Contrition

How many here have struggled with sin, and/or are affected by someone dealing with sin? Sin is one of the most enduring problems we face as Christians. Personally, I struggle with the fact that Christians, including myself, continue to deal with sin, even after the powerful effects of baptism into the Kingdom of God. If any remember correctly, the last time we encountered the story of the two sons, we looked into the perspective of the older brother, who remained cold and aloof as his younger brother returned from the dregs of the world into the arms of his family. Today, I would like to look at the front end of the story, from the younger brother’s point of view. The younger brother's journey into the abyss provides a detailed description of the human encounter with sin, and can give us insight into beginning our own journey back from sin into the arms of our Father.

As I pointed out in my last sermon, the manner in which the younger son leaves his household reveals a drama worthy of daytime television. In ancient times, as it is also done in our time, inheritance was traditionally given upon the death of the father of the household. Thus, when the younger son asks his father for his share of the inheritance, he is consequently implying that he does not value his father’s life. The son declares his independence from his father’s counsel, and strikes out to find his own way in life. To an ancient Hebrew audience, this plot sets up the son to be a deserter and traitor of tradition…one who dishonors his namesake and takes the path of a fool. In Scripture, the fool cannot see past his own pride. He is blind to anyone other than himself, including God. Thus, he has no basis for moral choices other than to follow in the path that he deems best. I hope you can see the irony in this description…I imagine this scenario does not sound foreign to us…verily, it sounds like the plot to a movie made-over a thousand times in our culture. The younger son would be painted a hero in our stories…a strong-minded, independent soul who does not allow any other authority form his life beyond his own counsel. But scripture paints a much different picture of the son. Even the first steps of his journey are questionable.

And in this particular story, the fool’s choices lead him to a fool’s treasure. As the son squanders his money in “dissolute living”, he eventually runs out of funds. I find it important to note that running out of funds did not necessarily bring the son to a point of crisis. Notice that after the son runs out of money, a famine spreads throughout the land…and then the son recognizes his need. Would the son have recognized his need without the crisis of a famine? Do we not often put ourselves in the same situation? I know personally, I often need a slap in the face to recognize that I am entrenched in a pathological habit, simply because I lack the ability to judge my own life reasonably. Psalm 32 exhorts us: “Do not be like the horse or mule, which have no understanding, but must be controlled by bit and bridle or they will not come to you.” God wants us to be able to judge our lives and make appropriate decisions. It seems that nowadays, when I call out to our oldest basset hound, Gatsby, to come down into the field to use the bathroom, he refuses with a glazed-over stare. I then proceed to pull him down into the field with the leash, because I refuse to stand around in 95-degree weather while my basset hound learns to obey my command. I am eternally grateful that God’s patience vastly exceeds my own. God does not want to coerce us constantly in order to bring us back to him. Yet, sometimes, a crisis is necessary to awaken us from our prideful slumber, and such happened to the younger son.

Sadly, sin is not only a spiritual condition, but is also carried on in the body. When we experience episodes of pleasure, a chemical called dopamine is released in our brains to register pleasure and record the event. After the initial release of dopamine, the part of our brain that reasons and assesses situations is impaired, and we are more likely to make irrational decisions. Our brain then associates the experience with the feelings of pleasure, encouraging us to seek out the same experience again, which subsequently reinforces the association until we form a bad habit or addiction. What God created to be good, we can distort and abuse on an intimate level. While the youngest son was experiencing pleasure, he was also forming bad habits in both his body and soul.

At his lowest point, we find the son feeding himself in the trough with the pigs. Most of us would find such behavior embarrassing, but the younger son is actually breaking Jewish Law by feeding with the pigs. Here, we see the son at his lowest point…not only is he isolating himself from the rest of the world through such detestable behavior, but he also tramples his relationship with God, breaking the law in order to survive. I’m certain that some find this reading unsympathetic and harsh…you would like to raise a question Les Miserablean question about stealing bread to feed your family…but you must take up such ethical quandaries with Jewish tradition. And even so, notice that the son does not simply feed his hunger, but that he “fills himself” with the pigs’ pods. The son cannot end his habit of excess. Even though he wallows with the pigs, he wallows in excess. Through a combination of pathological habit and intervening circumstance, the path of the fool leads the son to the fool’s abyss. Pride does not exist in the fool’s end…here, there is only honesty.

And thus, we hear that the young man came to his senses. Is this not a line of gospel? Oh, how each of us need this clarity in our lives. The young man found himself naked and vulnerable before himself, and before the living God. The irrationality clouding his mind dispersed, and he could clearly judge his situation. I am so thankful that God is persistent, and will struggle with us until we find this moment of reckoning with our selves. The young man’s situation became clear to him…if he would only humble himself and ask for help, then he wouldn’t have to die broken and alone in the world. Notice that he acknowledges both sin against his father, and sin against God. The young man realizes that he has sacrificed the most important relationships in his life to follow his own ideals. As an outsider to the story, it is easy to pity the young man, or possibly to judge him at a distance, but do we not deal with the same problems in our own lives? Do we not often sacrifice things in our lives to follow the path that we deem best? If only we held such a moment of transparency, we might consider a different path.

Yet, if honesty and uninhibited self-assessment were all that were require of the young man in his journey to repentance, then we could wrap up this story and go have lunch. However, something more is needed to recover from sin than psycho-analysis. After evaluating his situation, the young man takes a step of action and returns to his father to confess of his wrongdoing. The young man begins by being transparent before himself, and then moves to a position of transparency before someone that he trusts. You see, when open the shades and let light shine in the darkened corners of our souls, the darkness is obliterated. If we would open ourselves in confession to one another, then the darkness that we harbor within ourselves scatters and we can begin to heal the brokenness that we have let into our lives. I cannot begin to tell you where I would be without an accountability partner. I have found someone whom I trust, and I confide in him the mistakes I might have made during the week. Sin gains power from being hidden, but once we let others know of the sin in our lives, we are freed from sin’s hold on us. The young man did not stop at his moment of self-reckoning, but moved to confess his sin with a contrite heart of honesty.

As the young man confessed his sin, he also took action to begin to repair the bad habits which he had built on his sojourn into the world. The young man decides to become a servant in his father’s household. At first glance, this seems like a minor detail, but I believe that a prideful son would use his familial position to mooch off of his father. The young son takes a humble approach to reconciling with his father by entering the household in the lowest possible position. He comes home expecting to beg for food…he does not come home expecting a feast. The son is making restitution for his broken life by taking the appropriate steps. Although we are not saved by such actions, we ought to take such steps in our own lives to heal the brokenness done to us by sin. Maybe this means asking others for forgiveness of help. We might need to sacrifice certain things that we enjoy to renew ourselves. We might need to allot more time for God, or in service to other people in order to heal self-centeredness. None of these actions assure our salvation, but they might be a step in the road to recovery from sin.

As we end our journey to repentance with the younger son, I hope you are able to discern a general outline of how one can deal with sinful situations. We begin with sin, whether it be an evident problem, or one that requires a crisis to bring about realization. Then, we reach a moment of clarity when we must reckon where we stand in relation to sin and whether we wish to make a decision to action with honest motives. Next, we confess our sin to someone we trust in order to bring further transparency into the situation and weaken sin’s power over our lives. Finally, we act to heal the wounds left by our sin and to hopefully bring about lasting change in our lives. None of the journey to repentance is possible without the touch of God that brings about life. Yet, repentance also requires that we take an honest assessment of ourselves, and that we act in accordance with our motives. I want to offer a time for us to stand naked before God. Take this time to be honest to yourself, and to be honest to God.

Genesis 15: "Ordinary Time"

If you look on your weekly reading schedule, you will notice that we are entering a long journey to fall, void of holidays which some churches call “Ordinary Time.” Sounds exciting, eh? Fall and winter have days of expectation, looking towards Christmas, while spring has days of reflection and fasting leading up to our celebration of the Resurrection of Christ. But now, we enter back into the world of the ordinary…the world we have known during most of our lifetime. I don’t know about you, but I find it hard to get through “ordinary” times…I want something to strive towards. As we enter into ordinary time, we are presented with a story of expectation in the form of a promise. This promise brings hope in the midst of hopelessness, and in doing so, reveals Truth about God’s mission to save the world. This truth is what we need to cling to as we enter back into the world as we know it: the world of the ordinary.

In order to grasp what’s happening in this story, we must look back at Abram’s past. Abram is a man who abandons his home, his relatives and his inheritance in order to seek out a land that a foreign god has promised to him. Abram takes this god at his word, and sets out. Later on, Abram finds out that his wife, Sara, is unable to conceive a child. Thus, having abandoned his homeland, Abram must look to his nephew, Lot, to carry on his family name. Lot proves to be selfish and quarrelsome, and lo and behold, Lot and Abram decide to part ways. Are you beginning to see a theme? Even Abram arrives at the land promised to him…even as he conquers peoples and collects blessings and possessions…Abram has no one to carry on his legacy. If Abram were to die, then the story of his great trek across the world, and of all his victories…even the inheritance of a promised land…would vanish on the wind.

This story sets up Abram as a prophet of God, meaning that Abram is a point of contact between heaven and earth. The prophets most known to us tend to reveal God’s Word, although some reveal God to the world through certain actions. Here, procreation is Abram’s prophetic mission, carrying on God’s promise to fill a void world with life. The structure of the story follows other stories of prophetic call: Abram addresses God as “O Lord God”; Abram responds to God’s promise with a complication or concern; God responds with staggering reassurance. All of these details mirror other stories such as the calling of Gideon, Isaiah and Jeremiah. Abram belongs to a line of prophets, and God’s promise of procreation involves much more than simply providing an heir to the family empire. God wants to heal the earth through Abram…He wants to make a blessing out of a curse.

At the same time, Abram confronts one of the greatest perils facing humanity. We all face this conflict daily in our lives…this conflict is that: things change. When we take the time to learn about something…when we measure it, and study it, and reflect upon it…in time, we later find some new mystery that confounds our mind. When set out our plans…when we wait, and gather, and prepare…some new conflict arises to throw us off course. When we spend time getting to know someone…when we listen to them, and share with them, and invest in them…the situation changes, and we find ourselves having to adapt once again. The world is ever changing…the ancient philosopher Heraclitus once said that “you can never step into the same river twice”, because a river is constantly moving. Every time Abram found a secure foothold on this promise that God had made, the plan would change. New details would arise, and people would change their mind. Do we not face these problems daily in our lives? As this river of life keeps shifting…if everything we know and plan and invest in keeps moving and changing…how can we trust anything? How can we trust anyone?

And so, Abram responds to God’s promise with a borderline insult. Imagine the situation: Abram cannot have a son, so he chooses a nephew as his heir. This is not an ideal situation, but at least his acquired property and namesake will pass on into the future. Then, when Abram and Lot part ways, Abram can only imagine his inheritance passing on to his butler. This is somewhat of an embarrassment, and surely not what Abram imagined when God promised him so much at Abram’s calling. God has not promised a specific heir up to this point, so Abram has no idea what God has planned for him. Even Abram’s financial victories are lonely, as he cannot share his earnings with a child. All that Abram knows now is failure and abandonment, save for the persistent voice of this strange God who continually speaks.

However, without such hardship, Abram could not have mined the absolute depths of trust. Had he not abandoned his home…or if Sara’s womb had been fertile…or if his heir apparent had not abandoned him, Abram would not have felt his foundation shaken to its core. He would not have known how to trust, because he would have had no need to trust. It is this tension that we face as humans, the tension between brokenness and promise. Blaise Pascal describes the importance of this tension: “It is dangerous to show man too clearly how much alike he is to the beasts without showing him his greatness. It is also dangerous to show him too clearly his greatness without showing him his lowliness. It is still more dangerous to leave him in ignorance of both, but it is very advantageous to show him both.” The brokenness of humanity is hard for us to bear, but even in our depravity, God has found a way for this brokenness to bear His promise of salvation for the world…much in the same way that God still brings green growth from a cursed, famine-stricken land. The foundation of trust is a startling realization of our own need…that left to our own power, we are an abyss of nothingness.

And yet, God never fails us. When Paul interprets this passage, he reads verse 6 as crediting Abram with righteousness for his belief in God, and subsequently, the majority of Christians follow Paul’s reading of this passage. In talking with my friend Beef on this passage, he pointed me to an interpretation of verse 6, which reads something like, “the Lord reckoned it to Himself as righteousness.” Think about it for a second…that Abram places his full trust in God continually, he is passing judgment on God and saying, “You are righteous. You are worthy to be trusted.” Of course, God does not need this judgment…but Abram does. In trusting God, Abram begins to understand God’s identity on a personal level. Abram is not trusting in a promise…he is not focused on what he will gain out of this journey into foreign lands. Abram begins to trust God as a Person. He trusts the living God…and through this learning experience, Abram is becoming intimate with the Person of God. Living in covenant with God changes Abram…it changes the way he sees the world, and it changes the way he sees God.

Today, each one of us could stand up, walk out the front door of this building, and look out upon drought. We can each walk just down the road, knock on some doors and see famine. If we can strike up a conversation with several people on the corner of Weaver, or down Franklin, or at the intersection of 15-501 and Mt. Moriah at New Hope Commons…if you speak to enough people anywhere in this world…you can see brokenness. This is the world we live in…this is the ordinary. But when God looks into the ordinary, He sees promise. And if we spend enough time with Him…if we can reach a level of intimacy where we know Him, in the deep sense of that word, then we can see God in the ordinary. My friends, God is here. God is amongst us, and He is harvesting great promise from the driest plots of earth. He is giving Himself to fill empty stomachs the daily bread that He has promised. He is fixing the ruined beauty of His creation, just as He promised Noah as the baptismal waters of the Flood receded. God is everywhere in the land of the ordinary, because His promise to be with us endures at all times. He is with us, now and always, in special times, and ordinary. World without end. Amen.