Lent 1 A

Introduction. Our ties to one another

I’m going to talk today about sin — specifically, original sin. But in order to do that I need to talk about us — you and me — about our connections, our ties.

My great granddaughter, Olive, was born to two parents, Holly and Warren. She is tied to them and they to her by emotion, by need, by love, by bonds so strong they can be felt by me and anyone else who observes them, by bonds so strong they can almost be seen and touched. She is also tied to her grandparents — to Holly’s parents and to my son and daughter-in-law. And she is tied to me.

She is tied to family networks — to the living and the dead also — and not only to family but to the local and national networks into which she was born. She will speak with a Canadian accent because she is tied to Canadians. She will learn Canadian history. She is learning French as well as English. She will acquire western European attitudes and habits. She will pray as a Christian. She will buy and sell and work within the capitalist system. She will be protected by police systems and armies. She may even be drafted.

The number of networks into which she has been born and into which she will become increasingly tied is vast.

To illustrate how each thing on earth is connected with each other other thing on earth it is said that a petal falling from a flower in Thailand may cause a tornado in Alabama.

We are born, you and I, connected to vast networks of humanity and of earth. There is no such thing as an isolated individual. There is no such thing as a thing by itself.

1. Diseased networks

The problem for Olive and for every newborn child is that the networks into which they are born are diseased. I think my family is reasonably healthy, but I cannot maintain that it has no problems, no spiritual dysfunction whatever. And certainly, as much as I admire Canada, I cannot say that it is entirely healthy. Or the capitalist system. Or our educational systems. Or our businesses. Or the church. Every human network is diseased.

Olive was born into dysfunctional, diseased networks. Olive will struggle all her life against the dysfunction in which she is embedded.

We can call that fact the doctrine of original dysfunction or original disease. Our Hebrew ancestors, however, detected more than dysfunction. They sensed alienation. Somehow they were alienated from their source of being. They told stories from one generation to the next about their fundamental alienation, about a good God who created all things good, and from whom they had cut themselves off, about a righteous God who saw their evil deeds and in outrage destroyed all humankind except Noah and his family, about a loving God who rescued his people from slavery and made a covenant of law with them. From this God, who kept pursuing them, they felt themselves alienated.

Original dysfunction, original spiritual disease proceeding from alienation — that is the doctrine of original sin. We are born into a dysfunctional world alienated from its source of being, God.

I hasten to add that there are other aspects to the doctrine, that there are other ways of expressing it. But this is the best way I know to make it clear that we are each born in sin.

2. Guilt

Notice that Olive is not to blame. Olive did not choose to be born into an alienated, dysfunctional world. Olive did not choose to be born in sin. She has done nothing wrong. She is not guilty of sin. She has, however, been born into a world of sin.

But here’s the joker for Olive. Because she lives and will continue to live in diseased networks, she’ll catch their disease. She will do things she ought not to do; she will sin. And even though she did not choose to be born into such a world, and even though sinful behavior — at least some — is inevitable on her part, she will be guilty. She will come down with spiritual disease and from time to time she will do things she ought not to do, and for that she will be guilty. It happens to us all.

St. Paul calls it slavery. He graphically describes how he is enslaved to sin. And we are too — each of us. I have sinful habits I struggle against in vain. So do you. And so will Olive. That’s the human condition. You and I and our networks are enslaved to sin.

3. Human improvement

There’s a counter-story that needs to be told.

Not only is human history the story of war and strife and alienation; it is also the story of peacemaking and reconciliation and improvement in the human condition. You and I can look around us and bewail a downward trend in American life, but the fact is that our lives are vastly better than the lives of our ancestors. Our political system, as bad as it is, is far preferable to most of those in the world or those that have gone before. Humankind has gone in stages little by little from savagery to rule by petty kings or barons, then to kingdoms and empires, and eventually to democracies, each stage bringing — usually — an improvement in human relations and behavior. So human effort, human learning, human virtue amount to something.

How do such improvements take place?

Each step must be understood, I believe, as a giving up of self. I get better when I stop trying to heal myself by myself. I get better when I give up self to God or to another, loving human being. I get better when I stop trying to protect my ego.

Institutions get better when they stop trying to protect self, when they stop trying to enrich self, when they give up self-interest and seek the good of othersl

Think of some recent battles for and against reform. I’ll take some simple ones — tobacco sales, bottle and can deposits, and now, on the horizon, no more free plastic one-use bags. I choose these issues not because they are specially evil, but because it is easy to see the dynamics. The self-interest of tobacco companies fought and is still fighting against reform. Bottle and can deposits became successful law when the drink manufacturers discovered they could make money from the way the deposits are handled. And, you know, with plastic bags I can see several sets of self-interest that will have to be conquered if change is to take place. Consumers — you and I — and stores will have to give up convenience. Plastic bag makers will probably fight to the end. Giving up their self-interest means giving up a lot of money. And change will take place only when enough people give up self-interest.

Human advance means giving up self. And then I look with amazement at the shelves of books about self-improvement, about expanding the self, about enriching self-esteem. We are really hooked, you and I! We really are centered on self!

Conclusion. The church

That’s where the church comes in — on both the individual and corporate levels.

When we say, “Jesus saves,” we think immediately — at least I do — of individual salvation, of a person accepting Jesus and being saved. John Wesley, whose feast day we celebrated recently, comes to mind. He experienced an inner conversion on May 24, 1738, while listening to a reading of Luther’s Preface to the Epistle to the Romans. “I felt my heart strangely warmed,” he recorded, “I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”

We Anglicans don’t usually go in for such drama. We are likely to express more doubt, but at the same time more confidence in the church. We are likely to believe that partaking in the sacraments and confessing our sins we’ll turn out all right in the end. We are likely to believe more in a process of conversion than in a one time event.

Corporate conversion gets expressed, gets acted out successfully from time to time. Pope Francis appeals, I believe, because he is calling for corporate conversion, for a converted church. I loved the Episcopal Church I grew up in, but the Episcopal Church of today seems to me to have become a gradually converted church. Our witness and action have helped change many sinful networks — those that oppress women, those that oppress people of color, those that oppress sexual minorities, those that oppress religious minorities. I think we still have a long way to go when it comes to sinful business and social networks.

Such conversion — individual and corporate — is what Jesus is for. That’s what his self-lessness is for. That’s what we are called individually and as a body to be — self-less in the midst of a self-interested, self-centered, self-confident world.