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Summer Series Week Four
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Let's begin with a quiz. A sin quiz.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Commons cast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to commons.church for more information.
Speaker 1:Welcome. Welcome, everyone. So glad that you are joining us today in the livestream. My name is Bobbie, and I'm one of the pastors on the team here at Commons. And your participation from your homes and your backyards, from local Calgarians to our contingents in places like Ottawa and The UK has meant so much to us.
Speaker 1:Of course, we miss all of our services, parishes, and your faces. But you have stayed with us and found meaning and encouragement in what we offer every week. So thank you for tuning in and writing back and showing up and singing at home and praying for each other and of course taking good care out there. Every bit of that means more to us than you will ever know. Now we'll be back to our in person gathering next weekend with our masks on and shields up.
Speaker 1:So do register for Sunday if you are ready for that. So our summer series is called Speaking Sunday, and we are talking about the vocabulary of faith. And the hope is that we can refresh some of the language that has been central to our tradition. And whether some of the language of faith has been overused or underused or even abused in your journey, there is a way to reclaim language so that it can be life giving. Now today, we are talking about sin.
Speaker 1:And if you're taking notes in your journal, your outline is this. Number one, light and or dark. Number two, is God a liar? And number three, move towards it. And our text is first John chapter one verse five to two verse two.
Speaker 1:We'll get there soon, but first, take a breath. Let us pray. Loving God, to whom all hearts are open and all desires known, we gather together in homes and online spaces, and you are at the center of it all, of our searching, our learning, our loving. So we take a moment to say thank you. Today, we look at this concept of of sin.
Speaker 1:And before we do that, we consider the guilt in our own lives, the things that we feel sorry for. We also consider the shame in our lives, the things that make us feel sorry about ourselves. And Jesus, we trust that your invitation to us is always for our well-being and our flourishing. So spirit of the living God, won't you show us today what needs our attention, what needs healing and forgiving. Amen.
Speaker 1:So let's begin with a quiz. A sin quiz. And I'll say a statement about sin and you'll answer true or false. And what we're for here is your go to definition of sin, whether you think about it that much or not. And don't worry, no one is looking over your shoulder.
Speaker 1:Just answer in your brain. Okay. Ready? Let's go. True or false?
Speaker 1:Sin is the disorder of desires. True or false? Sin is the loss of original goodness. True or false? Sin maintains that there is nothing righteous in a person.
Speaker 1:True or false? Sin is found in systems that diminish human flourishing. True or false sin is the attempt to live for oneself rather than God and one another. Okay. That's it.
Speaker 1:That's all I've got. How do you feel about the the quiz? Did you connect with definitions, and did you connect with them to a time in your life when you were taught certain tenets about sin? Do you feel like parts of those definitions maybe don't sit that well with you anymore? Well, all of those definitions, they're actually not arbitrary.
Speaker 1:They outline major movements in the history of Christian theology when it comes to our ideas about sin. It was Augustine who emphasized sin as the disorder of desires. It was Aquinas who focused on the loss of original goodness. It was Luther who insisted there is nothing righteous in a person. It was liberation theology that shifted the emphasis to systems that oppress.
Speaker 1:It's thinkers in the twentieth century like Karl Barth who defined sin as the attempt to live for oneself rather than God and one another, adding that Jesus is the mirror who reflects the truth of our condition back to us. Definitions shift, and they change over time. And Christian thought is remarkably flexible to meet the needs of its day. So we dive into first John, and as we do that, hold a little space for your own ideas about sin to change. First John chapter one verses five to seven.
Speaker 1:This is the message we have heard from God and declare to you. God is light. In God, there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with God and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. But if we walk in the light as God is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus, God's son, purifies us from all sin.
Speaker 1:Now, the author of first John is anonymous, but the titles of first, second, and third John are true to their namesake in that they reflect the Johannine community, meaning the community is shaped around the same thinking which informs the Gospel of John. And specific to the Johannine community is the pain that comes when people are pushed out of a place they feel they belong. You see, the longer time went on, the more this group of Jesus Jewish followers weren't made to feel at home in Jewish circles. Even other Jesus followers had trouble understanding the Johannine community. Add to that a hostile empire and you have a struggle to maintain who you think you are.
Speaker 1:Understanding the audience helps us to see the language of either you are in light or you are in darkness as a challenge. It's like they're saying, don't say we don't belong. We know we are in the light. And let's talk a little more about this metaphor of light. Metaphors point to what is real.
Speaker 1:So the reference to light here does not mean God is literal light. In the late first century, light was the religious and cultural representation of life and hope and blessing. Be aware as well that this metaphor comes from the past where artificial light is a rare experience. There are no light switches in bedrooms and streetlights in the city and headlights, of course, on cars. Now, interestingly, a definition of sin can be that which devours and desires to possess or dominate all.
Speaker 1:And track with me here, but doesn't that sound a little like our relationship with light? Our world has so much artificial light. We probably haven't had a good night's sleep in like forever. We live and rest in a constant state of circadian rhythm disruption. TVs on at night, screens by our beds, city lights blocking out blazing comets in the night sky.
Speaker 1:And I have no problem with the emphasis on light in first John. The writer's point is that the light of God and the life of Jesus symbolized with blood inform an ethic of belonging. We are in the light, the writer affirms. But I wonder, in a world of intense extremes and polarized divisions, if we should take the metaphor of light so far, I wonder if we actually need a little more darkness. The light dark duality in first John sits alongside passages in the scriptures that spell out something different when it comes to darkness.
Speaker 1:In Genesis one, darkness is in creation before God's very first act, and it's not dismissed as evil, it just is. And Isaiah 45 verse seven says, God forms the light and creates darkness. And my favorite verse about God's own darkness is Psalm 97 verse two, where clouds and thick darkness surround God. And sometimes we speak in hyperbole and extremes. Sometimes we say either or or this or that.
Speaker 1:Sometimes we say 100% or absolutely not. And that's fine. To feel so strongly about something that matters to you. The scriptures do this all the time. But, and this is important here, the concern in first John is not what you say you believe, but how belief makes you behave.
Speaker 1:We can be so concerned about living in the light that we become afraid of the dark. And that feels lopsided to me. Let's reach for more nuance in our metaphors, when it comes to sin. You are not all bad. You are not totally evil.
Speaker 1:You are not too far gone. You might be struggling. You might get things wrong. You might be living with the consequences of a very big mistake. And you can learn.
Speaker 1:And you can turn that ship around. And you can grow. In fact, being able to acknowledge sin, to move close enough, to really see the contours of sin is a place where we encounter what is true. So verses eight to 10. If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.
Speaker 1:If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make God out to be a liar, and God's word is not in us. And there is a lot in this section, so let's take it by verse. Verse eight talks about sin as deception. And the Greek verb for deceive here is planao.
Speaker 1:And planao can also mean to stray, to wander, to roam about. And there's an archetypal story all about our instinct to run from the God honest truth of our sin. Think back to Genesis. The fateful story of the first sin in the garden. After Adam and Eve eat from the forbidden tree knowledge of good and evil, they discover the impulse to stray and roam.
Speaker 1:The couple are sure that they can deceive the creator. So Adam and Eve cover their naked bodies with fig leaves. And when the sun is still setting and the shadows are long, they run into the forest to hide from God who comes looking for them. Where are you? God says.
Speaker 1:Why are you hiding from me? And the story is archetypal because we all know the feeling of fleeing the fallout of our sin too. It's not fun to focus on your mistakes. It's not a walk in the park to notice how much more you still need to learn about being good. It's not comfortable to sit with how much you hurt someone who loves you.
Speaker 1:But you can only run so far before grace finds you and confronts you. We may run from our sin, but God runs straight for it. So if verse eight is about our propensity to deceive ourselves, to run from what is truthful, well then verse nine is about what we do with our self deception. It's about confession. In verse nine, the writer's message states, it's God's nature to forgive you, always has been, always will be.
Speaker 1:Now, first John is a letter concerned with ethics, right ways of being in relationship with one another. And you gotta love how much God trusts us to love each other. But alongside that trust is the basic understanding that we will blunder. So what do we do? First John says, you have confession for that.
Speaker 1:And lately, I've been thinking about confession as this need for us to speak out our affliction so that we are not destroyed by it. We all know people, either personally or from afar, who work so hard to hide what's wrong. Instead of speaking the truth, they say I'm fine. There's nothing to see here. I totally got this.
Speaker 1:And the longer they hold out, the more damage that's done. We have to speak out our our affliction or we will be destroyed by it. That's what confession is for. Confession is release. It's accountability.
Speaker 1:It's admitting limitations and trusting love to outrun the very worst thing in your life. Now, verse 10 is this edgy bit about calling God a liar. And this is not a threat. In the letter, it's a fact. Sin is the failure to see the reflection of God in the world.
Speaker 1:To fail to see God's very word or divine utterance in us. And the point here is not to make you feel bad about yourself. The point is to turn your face towards this truth. God is not a liar, but we sure lie. We lie about how scared we are.
Speaker 1:We lie about how hurt we are. We lie about how sad we are. We lie about what power looks like. We lie about how much healing we still need to do. We lie about the cost of our comfort and convenience to the most vulnerable in the world.
Speaker 1:The good news is that we don't have to stay stuck in any one of our lives, but be warned. It might take sacrifice before we feel set free. First John chapter two verses one and two read. My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the father, Jesus Christ, the righteous one.
Speaker 1:Jesus Christ is the atoning sacrifice for our sins and not only for ours, but also for the sins of the whole world. Now, in this last section, I wanna talk about sacrifice, first, a Jesus story from Matthew. Maybe you remember it. Jesus is preaching in the towns of Galilee. And John the Baptist wants to know if Jesus is the one to deliver them from Rome.
Speaker 1:And Jesus says, go tell John what you see. The blind receive sight. Those who are sick are healed. The dead are raised to life. And that's confusing because they want a conqueror, a king, a mighty deliverer.
Speaker 1:They don't want this preferential treatment for the poor and the sick and the dead. And a little further into the story Jesus says, you don't actually know what you want. John kept all the rules and you called him a demon. I broke them by eating and drinking and being a friend of sinners and still you miss what is wise before you. What the people are meant to see is that the divine does not rule the world with domination.
Speaker 1:The way of God is about friendship with the sinner. Moving towards what's wrong is the only way to make it right. Another way to say that is that the way we deal with sin is sacrifice. And the Hebrew word for sacrifice is korban, and it's tough to translate the word into English. The scholar Sharon Baker, in her excellent book Executing God, says that unfortunately, our translation of the word sacrifice often leads us to think a person brings something to God in order to appease or satisfy God's wrath.
Speaker 1:But guess what? God is not interested in punishing sinful people. Think about the ways God moves towards those who do wrong. God moves towards David, the adulterous and murderous king who learns to sing songs about God's love of a contrite heart. And God moves towards the ancient people through the words of prophets who say over and over again, your burnt offerings are useless unless you offer to me your heart.
Speaker 1:And God moves towards us in Jesus who insists that sacrifice is the very opposite of payback and revenge. Sacrifice is putting a stop to the cycle of of sin and self harm and abuse. And choosing love over fear. Always, always love over fear. So maybe it's time to move towards your sin too.
Speaker 1:You do not need to fear it. You can learn so much when you look right at it and know that your sins are forgiven. Living that reality is the only way to be made new. So what if we go back to take a sin quiz all over again? Only I'll help you this time.
Speaker 1:This time, all the answers are true. Sin is not your original condition. You are created good. True. Sin is our failure to see the reflection of God in the world.
Speaker 1:True. Sin is an invitation to notice what is wrong and to do something about it. True. You can move towards your sin with compassion and find Jesus there at the table, not at all afraid to be near every part of you and to eat with you and to heal you. True.
Speaker 1:True. Let us pray. Loving God, who gives life to all, Thank you for the ways that you are never scared off by our sin. We know that we fail to do what is right in word and deed. We do that every day.
Speaker 1:And still, you love us. God, you confront us with grace, and you invite us into the truth of who we are, that we are made for love, and we are made for forgiveness, and we are made for healthy and flourishing and stunning relationships. And so we end today turning our gaze inwards to see if there is anything we need to confess, to say out loud so we can be set free. Spirit of the living God, present with us now, Enter the places of our pain and heal us of all that harms us. Amen.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for being here in the livestream today. Your presence means the world to us. If you love these messages and they mean something to you, go ahead and share them with a friend. We are back to in person gathering next week if all goes as planned at 10:30, all masks all the time. Register to join us.
Speaker 1:Finally, we'll end as we always do. Love God. Love people. Tell the story. Hopefully, see you in the Zoom lounge today.
Speaker 1:Peace to you.