Sins, infants, and a yoke
Sermon for Pentecost VI, 2023, delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY
Three weeks ago I was on vacation in the GTA, otherwise known as the Greater Toronto Area. GTA sounds cooler. We stayed in an AirBnB that had a washer and dryer, and on the night we did laundry, I threw a dishwasher packet into the clothes washer. My wife had said earlier that she had already dropped a laundry detergent packet in, but it didn’t register with me. When I realized what I had done, I told her, and said that I didn’t know why I had made that mistake. I take care of the laundry at home, as well as starting the dishwasher on occasion, so I know what the dishwasher packets look like. I knew that it was the wrong thing to do after it happened, but I did it for a reason that I couldn’t explain. The load I threw the dishwasher packet into were white and light-colored clothes, so there wasn’t a noticeable effect. Everything turned out OK, but there was still the fact that I did something wrong and had no defense, no accounting for why I did it.
When I read the epistle for today, I could commiserate with Paul, even if I had to diagram in my head what he was saying. Paul’s logic isn’t easy to follow at all in the reading this morning, but what he says in a lot more words is that he wants to do things that go against God’s laws - which for him has been Jewish law, at the same time that he is not succeeding at doing good things. And he doesn’t know why. He knows what it is to do good things, but he can’t make himself do those things. This fits what he wrote in his second letter to the faithful in Corinth when he mentions that he has been given a thorn in his flesh by a messenger from Satan to torment him. It is very clear that Paul struggles with temptation, with moral failure, with righteousness, and with piety, just like we do. And it weighs heavily on him, and on us when we do more serious things than put the wrong detergent in the washing machine. We don’t know any more about what causes Paul’s moral failings than we do about our own failings except that we are human. We will make unintentional mistakes, and we will make intentional mistakes as we are overcome by anger, jealousy, fear, or just pure aggression. We struggle with the vulnerability we experience when we kneel and confess our sins, unintended and intended, every Sunday, or every day.
That vulnerability in confession is real, coming from shame, or guilt, or both, and we are afraid of the possibility of being judged by others. Jesus mentions this in the Gospel reading, where he says that people judged John the baptizer and his austere life, by saying that John had a demon. Then Jesus mentions himself, living the opposite life where he eats and drinks with his disciples and with sinners, and he says that he is judged a glutton and a drunkard. Neither one of them can win, because the people around them are looking for something, anything to call them out on. That doesn’t help our willingness to confess our mistakes and faults. We become targets of people who may be covering up their own shame and guilt over their sins, who want to look better than the people around them. And down the rabbit hole we go, outdoing each other in appearing blameless and righteous, rather than being honest with ourselves and trusting God to show us mercy.
When I read the epistle for today, I could commiserate with Paul, even if I had to diagram in my head what he was saying. Paul’s logic isn’t easy to follow at all in the reading this morning, but what he says in a lot more words is that he wants to do things that go against God’s laws - which for him has been Jewish law, at the same time that he is not succeeding at doing good things. And he doesn’t know why. He knows what it is to do good things, but he can’t make himself do those things. This fits what he wrote in his second letter to the faithful in Corinth when he mentions that he has been given a thorn in his flesh by a messenger from Satan to torment him. It is very clear that Paul struggles with temptation, with moral failure, with righteousness, and with piety, just like we do. And it weighs heavily on him, and on us when we do more serious things than put the wrong detergent in the washing machine. We don’t know any more about what causes Paul’s moral failings than we do about our own failings except that we are human. We will make unintentional mistakes, and we will make intentional mistakes as we are overcome by anger, jealousy, fear, or just pure aggression. We struggle with the vulnerability we experience when we kneel and confess our sins, unintended and intended, every Sunday, or every day.
That vulnerability in confession is real, coming from shame, or guilt, or both, and we are afraid of the possibility of being judged by others. Jesus mentions this in the Gospel reading, where he says that people judged John the baptizer and his austere life, by saying that John had a demon. Then Jesus mentions himself, living the opposite life where he eats and drinks with his disciples and with sinners, and he says that he is judged a glutton and a drunkard. Neither one of them can win, because the people around them are looking for something, anything to call them out on. That doesn’t help our willingness to confess our mistakes and faults. We become targets of people who may be covering up their own shame and guilt over their sins, who want to look better than the people around them. And down the rabbit hole we go, outdoing each other in appearing blameless and righteous, rather than being honest with ourselves and trusting God to show us mercy.
Going down that rabbit hole of self-righteousness distorts our view of ourselves and God. Some people read Paul’s mention of being captive to the law of sin that makes him a wretched man and believe that we are incapable of doing good. They believe that sin overshadows everything that we do. This emphasis on sin and de-emphasis on doing good is troubling because it devalues us when we hear and answer God’s call to help people in need. It is dismissive of following Jesus’ example of clothing the naked, housing the homeless, or collecting food for pantries. What Paul writes about is his own personal struggle with sin that we experience too, but that does not mean that everyone can only sin. He does not speak of the power of the Holy Spirit as we do, that power to be able to do good, to know when sin occurs, and when it doesn’t. When we are moved and guided by the Holy Spirit, we can and do perform good things in the world. To read Paul’s comments literally and in isolation is to read that sin is more powerful than the Holy Spirit, and that doesn’t fit with Paul’s comments to the Corinthians that we are the hands and feet of Jesus as the body of Christ. How can the Body of Christ not do good?
When Jesus prays in the Gospel reading, he thanks God for revealing truths to infants, or spiritual infants, innocent and ready to explore and learn without pretense. This spiritual infancy has no knowledge of the turmoil over sin and doing good, of what is and isn’t righteous. There is no preconceived idea that people are naturally bad or good. It is a spiritual state of learning to be righteous, rather than saying righteous things or be seen doing righteous things, or assume the worst about ourselves. There are no thorns to torment spiritual infancy because it is a time to learn what is good, and right, and to be loved by God. In that context of love, Jesus’ teachings are a light load, because we don’t have to work hard to overcome what we learned - or mislearned. If we start as innocents, Jesus’ teachings are easy and the burden of righteousness is light because we are lifted up by God’s love for us, rather than weighed down by being judged by God as unfit for the kingdom.
As we grow in our spiritual infancy to adulthood, who we have become is reflected in the sincerity of what we do, and this is taking on Jesus’ yoke. Above my desk at home I have a picture of Jesus, cut out from a magazine from years ago. It is a picture of Jesus fully laughing rather than just chuckling. There is a lightness in that image that reminds me of the lightness of his yoke, the ease of his burden. This ease and lightness does not diminish the seriousness with which we should confront our unintentional mistakes or intentional hurtful actions. It does not mean that we should ignore our sins, our mistakes, our shortcomings and not work toward being righteous. It does mean that we do not have to be weighed down by them as Paul was and wallow in them as some sign of humility. Jesus has made it clear that humility is performed as an act of love for others by putting their needs ahead of our wants. We may not understand right away why we make mistakes, or commit sins, but we can do good if we take on Jesus’ yoke of loving others as we are loved by God, his yoke of serving the needs of others. The burden will be light because we walk in light and love, rather than walking in the darkness of our mistakes and the expectations of others. In those moments of loving others we have the chance to come closer to God and Christ, to be in their presence without shame. We have a chance to look for where we fall short. We start as infants, and grow into wisdom where we know how to do good.
Great sermon!
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