Sermons

“The Good News About Sin”

2 Samuel 11:26—12:15; Psalm 51:1-12 – Rev. Rebecca Littlejohn

Vista La Mesa Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), La Mesa, California – August 2, 2015

Holy God, bless the speaking and the hearing of these words, that our hearts might be lightened by our trust in your abundant mercy. We pray in the name of Jesus, Amen.

So it’s not every week that I decide to preach about sin. In fact, the lectionary also offered us my favorite passage from Ephesians 4 that is so wonderful for preaching about the church, but I’m so likely to pull that out at other times, that I thought I should do something different. Every once in a while, I like to preach from a psalm, and pull out all the larger points that are merely hinted at in each line. And at first, I wasn’t going to pair it with the reading we heard from Second Samuel, but the more I realized this sermon is about sin, the more sense it made to keep that in.

Nobody really likes to talk about sin. When I was in seminary 15 years ago, the trend at the moment was to lament the fact that the word “sin” was hardly ever mentioned in worship in mainline Protestant churches any more. The new wisdom (which I still ascribe too) was that this was detrimental to teaching a faith that is relevant to the very broken world we live in. But if one is going to talk about sin, one must still do it gracefully, for the baggage of Angry Father God damning us all to hell for even the most minor of screw-ups is still very much with us. Does it help that I titled the sermon “The Good News About Sin”? Because there will be some. I’m saving it for last, but we will get there eventually.

But first, a few observations about sin and how it affects our lives. First of all, to build on what I said earlier: We don’t like to talk about sin. And if we have to, it turns out we’re a lot like King David: we’re much more likely to engage in passionate discourse about sin, if we think we’re talking about someone else’s sin. Because the storyteller has brought us in on the trap, we easily see how David is deluding himself when he gets so righteously offended by the rich man’s slaughter of the poor man’s beloved lamb. But if we’re honest, we will admit that we would have done the same thing.

It’s just so much easier to see those specks in other people’s eyes, than to take a look at the logs within our own. When we tell stories about our own lives, the spin moves in another direction entirely. Even when we realize the story is about us, we will look for ways to justify ourselves and blame others for what happened. If Bathsheba hadn’t been bathing on her rooftop… If Uriah had only gone to visit his wife when he was home on break from the war so the pregnancy could be pinned on him… This tendency toward rationalization is entirely human, but that doesn’t mean it’s healthy or holy.

The second observation I want to make about sin is related to our urge to spin. Did you notice how when David is caught in Nathan’s trap, he says “I have sinned against the Lord”? We find the same thing in verse 4 of Psalm 51: “Against you, you alone (meaning God) have I sinned.” Now of course it is a good thing to recognize that when we hurt people, God is hurt as well. But there is also something about immediately and only worrying about the offense to God that seems fishy to me. Not to scoop the big ending with the Good News, but we know that God is merciful. And God isn’t the one whose life gets messed up by our bad choices. Bathsheba is the one who was raped and lost her husband and is about to lose a baby, not God. And yet somehow, David doesn’t seem concerned about apologizing to her. The truth is that we don’t like to face the music. We may get to the point where we’ll admit we did something wrong and that we should feel bad about it. But that’s not the same as seeking the forgiveness of those whom we’ve hurt. That’s one of the scariest things there is; even David the King couldn’t handle it.

My third observation on sin is about the notion of generational consequences. You’re familiar with the idea that “the sins of the father are visited upon the son.” This is a complicated one. Certainly, the way Nathan tells the story, it’s pretty straightforward in David’s case. The baby that was conceived from his adulterous liaison with Bathsheba dies. But we also know that Jesus challenged this idea, in his interaction with the blind man in John 9. When the disciples ask if the man is blind because of his own sin or his parents’, Jesus says it’s neither. While his explanation is not much more satisfying there, we take comfort in his implication that God didn’t make someone blind because of something his parents did. We don’t like the idea that children would be punished for the sins of their parents.

I went back and forth and back and forth about whether to use this story about David and Bathsheba at all. It’s so dramatic. It’s more of an epic tale than a parable. I thought for a while that maybe I could draw out similarities to some of our great works of fiction and film that show how the sin of one person can reverberate through multiple generations of a family. The Scarlet Letter, Atonement, Unforgiven – So many of the gripping tales we tune into are about the generational consequences of one ill-advised choice. But connecting a Bible teaching to the fiction we enjoy is not quite the same as connecting it to our actual lives.

But again, part of addressing sin is getting more honest than we’re used to. And if we’re honest, we know all about the generational consequences of sin. We know how abuse cycles through families. We know about the devastating impact alcoholism and drug use can have on children. We’ve seen how emotional repression enforced on children can damage and distort their hearts so they can’t ever truly connect as adults. We inherit almost everything we are, including our deep brokenness. Is it our parent’s fault? Weren’t they also damaged by the sins and brokenness of their parents? Of course.

And here we are connecting to Psalm 51 again, this time verse 5: “Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me.” Protestants struggle with the idea of original sin, and for good reason. How can we declare the utter and primary depravity of humankind when our creation story tells us that God pronounced us good? And yet, to pretend evil comes out of nowhere simply doesn’t make sense. Contemporary theologians are re-working the idea of original sin to help us understand how we cannot escape the systems we are born into – systems that are sinful in their insistence on dividing humanity into tribes and privileging wealth and rewarding the abuse of power.

Those systems exist even down to the family tree level. They can be sinful without exactly being any one particular person’s fault. Our sin – the part for which we must take responsibility – is when we become aware of the sinfulness of these systems and do nothing to resist them. This is true at a societal level and within families. It is possible to break a cycle of abuse, if we are willing to get help and learn new ways to manage anger and frustration. It is possible to invite new voices to the tables where decisions are made, if we are intentional about seeking out those who were previously marginalized. But if we insist on pretending that everything was hunky-dory from the beginning, our denial will merely feed the sinfulness of the systems whose existence we are ignoring.

And so now we have arrived at the final lesson before the Good News. If Psalm 51 tells us anything, it’s that denial isn’t worth the energy, rather confession is the way to go. There is such hope in the psalmist’s words about seeking forgiveness. The cleansing metaphors, the assured anticipation of joy upon receiving mercy – none of this can be accessed without confession.

The added introduction to Psalm 51 tells us that it’s a psalm of David, from precisely this moment we’ve been observing him, when Nathan has revealed David’s own sinfulness to him in an inescapable way. Because David’s fiery sense of justice and righteousness had already been kindled, it could not be banked upon learning he was the actual object of such indignation. He was forced to turn it upon himself, and found that his only way forward was through confession.

And this, of course, brings us to the Good News about sin. The good news about sin is that it’s never as big as God’s mercy. The psalm makes it clear that the most important thing in this situation – or any situation of human failing and weakness – is nothing to do with us at all, but rather the truth of God. The psalm is grounded in God’s steadfast love and abundant mercy. The whole song is predicated on the unquestioned anticipation of God removing the sinner’s sins, blotting them out, and replacing them with a new and right spirit, a willing spirit, wisdom and a clean heart.

This is the Good News. No matter how sin has insinuated itself into our lives, whether through our own bad choices, or generations of broken people raising broken children, God’s grace is bigger than that. God’s mercy is more persistent. God’s love is more steadfast. God’s reconciling Spirit is more faithful. God’s desire to restore our souls is more passionate. Our sin, even our systemic and generational sin, can never grow bigger than God’s mercy. God will always mend our crushed bones. God will always renew our spirits. God will never cast us away or remove the Holy Spirit from us. This is the joy of our salvation. The good news about sin isn’t really about sin; it’s about God. Let us rejoice in the steadfast love and abundant mercy of our God, faithful and everlasting. Alleluia and Amen!