Today we begin an exciting
sermon series entitled “Rethinking the Faith.” To help you understand why
Christians like us should even bother to rethink our historic faith from time
to time, I want to share a terrific metaphor that contemporary theologian, Rob
Bell, uses in his first book.
Imagine an incredible painter - like Rembrandt -
finishing a painting he took years to complete. And imagine, as he unveils it
to the world at a press conference, he says, “Now that I’ve finished this – the
ultimate of all paintings – all of you other artists in the world can put down
your brushes permanently and retire, for there is no reason for any further
paintings ever again.” We would all know instantly that Rembrandt was crazy,
that he had clearly lost his mind, for we all understand that art and artistic
expression can never stop. It must continue. We would hate for our children,
for example, to be denied the joy, pleasure, and creative expression of finger
painting, not to mention the other gifted artists across the world.
Rob Bell uses this painting analogy to express a similar
truth about theology – the study of and human expression of God. Throughout
history, great theologians have come up with amazing metaphors and expressions
of who God is and what God is like. Various communities of Christians have
gotten together in particular moments in history to set down in writing what
they believe about God. If we look at the gospels, written between 70 and 90
AD, they give us four distinct paintings of Jesus. Several hundred years later,
we can read early church creeds, like the Apostles’ Creed or the Nicene Creed;
again human attempts to speak about God at a particular point and place in
time. We know, for example, that Martin Luther, John Calvin, and others felt
compelled to produce new “paintings” about God in the 1500’s, because they felt
that the Church had gotten off track and gotten too attached to ancient
paintings. These theologians produced new works of art that brought millions of
people into the Christian fold, people who had not been moved or inspired by the
older paintings.
The UCC is a denomination that encourages new paintings
and new expressions of God and faith. Our denominational motto is that “God is
still speaking…” and therefore “everything we say about God ends with a comma
rather than a period,” right? So I want us to spend lent this year rethinking
our faith, re-examining some of the old paintings, and showing you some newer
ones. And I want to begin today by rethinking this old Christian doctrine known
as “Original Sin.”
Original sin is the idea that Adam and Eve sinned or
turned against the wishes and will of God in the Garden of Eden, and that
somehow their sin, all those millions of years ago, was transmitted to every
other human being. The doctrine of original sin seems to suggest that everyone
who is ever born inherits or is born with the stain of Adam and Eve’s sin all
over them. It’s vitally important to note that this particular “painting,”
known as “Original Sin,” was actually produced NOT by Genesis 3 itself, which
says absolutely nothing about Adam and Eve’s sin being passed down, but rather it
was painted by 3 major figures who lived thousands of years AFTER Genesis 3 was
written: St. Paul, St. Augustine and Martin Luther. These three are most
responsible for producing and refining this Original Sin painting. Then John
Calvin came along, and he loved it! He took a look at it and added some black and
red hues to it, saying that we humans were “totally depraved,” “utterly
worthless,” “stained by sin,” and “doomed to the fires of hell.” One contemporary
theologian writes that the influence of theological painters like Augustine,
Luther, and Calvin is so strong, that it is virtually impossible to read
Genesis 3 and NOT think of it as a story about “original sin” and the “fall of
man,” even thought those words and concepts are nowhere to be found in the
story itself.
If you don’t think this notion of original sin is alive
and well and still the most influential painting out there, let me a tell you a
story that happened right here in Gaylord, Michigan, not so long ago. A loving
couple that you know very well, Jim and Kay Boughner, were committed foster
parents. They would periodically receive calls from the Dept of Child and
Family Services, asking if they would be willing to take in an orphaned child
for a period of time, which they usually would. In one particular instance, the
request came for them to foster a tiny little baby girl who was terminally ill,
expected to live only a month at most. Kay and Jim said yes, they would take in
this vulnerable, terminally ill baby, and shower her with love for her for as
long as she was alive. As this happened, a friend of Kay’s, a Christian, was
talking to Kay on the phone, and when she heard that they had taken in this
sickly infant, immediately asked, “Have you had her baptized? You must have her
baptized right away! What if she dies unbaptized?” Kay’s friend’s implication
was clear; this tiny, helpless, newborn was a hopeless, depraved sinner,
stained from birth by Adam and Eve’s hereditary sin. If she were not baptized
before her impending death, she would burn in hell for eternity. This same
“Christian friend” of Kay kept calling and needling her about getting this baby
baptized. Then she even had her priest call to harass Kay. He offered to come
over at once to perform the baptism that would save this child from the fires
of hell.
Talk about an influential painting! Can there be any
doubt as to the incredible influence Augustine, Luther, and Calvin have exerted
through their particular painting? And can there be any doubt that it’s high
time we repainted it? Two questions beg to be asked at this point: 1) What sort
of God would operate this way, condemning innocent, children? And 2) who in the
world would ever want to worship, much less serve such a God? Can you see in
this story a need for another painting, for other painters to rethink who God
is and who we are?
Fortunately, in 1940 in Madison, Wisconsin, a wonderful
new painter was born. His name was Matthew Fox, and in the 1970’s he painted a
terrific and beautiful painting, which he called “Original Blessing.” Fox’s
theological expression sought to celebrate Genesis 1, the creation story, which
is filled with the recurring phrase, “and God saw that it was good.” Fox
believed that all creatures are created in the image of God, that all of us are
loved and cherished by God, conceived in love, not sin. Fox saw no evidence
that human beings were filled with darkness; he saw no reason to decry humanity
as sin-stained and totally depraved. He painted the human race with bright,
bold, brilliant colors, and felt that each child that was born was blessed
rather than stained. Fox entitled his masterwork “Original Blessing” not
“Original Sin.”
Folks, I’ve studied the Bible and theology for a long,
long time, and I, like many of you, grew up in a family and in a church that
had the Original Sin painting prominently displayed, front and center. But I am
far more inclined these days to hang Fox’s “Original Blessing” painting in my
living room, in my church, and on the mantle of my heart, rather than Luther’s,
Calvin’s, or Augustine’s. It’s not that I don’t see my own sin or all the ways
that we humans go astray from time to time. But I simply can’t understand how a
God who lived and loved as Jesus did, would ever see us – his own precious
creation - as hopeless, stained sinners, in need of saving.
To me, the whole Original Sin painting stopped making
sense on Jan 7, 2008 at 12:20 a.m. That is when the midwife at McLaren Northern
Michigan Hospital handed Eloise Anna Jones into my new daddy arms for the first
time. I beheld this incredibly beautiful, perfect, loveable girl, and the whole
notion of Original Sin simply stopped making sense. She was and is pure
blessing, pure love, pure goodness, and nobody – not Augustine, not Calvin, not
Luther, nor anybody else – will ever convince me that Eloise is stained with
sin or in need of forgiveness, anymore than that little girl the Boughner’s
welcomed into their home was.
I’m here to tell you this morning that Original Sin
didn’t make any sense to Jesus either. Just look at the John 9 passage I
presented a few minutes ago. A blind man enters and religious leaders ask
Jesus, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that resulted in him being born
blind.” You can hear in their question that they grew up with the Original Sin
painting prominently displayed on their mantle, right? But Jesus completely
rejects the premise of their question. He responds by saying, “Neither this man
nor his parents’ sin has anything to do with his blindness. Sin has nothing to
do with it. But his blindness is an occasion for God’s love and power to be
manifested.” So Jesus heals him.
Jesus’ whole life was filled with religious people who were
obsessed with sin, always judging and evaluating whose sins disqualified them
from church membership or from having fellowship with others. They were
constantly offering animal and blood sacrifices to try to get their own sins
forgiven. Jesus spent his whole life trying to convey the message that God wasn’t
interested in sin, but with people living in ways that served, fed, healed, and
lifted up others. And the saddest part of all – when Jesus himself was killed
for all his loving and serving, theological painters got right to work, arguing
that even his death was blood payment for human sin. We’ll be repainting that
later in this series when we rethink the cross together in March.
But for now, I offer, for your consideration, this new
painting entitled “Original Blessing.” I ask that you hang this new painting on
the mantle of your heart for a while and see what a difference it can make in
your life. I challenge you this week to look at everyone who crosses your path
as an originally blessed child of God, as a person who is not in need of some
baptism or cleansing from sin, but rather as someone who just might need to be
reminded how blessed and loved they are and always have been. And while you’re
at, it you might also want to look at that person in the mirror the same way.
You might want to tell that one that he/she is loved, blessed from the very
beginning. You might want to remind that person and everyone in your life that
the Bible begins in Genesis 1, NOT Genesis 3; it begins with Original Blessing
NOT Original Sin. May the painting continue… Amen.
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