Sermons

Minister: Rev. Margaret A. Beckman | “I have never agreed with those who tried to us that the whole idea of sin is out of date.”  ~ A. Powell Davies
 

READING A Powell Davies “The Moral Crisis”
 In times of stress, people do strange things: useless things, futile and unavailing. A drowning man, we are told, will grasp at a straw. He is unable to help it. He knows perfectly well that the straw will not keep him afloat, but his hand goes out compulsively. He cannot keep it back. …

People have been willing to go to almost any length to avoid looking at realities…

I have never agreed with those who tried to tell us that the whole idea of sin is out of date. To the best of my observation and belief, sin is highly contemporary and we are all up to our necks in it.

But this doesn’t mean that to avoid drowning in sin, we must clutch at theological straws. It doesn’t mean that we must surrender all attempts at swimming our way to shore. Nor does it mean that there is nothing left to do but call on God for a miracle.
 

READING ~ Rev. Amy Butler, Head Minister at Riverside Church in NYC
Riverside is a very progressive Protestant congregation, and progressives are notoriously reticent to speak about sin. Because of that, we often cede responsibility for that kind of conversation, theological dialogue and exploration to our conservative brothers and sisters.
I think that’s a mistake.
SERMON

In the day that the Lord[a] God made the earth and the heavens, 5 when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground; 6 but a stream would rise from the earth, and water the whole face of the ground— 7 then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground,[b] and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. 8 And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed. 9 Out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

We know what happens after that.

The man made of adam – dirt in our langauge – was lonely. God formed adamah – a female of the man’s bone. Eventually she acquired the name Eve. And story of Adam and Eve was invented and passed down through the ages to us.

Etc., etc., etc. …………………

What is the defining concept we have attributed to the story of Adam and Eve? The first humans disobeyed the instructions – commandments perhaps- given to them by God and through them, sin came into the world and Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden of Eve – perhaps for all of eternity.

Sin. We Unitarian Universalists of the 21st century seem not to have much use for sin – the concept or even the word.

Why is that?

In my experience, we most often refer to the theological doctrine of Original Sin as being completely useless and probably damaging to the human spirit – our own for sure, and probably for everyone.

Useless for two primary reasons.

First, to suggest that each and every human being is conceived and born in sin and then carries that sin until a designated holy person washes that sin away is irrational at best and downright terrible and mean at worst.

Second, and perhaps more important for theologically inclined Unitarian Universalists, the notion that a loving God would place the first human beings in a beautiful garden and then set them up for almost certain failure by highlighting the marvelous nature of the trees of knowledge and life and then forbidding them to touch them …. Well, that sort of manipulation insults us. If God is this mean and terrible, then we have no use for that God.   We reject this mean and terrible God and throw out the concept of original sin as being completely inconsistent with a loving and merciful God – the only God UUs are inclined to acknowledge – me included.

So, ok. We throw out Original Sin. Watch what happens next ………..

We throw out sin altogether.

And now, we don’t have a useful religious understanding of sin within our Unitarian Universalist world view.

When I was preparing my thoughts for this message, I consulted our UU Worship Web – where thousands of examples of things we use in our worship and other types of services can be searched and found and used.

There is nothing there under a search for the concept or even the key word “sin.”

I was chatting up some of my minister colleagues this week at our Northern New England minister’s retreat and then the NNED Annual meeting. A couple of them asked what I would preaching about today and when I said, “sin” the common response was “Woa – really? Good luck with that!” Even my near-by colleague and friend, Lane Fisher, looked at me curiously and said “Really, that’s brave. What will you say?” We chatted for 40 minutes. Finally she said, “Ok, that would be worth listening to.” I hope she is right.

When we ministers are stumped, it’s no wonder we don’t talk about sin in UU company.

Yet, I think we must.

I find agreement for my opinion from A. Powell Davies who served All Souls Unitarian in Washington, D.C. in the 1940s and 1950s and Amy Butler who is the lead pastor at Riverside Church in NYC right now. In times of social and moral trouble, it’s time to talk about sin. It’s time to re-envision our notions about sin and create a useful process for responding to evil in our world – sin.

What happened to bring us to this place? We tossed out the whole notion of sin because we have such a deep aversion to Original Sin. We tossed out the useful along with the useless. The baby with the bath water.

Liberal theologians wrestled with the reality of evil and the rejection of orignal sin over the decades and we now find ourselves in a curious place where we ought not to be. In rejecting original sin, we have – for all practical purposes – rejected sin in any guise.

I propose to you that this is a problem for contemporary people of faith – especially for people of liberal and progressive faith.

Amy Butler of Riverside Church says that because we progressives have so much difficulty with traditional conservative Christian descriptions of sin, we can’t talk about it at all, in any even progressive way. The result? – those with the very theologies we find so problematic have taken over the entire conversation about sin – and it is most often cast as the personal sin of “others” or “them” which is not infrequently, you and me!

So, what is sin and what shall we do about it?

Classical theological education teaches us that sin – the Greek word – means missing the mark. As an archer shooting the arrow toward the taret misses the bullseye mark, our behavior can miss the mark of correct behavior. This happens individually and collectively. In this understanding, a wrong has been committed and consequences follow.

Consequences – there is a phrase that many of you heard. We think it comes from the Bible and maybe it does. “The wages sin are death.”

Well that is certainly a punishment model and we theological liberals question the value of that too. Would a loving God punish people who “miss the mark” with death – followed by eternity in hell?

Surely not.

So out goes that concept of sin.

The baby goes out with dirty bath water once again.

Opinion Columnist, David Brooks, wrote a piece in the March 7th NYT “The Case for Reparations” in which he describes sin as “anything that assaults the moral order.” I can go with that understanding. It provides room for personal misdeeds and collective misdeeds – by both acts of commission and acts of omission. So we can talk about personal acts of racism as sin and we can talk about our nation’s sin of historical and institutional racism – for example.

There is another richer concept of sin that I want to share with you. I credit Amy Butler’s Lenten sermon series on sin with helping me to sharpen my thinking on this. Sin is a problem because with sin comes loss. Too often in our world, rather than placing our attention on that which has been lost when we recognize sin, we have focused on punishment and retribution. I now want to reject this way of understanding sin and therefore the consequences of sin.

I want to shift, to turn around, our viewpoint and begin to look for what is lost through sin or misdeeds. When we begin to appreciate and understand what is lost, we may find much more productive and life-affirming ways of responding to sin that bring us ever closer to restoration and wholeness, and, for many, a loving God. Yet, we ought to wary of becoming even more inconsequential in our religious dialogue than we already are. So, where’s the beef?

Here’s the thing ….

If we begin to see sin as resulting in loss and brokenness then we are not served by throwing out sin altogether. As Powell Davies reminds us – evil is real, very real real, and evil acts have very real consequences. Grasping at straws or burying our heads in the sand is not helpful. So what is the helpful way of confronting evil – within ourselves, others or our collective historical, cultural or social evil?

I suggest that we look for what we’ve lost. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge. We think that was the sin. But no, the sin was acting in a way that resulted in the loss of their relationship with their God – for the consequences of their actions only became real when they refused to take responsibility and work to restore what was lost or broken. Remember in the story, with their newly acquired knowledge, Adam and Eve covered their nakedness? When God saw them in their new fig leaf finery, God knew something changed. God asked Adam about it and Adam denied, deflected and redirected. That is what angered God. Adam was not willing to engage in the process of restoring what was lost. Paradise Lost – the sin here is not valuing what was lost more than ego and reputation. OK, maybe I’m pushing the story – but I trust you get the point.

Seen differently, if the story paid attention to the loss suffered, relationship with the divine and easy living in the Garden of Eden, it might have gone in a different direction. This is a morality story, not history, so let’s not quibble about the details and lose the point.

When we fall short, we suffer a loss. Usually, this is a loss of relationship.

The next thing is to work for restoration. To make whole the relationship.

But if I have thrown out any meaning for sin, then there is no need for the process of restoration. And the loss remains. The brokenness becomes permanent.

In the Christian and Jewish traditions, there is a process for all of this.

Sin. Recognition of sin. Accountability. Confession/Personal Responsibility. Restitution/Restoration. Forgiveness. Absolution. Wholeness.

Without an acknowledgement of sin, the rest is not available.

So here we are.

We have a choice.

In one model, one I am all too familiar with ….

We see evil – personal and collective.

We have no theological or philosophical way to talk about or deal with the results in a life-affirming way.

We punish and cast out the sinners.

Relationships are broken – forever.

We suffer the consequences of living with faith crushing, life limiting brokenness.

In another model, one I am enthusiastic about practicing …

We see evil – personal and collective.

We do have a way of talking about it – as a loss of something we cherish and value.

We strive to find ways of restoring what is lost or repairing what is damaged.

Sometimes, maybe even often, we can and we do and we rejoice in that renewed wholeness.

The Jews have a theological concept – Tikkun Olam.[1] The progrssive Jewish understanding of this concept is “Repair the World” and it is the faithful response to brokenness – in all the places it occurs. Tikkun Olam often manfiests as our work for justice – human justice and justice for all of creation.

 

 

[1] Wikipedia – – Tikkun olam (Hebrew: תיקון עולם “repair of the world”) is a concept in Judaism, interpreted in Orthodox Judaism as the prospect of overcoming all forms of idolatry, and by other Jewish denominations as an aspiration to behave and act constructively and beneficially.