Guilt And Grace
Sermon
Come As You Are
Sermons On The Lord's Supper
Several years back I clipped out a newspaper article about a group of businessmen in Bellingham, Washington. They were trying to market a new product called "Guilt Away." Guilt Away was supposed to remove guilt. Part of their advertising ran like this: "Hounded by nagging guilt? Get rid of it the modern way, the same way you eliminate limp curls, bad breath or underarm wetness. Spray guilt away with new Guilt Away."
What they were trying to do was sell an eight-ounce bottle of rose water that you could spray on yourself when you were feeling guilty. Four bucks a bottle! I doubt that new Guilt Away worked. But if it did, it could have made its producers billions of dollars. Most of us can hardly get through a day without feeling at least a little bit guilty about something. As psychiatrist Paul Tournier once put it, "A guilty conscience is the seasoning of our daily life."
What parent hasn't felt guilty sometimes about disciplining the children: either that we have disciplined them too much, or haven't disciplined them enough? And that's only one of many things that can make a parent feel guilty.
A book titled How to Be a Guilty Parent listed 85 different types of parent guilt. Like "Working Mother Guilt." That's what happens when you get a telephone call that goes: "Hello, Mom? Is that you, Mom? I can hardly remember your voice any longer! Now, I know you don't like me to bother you at work, Mom, but, I've really got to know: where do you keep the instant coffee? I'd like to give the Fire Department and the Police some coffee before they leave."
But, of course, it isn't only parents who feel guilty. Children sometimes feel guilty about letting down their parents. I'm told that Samuel Johnson, the great British writer, reproached himself for his whole adult life over an incident that took place in his childhood. As a boy, Johnson pridefully had refused to help his father by watching his father's bookstall. Johnson never forgot that incident and never forgave himself for refusing his father. In his seventies, he went back to the spot where his father's bookstall had stood in the market, and stood there himself, in the rain, for hours, hatless, trying to come to peace with the fact that he had refused to help his father.
Parents can feel guilty. Children can feel guilty. Sometimes students feel guilty about not getting the most out of their education. Homeowners can feel guilty -- about taking a Saturday snooze instead of fixing the faucet. And so on. Tournier was right: a guilty conscience is the seasoning of daily life.
Well, what to do? If we could just spray our guilt away, we'd buy new Guilt Away -- and use it -- by the bucket. But we can't. So people try other ways to get rid of guilt.
Some of us try to deny our guilt. We're like the clergyman who, walking down the road, came upon a group of boys surrounding a dog.
"What are you doing with that dog?" the kindly clergyman asked.
"We're having a contest," said one of the boys. "Whoever can tell the biggest lie wins the dog."
"Oh, my, my, my," said the minister, "when I was a little boy like you, I never told lies."
There was a moment of stunned silence. Then, one of the boys responded, "Okay, mister, you win the dog!"
"If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us" (1 John 1:8, RSV). We can try to deny our guilt. But life won't let us long deny our guilt.
So then, maybe if we can't deny our guilt, maybe we can try works righteousness -- try to work it off. Say, you feel guilty about not visiting your Aunt Tillie. To make it up, you resolve to visit Aunt Tillie every single week, although, frankly, visiting Aunt Tillie and her 37 cats isn't really that much fun.
Still you do it. You visit Aunt Tillie winter and summer, rain and shine, for 52 consecutive weeks. Will that stop you from feeling guilty? No! Because sooner or later, your spouse or your children are going to complain that you're not spending enough time with them. You're always away -- visiting Aunt Tillie.
So you start to stretch out your visits to every two weeks. But before too long, your aunt will call you up and ask why you don't like her anymore. You don't visit like you used to. And if you get angry, and slam down the phone, you'll have to feel guilty about that!
You can't win. It's impossible to work off our guilt. Because we can't please everyone or do everything exactly right.
We can't deny our guilt. We can't work it off. Perhaps we can ease it by emersing ourselves in psychology. Most bookstores have a pop psychology, "self-help" section. Usually there's a dozen paperbacks in that section (often best sellers) about getting rid of the guilts. They give us advice like "turn off the Mom and Pop tapes in our head," stop collecting "guilt stamps," "learn to live with the normal crazies," or avoid your "Erroneous Zones."
Good, solid psychology is valuable, of course. Psychology itself, and its practitioners, have been an enormous blessing to society. These books can be helpful. But, what these books offer is a reduction of guilt, not a cure. Responsible writers are careful not to promise their readers too much. Paula and Dick McDonald, for example, authors of Guilt Free (Gossett and Dunlap Publishers) claim that by following their program most people can reduce their guilt load by up to sixty percent! But, the remaining forty percent, according to the McDonalds, is "not solvable." They tell their readers to learn to "live around it." There's no true escape in pop psychology, either.
Guilt is something like an automobile horn. It's useful, of course. But if the automobile horn gets stuck, it becomes a terrible nuisance! So, where can we turn for relief from guilt? Freedom from obsessive and oppressive guilt, I believe, can be had only through faith.
Our Christian faith tells us the truth about ourselves. We are indeed guilty. You and I do fail ourselves and our families and our friends and God every single day. "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23, RSV). "None is righteous, no, not one" (Romans 3:10, RSV). That's the "bad news" from Romans. But, the Good News is, "Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more" (Romans 5:20, RSV). Our sins may be great, but not greater than God's amazing grace.
The grace of God is proclaimed triumphantly in the eighth chapter of the book of Romans. In part of that chapter, verses 33 and 34, the Apostle Paul presents the image of each one of us standing in court. Imagine yourself in court! Your sins have brought you to court!
And the jury in that courtroom is every single person you've ever let down or hurt -- your mother, your father, your children, your spouse, the neighbor you don't like, the telephone salesman you were rude to last June, your eighth-grade Sunday School teacher that you gave such a hard time, your Aunt Tillie (whom you never visit) -- every single person you have ever hurt or let down is there in the courtroom to pass judgment on you.
The prosecutor, your own conscience, reads out the long, sordid list of your sins and moral failures. All your sins are exposed now, and you, God, and everyone else you've ever known can see them all. Whatever we have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what we have whispered behind closed doors will be shouted from the rooftops (Luke 12:3). Not even our secret thoughts will be hidden any longer.
The verdict is clear: Guilty, guilty, guilty! Every sharp word and thoughtless deed, every ugly thought rises up to condemn you. You, too, realize you deserve to die.
But there is One in the courtroom who is there to defend you, at a moment when you can't even defend yourself. It's Jesus Christ, our advocate, the righteous one (1 John 2:1), the Son of God. Radiant with power and glory, he stands in the courtroom and pleads for you.
"Yes," he says, "this one, the sinner, deserves to die. But I have already claimed this one for myself -- not because of this one's goodness but because of this one's faith. I've already paid the debt for this one. And Jesus shows the nail marks in his hands and the spear mark in his side. And the onlookers gasp.
And then God, the Great Judge, looks down upon his beloved Son, who pleads on your behalf, who has already paid for your sins on the cross; God looks down on Jesus and you, and raises the gavel and declares you not guilty, not guilty, not guilty. Not because of your goodness, but because you belong to Christ. Not guilty. Acquitted on all charges. Case closed!
Friends, we are never going to be able to spray our guilt away. Or ignore it. Or work it off. Or psychologize it away, either. Freedom from guilt comes only through faith. From faith that, while our sins and shortcomings are great, the grace of God is even greater.
Listen again to the words of the Apostle Paul:
If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, will he not also give us all things with him? ... Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? ... No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation [including our guilt] will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:31b-32, 35, 37-39, RSV)
Believe in the Good News. And live at peace.
What they were trying to do was sell an eight-ounce bottle of rose water that you could spray on yourself when you were feeling guilty. Four bucks a bottle! I doubt that new Guilt Away worked. But if it did, it could have made its producers billions of dollars. Most of us can hardly get through a day without feeling at least a little bit guilty about something. As psychiatrist Paul Tournier once put it, "A guilty conscience is the seasoning of our daily life."
What parent hasn't felt guilty sometimes about disciplining the children: either that we have disciplined them too much, or haven't disciplined them enough? And that's only one of many things that can make a parent feel guilty.
A book titled How to Be a Guilty Parent listed 85 different types of parent guilt. Like "Working Mother Guilt." That's what happens when you get a telephone call that goes: "Hello, Mom? Is that you, Mom? I can hardly remember your voice any longer! Now, I know you don't like me to bother you at work, Mom, but, I've really got to know: where do you keep the instant coffee? I'd like to give the Fire Department and the Police some coffee before they leave."
But, of course, it isn't only parents who feel guilty. Children sometimes feel guilty about letting down their parents. I'm told that Samuel Johnson, the great British writer, reproached himself for his whole adult life over an incident that took place in his childhood. As a boy, Johnson pridefully had refused to help his father by watching his father's bookstall. Johnson never forgot that incident and never forgave himself for refusing his father. In his seventies, he went back to the spot where his father's bookstall had stood in the market, and stood there himself, in the rain, for hours, hatless, trying to come to peace with the fact that he had refused to help his father.
Parents can feel guilty. Children can feel guilty. Sometimes students feel guilty about not getting the most out of their education. Homeowners can feel guilty -- about taking a Saturday snooze instead of fixing the faucet. And so on. Tournier was right: a guilty conscience is the seasoning of daily life.
Well, what to do? If we could just spray our guilt away, we'd buy new Guilt Away -- and use it -- by the bucket. But we can't. So people try other ways to get rid of guilt.
Some of us try to deny our guilt. We're like the clergyman who, walking down the road, came upon a group of boys surrounding a dog.
"What are you doing with that dog?" the kindly clergyman asked.
"We're having a contest," said one of the boys. "Whoever can tell the biggest lie wins the dog."
"Oh, my, my, my," said the minister, "when I was a little boy like you, I never told lies."
There was a moment of stunned silence. Then, one of the boys responded, "Okay, mister, you win the dog!"
"If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us" (1 John 1:8, RSV). We can try to deny our guilt. But life won't let us long deny our guilt.
So then, maybe if we can't deny our guilt, maybe we can try works righteousness -- try to work it off. Say, you feel guilty about not visiting your Aunt Tillie. To make it up, you resolve to visit Aunt Tillie every single week, although, frankly, visiting Aunt Tillie and her 37 cats isn't really that much fun.
Still you do it. You visit Aunt Tillie winter and summer, rain and shine, for 52 consecutive weeks. Will that stop you from feeling guilty? No! Because sooner or later, your spouse or your children are going to complain that you're not spending enough time with them. You're always away -- visiting Aunt Tillie.
So you start to stretch out your visits to every two weeks. But before too long, your aunt will call you up and ask why you don't like her anymore. You don't visit like you used to. And if you get angry, and slam down the phone, you'll have to feel guilty about that!
You can't win. It's impossible to work off our guilt. Because we can't please everyone or do everything exactly right.
We can't deny our guilt. We can't work it off. Perhaps we can ease it by emersing ourselves in psychology. Most bookstores have a pop psychology, "self-help" section. Usually there's a dozen paperbacks in that section (often best sellers) about getting rid of the guilts. They give us advice like "turn off the Mom and Pop tapes in our head," stop collecting "guilt stamps," "learn to live with the normal crazies," or avoid your "Erroneous Zones."
Good, solid psychology is valuable, of course. Psychology itself, and its practitioners, have been an enormous blessing to society. These books can be helpful. But, what these books offer is a reduction of guilt, not a cure. Responsible writers are careful not to promise their readers too much. Paula and Dick McDonald, for example, authors of Guilt Free (Gossett and Dunlap Publishers) claim that by following their program most people can reduce their guilt load by up to sixty percent! But, the remaining forty percent, according to the McDonalds, is "not solvable." They tell their readers to learn to "live around it." There's no true escape in pop psychology, either.
Guilt is something like an automobile horn. It's useful, of course. But if the automobile horn gets stuck, it becomes a terrible nuisance! So, where can we turn for relief from guilt? Freedom from obsessive and oppressive guilt, I believe, can be had only through faith.
Our Christian faith tells us the truth about ourselves. We are indeed guilty. You and I do fail ourselves and our families and our friends and God every single day. "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23, RSV). "None is righteous, no, not one" (Romans 3:10, RSV). That's the "bad news" from Romans. But, the Good News is, "Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more" (Romans 5:20, RSV). Our sins may be great, but not greater than God's amazing grace.
The grace of God is proclaimed triumphantly in the eighth chapter of the book of Romans. In part of that chapter, verses 33 and 34, the Apostle Paul presents the image of each one of us standing in court. Imagine yourself in court! Your sins have brought you to court!
And the jury in that courtroom is every single person you've ever let down or hurt -- your mother, your father, your children, your spouse, the neighbor you don't like, the telephone salesman you were rude to last June, your eighth-grade Sunday School teacher that you gave such a hard time, your Aunt Tillie (whom you never visit) -- every single person you have ever hurt or let down is there in the courtroom to pass judgment on you.
The prosecutor, your own conscience, reads out the long, sordid list of your sins and moral failures. All your sins are exposed now, and you, God, and everyone else you've ever known can see them all. Whatever we have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what we have whispered behind closed doors will be shouted from the rooftops (Luke 12:3). Not even our secret thoughts will be hidden any longer.
The verdict is clear: Guilty, guilty, guilty! Every sharp word and thoughtless deed, every ugly thought rises up to condemn you. You, too, realize you deserve to die.
But there is One in the courtroom who is there to defend you, at a moment when you can't even defend yourself. It's Jesus Christ, our advocate, the righteous one (1 John 2:1), the Son of God. Radiant with power and glory, he stands in the courtroom and pleads for you.
"Yes," he says, "this one, the sinner, deserves to die. But I have already claimed this one for myself -- not because of this one's goodness but because of this one's faith. I've already paid the debt for this one. And Jesus shows the nail marks in his hands and the spear mark in his side. And the onlookers gasp.
And then God, the Great Judge, looks down upon his beloved Son, who pleads on your behalf, who has already paid for your sins on the cross; God looks down on Jesus and you, and raises the gavel and declares you not guilty, not guilty, not guilty. Not because of your goodness, but because you belong to Christ. Not guilty. Acquitted on all charges. Case closed!
Friends, we are never going to be able to spray our guilt away. Or ignore it. Or work it off. Or psychologize it away, either. Freedom from guilt comes only through faith. From faith that, while our sins and shortcomings are great, the grace of God is even greater.
Listen again to the words of the Apostle Paul:
If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, will he not also give us all things with him? ... Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? ... No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation [including our guilt] will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:31b-32, 35, 37-39, RSV)
Believe in the Good News. And live at peace.
