Sermons

“The Joy of Salvation”

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

Vista La Mesa Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), La Mesa, California – August 5, 2018

Holy God, bless the speaking and the hearing of these words that we might learn to trust in your mercy and grow in righteousness. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

As we begin this morning, let me clarify that it is NOT my secret mission today to imply that there is anyone in our congregation who had their friend or employee killed so they could marry his wife. As far as I’m aware, none of you have done that. I mean, there’s sin and then there’s sin. Nevertheless, I don’t think many of us would struggle to identify with David in this passage we heard from 2^nd Samuel this morning. We hear stories about people doing terrible things – stealing, cheating, lying, discriminating, or even just fudging – and we’re right there, ready to condemn. “They oughta be thrown in jail,” we cry. But when it comes to seeing our own actions with such moral clarity, we often fail. After all, we have good reasons for doing what we do. There are extenuating circumstances.   We’re not bad people; we just get backed into corners with nothing but bad choices sometimes. Right?

I wonder how that reading of Psalm 51 hit you just now. When you hear the words “Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me,” does that ring true? Or do you reject the premise? Do you flinch when someone refers to themself or another person as a sinner? The mainline church has been through a phase when we struggled to talk about sin, in practice if not in theory. We were operating, I think you could say, on a religious version of the idea that children will live up or down to the expectations we have of them. For the most part, I believe this approach makes sense for child-rearing. Children need to hear that they are loved and that they are capable of much. They need to grow up with the assumption that they can do anything, at least until experience shows them otherwise.

But for Christians, this approach can open up certain vulnerabilities. The assumption was that if we tell people they’re good, they’ll be good. This is fine as long as it holds. The problem arises when suddenly, that person isn’t good. If you do something bad, but you’ve been told all along that being good is part of your identity, you are less likely to confess your transgression and seek forgiveness, and more likely to simply deny that what you did was bad.

The theological premise that humanity is inherently good, and good alone, short-circuits our need for God’s mercy, and that is a trap. Our expectations shape our lives far more than we often realize. My sister and brother-in-law are celebrating their 20^th anniversary this month. They are adorable. They were high school sweethearts, but it’s not as simple as that, for which I give thanks. You see, both Jean and Mike are the older of two siblings. And they were the ones in their families who preferred to avoid conflict. When you add that combination to the fact that they were convinced, while they were dating in high school, that their romance was meant to be and perfect and true love and all those other sentiments high school romances tend to rely on, you have a recipe for disaster. There was no room in their relationship for disagreement. Any shadow of tension had to be swept under the rug of denial as quickly as it appeared. But as it turns out, even true loves occasionally disagree with one another, so eventually, that rug was going to get pretty lumpy. This is why I am grateful that, due to the complications of educational paths and long-distance relationships, they broke up and dated other people for a while before getting back together. They had to experience relationships without the expectation of perfection in order to eventually be able to successfully navigate the one that really was the right one all along.

So what does this have to do with sin? Again, it’s about expectations. I am entirely happy to proclaim to you that God created you in love, for love and through, and pronounced you Good with a capital G. For the most part, I do think this influences people to behave in ethical, righteous ways. But if I only tell you that, it is not that hard for you to conclude that if God made you good, then you must be good to go, and don’t really need to keep coming back to God for anything. Which means that once you do act in a way that isn’t good – which is inevitably going to happen at some point – you’re going to be ill-equipped to deal with it. You would have two main options at that point: to conclude that the church lied to you and you aren’t good, which could put you on the road to a crisis of faith, or to find a way to rationalize your behavior as “not that bad” so that you can maintain your impression of yourself as a “good person,” which will hollow your faith out from the inside. I do not want either of these things for you. And indeed, that’s not what Christianity is supposed to offer us.

The story of Nathan tricking David into confessing his sin reminds me of the parable Jesus told about this tendency we share with David. “Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.” (Matthew 7:3-5)

How can we afford such a vulnerable, self-examining faith? The answer is right there in Psalm 51. Perhaps we got hung up on the line declaring us sinners and didn’t notice the main point because we were so caught in defensiveness. The bulk of this psalm is focused on what? The steadfast love and abundant mercy of God. That’s how this whole thing works. If we claim that we are inherently only good, we set ourselves up for failure. But I think sometimes we do that simply because we’ve forgotten about the mercy of God, so we’re afraid to admit our sinfulness, even as we experience it in real time. But God’s mercy is real, my friends. We don’t have to be frightened of the sinful parts of our nature, for they do not have the last word.

David, anointed by God to be king over Israel, sinned Big Time, and yet, as we hear at the end of the story, God put his sin away and did not take his life, murderer though he was. God’s mercy is abundant. God’s love is steadfast. This does not mean there won’t be natural consequences for our bad choices; it’s not license to just do whatever we feel, regardless of its impact on others. But it does mean we don’t have to have an identity crisis when we mess up. We don’t have to let our faith crumble into ruins because we made a mistake. We can stop wasting energy pretending we’re perfect and start putting energy into living joyfully as forgiven sinners. This is a big deal.

You know, there is a whole group of people out there who aren’t in here because they’re convinced that churches are “full of hypocrites.” They’re not wrong. But can you imagine how attractive it could be to be invited to join a gathering of forgiven hypocrites? Because churches are full of hypocrites; Jesus himself called us that. But churches aren’t any more full of hypocrites than the rest of the world. The difference here is that, when we’re at our best, we are confessed hypocrites. We have managed to get over our fear of our own sinfulness by keeping our eye on the truth of God’s abundant mercy. We come here every week, and whether we read Psalm 51 or not, we ask God to create within us clean hearts and to put new and right spirits within us. And God does!

We come here every week to act as lumberjacks. We seek out the biggest logs we can, but only in our own eyes, and we chop them to bits. Being part of a church is sort of liking attaching a hashtag to your life. If you’re not familiar with hashtags, let me explain. You might call it a number sign or a pound sign. And on many forms of social media, if you type it directly in front of other words, it becomes a way to categorize and index comments that are connected to one another. Can you imagine if we created a hashtag to remind ourselves that we don’t need to be afraid of our sinfulness? How about #whatsmylog? It could become a trend. It could redefine the hypocrisy of the church, from a turn-off into a confessed weakness. It could remind us, every time we’re tempted to judge someone else harshly, to stop and look at ourselves first, to be sure we’re seeing clearly.

It’s not that I’m telling you that God didn’t create you good. It’s just that good isn’t all we are. If my faith rests on anything, it’s the truth of the “both/and”. We are both created good and highly likely to sin. We are both precious in God’s sight and continually in need of mercy. We are both sinful and capable of repentance. This is the kind of good news that can sustain us for real life. This is the good news that reminds us we’re not on our own out here; we can ask for help. This is the joy of salvation. Alleluia and Amen.