How Much Sin Is Too Much?
Sermon
And Then Came the Angel
Gospel Sermons For Advent/Christmas/Epiphany
Of all the pressing questions of the day, a sign on one person's desk asks, "How much can I sin and still go to heaven?" The question seems amusing until we stop to think about it. Inherent in this question is a bold-faced confession that there is no interest at all in pursuing a life shaped wholly by the spirit of God, but at the same time we do not want to be so recklessly sacrilegious that we forfeit completely the rewards of the hereafter.
The late Southern humorist Lewis Grizzard said thinking about hell scared the you-know-what out of him. One day he received a questionnaire in the mail titled "Heaven: Are You Eligible?" Grizzard said he took the test and scored "too close to call."1 How much can I sin and still go to heaven? Lest we fail to recognize the question in that form, perhaps these will sound more familiar. How often can I miss worship and still remain in God's favor? How much prayer time can I forsake and still count on God to hear my prayers when they are the most urgent?
We try to walk the tight rope between doing a lot of things that we want to do for ourselves, but we are careful not to get so carried away that we fail to attend to the things of God. It is a balancing act we attempt in other areas of our lives. Shortly after people learn to drive they discover an interesting twist to the law. While studying for the written part of the examination required to get a driver's license, we find that the rule book makes it quite clear that the speed limit is precisely set. In most places it is 65 miles per hour on limited-access highways. If we ask an officer who administers the written test, she will tell us that the speed limit is 65 miles per hour. However, what we soon learn, through sources we cannot reveal, is that police officers allow drivers anywhere from three to five miles per hour over the speed limit. On most days of the year, 65 miles per hour really means 68 or even seventy miles per hour. The exceptions are holidays. Then 65 really means 65.
While surely none of us participate in such cunning calculation on our roads and highways, some people somewhere probably do. You know how some people are! They read 65 on the signs, but they drive seventy because they can get away with it. The question becomes, "How much can I get away with and not have to pay any consequences or lose any privileges?"
Cosmic judgment is not going to fall on us for driving three or five miles over the speed limit. We probably should not speed. It is not as safe in many cases to speed as it is to drive the speed limit. It may even cost us some serious money in court if we push it too far, but "fudging" on the speed limit will not lock us out of God's family. However, this attitude which puts our speedometers close to seventy miles per hour, which is more than what is allowed but less than what will get us ticketed, has a way of finding its way into a lot of our thinking. It has the ring of, "How much can I sin and still go to heaven?"
This is an attempt to justify the presence of sin in our lives instead of trying to eliminate it. This is an effort to bargain with God, to renegotiate the terms. Jesus said, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself" (Matthew 22:37, 39). We are simply asking that the requirements be softened a bit. Is it not enough that we make as much room for God in our hearts as we do for the other things we love in our lives? Is it not enough that we pray occasionally, or must we love God with the kind of depth that would require our whole souls? Is it not enough that we know a few favorite verses of scripture, or must we continue to open our minds to the things we either have not heard or are not interested in hearing?
The temptation is to call sin something else, to rationalize that whatever we said did not hurt anybody. It is true that many times what we say and do doesn't hurt anybody else, but it hurts us. Our actions construct a barrier between God and us, regardless of whether anybody else is affected by them. As for the temptation to call sin something else as a way to make it sound okay, that sounds very similar to what the airline industry does in marking their on-time arrivals. A plane can land up to fourteen minutes late and still be considered on-time. Now the question becomes, "How late can I be and still be on-time?" If a plane is four minutes late, it is on-time. If a plane is nine, or ten, or eleven minutes late, it is on-time. "Hey, where you have been. You are twelve minutes late!" "Did you say 'twelve'? Then what is the problem? I am two minutes early!" Just remember, people who come in twenty minutes after their scheduled arrival are in big trouble. They are six minutes late!
The same inclination to call speeding legal, the same temptation to call being late as being on-time, is the same temptation to make some sin acceptable. It is nothing new. When Joseph's brothers finally vented their dislike for their younger brother, the temptation was to kill him. They even made a plan to murder their brother, but then realized it would not profit them any to do so. Instead, they sold him into slavery. The older brothers did not want to kill him, but they wanted him out of their lives. They were tired of Joseph. It would have been a sin to kill Joseph, but it was also a sin to treat him the way they did and sell him as a slave. However, they could get by with that. They probably would not be caught and they could apparently live with themselves, even though this was a terrible thing to do to their brother (Genesis 37:12-28).
The same thing happened in the early church. People were selling their possessions and bringing them to the community so that all would have enough. Ananias and Sapphira sold a piece of property but withheld some of the proceeds. Some of the proceeds he brought to the disciples, but not the entire amount. Ananias must have asked, "What will it hurt if I hold back a little? I am giving a generous amount." Of course, Ananias and Sapphira did not live long enough to ask the question again, "How much can I sin and still go to heaven?" (Acts 5:1-11).
It is not a situation confined to scripture. We ask similar questions. How much can I talk about somebody before it is gossip? How much time can I spend away from the church and still feel connected to its life and worship and service? How long can I ignore the needs of my family and still keep them? How long can I treat my body this way and still expect a long, healthy life?
Sometimes people ask, "How many of the Ten Commandments can I break and still be okay?" These words from Matthew shed a new light on the question. Jesus said, "Whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven." Just when we thought we were doing fairly well on the Ten Commandments, Jesus throws in all the lesser commandments for us to follow as well. We ask Jesus, "How much sin is too much?" Jesus answers, "Any sin is too much." Not only that, but we get the impression from Jesus' other teachings that maybe we are not even asking the right question.
"How much sin is too much?" Any sin is too much, especially sin that is calculating and intentional. Sin weighs us down. It restricts our freedom. It creates problems in our lives. It makes us live out of fear. It makes us worry about things that are beyond our control. Any sin is too much, and yet we all make mistakes and commit errors and engage in sinful thoughts and words and deeds.
The point is not that we are going to live perfect lives. We are never going to be free of sin, but even to ask, "How much is too much?" is to say we are straddling the fence and holding on for our lives. Even to ask the question says we have one foot in both worlds, wanting to be able to commit to the one but afraid of giving up the other completely. Even to ask the question indicates we are interested in the rewards of the hard and narrow way, but are equally interested in the lifestyle of the wide and easy path.
Elie Wiesel was a teenager when he was taken from his home to the Auschwitz concentration camp. He asked one man there why he prayed and the man replied, "I pray to the God within me that I will be given the strength to ask God the right questions."2 God gives us the strength, courage, and single-mindedness to ask the right questions. No more are we delving into questions which serve to delay whole-hearted commitment. Now, led in every movement by the spirit of God, we ask different questions. Instead of questions that look for a way out, we ask questions which grow out of loving God with all our hearts, souls, and minds.
As God's spirit shapes our lives, from each thought to each action, questions like this one vanish. We are no longer interested in seeing how much we can get away with. Instead, we awake with a devotion that explores how we can live each day more fully aware of God's guiding presence. We learn to ask new questions.
How can I make choices for God in my work place? How can my personal habits better reflect a sense of God's presence in my life? How can I treat my neighbors in such a way that they feel the love of God through me? How can I free my life of the trappings and clutter in order to live more focused on the ways of God? What new things, O God, are you calling me to learn and do?
Thomas Merton agreed that sometimes we are called not to receive the right answers, but to live the right questions. Merton wrote,
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going ... the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.3
____________
1. Lewis Grizzard, A Heapin' Helping of True Grizzard (New York: Galahad Books, 1991), p. 326.
2. Elie Wiesel, Night (New York: Bantam Books, 1960), p. 3.
3. Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1956), p. 83.
The late Southern humorist Lewis Grizzard said thinking about hell scared the you-know-what out of him. One day he received a questionnaire in the mail titled "Heaven: Are You Eligible?" Grizzard said he took the test and scored "too close to call."1 How much can I sin and still go to heaven? Lest we fail to recognize the question in that form, perhaps these will sound more familiar. How often can I miss worship and still remain in God's favor? How much prayer time can I forsake and still count on God to hear my prayers when they are the most urgent?
We try to walk the tight rope between doing a lot of things that we want to do for ourselves, but we are careful not to get so carried away that we fail to attend to the things of God. It is a balancing act we attempt in other areas of our lives. Shortly after people learn to drive they discover an interesting twist to the law. While studying for the written part of the examination required to get a driver's license, we find that the rule book makes it quite clear that the speed limit is precisely set. In most places it is 65 miles per hour on limited-access highways. If we ask an officer who administers the written test, she will tell us that the speed limit is 65 miles per hour. However, what we soon learn, through sources we cannot reveal, is that police officers allow drivers anywhere from three to five miles per hour over the speed limit. On most days of the year, 65 miles per hour really means 68 or even seventy miles per hour. The exceptions are holidays. Then 65 really means 65.
While surely none of us participate in such cunning calculation on our roads and highways, some people somewhere probably do. You know how some people are! They read 65 on the signs, but they drive seventy because they can get away with it. The question becomes, "How much can I get away with and not have to pay any consequences or lose any privileges?"
Cosmic judgment is not going to fall on us for driving three or five miles over the speed limit. We probably should not speed. It is not as safe in many cases to speed as it is to drive the speed limit. It may even cost us some serious money in court if we push it too far, but "fudging" on the speed limit will not lock us out of God's family. However, this attitude which puts our speedometers close to seventy miles per hour, which is more than what is allowed but less than what will get us ticketed, has a way of finding its way into a lot of our thinking. It has the ring of, "How much can I sin and still go to heaven?"
This is an attempt to justify the presence of sin in our lives instead of trying to eliminate it. This is an effort to bargain with God, to renegotiate the terms. Jesus said, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself" (Matthew 22:37, 39). We are simply asking that the requirements be softened a bit. Is it not enough that we make as much room for God in our hearts as we do for the other things we love in our lives? Is it not enough that we pray occasionally, or must we love God with the kind of depth that would require our whole souls? Is it not enough that we know a few favorite verses of scripture, or must we continue to open our minds to the things we either have not heard or are not interested in hearing?
The temptation is to call sin something else, to rationalize that whatever we said did not hurt anybody. It is true that many times what we say and do doesn't hurt anybody else, but it hurts us. Our actions construct a barrier between God and us, regardless of whether anybody else is affected by them. As for the temptation to call sin something else as a way to make it sound okay, that sounds very similar to what the airline industry does in marking their on-time arrivals. A plane can land up to fourteen minutes late and still be considered on-time. Now the question becomes, "How late can I be and still be on-time?" If a plane is four minutes late, it is on-time. If a plane is nine, or ten, or eleven minutes late, it is on-time. "Hey, where you have been. You are twelve minutes late!" "Did you say 'twelve'? Then what is the problem? I am two minutes early!" Just remember, people who come in twenty minutes after their scheduled arrival are in big trouble. They are six minutes late!
The same inclination to call speeding legal, the same temptation to call being late as being on-time, is the same temptation to make some sin acceptable. It is nothing new. When Joseph's brothers finally vented their dislike for their younger brother, the temptation was to kill him. They even made a plan to murder their brother, but then realized it would not profit them any to do so. Instead, they sold him into slavery. The older brothers did not want to kill him, but they wanted him out of their lives. They were tired of Joseph. It would have been a sin to kill Joseph, but it was also a sin to treat him the way they did and sell him as a slave. However, they could get by with that. They probably would not be caught and they could apparently live with themselves, even though this was a terrible thing to do to their brother (Genesis 37:12-28).
The same thing happened in the early church. People were selling their possessions and bringing them to the community so that all would have enough. Ananias and Sapphira sold a piece of property but withheld some of the proceeds. Some of the proceeds he brought to the disciples, but not the entire amount. Ananias must have asked, "What will it hurt if I hold back a little? I am giving a generous amount." Of course, Ananias and Sapphira did not live long enough to ask the question again, "How much can I sin and still go to heaven?" (Acts 5:1-11).
It is not a situation confined to scripture. We ask similar questions. How much can I talk about somebody before it is gossip? How much time can I spend away from the church and still feel connected to its life and worship and service? How long can I ignore the needs of my family and still keep them? How long can I treat my body this way and still expect a long, healthy life?
Sometimes people ask, "How many of the Ten Commandments can I break and still be okay?" These words from Matthew shed a new light on the question. Jesus said, "Whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven." Just when we thought we were doing fairly well on the Ten Commandments, Jesus throws in all the lesser commandments for us to follow as well. We ask Jesus, "How much sin is too much?" Jesus answers, "Any sin is too much." Not only that, but we get the impression from Jesus' other teachings that maybe we are not even asking the right question.
"How much sin is too much?" Any sin is too much, especially sin that is calculating and intentional. Sin weighs us down. It restricts our freedom. It creates problems in our lives. It makes us live out of fear. It makes us worry about things that are beyond our control. Any sin is too much, and yet we all make mistakes and commit errors and engage in sinful thoughts and words and deeds.
The point is not that we are going to live perfect lives. We are never going to be free of sin, but even to ask, "How much is too much?" is to say we are straddling the fence and holding on for our lives. Even to ask the question says we have one foot in both worlds, wanting to be able to commit to the one but afraid of giving up the other completely. Even to ask the question indicates we are interested in the rewards of the hard and narrow way, but are equally interested in the lifestyle of the wide and easy path.
Elie Wiesel was a teenager when he was taken from his home to the Auschwitz concentration camp. He asked one man there why he prayed and the man replied, "I pray to the God within me that I will be given the strength to ask God the right questions."2 God gives us the strength, courage, and single-mindedness to ask the right questions. No more are we delving into questions which serve to delay whole-hearted commitment. Now, led in every movement by the spirit of God, we ask different questions. Instead of questions that look for a way out, we ask questions which grow out of loving God with all our hearts, souls, and minds.
As God's spirit shapes our lives, from each thought to each action, questions like this one vanish. We are no longer interested in seeing how much we can get away with. Instead, we awake with a devotion that explores how we can live each day more fully aware of God's guiding presence. We learn to ask new questions.
How can I make choices for God in my work place? How can my personal habits better reflect a sense of God's presence in my life? How can I treat my neighbors in such a way that they feel the love of God through me? How can I free my life of the trappings and clutter in order to live more focused on the ways of God? What new things, O God, are you calling me to learn and do?
Thomas Merton agreed that sometimes we are called not to receive the right answers, but to live the right questions. Merton wrote,
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going ... the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.3
____________
1. Lewis Grizzard, A Heapin' Helping of True Grizzard (New York: Galahad Books, 1991), p. 326.
2. Elie Wiesel, Night (New York: Bantam Books, 1960), p. 3.
3. Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1956), p. 83.
