|
Several years ago, The Wall Street Journal published an editorial about
morality in America, morality in high circles as well as low. The editorial concluded with these words:
"Sin isn't something many people, including most churches, have spent much time talking about through the
years of the [cultural and sexual] revolution. But we will say this for sin: it at least offered a frame
of reference for personal behavior. When the frame was dismantled, guilt wasn't the only thing that fell
away. We also lost the guide wire of personal responsibility. ...Everyone was left on his own. It now
appears that many wrecked people could have used a road map. Ministers and priests gave way to clinics
and counselors. Instead of giving your kid a dressing down, you now gave him a condom. The ministers of
the therapeutic say the dressing down is useless because the kids don't know what you're talking about
anyway. By now, they may be right."
Lent is the Church's attempt to minister to human sinfulness, and on Ash Wednesday we were invited
"to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance."
What the Bible knew, before The Wall Street Journal knew it, is that sin is the condition we human
beings are in, a condition in which we lie about who we really are and avoid responsibility for what we
do.
"Who told you you were naked," the Lord God asked the man. "What have you done? Have you eaten
from the tree which I forbade you to eat from?" "It was the woman you gave to be with me who gave me
fruit from the tree," replied the man. And the Lord God said to the woman, "What have you done?" And
the woman answered, "It was the serpent who deceived me into eating it."
More recent responses might sound like this: "Anyone would have done the same thing if he had
been in my situation" or "Everyone does stuff like that." Or "I'm not all that well off, not rich," we
say in the face of plain facts that contradict us. Or "I believe children are our most important
responsibility," we say as we leave their moral and spiritual education to others.
Our elaborate defenses and denials of sin are themselves the best evidence of sin's stark and deep
reality. I would feel no need to fool myself and try to look good in the eyes of others if I did not,
deep down, know my sin. As Chesterton said about the truth of the doctrine of original sin, "Of all
religious doctrines the doctrine of original sin stands on the firmest ground; it's the only doctrine of
which there is empirical evidence."
Not too long ago, a woman of questionable character was delicately referred to as "having a past."
Yet if I am honest, I have to admit that I "have a past" as well. And I imagine that if you are honest
you'll have to admit the same thing.
Our sin is so deep, so insidious, so interconnected. We wear clothes that are made by horribly
mistreated workers in Jamaica. We buy our sons basketballs that cost practically nothing because they
were stitched by children in Asia or the Middle East who earn only pennies a day working in conditions we
would not tolerate for our own children. We pay grown men millions of dollars a year so that we can watch
them play with a baseball that is stitched by women and children in similar misery in the Caribbean and
Central America. And part of our incomes is derived from stocks that are undoubtedly invested in some
pretty unsavory practices, both abroad and at home. We all "have a past." And a present. There are ways
each one of us is complicit in the principalities and powers we don't even know about yet.
That sin is pervasive is one of the great truths known in the Bible, a truth Solzhenitsyn came to
experience empirically. As a young man, Solzhenitsyn searched for good and evil in his native land of
revolutionary Russia. He found that one of the costs of the Soviet attempt to create the good society was
a repression of human freedom so deep that it allowed no room for the Spirit, no room for God. As an old
man, living in exile in the United States, he discovered that the Western attempt to create the good
society costs precisely the same -- an exaltation of freedom so complete that it requires the creation
of "autonomous man," of man "free from any higher force above him."
"Gradually it was disclosed to me," Solzhenitsyn concluded, "that [good and evil in this world are
not easily discerned, because] the line dividing good and evil passes not through states, nor between
classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart." That's the
arrogant reality of sin -- the arrogant reality of sin in New York as well as in Moscow. And in
Baghdad. Even in Tel Aviv. Even in Colorado Springs and Washington, D.C. Even in the White House.
Even in your house, and mine. The world is not easily divided into evildoer and righteous, Jesus reminds
the pharisee, and us. And if this war, and the misery and chaos it will inevitably bring, ever does
occur, there will be plenty of room for plenty of repentance all around.
This is the agonizing reality of the wilderness in which we live and into which Jesus was thrown
by the Spirit, where the heart of Jesus was attended by wild beasts as well as by angels. It is the
agonizing truth of Lent.
In the Gospel reading for Ash Wednesday, Jesus says, "When you fast, anoint your head and wash
your face, that your fasting may not be seen by men but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father,
who is in secret and who sees what is done in secret, will give you your reward."
Secretly, we all know just who we are, and it's that secret about ourselves that we're trying to
escape from.
It isn't, of course, just in our religion that we try to escape ourselves. We do it in all of
our life. We lie about ourselves. We lie to other people, but mostly we lie to ourselves -- about how
smart or good-looking we are, or how popular, or how important, or how successful. But secretly, we all
know just who we are, and it's that secret about ourselves we're trying to escape from.
But the solution to sin, Lent reminds us, is not through escape. The solution to sin is honesty,
an honesty which leads to repentance.
Repentance, however -- and let's be clear about this right up front -- repentance is not a
matter of doing better or trying harder. That's the terrible trap our Lenten observance can fall into.
If we set out during Lent to do away with all our sins, we soon find that the very attempt to do so is one
of sinful pride. "I can do it; I know I can." Just like the little engine that could. Even if we don't
tell anyone else what we're trying to do, we still can't hide that pride from ourselves. Our left hand
always knows what our right is doing, and we still end up trying to make ourselves believe that we are
someone we are not and that we can do something on our own that we can't.
And that's where honesty comes in, because repentance isn't trying to make ourselves believe that
we are someone we are not and that we can do something on our own that we can't. Repentance begins and
ends with honesty about ourselves. Repentance begins, and can begin, only when we are able to be honest
with ourselves about the selves we know in secret.
This is the self-examination Lent invites us to. "Remember that you are dust," we are reminded
on Ash Wednesday, "and unto dust shall you return." In other words, "We're not such great stuff after
all." That's one of the truths about us that Lent gives us the opportunity to consider.
But the other truth about us which Lent teaches is that we are of infinite worth and significance
to God just as we are. The chief truth of the Gospel is that honesty about ourselves does not destroy us,
but is redemptive. There is no greater gift in the Christian faith than the gift of the possibility of
such honesty, for the truth of Jesus is that God's love for us is, in fact, what makes it possible for us
to be honest.
Honesty, and the repentance that honesty makes possible, is redemptive because our Father, who is
in secret, already knows, in secret, who we really are. We do not fool God when we try to fool
ourselves, anymore than Adam and Eve fooled God.
The good news of Jesus is that God loves us just as we are, popular or not so popular, successful
or unsuccessful, men and women of grand accomplishments or no accomplishments, of many good deeds or
few.
The grace of the Gospel is like waking up one day after years of trying to fool your husband about
how perfect you are and finding out that he really has committed himself to you for life as you are. The
grace of the Gospel is like waking up and finding out that your wife married you, for better for worse,
for richer for poorer, for smarter for dumber, in sickness and in health, finding out the she married you,
not some fictional, ideal person you would like your wife and the world to believe is you. Grace is
waking up and finding out that you don't have to live the rest of your life with the burden of trying to
make others believe you are someone you are not, someone who, you know in secret, is a lie.
Grace is like that, only more so.
We do not fool God when we try to fool ourselves. So the good news of Lent is that we can repent.
The good news of Jesus is the good news of God's covenant with Noah and with us, his descendants. We can
be honest with ourselves because the selves we know ourselves, in secret, really to be are precisely the
same selves God already secretly knows anyway, and God has not abandoned us because of it, but calls us
home.
Ernest Hemingway once told a story to illustrate how popular the Spanish name Paco is. A father,
he said, traveled to Madrid from the countryside to place an ad in the city paper. The ad read: "PACO,
MEET ME AT THE PUEBLO INN. NOON WEDNESDAY. ALL IS FORGIVEN. PAPA." The next day the authorities had to
muster the Civil Guard to disperse a mob of 800 young men who massed on the street in front of the
inn.
So we stand at the front door of the inn, hoping against hope that we are forgiven. And the
Gospel tells us that, yes, we are called by a Father who has been waiting for our return, and we are now
brought in to be seated at the banquet table. And a ring is placed on our finger and a robe around our
shoulder and sandals on our feet. The fatted calf is killed, the musicians are cutting loose, and the
guests are getting on with some serious dancing. "The guests? What guests?" we ask, until we suddenly
realize that all the other Pacos are there too, until we realize that Dad has welcomed every prodigal home
from every far country in the world. Even from Moscow. Even from Washington and New York. Even from
Baghdad. Even from Asia and Africa and Latin America. Even from that seamy side of town across the
tracks.
The great theologian of the past century, Karl Barth, summed it up this way: "Forgiveness
precedes repentance." Grace precedes honesty. God's love for us is out in the world hunting for us
before we ever open our eyes and hearts to the facts about our real condition, and that's what makes it
possible for us to be honest with ourselves. That's what makes it possible for us to turn toward
home.
Dust we are, and unto dust shall we return. The dust of which we're created is not significant in
itself. It is significant because it points to the One beyond ourselves who created the dust and who,
from the dust, created us.
The cross of ashes traced on our brows on Ash Wednesday is not significant in itself. The cross
of ashes fades or washes away. It is significant because it points to the truth about ourselves, and to
the One beyond ourselves who loves us as we are.
And the lives we live in repentance are significant because they mean we are living honestly,
admitting the truth about ourselves. Admitting the truth to ourselves and to God, who already knows it
anyway.
I invite you this Lent to find the time and quiet and humility to explore your secret life with
God. Begin with the secret life about yourself, with the self you honestly know you really are. There,
in secret, you will surely find pain and tears. You will find dust and a cross of ashes.
But you will also find God there. And God will reward you, as he rewarded Jesus before you, with
the truth of Lent. He will reward you with the good news that being honest with ourselves and with God
about who we really are is the beginning of resurrection life, the beginning of that life of love and
significance that will never fade or wash away, because we know we are loved. That's what repentance
means and is.
In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. |