GENESIS 15:1-12,17-18

PSALM 27:10-18

PHILIPPIANS 3:17-4:1

LUKE 13:22-35

Sermon – March 7, 2004

Whatever happened to sin?

Does anyone else feel sometimes that American culture is out of control – that what used to be standards have been overrun as if by an invading army – except that it’s not an invading army of barbarians; it’s us.

Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson figured they could get away with their planned indecent exposure on the Super Bowl half-time show, and that they would merely become even more famous. They were right on both counts. Despite getting dropped by a few radio stations, Howard Stern still has a huge audience. Also with at least relatively huge audiences (compared to other shows) are so-called reality TV programs designed to glorify people trying to live by “the law of the jungle” – sometimes actually in jungles – lifting up greed and ruthlessness as ideals. And I haven’t even gotten to the TV shows which make a mockery of courtship and marriage. Or reputable national magazines which now routinely print words which used to be considered unprintable.

When did the media moguls hook up with the sewer systems – and why has that seemed to be such a popular decision?

And when we’re not being told to live by “the law of the jungle”, we’re being told to live by “the law of the jingle” – the boundless tidal wave of commercials which floods not just our media outlets but our phones (still) and computers as well, many of them unsavory and unwanted and which have prompted the creation of a whole industry to try to block them from our homes.

But somebody must buy this stuff. And lots of people seem to produce it. And that’s not even mentioning what goes way beyond unsavory to dangerous and destructive, from vastly expanded opportunities to gamble (serious poverty is just a mouse click away) to internet porn sites (some designed to lure children) and, or course, pedophiles out trolling for fresh prey on-line and in person.

But never fear, the government is defending us ...from Martha Stewart’s greed, which caused her to keep $50,000 of gains she would have legitimately lost if she’d played by the rules. Fifty thousand dollars – that’s the kind of money the WorldCom, Enron and Tyco people might have left lying around on coffee tables. If prosecutors are serious about greed that broke laws, let’s see some action against people whose greed allegedly wiped out thousands of jobs and thousands of retirements.

But they were just “the little people”, who are not themselves more moral than anyone else but seem to be the victims of other peoples’ immorality more regularly. And some of what happens to people isn’t even illegal, just wrong.

I’m not shopping at Wal-Mart any more after I read the latest exposé in the “New York Times” of how they treat their employees. It seems that people who work overnight shifts at at least some Wal-Marts are locked in to the stores and can only get out if a manager unlocks the store...and a manager is not always present overnight. Oh, there are fire exits, but employees are clearly told that if they use fire exits for anything but a fire, they will be...fired. So when an employee’s foot was crushed by a piece of moving equipment, the ambulance couldn’t get him out of the store until a manager arrived with a key...an hour after the accident. There was also a delay when an employee had a heart attack. After all, they’re just people.

Those who live in California’s Central Valley and pick much of what ends up in the produce aisles of our grocery stores are just people, too. People who are paid too little to be able to afford the healthy food they pick – if it was even offered for sale to them near where they live. Instead, there’s tortillas, potatoes and bread – cheap starches – in hard times, and readily available high sugar sodas and convenience foods – which are sold nearby – on paydays.

These diets have disastrous health effects. Diabetes is epidemic among the children as well as adults. Only when a 15-year-old student went blind as a consequence of untreated diabetes did the school seek help for the families it serves. Check out last Thursday’s “Star Ledger” for details.

What ever happened to sin? It’s all around us. We are caught in a vast and growing jungle of sins – some spectacular and some subtle, some individual and some systemic, some with names and faces of famous people attached to them and some which just hold up mirrors to each and to all of us [hold up mirror]. There is not one of us who can claim we are free of all of them.

Sins, plural, are specific examples of sin, singular, which the Catechism (page 848 in The Book of Common Prayer) defines as “the seeking of our own will instead of the will of God, thus distorting our relationship with God, with other people, and with all creation.”

St. Paul puts it more colorfully in today’s epistle: “For many live as enemies of the cross of Christ; I have also told you of them, and now I tell you even with tears. Their end is destruction; their god is the belly; and their glory is in their shame; their minds are set on earthly things.”

“Their god is the belly.” That kind of sums it up in a “G-rated” way: Paul is talking about people who worship their own appetites – whether for food, drugs, sex, alcohol, power, money, fame, violence, or the degradation of others – instead of worshipping God. And for every one who is a spectacular worshipper of one or more of these appetites, there are dozens of enablers, cheering voyeurs, sympathizers or witting or unwitting co-conspirators. The vines from the jungle of sins wrap themselves around us all, even the unwitting co-conspirators. How many people shop at Wal-Mart, or eat produce from California, or tune into a Super Bowl half-time show, or watch an exploitative TV program? Millions and millions. Who has ever had just some small bout of self-worship, or of worship of one or more of those appetites? Billions.

St. Paul asks in his “Letter to the Romans”, “Who shall deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through our Lord Jesus Christ!”

But deliverance did not come easily or cheaply. We all fall short of the glory of God. We can no more get to heaven on our own merits than we could get to the moon by standing on top of a hill and jumping. And piling up a mountain of good deeds and jumping up wouldn't do it, either.

Only if God came down to our level, to live among us as one of us yet without sin, to take the punishment we deserve for our sins – the sins of commission and the sins of omission alike – could we hope to rise beyond being trapped in the jungle of sins for all eternity. Only if God incarnate “took the rap” for us can we go free and start to be made new, and hope to be fully transformed by God’s love in God’s presence.

God did come down to earth and “take the rap” for us, that we might have a second chance in this life, and a chance for real life. If you want to see exactly how much he loves you and me, then write a list of your own sins, things done that you ought not to have done and things left undone that you ought to have done, and see Mel Gibson’s movie “The Passion of the Christ” and take your list out and read it when Christ is being whipped until the Roman torturer is exhausted.

That’s what Our Lord suffered for you and me.

But, as Isaiah says, “With his stripes we are healed.” Healed not just to give ourselves hope, but for us to give others help. Healed not just by receiving his forgiveness, but healed to go out and forgive others. Healed not just so we can be “lip-service Christians” – the kind Christ denounces in today’s Gospel – but to be transformed Christians who “strive to enter through the narrow door” of making our deeds match our words and to make our words those of Christ, devoted to holiness, justice, mercy, healing and hope.

(The Rev.) Francis A. Hubbard

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church