Free Lunch

This is the third Sunday in Lent. This forty days is traditionally a time of reflection and repentance, a time to acknowledge our own sinfulness and need for God’s grace. And traditionally, too, pastors temporarily drop whatever track they were on and preach a series of special sermons just for Lent, to prepare us for this most holy time in the entire Christian calendar: the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. A classic example is a series on the seven last words of Christ. Another classic subject is the temptations of Christ in the wilderness. But I didn’t shift gears. I stuck with what I was doing.

I didn’t do a special series because you really can’t get much more explicit about our alienation from God and our need for repentance than in the series on the ten commandments which we finished up last week. As Paul says in his letter to the Romans, it is through the law that we become conscious of sin. When we look at what fulfilling the law is really about, when we see how right the Psalmist was to say that “there is no one who does good, not even one.”

Don’t get me wrong.

There are a lot of good people.

Particularly there are a lot of good people right here in this sanctuary, loving, generous, helpful people. But I’m not talking about human standards, as of course you know if you have sat through the last ten weeks.

What Paul meant was that there is no one who meets God’s standards of goodness. And there are only two ways of responding to that uncomfortable fact. Well, three, if you count ignoring God altogether. But let’s stick to those of us who are more inclined than not to believe that God does exist, and that God has an interest in human behavior.

People respond to the idea of the ten commandments most often nowadays by narrowing ‘em down. We’ve - that is, society in general - pretty much cut the list down to four of the originals (that is, murder, adultery, stealing, and lying), and adding a few modern ones like racism, sexism, and intolerance. And then we measure our behavior by our neighbors’ standards, rather than by God’s. Another way of putting it is that we’ve made up our own moral code, one that we can keep. Not to mention that at the same time we’ve also invented a God who grades on the curve. As long as we’re above the midpoint we’ll make it to heaven, right? Isn’t that the way most people seem to see it?

The other way to respond to the commandments is the way Isaiah responded to God. Remember early in his career God gave him a vision:

"In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and his train filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim; each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said: 'Holy, holy, holy is YHWH of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.' And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said: 'Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, YHWH of hosts!'” [Is 6:1-5]

When Isaiah saw the living God face to face, he saw himself clearly for the first time, and knew his own sinfulness. And he cried out in grief and despair. In much the same way, looking closely and honestly at the 10 commandments, as we have been doing, is enough to make us despair.

There’s an awful sense of shame and unworthiness and guilt that comes with recognizing the extent of our own sinfulness, even if we’re not as poetic about it as Isaiah was. That’s why talking about sin has gone out of fashion. It hurts. It hurts badly enough to paralyze us.

When I was studying evangelism in seminary, most of the people in my class were life-long evangelical Christians, mostly Baptists, of course, since it’s a Baptist seminary. And the classic model of sharing the gospel that most of them used began with the fact of our sin and our need for God’s forgiveness. I’m not sure any of them would have recognized any other way into the kingdom than through the sinner’s prayer, that is, “Jesus, I am a sinner, and I need your forgiveness,” or variations thereof. But I argued for a different approach.

The first point I made was that if people aren’t raised Christian, they mostly haven’t got a clue about sin, unless they’re major offenders. Most of the people out there think they’re pretty good people and that God will credit their good intentions as righteousness.