Judgment, the Flesh, and Sin (mid-week message)

 The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse from the Ottheinrich-Bibel (ca.1530-1532) 

illustrated by Matthias Gerung, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek

Judgment, the Flesh, and Sin

Fr. Tony’s Mid-week Message

September 10, 2014

“There is no way that the scriptures, rightly understood, present God as an eternal torturer. Yet many Christians seem to believe this, and many are even held back from trusting God’s goodness because of this ‘angry parent in the sky’ that we have created. The determined direction of the scriptures, fully revealed in Jesus, is that God’s justice is not achieved by punishment, but by the divine initiative we call grace, which enables us to bring about internal rightness, harmony, balance, and realignment with what is.”  (--Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, Job and the Mystery of Suffering, p. 57)

We have many false ideas about God and the world and many of these come from inadequate translations or misunderstandings of scripture.  There are bad ideas contained in the Bible, to be sure.   But when we come to learn to read the bad passages and ideas in light of the good ones, we start to see the overall message of the whole canon of scripture and many of our wrong ideas about God are corrected. 

Here are several ideas and phrases that many of us have gotten from the way we have heard scripture read and taught, followed by possible alternate phrases or ways of saying them that cohere better with what the whole of scripture teaches about God.  

Judgment, God as a Judge:  The basic Hebrew idea of shaphat (judgment) is the setting of things right.  That’s why the Book of Judges is not about jurists in black robes and white wigs, sitting at a bench rapping gavels.  It’s about heroes who vindicate the oppressed.  The Day of Judgment is the day when all that is wrong is set to right.  When we say in the Creed that Christ will come to be our judge, we are saying he will come to set all things right.  And saying that that final judge is Jesus means that mercy and love is the central part of the setting things right. 

Flesh, the Desires of the Flesh:  This image, used by Paul, often is taken as something dirty, evil, and in absolute polar opposition to God and God’s plans for us.  But Paul knew as well as anyone that when God created us in creation, he declared it very good, and that our bodies are very much a part of what God intends in us.  He uses the stoic idea of “the flesh” as a kind of shorthand in opposition to “the mind.”  A better rendering of the idea in our age is “that part of us that opposes God,” or “the self that opposes God.” 

Sin, sinners:  We often think that this means only deliberate disobedience or rebellion against a command or teaching of God.   But it means anything that makes us fall short of what God intended when God created us, anything that alienates us from God, ourselves, or each other.  It is, in the words of the Enriching our Worship confession of sin, where we have opposed the will of God in our lives, denied God’s goodness in ourselves, each other, and the created world.  It is what enslaves us, the bad we ourselves have done or that done on our behalf, and the good things we have left undone, the skills and gifts not developed, the ideals not pursued. Sin thus conceived is not a crime for which punishment must be exacted (either from us or by proxy by some kind of transferred punishment!), but rather an illness or weakness from which we must be healed, strengthened, and a disruption of relationship for which we must make amends and be forgiven. 

There is a lot going on in our world right now that makes us feel helpless, set upon, and threatened:  our national government pursuing policies that isolate and stigmatize minorities (whether constituted by gender identity or sexuality, race, mother language or national origin), and deprive them of livelihoods, opportunities, and even the ability to live in this country, unbreathable air from the wildfire smoke about us, the horrible storms and flooding in Texas, the Caribbean and Florida, Bangladesh and Southeast Asia, and the specter of war—possibly nuclear war—on the Korean Peninsula and the Pacific Rim.    It is important that we not ascribe such horror to God.  A witty friend of mine put it this way:  it takes a special kind of stupid to think that hurricanes and floods come from a God angry over marriage equality and not even think of the possibility that they may be due to our careless economic activities warming the global environment.   But all the same, when we feel sick it often feels like we’re being punished for something, even if this is not the case. Due to concerns many parishioners have raised, I have decided that instead of Prayers of the People this Sunday, we will start our Eucharist with a (Rite II) Great Litany, a series of prayers in the face of horrors and things that make us doubt ourselves.

Grace and Peace,

Fr. Tony+