“Re-Thinking Sin”
A Sermon Offered by Toby Jones to People and Churches All over the Place!
(Based on Matthew 5:38-48, Luke 15:11-31 with inspiration from both Rev. Dr. Tom
Dickleman and Phillip Yancey in his book "What Good is God?")
What is sin…? How do you define sin? It’s a tiny little three-letter word that has been around for an awfully long time. And we all grew up with a certain awareness and understanding of this word, didn’t we? So what was yours? What IS your understanding of sin…?
For me, I grew up with a pretty clear and tightly defined notion of sin. It wasn’t complicated. God had made rules; the Bible spelled them out; You break those rules; it’s a sin, plain and simple. And you will pay a price. There will be consequences for sinful actions. Sin is the violation of the rules God made. God’s rules start with the 10 Commandments and expand to include the nuances and additions from Jesus. I wonder how many of us here today grew up with a similar definition of sin – the moral rule breaking definition?
Now, like I said, I grew up with that very same understanding of sin, so I’m sympathetic to it and am even willing to give it a certain level of respect and legitimacy. And it’s an understanding of sin that fits in very nicely with the moral world we humans have set up.
It’s plain to see that our world operates according to something very similar to Newton’s third law of motion, namely that every action produces an equal and opposite reaction. If you lose your temper and yell at me, I’ll yell right back at you. If you hit me…I’m going to hit you back. If you and your country bomb me and my country…we’ll bomb you and you’re your country right back. This action-reaction stuff is written all over the annals of human history. And not only at the national or governmental level…it trickles right down to the individual ethics that govern each and every one of us.
We as a human race are still entrenched in the action-reaction mode of existence. It is the default drive in our heads and hearts, so deeply engrained, that at times we rightly feel powerless to break out of its clutches. But I’m here to tell you today that Jesus has no tolerance for this action-reaction way of living. When Jesus talks about and teaches about sin, he is even more concerned about the reaction we have to sin than he is about the initial perpetrator of it. Any follower of Jesus who wants to talk about sin has got to include a discussion of action-reaction living.
So let’ start by reviewing our two passages for the morning. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus distinguishes his teaching – or “yoke” – for how we must live from the other rabbis of his day. He says, “You have heard it said ‘an eye for an eye.’ But I tell you NO! Don’t live that way. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, offer him the left…If anyone tries to steal or take your shirt, give him your coat as well.” Here we begin to see that Jesus has something different in mind for what sin is than the mere breaking of rules. For Jesus, sin begins with the instinct to react to what is done to us. Jesus’ attempt to root out sin from among his followers begins with calling us out of action-reaction living. “If anyone forces you to walk a mile with them, go two miles with them…You’ve heard it said, ‘love your neighbor.’ But I want you to love your enemy.” Paul picks up on this thread in Romans 12 when he says, “Do not repay anyone evil for evil. But repay evil with good.”
What Jesus was most bothered by in this world was not so much that people mess up and hurt one another. What bothered Jesus was the fact that people – even religious people – seem to always react to sin by perpetuating further sin. To Jesus, sin was this amazingly strong tendency to react to evil with more evil. And so when we examine his example, his teaching, his parables, his yoke, what we find is the consistent call to break this cycle of sin, to get out of this action-reaction mentality. Look at the Parable of the prodigal son, and you’ll see what I mean. What we find is the story of a younger son who sinned. He acted selfishly, insensitively, and even immorally by demanding his share of the inheritance while his father was still living. He sinned against his father and he certainly sinned against his older brother as well, leaving him alone to work doubly hard in the fields. It didn’t help that he squandered all his inheritance on prostitutes and licentious living. The parable doesn’t debate whether or not this younger son sinned. He did, plain and simple. But what makes the parable so challenging and so instructive is in the two reactions to sin that we get from the older brother and from the father.
The older brother is completely stuck in action-reaction mode. He sees his brother return and he wants nothing more than to punish him for his sin. The father, however, no less aware of the younger son’s sin, chooses to step outside of action-reaction living. The father chooses NOT to heap sin upon his younger son, but rather steps in a completely different direction – a direction of grace, forgiveness, and mercy. It is this choice – the father’s choice – that Jesus holds up in this parable and says, “THIS is how I want MY followers to respond to sin.” It is NOT an easy thing to do – this stepping outside of the natural human tendency of “an eye for an eye.” There is nothing easy or natural about it. But make no mistake: it IS what Jesus asks – even REQUIRES of us. I have come to believe that the single most important thing I can do in what remains of my life is to step off the treadmill of action-reaction living, to leave that utterly ineffective cycle behind once and for all, and replace it with Jesus’ radical M.O. of grace.
If I want to call myself a follower of Jesus…if I want to claim that I am a Christian…I have no option but to force my way out of this action-reaction prison one decision at a time…one action at a time…one situation at a time…one relationship at a time. It can be done…It has been done in some quite remarkable ways. And when it IS done, when an individual Christian or group of Christians actually steps outside of action-reaction living, the entire world stands up and takes notice. Let me remind you of a few historical examples…
In 1999 in Mumbai, India a mob of Hindu fanatics attacked an Australian missionary named Graham Staines. Staines was working with Indian leprosy patients when he was burned alive by these thugs. They also burned his 8 and 10-year old sons with him. Everyone expected his widow Gladys to leave the country at once and retreat to Australia. She didn’t. She stayed at that same leprosy center for five more years, continuing her husband’s work. She said, “I have no bitterness because forgiveness is the only force that brings healing…and this land and all of us need healing from hatred and violence.” Do you think there is a power when someone steps out of action-reaction sinfulness to behave like Jesus instead?
Many of us remember the stunning events of October 2, 2006, when an armed gunman entered an Amish schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, PA and opened fire, killing 5 children before killing himself. We still remember how stunned we were when all the parents of those 5 children went to the home of the mother of the gunman to embrace her and to let her know they held no ill-will toward her and that they had forgiven her son for his act. Do you think there is a power when someone steps out of action-reaction sinfulness to behave like Jesus instead?
Remember Nelson Mandela, who was imprisoned unjustifiably for 27 years in Apartheid South Africa? When he was released and elected president of the new South Africa, do you know that he asked his jailer to be a guest of honor at his inauguration. Mandela also hired white Afrikaner policemen to be his personal bodyguards. He then, along with Desmond Tutu, established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which would bring to light the atrocities that took place under apartheid, but with the specific mandate that no acts of revenge of any sort would be inflicted upon the perpetrators. Phillip Yancey, in his book What Good is God, tells what happened in just one of the hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It involved a white policeman named van de Brock. He and a few other officers had shot an 18-year old boy and then burned his body. Eight years later, van de Brock returned to the same house and seized that boy’s father. This time they forced the man’s wife – and the mother of that 18-year old -- to watch as they tied up her husband, poured gas on him, and ignited him. Now imagine the scene when years later this woman who had lost her only son and her husband to this horror sat in a court room across from Officer van de Brock, as a part of this Truth and Reconciliation Commission. When the evidence was finished being presented, the judge asked this woman, “What do you want from Mr. Van de Brock?” Do you know what she said…? She said she wanted Mr. Van de Brock to return to the place where he had burned her husband and gather up the dust from the ground so she could give him a proper burial. Then she said one other thing that stunned the courtroom even further. She said, “Mr. Van de Brock took all my family away from me, and I still have a lot of love to give. Twice a month, I would like for him to come to the ghetto and spend a day with me so I can be a mother to him. I would like for Mr. Van de Brock to know that he is forgiven by God and that I forgive him too. I would also like to embrace him so he can know and feel that my forgiveness is real.” Do you think there is a power when someone steps out of action-reaction sinfulness to behave like Jesus instead?
Jesus was no dummy. He knew what it took to make people stand up and take notice of this revolution he had come to start. If you want to follow Jesus, there is really only one thing you HAVE to do…You HAVE to embrace a way of thinking and of living that steps OUT OF the world’s action-reaction living. It’s a BIG step, and it is NOT an optional one for the person who claims to follow Jesus. It is the road Jesus himself trod. It is the road that led him from the very cross of calvary to say, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” It is the road that Jesus painted so vividly for us and for his disciples when he told the story of the prodigal son, painting those two, radically different approaches to livingthe world’s way of action-reaction, brought to life in the character of the older brother, and the ways of Jesus, brought to life by that loving father, who did NOT react to his younger son’s sinful actions, but instead stepped outside of action-reaction living to do something truly Christ-like.
That little three-letter word S-I-N has stuck around for as long as it has because billions of people thoughtlessly continue to buy into the world’s notion that every action deserves an equal and opposite reaction. But the one we call Lord came to show us a better way, a way that, instead of feeding and multiplying the endless cycle of sin, vengeance, and violence, could actually break the cycle, stopping sin dead in its tracks, before it has the chance to multiply. That way is the way of forgiveness…the way of grace… the way of the cross. It is, in a nutshell, the way of Jesus. Don’t think you can follow Jesus or claim to be his disciple without walking this same path.
Make no mistake: there is tremendous power unleashed whenever someone steps out of action-reaction sinfulness to behave like Jesus instead. Who will be the next person who dares to step out of action-reaction living to unleash the amazing power of grace?…Why not one of us? Amen.
*** Please post a comment and let me know what you think!
