The Utmost Patience For The Foremost Sinner
Sermon
Sermons on the Second Readings
Series III, Cycle C
We usually don't spend too much time thinking about our own sinfulness. On occasion, of course, our feelings of guilt overwhelm us. We can't stop thinking about our sinfulness. If we are in that situation, we may need to talk that out with someone. Apart from times like that, we don't think much about our own sinfulness. We have ways of getting around that.
We don't think about our sins because we are too appalled at the sins of others. The news media throws in our faces the outrageous sins of other people. We overdose on the spectacular murders, war crimes, cruelty, child abuse, and depravity of others. We know more than we want to know about parents who torture their children, sometimes in horrific ways, like cooking them in a microwave. We see such things and become too complacent about our own sins. As long as we are not as bad as some people, we must be doing okay.
Our emotional needs keep us from thinking about our sins. Most of the time we need all of our emotional energy just to get by. Life seems to throw everything at us that it can. We don't have time or energy left to think about our sins. We come to church to gain the emotional strength to survive the coming week, not to hear someone pound the pulpit about what sinners we are.
What is front and center for us is not our sins, but the ways others have sinned against us. We carry the memory of grudges big and small around inside of us. The sins against us that hurt the most are the ones that someone got away with or that no one ever noticed. How dare anyone bring up our sinfulness when we have been so sinned against!
Besides, our sins aren't that bad! We're not perfect by any means, but what we do is piddly stuff, right? A psychologist conducted an experiment in which he asked people to describe a time they had hurt someone. Then, they were to describe a time when they were hurt. When the subjects described a time they had hurt someone, they invariably thought the hurt they caused wasn't too bad and didn't last long. The other person got over it. What they had done was justifiable, unpreventable. But, when they described their own hurts, the pain was intense and long-lasting; they had trouble putting it behind them. The perpetrator acted out of bad motives. No excuse was good enough for what the other person had done. In many cases, both the hurt they caused, and the hurt they endured were about the same kind of thing.1
No matter how much we don't want to hear about our sinfulness, we need to hear about it. We fool ourselves. We let ourselves off the hook. We buy our own excuses. There's a danger to that.
Our passage today in 1 Timothy is an honest reflection on sinfulness. First Timothy is one of those books that New Testament scholars have trouble with. We are not sure if 1 Timothy was actually written by Paul. The ideas in the letter do not sound like Paul. The writing style is different. Some scholars think that one of Paul's students may have written it in Paul's name. Why would someone do that? We see a kind of modern-day parallel in the practice of United Methodist Bishop Woodie White, who writes an open letter every year to Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. King has been dead for over forty years. Nevertheless, Bishop White writes these letters to keep King's memory and influence alive and to discuss racial issues in an indirect way. Something like that may have been going on here in 1 Timothy. When the readers of the letter are reminded about Paul, they may pay closer attention. The question of authorship matters here because this passage talks in a very personal way about Paul's sins. Is this a first-person confession or a reflection on sin prompted by Paul's life? We can learn from it either way.
As the passage reminds us, Paul never hid from his sinfulness. In Romans 7, he speaks for people of all ages who have grappled with temptation.
For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.
-- Romans 7:18-19
The book of Acts depicts barbaric things Paul did. He persecuted members of the early church. He held everybody's jackets when they stoned Stephen. He hauled off men and women to prison. In Acts, Paul was an angry control freak.
This passage uses three terms to describe Paul: blasphemer, persecutor, man of violence. These three terms reveal the comprehensive nature of Paul's sinfulness and teach us something about our own. If we examine these three terms carefully, we see what our sin does to us. Blasphemy is an insult to God. Persecution is cruelty to someone else. Violence is an attempt to control, arising out of the anger and hate within us. These three terms summarize our sinfulness. A blasphemer is alienated from God. A persecutor is alienated from other people. A person of violence, full of anger and hate, is alienated from him or herself. Our sinfulness wrecks all three relationships. We are isolated and estranged from everyone.
Many things cause this isolation and estrangement. Part of it, but not all of it, is our own rebellion against God. In our pride, we reject God's offer of grace and healing. We stubbornly refuse to submit ourselves to God's will. That rebellion is not the whole story, however. We live in a fallen world, a creation that is not what God intends. As Paul himself says, the creation is subjected to futility and in bondage to decay (Romans 8:20-21). The sin that holds the creation in bondage holds us in bondage as well. We are influenced by social, economic, and spiritual forces beyond our control. We cannot just excuse our bad behavior, but we are part of a larger problem. Alienation is part of the human experience. The Bible gives numerous examples of people who experienced God as far away. It is true that sometimes we separate ourselves from God, but it is also true that sometimes God seems far away and we don't know why. We feel like the psalmist who cried out, "How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?" (Psalm 13:1). Our sinfulness is something we do, we cause, and also something that is part of the whole creation, something we are trapped in.
This passage calls us to be honest about our part in our sinfulness, to own it, to face it, to admit it. If we feel blocked from God, what is our part in that? If we are cut off from other people, how much of that is our fault? If we are not at peace within ourselves, how are we to blame? If we deny our part, we can never feel the cleansing, the release, or the joy of being forgiven. We can never move past where we are. We can never feel reconnected to God. We can never sop up the bitterness of our broken relationships.
If we do not confess our sins, if we continue to deny them, we may dupe ourselves into thinking we have gotten away with them. Eventually, though, our sins leak out. Our well-guarded secret is put on display for the world to see. We certainly remember the embarrassment of former New York governor Eliot Spitzer when he was caught engaging in prostitution. His hypocrisy is compounded by a speech he gave before the incident. In 2007, alluding to theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, Spitzer spoke words that proved to be almost prophetic, "Driven by hubris, we become blind to our own fallibility and make terrible mistakes."2 How ironic that he could not heed his own words. We cannot sweep our sins under the carpet forever.
The author of this passage, reflecting on Paul's life, called Paul a "man of violence." We have said that violence is a sign of unresolved anger within us. That anger can come out against other people, or we can turn in inward against ourselves. Sheron Patterson, a United Methodist pastor in Dallas, Texas, survived breast cancer. Heroically, she shared her journey with others through a series of articles in The Dallas Morning News. In one of the articles, she told of how unresolved anger may have played a part in the growth of her cancer. She named an oppressive situation that caused her to internalize her anger. She found forgiveness difficult. Nevertheless, she wrote the following, "The missing link in my healing process is confronting my anger and getting on with forgiveness."3
This passage calls us to confront our sin. Perhaps we can do that with soul-searching. Perhaps we need the guidance of another person. Perhaps we need to quit hiding from ourselves.
As much as this passage pushes us to be honest about our sins, it is even more confident about God's grace and forgiveness. The author of this passage reflected on Paul's guilt, but only to show the depth of God's forgiveness. As angry and mean as Paul was, God never gave up on him. This passage shows that God understands the reasons behind our sins: our ignorance, our hurts, our fear. God heals as well as forgives. We as Christians have to marvel at what God did with Paul. Paul was angry, mean, remorseless, and the control freak of all control freaks. God turned him into the man who could write the tender, beautiful words of 1 Corinthians 13. In the words of the passage, "in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display the utmost patience" (v. 16).
Where are we with our sinfulness today? Are we denying it, bottling it up? Are we only too aware of some sin and the guilt won't let us go? God is patient with us. God can give us the courage to face what is inside of us. God is stronger than our sin and the causes behind it. God can release us, cleanse us, strengthen us, and enable us to move forward. God can get us over the hump if we are held back by our sins. Let us accept God's mercy; let us celebrate God's patience. Amen.
____________
1. Shankar Vedantum, "Bush: Naturally, Never Wrong," Washington Post, July 9, 2007, A3.
2. Quoted in "Century Marks," Christian Century, April 8, 2008, p. 8.
3. Sheron Patterson, "Reaching Inside to Forgive," The Dallas Morning News, April 1, 2008, 12G.
We don't think about our sins because we are too appalled at the sins of others. The news media throws in our faces the outrageous sins of other people. We overdose on the spectacular murders, war crimes, cruelty, child abuse, and depravity of others. We know more than we want to know about parents who torture their children, sometimes in horrific ways, like cooking them in a microwave. We see such things and become too complacent about our own sins. As long as we are not as bad as some people, we must be doing okay.
Our emotional needs keep us from thinking about our sins. Most of the time we need all of our emotional energy just to get by. Life seems to throw everything at us that it can. We don't have time or energy left to think about our sins. We come to church to gain the emotional strength to survive the coming week, not to hear someone pound the pulpit about what sinners we are.
What is front and center for us is not our sins, but the ways others have sinned against us. We carry the memory of grudges big and small around inside of us. The sins against us that hurt the most are the ones that someone got away with or that no one ever noticed. How dare anyone bring up our sinfulness when we have been so sinned against!
Besides, our sins aren't that bad! We're not perfect by any means, but what we do is piddly stuff, right? A psychologist conducted an experiment in which he asked people to describe a time they had hurt someone. Then, they were to describe a time when they were hurt. When the subjects described a time they had hurt someone, they invariably thought the hurt they caused wasn't too bad and didn't last long. The other person got over it. What they had done was justifiable, unpreventable. But, when they described their own hurts, the pain was intense and long-lasting; they had trouble putting it behind them. The perpetrator acted out of bad motives. No excuse was good enough for what the other person had done. In many cases, both the hurt they caused, and the hurt they endured were about the same kind of thing.1
No matter how much we don't want to hear about our sinfulness, we need to hear about it. We fool ourselves. We let ourselves off the hook. We buy our own excuses. There's a danger to that.
Our passage today in 1 Timothy is an honest reflection on sinfulness. First Timothy is one of those books that New Testament scholars have trouble with. We are not sure if 1 Timothy was actually written by Paul. The ideas in the letter do not sound like Paul. The writing style is different. Some scholars think that one of Paul's students may have written it in Paul's name. Why would someone do that? We see a kind of modern-day parallel in the practice of United Methodist Bishop Woodie White, who writes an open letter every year to Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. King has been dead for over forty years. Nevertheless, Bishop White writes these letters to keep King's memory and influence alive and to discuss racial issues in an indirect way. Something like that may have been going on here in 1 Timothy. When the readers of the letter are reminded about Paul, they may pay closer attention. The question of authorship matters here because this passage talks in a very personal way about Paul's sins. Is this a first-person confession or a reflection on sin prompted by Paul's life? We can learn from it either way.
As the passage reminds us, Paul never hid from his sinfulness. In Romans 7, he speaks for people of all ages who have grappled with temptation.
For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.
-- Romans 7:18-19
The book of Acts depicts barbaric things Paul did. He persecuted members of the early church. He held everybody's jackets when they stoned Stephen. He hauled off men and women to prison. In Acts, Paul was an angry control freak.
This passage uses three terms to describe Paul: blasphemer, persecutor, man of violence. These three terms reveal the comprehensive nature of Paul's sinfulness and teach us something about our own. If we examine these three terms carefully, we see what our sin does to us. Blasphemy is an insult to God. Persecution is cruelty to someone else. Violence is an attempt to control, arising out of the anger and hate within us. These three terms summarize our sinfulness. A blasphemer is alienated from God. A persecutor is alienated from other people. A person of violence, full of anger and hate, is alienated from him or herself. Our sinfulness wrecks all three relationships. We are isolated and estranged from everyone.
Many things cause this isolation and estrangement. Part of it, but not all of it, is our own rebellion against God. In our pride, we reject God's offer of grace and healing. We stubbornly refuse to submit ourselves to God's will. That rebellion is not the whole story, however. We live in a fallen world, a creation that is not what God intends. As Paul himself says, the creation is subjected to futility and in bondage to decay (Romans 8:20-21). The sin that holds the creation in bondage holds us in bondage as well. We are influenced by social, economic, and spiritual forces beyond our control. We cannot just excuse our bad behavior, but we are part of a larger problem. Alienation is part of the human experience. The Bible gives numerous examples of people who experienced God as far away. It is true that sometimes we separate ourselves from God, but it is also true that sometimes God seems far away and we don't know why. We feel like the psalmist who cried out, "How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?" (Psalm 13:1). Our sinfulness is something we do, we cause, and also something that is part of the whole creation, something we are trapped in.
This passage calls us to be honest about our part in our sinfulness, to own it, to face it, to admit it. If we feel blocked from God, what is our part in that? If we are cut off from other people, how much of that is our fault? If we are not at peace within ourselves, how are we to blame? If we deny our part, we can never feel the cleansing, the release, or the joy of being forgiven. We can never move past where we are. We can never feel reconnected to God. We can never sop up the bitterness of our broken relationships.
If we do not confess our sins, if we continue to deny them, we may dupe ourselves into thinking we have gotten away with them. Eventually, though, our sins leak out. Our well-guarded secret is put on display for the world to see. We certainly remember the embarrassment of former New York governor Eliot Spitzer when he was caught engaging in prostitution. His hypocrisy is compounded by a speech he gave before the incident. In 2007, alluding to theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, Spitzer spoke words that proved to be almost prophetic, "Driven by hubris, we become blind to our own fallibility and make terrible mistakes."2 How ironic that he could not heed his own words. We cannot sweep our sins under the carpet forever.
The author of this passage, reflecting on Paul's life, called Paul a "man of violence." We have said that violence is a sign of unresolved anger within us. That anger can come out against other people, or we can turn in inward against ourselves. Sheron Patterson, a United Methodist pastor in Dallas, Texas, survived breast cancer. Heroically, she shared her journey with others through a series of articles in The Dallas Morning News. In one of the articles, she told of how unresolved anger may have played a part in the growth of her cancer. She named an oppressive situation that caused her to internalize her anger. She found forgiveness difficult. Nevertheless, she wrote the following, "The missing link in my healing process is confronting my anger and getting on with forgiveness."3
This passage calls us to confront our sin. Perhaps we can do that with soul-searching. Perhaps we need the guidance of another person. Perhaps we need to quit hiding from ourselves.
As much as this passage pushes us to be honest about our sins, it is even more confident about God's grace and forgiveness. The author of this passage reflected on Paul's guilt, but only to show the depth of God's forgiveness. As angry and mean as Paul was, God never gave up on him. This passage shows that God understands the reasons behind our sins: our ignorance, our hurts, our fear. God heals as well as forgives. We as Christians have to marvel at what God did with Paul. Paul was angry, mean, remorseless, and the control freak of all control freaks. God turned him into the man who could write the tender, beautiful words of 1 Corinthians 13. In the words of the passage, "in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display the utmost patience" (v. 16).
Where are we with our sinfulness today? Are we denying it, bottling it up? Are we only too aware of some sin and the guilt won't let us go? God is patient with us. God can give us the courage to face what is inside of us. God is stronger than our sin and the causes behind it. God can release us, cleanse us, strengthen us, and enable us to move forward. God can get us over the hump if we are held back by our sins. Let us accept God's mercy; let us celebrate God's patience. Amen.
____________
1. Shankar Vedantum, "Bush: Naturally, Never Wrong," Washington Post, July 9, 2007, A3.
2. Quoted in "Century Marks," Christian Century, April 8, 2008, p. 8.
3. Sheron Patterson, "Reaching Inside to Forgive," The Dallas Morning News, April 1, 2008, 12G.
