sin and condemnation apply to someone else!" If you're going to be under God's Word, be under it. If it's going to lead you, let it lead you. Don't ask whether, but how, it's doing so even in these difficult and wart-revealing passages. Unless you can find yourself in that sin (keeping in mind that sins are usually broader and run deeper than we tend to define them) you've pushed away Scripture and set yourself apart from it and God. By finding yourself in these passages about sin you've--somewhat paradoxically--taken the first step to truly understanding and living our your salvation.
--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)
No comments:
Post a Comment