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Sermon:
Brothers and sisters, who among you here today is a sinner? Come on now, look deep within your soul and admit that you've gone astray, you have sinned many times and will sin until the day you die. We're all sinners here today brothers and sisters, every single one of us.
Scared you, didn't I? Don't worry, you're in a Unitarian Universalist church, the church that dares to doubt, that explores the significant questions of life, and that lives out our beliefs in deeds not creeds. But, nevertheless, the question I ask you today is, “Are you a sinner?”
I know some of you would answer that question with a resounding “No!”. Of course we're not sinners. That's an outmoded term used to manipulate and control people. Sin has nothing to do with super-rational Unitarian Universalists. Or does it?
Our major problem with sin is that we see it as a bad thing when in reality sin is one of the greatest blessings of humanity. In the ancient myth of the Garden of Eden we see that the original sin of humanity is the disobedience to God. And yet it's this archetypal rebellion, this insistence on individuality and free choice, on that defines our humanity. What kind of human beings would we be if all we did was obey the dictates of a deity? There would be no struggle, no conscience, and no consciousness.
The church fathers came up with the Seven Deadly Sins as a way of warning people against these especially tempting and destructive sins, and yet even they have a positive side to them, as Rev. Mary pointed out so well in her sloth sermon last month and that Peter Pereira emphasizes in this poem called "Reconsidering the Seven":
Deadly Sins? Please — let's replace Pride
with Modesty, especially when it's false.
And thank goodness for Lust, without it
I wouldn't be here. Would you?
Envy, Greed — why not? If they lead us
to better ourselves, to Ambition.
And Gluttony, like a healthy belch, is a guest's
best response to being served a good meal.
I'll take Sloth over those busybodies
who can't sit still, watch a sunset
without yammering, or snapping a picture.
Now that makes me Wrathful.
Perhaps the Seven Deadly Sins aren't so deadly after all. Or perhaps they are. The challenge of these sins and this sermon series and the covenant groups discussing the sermons is to discover the sins – or the habits – that kill our souls and those saving values that nurture and grow our souls. This is what I hope you will reflect on: what in your life diminishes you as a person and what is it that makes you a more ethical and whole human being?
One habit that kills our soul is to use sin as a way of demeaning and dehumanizing others. I remember an anonymous woman who called me after I'd been in the media for taking a stand for gay rights. She exclaimed that she was praying for me and that she hoped that my sins would be forgiven. I politely thanked her for her concern and gently pointed out that she might do the world more good by praying for herself.
I'm sure you've noticed that those who point the finger of guilt at people for the sins they've committed tend to have a bad habit of being the guilty ones themselves, especially when it comes to so-called moral values preachers and politicians. Senator Larry Craig from the great state of Idaho is someone who won elections on moral values issues, and yet Senator Craig was caught literally with his pants down in the men's room of the Minneapolis airport tapping his foot to the tune of a different drummer. [“What's New?” by Bob Parker, science listserve]. He's now trying to withdraw his guilty plea and hang onto his position as senator, but his greatest obstacle doesn't seem to be breaking the law as much as having sinned in the eyes of many Americans. His sin for some is his obvious homosexuality, but for others like myself it was his denial of his sexuality along with the blatant hypocrisy of condemning gay people when he is gay himself.
Senator David Vitter, another “moral-values” politician, had a different experience recently when his phone number showed up in the "client" book of a D.C. madam. Instead of denying his guilt he immediately repented. He knew the issue was one of sin and that fundamentalist Christians love a sinner who repents. In fact, the more times they sin and repent the better.
The power of sin is that it can be used to control others by threatening them with terrifying guilt, usually of hell and damnation. There are exceptions of course, like Bart Simpson who said: "I didn't do it. Nobody saw me. And you can't prove it anyway."
I don't accept the traditional concept of original sin, and yet I do feel a sense of guilt – and perhaps even sin – when I remember the ovens of Dauchau, the charred remains of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the slaughter of the Native Americans. I can't convince myself that these horrors and the many others throughout history are all the responsibility of others and have nothing to do with me. That guilt makes me a more compassionate person, and yet it's a heavy burden to carry.
It's amazing how ingrained guilt is for most of us. When I was in the hospital recently recovering from major surgery, it reminded me of being in training as a chaplain in a medical hospital in Jacksonville, Florida. I was only 24 years old, had never even been in a hospital before, and suddenly I was visiting people who were seriously injured or dying. Many of them were conservative Christians, and it was quite a challenge to find ways to help them in their time of crisis.
One of my biggest shocks were the many patients I talked with who believed that they were suffering a medical crisis because they had sinned against God. I remember one teenaged girl who had been in a car accident with several other teenagers who were going to a church event. Two of her friends were killed, and she was paralyzed from the waist down. We had many talks in which I tried to get her to consider that she and her friends sins had nothing to do with the accident. But sadly she was never convinced.
I thought this was a superstitious and primitive way of thinking, but I was surprised that following my surgery I also felt a sense of guilt because I had a pre-cancerous tumor. What had I done wrong to cause such a thing? Should I have taken better care of myself? Is this a result of my lifestyle or perhaps even my character?
When I told my doctor he replied that he has patients who are marathon runners who get angry when they're told they have high blood pressure or high cholesterol or a colon tumor or some other serious health condition. It's difficult for them – as it was hard for me – to understand that some of these things are out of our control, especially when it comes to genetics.
Perhaps this genetic component of our health is the equivalent of original sin. It's what we carry around with us from no fault of our own, and actually no fault of anyone, but it can cause us great harm. Sin then is what we can control, those deeds of omission or commission that can cause us or others harm. As the writer, Robert Heinlin, put it, “Sin lies only in hurting others unnecessarily. All other 'sins' are invented nonsense.”
So in terms of a medical model, sin is when we go against the best interests of our body, whether that be giving into an addiction such as smoking, a lack of exercise, or eating fast foods. Salvation on the other hand is when we are in tune with our body responding in healthy and healing ways, such as eating the right foods, exercising regularly, and getting check ups, including regular colonoscopies (don't forget yours).
Gautama Buddha used a medical model when he said that our lives are dislocated, like a bone that has slipped out of its joint, only we have slipped out of our relationship and relatedness with the source of all life. The biblical Hebrew and Greek words for sin literally mean "missing the mark." I like that image because it conveys the lack of condemnation. To miss the mark doesn't mean that you are bad, wrong, or depraved. It only means that you aren't perfect. No big deal.
Paul Tillich, perhaps the greatest Protestant theologian of the 20th century, defined sin in this way: "To be in a state of sin is to be in the state of separation. And separation is threefold: there is separation among individual lives, separation of [human beings from themselves], and separation of all [humanity] from the Ground of Being. This threefold separation constitutes the state of everything that exists; it is a universal fact; it is the fate of every life."
I like this definition because, as I've said many times, life is relationship, and when we're out of relationship, whether it be with ourselves, our loved ones, the Earth, the interdependent web of all existence, or God, then we our lives are out of kilter and we feel deficient. And salvation is the act of healing and repairing the spirit, of living our best values and being in good relationship with the world within and around us. But how can we achieve salvation?
Robert Fulghum, the renowned Unitarian Universalist minister and author, gives us a hint when he wrote, "Uh-oh ... may be the first thing Adam said to Eve when he bit into the apple." Fulghum sees that first uh-oh as not the downfall of humanity but the first daring step towards our fulfillment as human beings. That may be the best way to tell a Unitarian Universalist from a traditional Christian: we believe that the mythological fall of Adam and Eve was not an uh-oh but an aha! The eating of the apple of knowledge is a metaphor for the awakening of consciousness and conscience within human beings.
Our conscience is the ability to hear the internal “uh-oh” when we've done something wrong. We all know when we've blown it, don't we? We can hear that little “uh-oh” whispering to us – and sometimes shouting at us -- letting us know that something's not right. Consciousness then is the ability to turn an “uh-oh” into an “aha,” the ability to learn from our mistakes and misjudgments so that we can be better human being.
I like the “Mother Goose and Grimm” cartoon that shows Mother Goose chastising her trouble-making dog, “Grimm, you know it's wrong to knock over a trash can... You have to listen to your conscience when it calls.” Grimm, with a devious grin on his face, thinks to himself, “...Luckily, I have caller I.D. and I can screen my calls.”
Unfortunately, too many people do screen their “uh-oh” calls. We sin when we refuse to listen to the “uh-ohs” of our conscience, when we refuse to listen to the cries of those who suffer around us, when we refuse to listen to the protests of those who are victimized by injustice, when we refuse to listen to those who beg for peace in the midst of war, when we refuse to listen to the agony of our Earth being ravaged. When we refuse to listen we are cut off from the source of all spiritual power, and we become fragmented and incomplete.
So let's face it folks, we are all sinners. We are incomplete, imperfect, flawed. We are continually confronted with our shortcomings, missing the mark over and over again. “Uh-oh! I've done it again. I've blown it. I can't believe I did something so stupid!” And we're continually confronted with everyone else's foolishness. “God, did you see what he just did? I can't stand to hear another word from her! How can those people be such idiots!”
We are sinners, but we are also on the road to salvation, listening to the “uh-ohs” of our conscience and responding with love, expanding our consciousness to embrace all those who suffer with our compassion, moving steadily towards forgiveness of those who have wronged us and of ourselves for wronging others, and living life with power and purpose and joy. I call that amazing grace. May we always feel its sweetness and savor its joy.
So may it be.
Questions for Covenant Groups:
1. Are you a sinner?
2. Which of the Seven Deadly Sins is your biggest weakness? Which one is your biggest strength?
3. Do you feel guilty about the holocaust, slavery, and other historical tragedies? How do you handle that guilt?
4. Have you ever felt guilty about being ill or injured? If so, how did it affect you?
5. Which definition of sin do you prefer? Why?
6. Can you share a sin (Uh-oh!) you have committed and how you turned it into salvation (Ah-ha!)?
