First and Last Sermon On Sin

Text: Genesis 2:15-3:21

              Bart, Jenni, and I returned last night from the annual meeting of the Southeast Conference of the United Church of Christ.  We will share later some of the highlights from the workshops and worship services.  But for sermonic purposes, I’m going to quibble about one tiny typographical error in a worship bulletin that caught my eye on Friday.  One prayer of confession included a phrase that was meant to read “forgiveness of sins.”  Instead, it read “forgiveness of sims.”  Since Sims is my last name, I felt a little singled out.  For a nanosecond it felt as if everyone at the meeting was praying for or about me, that I—though perhaps there was another Sims or two present—needed to be forgiven.  How gracious of them.  How embarrassing for me.

               Although I'm being facetious, the word sin can have powerful associations. Sin is a word we rarely use at Open Table. Not that we are sinless here.  Not that we deny the existence of sin, if we were ever to employ that antique term rather than words like wrongdoing or injurious behavior or immorality or injustice.  But sin is a word to speak sparingly and warily since it is usually wielded in ways that do more harm than good. Even people who wish the best for another can do unintended harm when they use the word sin, and that word creates terrible injury when used to scapegoat, judge, vilify, or dispirit someone.

               But the lection from Genesis today, a story often used to explain how sin entered the world, gives us a chance to consider that word in ways consistent with a healing theology.  Although sin was the subject of every sermon I heard as a child, and “forgive our many sins” was included in the prayers I heard and said growing up, this is the first sermon I’ve preached on the topic, and it may be the last.  So listen up!  You may have only one chance to hear me preach on sin.

               Ironically, I’m jumping into the topic of sin from the diving board of a biblical story that is not really about sin. Contrary to what you’ve been told, sin is NOT the subject of the Adam and Eve myth and the word sin is not to be found there.  When we read Genesis 2 through 3 afresh, without the layers added by St. Paul or St. Augustine or John Milton, for instance—when we try to hear the story divorced from the impressions that high art and popular cultural have left—we recognize that a whole history of interpretation and extrapolation has skewed our understanding of this myth.  For instance, we’ve been told this story teaches that woman was created in a way that subordinates her to man.  We’ve been told this story instituted marriage and explicitly authorized marriage only between a man and a woman, not between Adam and “Steve.” We’ve been told that the serpent was the devil in disguise who tempted the humans to disobey God.  We’ve been told that the fruit of the forbidden tree was specifically an apple, that Adam and Eve’s shame for their nakedness connects the first sin to sex, and that God cursed the first humans for sinning before expelling them from paradise.  These details are simply not in the story as we’ve received it from Genesis.   

               In fact, many scholars instead see within this story an affirmation of the equality of woman who was created, like the male, in God’s image and as partner for the male. They deny Eve is depicted as a sexual temptress and suggest woman is instead presented in the story as the pinnacle of creation since Eve was created last in the list of created beings.  Many insist that while the story is a strong affirmation of the universal need for connection and communion, there’s nothing in this story about marriage; furthermore, only extremely dysfunctional families can be found in the remaining chapters of Genesis, and none of those families could serve as a model for “family values.”  Many believe the talking serpent is a mythical creature with no correlation to the Satan figure and certainly there was not yet a concept of a devil-ruled hell that served as the destination for sinners. Finally, many believe this myth tells us how we grow into human maturity as we test boundaries and exercise curiosity, independence, and self-determination.  Therefore, the story of “man’s fall from grace” is really the story of humanity’s rise from brutish ignorance or childish naiveté into an adult perspective on the world. Genesis 3 does say God cursed the serpent, but God does not curse Eve and Adam.  Rather, God sends them forth to work by the sweat of their brow and bear children through great labor--which seems the price one pays for adult responsibility. One could argue that sin occurs when those capable of doing so do not move into adulthood. As Saint Gregory of Nyssa, a 4^th Century Eastern father of the church, said, sin is “the refusal to keep growing.”

               Many note the Eve and Adam story is bookended between Genesis 2: 15 (which says the human was created to till the fields) and Genesis 3:24 (which says the human pair is sent out of the garden to till the ground).  Thus, the myth also stresses that humanity’s adult vocation is caring for the earth.  

               Many argue the doctrine of Original Sin is harmful and unbiblical and should be replaced by the more “original” and biblical concept of Original Blessing, heard repeatedly in Genesis 1 as God approves each created thing as “good.”  What a difference that shift in perspective can make for the ways we love ourselves, one another, our planet, and our God.

               You and I can use this artfully told tale most responsibly if we read it on its own terms, appreciating the richness of its meanings.  Let us at least consider that this story may not tell us how sin entered the world but rather how humans grow into a maturity and into an awareness of their mortality—with all the attendant risks and potential consequences.

               Of course, even if Eve and Adam don’t teach us about sin, that doesn’t mean the Bible is silent on the subject.  It’s just that what gets translated as sin or transgression or iniquity or evil is really a variety of ideas that include ancient purity codes and morals specific to certain cultures plus concerns about social/economic/political injustices .  The psalmist lamented his individual sins. The Hebrew prophets exposed the sins of entire nations that built their empires on the backs of the poor.  Jesus consorted with sinners and forgave sins profligately in ways that angered religious authorities.  The Bible even explicitly defines sins at times, as when St. Paul says that “Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins.”[i]  Sin, many would argue, is “the Bible’s central plot.”[ii]

                So we want to be aware of the various meanings of sin in the Bible and in Christian theology. Since this word remains in the Christian lexicon, progressive Christians probably need to decide if we can retain the word for our theological and liturgical purposes, or if we need to cede its use to others and employ for our theological  conversations some other word or words. 

               Probably the most common understanding of sin locates it in the body, but sin is not mainly a sexual or bodily transgression, contrary to popular culture. As Frederick Buechner says, “Sex is sinful to the degree that, instead of drawing you closer to other human beings in their humanness, it unites bodies but leaves the lives inside them hungrier and more alone than before.”[iii]  Sin is doing what harms ourselves and others.

               Sin is not even entirely a personal act or attitude. Sin exists on an individual level but also on a systemic level.  Sin is both a discrete action and also ingrained patterns or systems of thought and action.  When any human system (economic, religious, educational, political, familial) is oppressive, then that institution, group, nation, or family is a complexly organized force of sin.  Sin operates in structures and implicit cultural codes that demean, harm, or subjugate those God made equal, free, and loved.  Racism, for instance, is a systemic sin.  Both societies and individuals can share complicity for sinful systems.  When we forget these broader meanings of sin, we find it easier to use morality codes to turn certain groups of people into scapegoats and to distract ourselves from our own role in sin’s harm.

               The consequence of sin is death, St. Paul said.  The consequence of eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge is death, the Genesis story imagines God saying to the humans.  But what kind of death?  Eve and Adam do not drop dead after eating the fruit as God’s prediction might have implied.  Initially the serpent seems right and God wrong about that. But death entered their realm of consciousness.  The human pair came to understand their mortality.  Unlike all of the other creatures, humanity had evolved to realize their days are numbered. 

               The natural consequence of sin is death.  Systemic sin is right now poisoning our waters and heating up our planet and exterminating species that the Creator called “good.”  The consequence of sin is death.  But I don’t believe in a death-dealing God who exacts our lives or punishes us into eternity because early literary characters disobeyed a quirky rule. Rather, this story tells me the natural consequence of neglecting or poisoning the garden we were created to tend is that the garden will die.  

               Systemic sin is also widening the gap between the uber-rich and everyone else. Systemic sin is telling female children in many cultures that they are less valued than male children, though the Creator has called them good.  Systemic sin is inciting war among people created to live as the human family, all of whom God called good. The natural consequence of refusing the role of caring partnership with one another is death.

               The consequence of sin in our own private souls is also a kind of death.  We don’t live as fully mature and authentic human beings.  We let parts of ourselves shrivel into nonexistence through neglect.  We kill off pieces of our history and personality and physicality with lack of self-love and self-care and honest self-awareness. 

               One particular consequence of the misuse of the sin story is that we sometimes hang on to the guilt rather than moving ahead into transformation.  Sometimes we accept guilt for things for which the culture condemns but God’s spirit within does not.  Sometimes we’re happy to lie to ourselves and pretend that our actions are not harmful to ourselves or others or that we’re not really responsible. Sometimes we do realize and deeply regret our mistakes but get mired in the guilt and never move forward into God’s grace and forgiveness. 

               I think one reason we can’t shake the guilt is that we find it easier to keep berating ourselves rather than doing the hard work of change.  We accept guilt and all the hurt it causes because it’s our unconscious bargain to punish ourselves with endless self-accusations rather than ask for forgiveness for a past mistake or change the path we’re on now or take a good hard look at our lives. 

               I suggest the church has at least 5 roles in the cycle of sin and forgiveness:

1. The church gives us gracious and compassionate space and time to contemplate our inner lives and our outer actions.
2. The church gives us a community that helps us discern what are the good and healthy and life-giving choices and supports us in growing into our best selves and creating our best communities. 
3. The church gives us language and liturgy to lead us into spiritual health and wholeness.
4. The church gives us interpretable stories from the past that illuminate our own human predicament in terms of the larger human story.  These sacred stories offer varied metaphors for the central human dilemma. Sin is not the only word for the human predicament.  The Bible also speaks of unawareness, estrangement, exile, blindness, disease, lostness, etc.  Therefore, the way out of our predicament can be expressed and imagined differently, thanks to scripture’s varied pictures of our paths to spiritual growth.[iv] 
5. The church teaches Jesus’s hopeful way of love.  Love lures us home to God and makes us at home in the world; love reconnects us to those from whom we’ve been estranged; love forgives; love breaks our hearts to see the harm we cause or condone and therefore leads us to repent (which means to change our whole mindset).  Jesus’ commandment to love God, neighbor and self is the simple yet complete antidote to sin.

               Marcus Borg said a Buddhist friend once observed, “You Christians must be very bad people—you’re always confessing your sins."[v]  Yeh. I think there are ways we can regularly and honestly examine our individual lives and our systems—without wallowing in guilt.  My hunch is that the word sin sends us too quickly into a position of self-defense or shame or simply causes us to shut down emotionally and spiritually.  I am looking for words that are better than sin. But I’m interested in your thoughts.  I’m interested in ways we can continue to forge together a language that facilitates our growth and healing.  Amen

---

[i] James 4:17

[ii] Frederick Buechner, “The Good Book as a Good Book” in The Clown in the Belfry (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992) p. 44.

[iii] Frederick Buechner, “Sin” in Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993) p. 109.

[iv] See Marcus Borg, “Sin and Salvation” in The Heart of Christianity (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2003) pp. 167-171 especially.

[v] Borg, p. 165.
See also Walter Brueggemann, Genesis.  Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Atlanta: John Knox, 1982) pp. 40-54 and  Alice Ogden Bellis, "The Story of Eve" in Helpmates, Harlots, and Heroes: Women's Stories in the Hebrew Bible (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1994) pp. 45-67.