I am starting a new sermon series on SIN.
It is an old word. A word dismissed. Only fit for the archaic Biblical word rubbish heap. It is a word that we don’t want the preacher to preach on.
I half understand. If you were weaned in evangelicalism, like I was, then sin was a fun killer. It was this long list of things you were no longer allowed to do. I think of the generation above me and feel sorry that a fuller life escaped them - the places they couldn't go, the lovely glass of wine they couldn't drink and of course rock n roll.
It was also very mathematical. Sin was a list of those fun killer don’ts. The ones that you broke got a tick. Those needed wiped out and that is what Jesus did for us on the cross.
It all seems too domesticated. Any reading of Genesis suggests to me that the effects of sin are cosmic, running deep in human beings and society right across human history. Sin is not mathematical but experiential with personal, national and cosmic consequences every moment of every single day.
Frederick Buechner died recently and in my Tribute I quoted something on sin that opened it up for me. It now became the power surge for the breaking up of the world:
THE POWER OF SIN IS CENTRIFUGAL. When at work in a human life, it tends to push everything out toward the periphery. Bits and pieces go flying off until only the core is left. Eventually bits and pieces of the core itself go flying off until in the end nothing at all is left. "The wages of sin is death" is Saint Paul's way of saying the same thing.
Other people and (if you happen to believe in God) God or (if you happen not to) the world, society, nature—whatever you call the greater whole of which you're part—sin is whatever you do, or fail to do, that pushes them away, that widens the gap between you and them and also the gaps within your self.
As I scan my eyes across the first chapters of Genesis, on through the Bible and try to make sense of God’s purposes in Jesus and the Gospel, then Buchner’s insight is a key that opens up vital understanding.
So, for a Sunday or two or three or more I am going to unpack Buchner’s theological thought in the light of what the Bible says about sin and the Gospel and then how it applies to me, the Church, Northern Ireland and the planet.
Fitzroy gathers for worship at 11am on Sundays. The service is also streamed or a recording can be watched on Youtube (though it might take some hours to upload)
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