The Real Sin

Foundry UMC

A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC, March 18, 2018, the fifth Sunday in Lent. “Dissonance” sermon series.

Texts: Psalm 51:1-12; Luke 15:1-2, 11-32

“When God Ran…” It’s the provocative title of a duet I sang in church with my mother circa 1988… When God Ran… Generally, we think of God as steadfast, a solid rock, never leaving nor forsaking, going ahead of us to guard and guide, an encircler and protector, ever present. But there was a time when God ran. // “While [the son] was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him.” (Lk 15:20) Jesus’ parable imbues the father with the characteristics of God—generosity, wisdom, steadfast love— and compassion that sends him running. The father doesn’t turn away or run away. The father has been waiting and watching for any sign of his beloved child’s return and when the son appears, there is no hesitation—he runs toward his precious one and embraces him.

Today we have experienced the story of the prodigal and his brother for the fourth week in a row. Over the course of our reflections, we’ve gazed upon the two sons—and more than a few of you have shared that you see yourself in one or both of them. Henri Nouwen has been our companion on this Lenten journey and his insight reveals that both the younger and the elder son were disconnected from their true home. The younger son intentionally wanders away and breaks all the rules; and the elder son is lost even though he’s remained close and labored to be the good son. The home they struggle to find is that place where they can rest in the love of their father, that place where they can trust that they’ve always been loved—loved even when they were ungrateful, even when they were making terrible choices, even when they were cruel, even when resentment bubbled over, even when pride held them hostage. In the midst of it all, home is waiting, God is watching for any sign of return…and God runs to the elder just as to the younger…God goes out to meet the one on the road and the other outside the feast, entreating each to enter into the love and joy and embrace of home.

Jesus tells this story with an open ending. The invitation and embrace is offered, but we don’t get to hear how it all turns out. The younger and the elder sons may yet fail to truly get home. There remains an open end for us as well. Are we willing to do what it takes to acknowledge and receive what is offered to us? Everything hangs on our answer.

Some weeks ago I shared in a sermon a moment in my life when I realized that I was lugging around all this guilt and shame like a weight, a burden I thought I had to carry forever as my punishment for terrible things I’ve done. Through the grace of God and a good spiritual director I began to release that burden and to move a little closer toward home, toward the freedom that awaits when we can trust that God’s love and compassion are more powerful than even our worst transgressions. It still stuns me to realize just how unaware I was that I was clinging to all that garbage, all those self-punishing thoughts and feelings. Guilt and shame are sneaky and sinister temptations. We get so attached to them—or they to us, like parasites…guilt and shame can start to feel like part of who we are—even though they’re not. I believe Nouwen is correct when he says that “one of the greatest challenges of the spiritual life is to receive God’s forgiveness.”[i]

It seems to me there are lots of reasons for that. First of all, as in my case, we may not even realize that we’re rejecting forgiveness! Maybe we can’t or won’t admit that we’ve done anything that needs forgiving. Perhaps we can’t imagine ever being able to forgive someone who did what we did—and so we can’t forgive ourselves and don’t believe anyone else should either. Maybe we think there needs to be some penalty paid for what we’ve done and being forgiven by God seems like cheap grace. But those ways of thinking fail to account for the way repentance and forgiveness work. God desires our freedom from those things that bind us, that hold us hostage, that keep us from living and loving fully and entering into the joy of home. To repent and receive forgiveness are paths toward that freedom! And real repentance and forgiveness will mean not only seeing our fault and feeling regret, but—with the help of God (and often the help of other people!)— changing our ways. In some ways, it’s easier to keep lugging around all that guilt or to be punished and believe that buys you time to keep on living the same way. William Sloane Coffin said, “It’s hell to be guilty, but it’s worse to be responsible.”[ii] And the invitation is to step into the freedom of a new way of being, a new way of loving, a new place of trust and generosity—both toward yourself and toward others. You are invited to take responsibility for yourself, to take yourself seriously, to see the truth that you matter and that you are worth more than a small life bound up with shame and self-loathing and self-destructive behavior. You are invited to grow up, to see yourself not only as a child, identifying with the younger or elder son, but also to begin to identify with the father. Growing up is the goal—growing in wisdom, vision, patience, courage, and love…being and becoming more like God our father and our mother. The elder son is reminded explicitly: “all that I have is yours.” All the grace, all the steadfast commitment and care, all the generosity…all these gifts are yours for you are God’s beloved child. And any loving parent wants to see her child grow up and develop the gifts within them; God desires that you grow up into the version of your life that most fully reflects God’s own.

Such an assertion may seem absurd to you. In fact, a primary obstacle for many of us on the journey home is a deep sense of insecurity and lack of self-worth. This is often the thing at the heart of alienation in the first place. Perhaps the thing that has led to addiction or betrayal or debilitating secrets, or violence, or prideful defenses, or hardness of heart—whatever it is that keeps you from going “home”—is a conviction that you are not worthy of love or care, that you are not capable of bravery or creativity or responsibility, that no one would ever be proud of you. This may have been beaten into you physically, emotionally, or spiritually through the actions of broken people in your life. Or it may have seeped into you through the manipulations of empire with its consumer economy relentlessly insisting that you need this or that product or experience in order to be cool, attractive, healthy, powerful, or important. We waste so much time chasing after things that will not satisfy the deep longing at our core.

This is not a new phenomenon. In the 6th century, BCE, the prophet known as Second Isaiah wrote:

Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,
and your labor for that which does not satisfy?...
Incline your ear, and come to me;
listen, so that you may live. (Isaiah 55:2-3)

Saint Augustine in the 4th century of the Common Era famously prayed these words to God: “Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee…”

In the 14th century CE, English Anchoress and mystic, Julian of Norwich wrote, “we do not know our God who is almighty, all wise and all good… God wishes to be known, and it pleases [God] that we should rest in [God]; for everything which is beneath [God] is not sufficient for us."

In 1980 CE, country singer Johnny Lee recorded a classic for the “Urban Cowboy” soundtrack that included these lyrics, “Lookin’ for love in all the wrong places, lookin’ for love in too many faces, searchin’ their eyes, and lookin’ for traces of what I’m dreamin’ of…”

Throughout the ages, we look for our deepest needs to be met in things that are not God—we look to products and substances, other people, and our own force of will—and in so doing, we stay at a distance from the source of all we need. We go in search of that which we think will fix us or help us get right or strong; we go in search of meaning, of satisfaction, of love, even of God—and our search itself can become its own idol. It’s not our search that matters most of all; God’s search for us is what makes the difference; and God is always already looking for us.

God runs out to you wherever you are and invites you to receive and affirm what is real: that God loves you and there’s nothing you can do about it…that God sees not only your faults, but also your inherent worth—not because of anything you say or do or prove, but simply because you are YOU. Nouwen contends that when we think of sin we generally focus on our faults and failings but, he says, “the real sin is to deny God’s first love for [you], to ignore [your] original goodness.”[iii] Does anyone really love me? Does anyone really care? How can I keep from being hurt and rejected again? What if I fail or disappoint or relapse, will I lose the love that’s been given? These concerns reveal the ways we struggle to trust God’s presence and love. “The parable of the prodigal son is a story that speaks about a love that existed before any rejection was possible and that will still be there after all rejections have taken place. It is the first and everlasting love of a God who is Father as well as Mother. It is the fountain of all true human love, even the most limited. Jesus’ whole life and preaching had only one aim: to reveal this inexhaustible, unlimited motherly and fatherly love of his God and to show the way to let that love guide every part of our daily lives…It is the love that always welcomes home and always wants to celebrate.”[iv]

God is always watching, ready to run to you and welcome you home. The story is unfinished. Will you reject God’s love and deny your original goodness? Or will you allow yourself to be found by God, to be known by God, to be loved by God? Everything hangs on your answer.

[i][i] Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 53.

[ii] William Sloane Coffin, Credo, (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), 18.

[iii] Ibid., 107.

[iv] Ibid., 108-109.