The Rev. Keri T. Aubert  January 11, 2009

Genesis 1:1-5

Psalm 29

Acts 19:1-74

Mark 1:4-11

First Sunday after the Epiphany (The Baptism of the Lord), Year B, RCL 

Last fall our adult forum featured a conversation about the original seven deadly sins. In case you need a refresher, the seven deadly sins, as first enumerated by Pope Gregory the Great in the 6^th century, are these: lust, gluttony, avarice, sloth, anger, envy and pride. For an Episcopal Church, having such a conversation was perhaps a bold move. We Episcopalians tend to talk little about sin. Excessive talk about sin may be one of the things we’re here to avoid, especially if we grew up in a tradition that seemed to be preoccupied not only with sin but also with punishment, and perhaps especially if the preoccupation was with sins of a sexual nature and threats of a fiery eternity in hell. We may have already heard enough about original sin and venial sin and mortal sin, about penance and limbo and purgatory.

Even so, it was hard to miss the story in the news last March, when the Roman Catholic Church released a new list of “seven modern mortal sins.” As I remember it, the headline of the story made me feel instantly skeptical, but the actual list brought me up short. I may be uncomfortable with the language of “mortal sins,” but it turned out to be hard to dismiss the list itself: environmental pollution; genetic manipulation; accumulating excessive wealth; inflicting poverty; drug trafficking and consumption; morally debatable experiments; and violation of fundamental rights of human nature. The tendency may be to dismiss checklists such as these because, for example, my personal opportunity to engage in genetic manipulation is limited. On the other hand, we live in a nation whose communal bad habits have gotten us into trouble and are therefore coming under some scrutiny right now. And so it might be a good idea to take any opportunity for help in thinking about sin in new ways.

In Mark’s gospel, sin appears early, in verse 4, as John proclaims a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. In thinking about what this means for us, we might begin by considering what it meant to Mark. As one commentator describes it, in Mark’s society, “sin is a breach of interpersonal relations. In the Gospels, the closest analogy for the forgiveness of sins is the forgiveness of debts, an analogy drawn from pervasive peasant experience. Debt threatened loss of land, livelihood, and family. It made persons poor, that is, unable to maintain their social position. Forgiveness would thus have had the character of restoration, a return to both self-sufficiency and one’s place in the community.”[i] 

The picture this draws of debt as a destabilizing influence is one that holds true even today. But it should also be extended by noting that people exist in the community of all creation; therefore, as debt destabilizes the individual, at the same time it also puts everyone and everything at risk. As we hear in the news, the implications of debt extend far beyond the two parties directly involved. Going backwards from the characterization of forgiveness of sin as forgiveness of dept, one might say that, metaphorically, committing sin places one in debt to another party, makes one poor, and destabilizes one’s social position. And further, the instability created by sin extends into the entire fabric of the community. Because we live in a web of interconnected relationships, the effects of one person’s sin can spread beyond them unpredictably and infinitely. Returning to the two lists we started with, they converge as we consider, for example, how individual avarice is expressed as a culture of greed that contributes to global environmental degradation. The distance between the individual and the universal has become shorter than we might like to think.

The Greek word that we translate as sin more literally means “missing the mark,” as in archery. List or no list, I think that what we’re talking about here are the ways in which humans miss the mark by falling short in love, and about how that falling short inevitably separates us from one another and from God. We each find ourselves on both sides of in the transaction: each of us fails in love, and each of us is failed in love. Each of us commits sins, and each of us is sinned against. The question is: What do we do about it? With a debt that is of a financial nature, money can be paid off with other money. But sin cannot be paid off by other sin. Something else has to happen. Our commitment to this something else is part of our commitment to the Christian life.

In talking about this something else that has to happen, we often use the word forgiveness. But it seems to me that the word forgiveness can be problematic, because it seems to imply that only the sinner benefits, and that the decisive act rests with the party who has been sinned against. For the person who has been sinned against in a big way, forgiveness as we usually think of it may be too much to ask. And so it might be useful here to stick with the analogy of sin to debt and think of forgiveness as restoration. Restoration implies the possibility of another path via which all parties can be satisfied and the health of the entire community reestablished. This is a perhaps a good point to note that, while we’ve talked about sin and forgiveness, we shouldn’t forget the other word that John uses: repentance. Repentance, the translation of the Greek word metanoia, means literally the act of turning. Some would describe it as the turning away from sin and the turning toward God. John seems to be offering that restoration begins with the decision to turn.

Whether we’re talking about sin large or small, whether we’re looking at it from the perspective of the sinner or the sinned-against, there might be something for us in this concept of turning. I’m not saying that it’s easy. I think the practice of turning must be exercised continually. It may even be that our awareness of it only means that we have to do it more. I don’t think this is because humans are intrinsically sinful or unforgiving. Rather, I think it’s because humans are intrinsically good and forgiving, while life is difficult. But there is hope. The good news for us, especially as we exist as individuals in community, is that the baptism of John, while instructive, isn’t the end of the story. We get a clear picture of this from our reading from Acts, in which Paul contends that we turn with John, but that turning is to Christ, and Christ’s baptism is in the Holy Spirit. As we turn to follow Christ, we do so with the grace of the Holy Spirit. No matter how many times we fail, the Holy Spirit helps us to turn again. No matter where we are, the Holy Spirit restores us. Every act of restoration brings us closer to our Christian goal of reconciling all creation to God and one another.

God is to be found in all aspects of our own humanity, in our weaknesses as well as our strengths, in our failures as well as our successes. Wherever we find ourselves, the act of turning to God has the power to bring us individually and communally closer to God. Tuesday was the Feast of the Epiphany, the day when the Church celebrates the revelation of God in the human person of Jesus. The call of Epiphany is often articulated as the call to each of us to be the light of Christ in the world. Sometimes that light emanates as we demonstrate our willingness to turn. God’s creative power, as it moved over the depths in Genesis, sweeps over the depths that lie within each of us. The Spirit calls forth new creation. As we celebrate the baptism of Jesus, we remember our own baptisms and know that, whatever we are turning from, we remain God’s beloved, and we are restored.