Today marks Part 3 of our Lenten Journey through the Catechism. Catechism is just a fancy same for instruction. It is my hope to present the basic teachings of the Christian Faith here through the lens of my Episcopal heritage and the Book of Common Prayer. This week we'll be looking at the topic of Sin and Redemption, which is discussed in the same prayer book on pages 848-849.
Sin is 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.
It's pretty common to hear that seeking our own will instead of God's is sin. It's less common to hear how that distorts our relationships in life - our relationships with God, others, and all of creation. In Genesis 3:6 our first parents ate the fruit of good and evil - or more specifically, the knowledge of good and evil. The serpent tempted them by claiming that they would be like God, knowing both good and evil. First the woman looked on the fruit, and it looked really, really good. It was a delight to the eyes, and could make one wise. Everything looked wonderful so she ate it. Then she gave some to her husband and he ate it. However, instead of their lives improving, they became ashamed of themselves. The first problem they had was that they realized they were naked, and somehow this was wrong, so they tried to cover themselves. This is what knowledge of good and evil does - it invites us into judgement, proclaiming some things as good and other things as evil.
It's somewhat funny that this tree is in the middle of the garden to begin with. If it's that much of a problem, why not remove it? Or as a child in my parish asked recently, "Why didn't God put a sign on it?" I think the answer lies in that the tree of good and evil is a temptation each of us faces every moment of every day. Every time we judge somebody as good or bad, be it someone in traffic who cuts us off, or the sales clerk who rang up our purchase incorrectly, or the politician that makes a decision we disagree with, we are eating of that fruit. And it's so easy to recruit others into our judgement or be recruited into theirs. "Can I tell you what so and so did? Can you believe that? SMH!" What happens in these moments is that we no longer see others as people, in all their complexities. Instead we see them as objects, exaggerating their flaws and consequently inflating our own bright spots. (I'll have to give credit for these thoughts to The Anatomy of Peace- Resolving the Heart of Conflict published by The Arbinger Institute.) This necessarily distorts our relationship with them because we no longer see them as they actually are, but we see them through the lens of our judgement. We like to think that we are right, so we believe that God must see things the same way, distorting our relationship with God. Once we become accustomed to judging things as good or bad, we can even start viewing the world around us in terms of its usefulness to us, rather than a system that exists within its own right, thus distorting our relationship with all of creation.
Judgement has so many consequences that its no wonder Jesus talked about it as much as He did. The sad part is that judging another human being makes us incredibly miserable, yet we continue to do it anyway.
Sin has power over us because we lose our liberty when our relationship with God is distorted.
Again we have a new concept, how do we lose our liberty in this manner? When I was a boy, I began wearing glasses at a very young age. At the same time I developed a love for basketball, and definitely wanted to play. Yet I had one major problem: I couldn't see. Yes I could wear the corrective lenses but they were so think that my depth perception was distorted. The further something was out the more I had problems. So to throw a basketball at a 10 foot high basket became almost impossible. I rarely made baskets. I threw the ball where I thought the basket was but somehow it never went in. I wasn't free to engage the game because my relationship to the basket was distorted.
When we are stuck in judgement, we don't see the world clearly. But even more insidious than that, we often think such ugly things about others that we can't admit we're mistaken. Because if we are wrong, there is no justification, and no excuse for the thoughts and opinions we've harbored. We definitely don't want anyone to know about them, and heaven help the person who tries to expose them. So we go through life as if our judgements are correct, or even true with a capital T. Yet our judgements almost never reflect reality, so we're constantly fighting between the world we think we're seeing and the world as it truly is.
Redemption is the act of God which sets us free from the power of evil, sin, and death.
When we are judging we are not living fully. But we have become so invested in our judgments that we actually deceive ourselves to keep them going. It's not something that we can get out of on our own, we need help, and someone to invite us into a different way of being. God did that through Jesus Christ.
God prepared us for redemption when He sent the prophets to call us back to himself, to show us our need for redemption, and to announce the coming of the Messiah.
The prophets had a pretty lousy job. They were often the ones telling people to watch out, that things were a problem when everyone else around them thought things were going fine. "You don't understand the system! This is just the way things work! I know it sounds harsh but ..." This dynamic was so intense for the prophet Jeremiah that he was thrown into a cistern and left there (Jeremiah 38:6). But their job was also a vital one. They were asking us to wake up. They challenged our self-deception and invited us to see God as He truly is, not what we would like God to be. These first calls are like the birds that start chirping early in the morning. We still may be asleep, but we're beginning to be roused. Something new is coming.
The Messiah is the one sent by God to free us from the power of sin, so that with the help of God we may live in harmony with God, within ourselves, with our neighbors, and with all creation.
Here we have the unwinding of the process that began in Eden. There our first parents began the process of judgement, leading to self-deception and distorted relationships. What the Messiah does is bring us to another place, where there is no judgement and we live in the way we were always meant to.
I think it's significant that the tree that caused so many problems was located in the middle of the garden. One of the other consequences we have from eating its fruit is that we believe that we are at the center of the universe - the place that rightly belongs to God. At the same time, there are billions of other people in the world, each also trying to be at the center of the universe. When I was a boy, I used to play King of the Mountain with my friends. We would find a big dirt pile, race to the top, and wrestle each other so that only one person would be there - the king of the mountain. It was fun for a little while, until we got tired, bumped, scraped, and bruised. When human beings are trying to be at the center of the universe, it's like we are in an eternal struggle to be king of the mountain.
At the same time it's natural that we should be attracted there, because we are naturally drawn to God. The temptation from the serpent was that, "You will be like God (Genesis 3:5)." If we are to be invited into a different way of being, we need something equally enticing, and yet equally as good to draw us away from King of the Mountain, and to where we properly belong. That is the work of the Messiah.
The Messiah, or Christ, is Jesus of Nazareth, the only Son of God.
Jesus Christ is a mystery, being perfectly God and perfectly human. Philippians Chapter 2 describes His descent from Heaven, and how he humbled himself to walk among us in His humanity. Our rightful place as human beings is not King of the Mountain (or Queen of the Mountain if that's your preference.) It's not to be at the center of the universe, but it's to be on the outside, responding to legitimate needs and caring for those around us. This was the first charge in the Garden of Eden. "The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. (Genesis 2:15 NRSV)." In order to return us to that state, God, in Jesus, came to earth and worked the outside. He fed the hungry, healed the sick, gave sight to the blind, and did a whole host of other things.
He also died for us. Like all the prophets that came before him, His message was not universally accepted and many sought to silence Him. When we say that He died for our sins it's because our sinful way of being is ultimately what rejected and killed Him. But even in that moment, Jesus remained a servant; He maintained His humanity as it should be. It is always so tempting when we are suffering, especially when we are suffering unjustly, to return to judgement, to the tree of good and evil. Jesus, even in the most excruciating moments never succumbed to that temptation, and even on the Cross draws us to Himself, and consequently restores us to where we should be.
Sin is 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.
It's pretty common to hear that seeking our own will instead of God's is sin. It's less common to hear how that distorts our relationships in life - our relationships with God, others, and all of creation. In Genesis 3:6 our first parents ate the fruit of good and evil - or more specifically, the knowledge of good and evil. The serpent tempted them by claiming that they would be like God, knowing both good and evil. First the woman looked on the fruit, and it looked really, really good. It was a delight to the eyes, and could make one wise. Everything looked wonderful so she ate it. Then she gave some to her husband and he ate it. However, instead of their lives improving, they became ashamed of themselves. The first problem they had was that they realized they were naked, and somehow this was wrong, so they tried to cover themselves. This is what knowledge of good and evil does - it invites us into judgement, proclaiming some things as good and other things as evil.
It's somewhat funny that this tree is in the middle of the garden to begin with. If it's that much of a problem, why not remove it? Or as a child in my parish asked recently, "Why didn't God put a sign on it?" I think the answer lies in that the tree of good and evil is a temptation each of us faces every moment of every day. Every time we judge somebody as good or bad, be it someone in traffic who cuts us off, or the sales clerk who rang up our purchase incorrectly, or the politician that makes a decision we disagree with, we are eating of that fruit. And it's so easy to recruit others into our judgement or be recruited into theirs. "Can I tell you what so and so did? Can you believe that? SMH!" What happens in these moments is that we no longer see others as people, in all their complexities. Instead we see them as objects, exaggerating their flaws and consequently inflating our own bright spots. (I'll have to give credit for these thoughts to The Anatomy of Peace- Resolving the Heart of Conflict published by The Arbinger Institute.) This necessarily distorts our relationship with them because we no longer see them as they actually are, but we see them through the lens of our judgement. We like to think that we are right, so we believe that God must see things the same way, distorting our relationship with God. Once we become accustomed to judging things as good or bad, we can even start viewing the world around us in terms of its usefulness to us, rather than a system that exists within its own right, thus distorting our relationship with all of creation.
Judgement has so many consequences that its no wonder Jesus talked about it as much as He did. The sad part is that judging another human being makes us incredibly miserable, yet we continue to do it anyway.
Sin has power over us because we lose our liberty when our relationship with God is distorted.
Again we have a new concept, how do we lose our liberty in this manner? When I was a boy, I began wearing glasses at a very young age. At the same time I developed a love for basketball, and definitely wanted to play. Yet I had one major problem: I couldn't see. Yes I could wear the corrective lenses but they were so think that my depth perception was distorted. The further something was out the more I had problems. So to throw a basketball at a 10 foot high basket became almost impossible. I rarely made baskets. I threw the ball where I thought the basket was but somehow it never went in. I wasn't free to engage the game because my relationship to the basket was distorted.
When we are stuck in judgement, we don't see the world clearly. But even more insidious than that, we often think such ugly things about others that we can't admit we're mistaken. Because if we are wrong, there is no justification, and no excuse for the thoughts and opinions we've harbored. We definitely don't want anyone to know about them, and heaven help the person who tries to expose them. So we go through life as if our judgements are correct, or even true with a capital T. Yet our judgements almost never reflect reality, so we're constantly fighting between the world we think we're seeing and the world as it truly is.
Redemption is the act of God which sets us free from the power of evil, sin, and death.
When we are judging we are not living fully. But we have become so invested in our judgments that we actually deceive ourselves to keep them going. It's not something that we can get out of on our own, we need help, and someone to invite us into a different way of being. God did that through Jesus Christ.
God prepared us for redemption when He sent the prophets to call us back to himself, to show us our need for redemption, and to announce the coming of the Messiah.
The prophets had a pretty lousy job. They were often the ones telling people to watch out, that things were a problem when everyone else around them thought things were going fine. "You don't understand the system! This is just the way things work! I know it sounds harsh but ..." This dynamic was so intense for the prophet Jeremiah that he was thrown into a cistern and left there (Jeremiah 38:6). But their job was also a vital one. They were asking us to wake up. They challenged our self-deception and invited us to see God as He truly is, not what we would like God to be. These first calls are like the birds that start chirping early in the morning. We still may be asleep, but we're beginning to be roused. Something new is coming.
The Messiah is the one sent by God to free us from the power of sin, so that with the help of God we may live in harmony with God, within ourselves, with our neighbors, and with all creation.
Here we have the unwinding of the process that began in Eden. There our first parents began the process of judgement, leading to self-deception and distorted relationships. What the Messiah does is bring us to another place, where there is no judgement and we live in the way we were always meant to.
I think it's significant that the tree that caused so many problems was located in the middle of the garden. One of the other consequences we have from eating its fruit is that we believe that we are at the center of the universe - the place that rightly belongs to God. At the same time, there are billions of other people in the world, each also trying to be at the center of the universe. When I was a boy, I used to play King of the Mountain with my friends. We would find a big dirt pile, race to the top, and wrestle each other so that only one person would be there - the king of the mountain. It was fun for a little while, until we got tired, bumped, scraped, and bruised. When human beings are trying to be at the center of the universe, it's like we are in an eternal struggle to be king of the mountain.
At the same time it's natural that we should be attracted there, because we are naturally drawn to God. The temptation from the serpent was that, "You will be like God (Genesis 3:5)." If we are to be invited into a different way of being, we need something equally enticing, and yet equally as good to draw us away from King of the Mountain, and to where we properly belong. That is the work of the Messiah.
The Messiah, or Christ, is Jesus of Nazareth, the only Son of God.
Jesus Christ is a mystery, being perfectly God and perfectly human. Philippians Chapter 2 describes His descent from Heaven, and how he humbled himself to walk among us in His humanity. Our rightful place as human beings is not King of the Mountain (or Queen of the Mountain if that's your preference.) It's not to be at the center of the universe, but it's to be on the outside, responding to legitimate needs and caring for those around us. This was the first charge in the Garden of Eden. "The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. (Genesis 2:15 NRSV)." In order to return us to that state, God, in Jesus, came to earth and worked the outside. He fed the hungry, healed the sick, gave sight to the blind, and did a whole host of other things.
He also died for us. Like all the prophets that came before him, His message was not universally accepted and many sought to silence Him. When we say that He died for our sins it's because our sinful way of being is ultimately what rejected and killed Him. But even in that moment, Jesus remained a servant; He maintained His humanity as it should be. It is always so tempting when we are suffering, especially when we are suffering unjustly, to return to judgement, to the tree of good and evil. Jesus, even in the most excruciating moments never succumbed to that temptation, and even on the Cross draws us to Himself, and consequently restores us to where we should be.
Comments