There is in our culture an ancient yet conventional piece of wisdom. It is so ancient that it was part of the teachings of ancient Israel, but it is so conventional, that it was taught to all of us by our grade school and Sunday school teachers.
Our 3rd grade teacher probably put it to us as something like this: After making a glance at the class sociopath, she would look at the rest of the class and say, "Now you remember class, one rotten apple can spoil the whole bunch."
Now that is a common and surface expression of a deeper theological truth understood by ancient Israel, and that is -- put bluntly and plainly, "Human sinfulness is a public disease"
In other words, regardless of the impression that revivalist preachers have given us, it is not true to put sinfulness in purely individualistic terms.
Human sinfulness by definition infects and rots the fabric of the whole community.
Try for example, this hypothetical moral recipe. Take one group of honest people for whom truth telling comes innocently and naturally, add a dash of liars, shake well and allow to sit. What dish will result?
It will not be long before no one in the group will no longer know whom to believe, and it will not be long before someone in the group will blurt out loudly, "Philosophically speaking, what is truth any way?"
Human sinfulness by definition infects and rots the fabric of the whole community.
Take a nice school, and add just a few drug users. Even those who don’t use the drugs are affected by those who do, and the presence of the drugs infects the fabric of everyone’s relationship.
Take one nice, decent highway, add one drunk driver, and everyone on the road is potentially affected by that one driver.
Anytime you are trying to build a society, or a church, or a family, or a group, or a world -- it only takes a few rotten apples to mess it up for the rest of us.
Now the solution to that is simple enough, get rid of the wicked few.
And I suppose the Pharisees, the puritans, the holiness movement, the Ku Klux Klan and the Taliban, and most of us, have in their own time and in their own way have tried to do just that, but they have each failed.
Because they ran into another truth that Israel knew, and that is that you cannot get rid of sinfulness in a human community. There is just too much of it.
To try to do so is like stamping out a gasoline fire. The more you stamp, the more it spreads. And that means logically, that every community, and this community, will eventually move toward becoming like Sodom and Gomorrah. Which is not a pleasant thought.
That is why this story was so important to the ancient people. It was not just an amusing story about the Reno and Las Vegas of the old world and how those cities got what was coming to them.
Sodom and Gomorrah., were surprisingly enough, were not far fetched examples, but according to one Old Testament scholar, models for communities. So that is why when communities heard this story, they perked up their ears and listened.
It was also in this story that Old Abraham came up that rarest of all human discoveries, a new theological idea. Most theological ideas are not new, but this one was. In fact his new theological idea was so revolutionary and mind boggling, that he was both proud and embarrassed to have thought of it.
What if, he said, given the fact that the sinfulness of a few can destroy a good community, what if the economy of God can work the other way? What if the broken and wicked community can be saved and redeemed by a few good apples -- a few righteous.?
That was an idea so innovative, he took it to the source Himself. And when he did so, he did it was if he were the skinniest kid in the neighborhood, drawing a dare line for the toughest bully on the street.
"I know you are going to beat up on Sodom and Gomorrah, but suppose there are 50 righteous, would you step over that line and save them?"
The divine answer, and God step forward and said yes.
"What about 40?"
"Yes."
"30?"
"Yes."
"20? 10?"
"Yes."
The mercy of God for the righteous is stronger than the punishment of God for the wicked.
But you know the outcome, Sodom comes up short and the prospect for the human community is a dim one indeed. And that is why for us and for ancient Israel, there should be an element of fear for what we need to do next. And that is to put this community in this story.
And if you think the prospect for hope for this community is to destroy the wicked among us, then you are way behind the times. The hope for the community is in finding a few righteous. So lets start counting the righteous. Are there perhaps among us here today, 50 righteous? Don’t raise your hands yet. Before we have a show of hands, what we need
to do is to figure out what it means to be righteous.
If you want to understand a word, what better place to go than to the dictionary.
Righteous. Adjective. Conforming in disposition and conduct to a standard of right and justice. Upright. Virtuous.
Dennis was the president of the congregation where he worshipped God. By all outward appearances, he was a devout Christian. His pastor said he was in church almost every Sunday. When Dennis couldn’t attend a congregational pot-luck dinner, he still prepared food and sent it to the church. He helped count the offering after worship services. He told nice, tasteful jokes. He seemed very pleasant. He was married. He had children. He seemed to be a devoted husband and father. He seemed like a righteous person.
Then one day the police arrested Dennis Rader for being BTK. BTK was the nickname the media and police had given to a serial murderer who liked to bind, torture and then kill his victims. There seems to be no doubt about his guilt.
Are there 40 righteous?
Fred was a class mate of mine when I was in college. He was an Eagle Scout. He helped with the youth group of one of the local churches. He volunteered his help at a local nursing home. Fred had a well deserved reputation among the students. He never drank, ever smoked, took care of himself and others. By every standard, Fred was a righteous person, conforming to standards of right and justice.
Then one day, Fred didn’t show up for class. No one saw him in the dormitory. Fred, although he was a decent fellow, never really made any friends, so it was a couple of days before anyone started growing concerned.
Fred had been arrested. He had molested one of the young children of his chemistry professor.
Are there 30 righteous?
Some time ago, Jim and Tammy Bakker were forced to leave the PTL Club as a result of Jim Bakker’s indiscretions. He had misused money, and committed a number of other wrongful acts, one of which was his affair with Jessica Hahn. This affair was brought to the attention of the authorities of the Assembly of God Church, the denomination of which Bakker is a part, by another Assembly of God minister, Jimmy Swaggart.
Swaggart had already helped defrock another fellow minister who had been involved in a sexual affair.
Of course, you may remember the rest of the story. Swaggart was himself caught with a prostitute in a motel room.
Are there 20 righteous? 10? Or dare I draw even another line. One that Abraham did not have enough hope to add. Is there even one.
One?
In Paul’s letter to the Romans, he says that "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God."
Is there not even one righteous here?
Or among all of humanity?
Paul’s letter deals with that issue and in it he states very clearly that the answer is no.
Not 50, not 40, not even --- not even one.
And Paul, good preacher that he is, does not imply that this is his opinion. But he backs it up with Scripture. He quotes Psalm 14, which says, "There is no one who is righteous. No one who is wise, or who worship God. All have turned away from God’; they have all gone wrong; no one does what is right, not even one. Their words are full of deadly deceit; wicked lies roll off their tongues, and dangerous threats, like snake’s poison, from their lips; their speech is filled with bitter curses. They are quick to hurt, and kill, they leave ruin and destruction wherever they go. They have not known the path of peace, nor have they learned reverence for God."
Now before you characterize the author of that Psalm as a pessimistic fellow, take a hard look at the newspaper, and at the world around us.
He hits the nail on the head. He knows humanity. There is no one righteous. Not 50, not 40, not one.
Which is not pleasant news when one looks to see what happened to Sodom and Gommorah. As my 3rd grade teacher said, "One bad apple spoils the bunch." But in Sodom and Gomorrahs case, there was not even one good apple to save the bunch.
And what of our world?
Our sinful recklessness has damaged the environment. What will save us?
Our sinful greed has established poverty at the deepest levels. What will save us?
Our sinful fears and hates have built up nuclear arsenals to destroy us in the blink of an eye. What will save us?
Are there not 50, 40, 30? Is there not even one righteous person?
Yes, there is one among us who is righteous. One among us on whom God’s favor falls. As Paul said, God gave Christ Jesus to shadow his own righteousness. Good news that Abraham only dimly saw. That into the midst of broken human community, God himself would provide his own righteousness. He makes our community life not only possible, but pleasant.
It is through the one good apple, the one righteous, the one Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, that we are saved.
How many of us depend on our own righteousness to redeem us? How many of us think, “I’m living a good life. God will save me because I go to church. I take care of my family. I’m a good person.”
And I have no doubt in the truth of that statement. This is a great church, full of wonderful people. But I also have no doubt that everyone of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. There is not a person here who can depend on living the good life as a means of redemption – for we can never be good enough.
It is not just that the obvious sinners among us are the bad apples in our community. We are all bad apples. We are all perfect citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah. And you can’t redeem our community by getting rid of all of us, bad apples.
It is through the one good apple, the one righteous, the one Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, that we are saved.
Are there 50 righteous among us?
No, but thank God, it doesn’t matter.
We need only one righteous among us -- Jesus Christ.
Copyright 2005, Dr. Maynard Pittendreigh
All rights reserved.
www.Pittendreigh.com
