Keeping score; making confession

“Grace cannot prevail,” writes Robert Farrar Capon, “until our lifelong certainty that someone is keeping score has run out of steam and collapsed.”*

In spite of the fact that I am a terrible golfer, golf has provided me with a grand metaphor for the concept of original sin:  keeping score. [Just an aside. I don't conceive of an original sin which has infected all human beings always, but rather, an action or attitude that continually breaks our relationships with one another and with God.]

So.....in golf, you are either at par (average), above par (which appears to be a little better, but is, in fact, worse) or below par (which appears to be worse, but is in fact better).  By the end of 18 holes, the winner has the lowest score, but can easily be 'above par' and so not really that good.  Likewise, a loser could end up below par, but not far enough.  It's an Alice in Wonderland sport.

Keeping score is what we do. We claim our  better jobs, better schools, better grades, better sports teams are the easy examples.  Our Instagram pictures prove we take better vacations, go to better concerts, have better friends.  Our family reunions are a cacophony of often not so subtle one upmanship.  Somehow we have convinced ourselves that we are in a lifelong race with every other human being near us, and so we keep score.

Because we are so busy keeping score, watching one another, greedy for advantage, envious of another's good fortune, lusting after power, we can't imagine that God - or however you image the Divine Creator - isn't keeping score as well.  God is just waiting to 'catch' us in some indiscretion or outright nastiness, recording this failure for all eternity, and often planning some kind of punishment for our failure.  No wonder no one wants to talk about God or sin.  The result is that the concept of grace is more dense than nuclear physics.

Grace is both the gift given and the manner in which it is given.  Grace is forgiveness without requiring a pound of flesh or deep groveling.  Grace is making whole what was broken without constant referral to the repaired cracks.  Grace is love.  Love is Grace.  In the end, there is no greater gift. It is a gift we are loathe to accept because first, it speaks the truth and therefore, we want to earn it.  Of course if you have 'earned' it, it isn't grace.

But in our heart of hearts we know that there are a slew of things that someone should be keeping track of - things we have done, or not done, for which we are to blame, which have caused harm to others.  You make up your list; I have my own. So, we are suspicious of such a gift because we know our own flawed history. We also know how hard it would be for us to be truly gracious.

Enter the gift of confession.  Yes, I said 'gift'.  The act of confession allows us to stop running (away from ourselves and away from others) and speak truth - about who we are and what we are capable of doing.  It is a moment when all the posturing comes to an end and we admit - mostly to ourselves since everyone else has known all along - that we were out of bounds, missed the target, broken the rules, hurt someone else.  We say it aloud (even if only in our heads) to make it real. No getting around it.

Then grace happens. Like a warm blanket on those nights when the temperature plummets.  Like a cup of tea with a friend.  Like the gentle touch of a loved one who has been wronged.  Words of forgiveness that allow us to breathe deeply once again.  An outstretched hand that invites us back into relationship.  A voice that calls us 'beloved'.

Certainly consequences will be paid; amends will have to be made.  We will need to do work to strengthen the relationship that somehow we broke.  But we can stop running and begin living. We can be a part of someone else's better tomorrow.

Now that's amazing!  That's grace.

*Robert Farrar Capon, Between Noon and Three: Romance, Law, and the Outrage of Grace (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 7.

Evans, Rachel Held. Searching for Sunday (p. 265). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

An original sin........

For most of us, sin isn't particularly original.  Nor can most of us remember what our original sin was.  However,  I want to talk about the original sin.  You know, Adam and Eve and the apple (which wasn't necessarily an apple, just a piece of fruit, but why argue with all those Renaissance paintings?).

Or maybe you don't know.  Maybe you are one of those folks for whom religious symbols or biblical terms are so archaic as to be incomprehensible.  Fair enough.  No point in discussing original sin if you don't know the first thing about it.

A quick synopsis.  Before things went haywire, before people were casually unkind and intentionally evil.......when everything was well, and good, and beautiful and life-giving.......there was no sin.  We are fairly sure that there must have been a time when things weren't as bad as they are today. (Although I do not mean 'the good old days' which may be fondly remembered by the geriatric crowd but which, in fact, were just as broken and dangerous as today but with uglier fashions)

Furthermore, when I use the highly charged religious term 'sin' I want you to think 'broken' 'forsaken' 'warped' 'skewed'.  Let's use the word 'sin' to talk about the distortion of our shared life that causes pain and sorrow - too often deliberately, but often unintentionally or unavoidably.

People of every nation and culture have pondered about the possibility of a paradise - a time and place where everyone simply got along with everyone else, kindness and compassion prevailed, life was truly good.  The great storytellers of each of these cultures have woven tales of what it was like  when it was wonderful; Christians (and others) call this paradise Eden and it was a garden where animals cooperated, the vegetation was lush and suitable for eating, and the people were so sympatico that it was as if they came from one whole cloth.

But since we know that the world we inherited is not any version of paradise, how did we get from those wonderful imaginings to the mess we have today?  Somehow, it all broke and became so shattered that all the kings horses and all the kings men couldn't put it back together again.  What started this cascade of disaster?

Well, there are lots of stories about that as well.  For Christians, this is where Adam and Eve come into play.  They are the original human creatures, and on one hot afternoon (I made that up) when they were walking through the magnificent garden God had created and given to them as home, they encountered a tree called 'The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil".  (Remember, this is a story, not a travel guide).  It seemed like a good thing to be able to know good from evil, and the fruit of the tree was very appealing.  So they ate.

Here's the rub.  God had given them only one thing to remember in their garden, and you can guess what it was:  stay away from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  One thing!  They took the first bite of that 'apple' and the rest is human history. God called out Adam, Adam threw Eve under the bus, and Eve blamed the wily serpent.  With finger pointing all around, Paradise ended.  Adam and Eve were evicted, they began to know the pain that comes from power-over relationships and the act of creation.  They lost their close connection with the Creator, and work became a four letter word. The essential relationship between Creator and Beloved Creature is forever broken.  We know it as sin.

From a single act comes generations of broken relationships.  It is a pestilence upon the human race perpetrated by the human race.  It is from these dreams of paradise, and stories about a desire that led folks astray, to the reality of our broken world that we get the idea (and, in the Church, doctrine) of  'original sin.'

So to bring us full circle, once again I assert, few of us are original in our sin, nor can we point to our very first 'original sin.'  We ask  Who is to blame?  Is there a way to fix it?  How did sex get involved?  Keep an eye out for more sin talk.

What's with all the insecurity?

Yesterday I claimed that the hostility of Jesus' hometown crowd was born out of insecurity.
What's with all the insecurity?
Don't you see it everywhere, and if you reflect on it, are aware of how it impacts your own behavior?

Insecurity - just normal, everyday insecurity  (not the kind that is born out of trauma or abuse) is one face of original sin.  Now, I know that Original Sin (notice the caps?) is a much maligned doctrine of the Church, but try this.

When you look at the world as one gigantic competition, where scores are being recorded and judgments made......then insecurity is a natural response.  Am I good enough?  Did I do that as well as could be expected?  Others are so much ahead/better than me.

Almost everyone is insecure; we simply differ in what we are insecure about.  Ask any preacher how daunting it is to preach for a congregation filled with other clergy, bishops, seminary professors, etc.  Makes the sweat break out! 

One of the ways that Sin manifests itself in this world is in the notion that everything is a competition and somewhere in the great beyond, someone is keeping score.

No one is keeping score (well, I can't answer for your spouse or mother-in-law or teenager, or even the mean girls in high school).  Remember John 3.16?  For God so loved the world.   Let it go.  Be the best you can be.  Live generously.  Trust in God's love.  Tuck this in the back of your mind, and hide it in your heart.

You know we won't remember this perfectly.  Our insecurity will well up.  We will participate in the score keeping.  That's when we will need to remember that God's love is first and there is nothing God doesn't already know about his children.

AMEN