At War With Myself
Sermon
Sermons On The Second Reading
Series I, Cycle A
In a certain church, a woman was leading the congregation in the prayer of confession. She called the people to confess, reminding them of the sin within their hearts, and then all joined in reading the prayer of confession. She paused for the silent confession, and she kept pausing for a good long while. So long, in fact, that the people began to rustle as they waited for the next part of the service.
It was awkward, and more than a few worshipers thought she had lost her place or mislaid the piece of paper with the proper words written on it. Finally someone was overheard to murmur, "Just hurry up and forgive us, so we can shake hands and sit down."
I wonder sometimes, if that is how we feel when we come to the prayer when we confess our sins. For some people, it seems rather perfunctory. Read a short prayer that mentions some things that you may or may not have done or felt. Pause for a moment to appear properly penitential. Then move on to more cheerful and uplifting aspects of the service.
We don't talk much about sin any more. It's not a topic of public discourse, and if it is, it's usually reduced to some obvious misdeed of some prominent public figure. And since we would rather joke about our public figures on late night television than forgive them, we often regard sin as some extravagant mistake that any intelligent person would laugh about.
We hear about a congressman accused of taking bribes and making a fool of himself. We pretend to be shocked, and poke fun at his rough language. It is our way of saying it couldn't happen to us. Either we are not that stupid, or we are not that extravagant.
In other words, "Just hurry up and forgive us, so we can shake hands and sit down."
We don't like looking too closely at the dark side of human existence, unless, of course, we can turn it into some form of entertainment. But all of us know it's there. All of us are acutely aware of the dangerous power of sin.
Years ago, there was a Peanuts cartoon where Lucy was explaining to her brother Linus about the division in the human heart. She drew a picture of a heart, put a line down the middle, and said, "One side is filled with hate and the other side is filled with love. These are the two forces which are constantly at war with each other." Linus says, "I think I know just what you mean. I can feel them fighting."1
So Lucy has him tip to one side, so the good part can drain into the evil part. If only it were that easy!
The Apostle Paul describes a constant war going on within himself. "I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate ... I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do ... I find it a rule that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my body another law at war with the law of my mind. Wretched man that I am!"
A lot of people don't like the Apostle Paul. They think he ought to act more like a twenty--first century person. But the truth is, he understands us better that we understand ourselves. He knows that to be human is to find yourself in one tangled mess after another. Sometimes the mess is of our own making. Sometimes it comes from our own rebellion. Sometimes our best efforts are corrupted by the power of sin. Today he simply holds up a mirror and invites us to look at ourselves.
Paul speaks about his own spiritual struggles in the seventh chapter of Romans. He holds up himself as a sermon illustration. A lot of scholars think he is talking about the old life before he became a Christian. He says, "I am a slave of sin, a captive to the law of sin," even though one chapter before he said we are no longer under sin's dominion. Now we are slaves to the righteousness of God. Our lives are directed toward serving God.
That is true, as far as it goes. But most of chapter 7 is in the present tense. He speaks about a war continuing within himself. He tries to do the right thing, but it doesn't always work out that way. He knows he has been claimed by Jesus Christ, called to live as God's apostle, and filled with the gifts of the Holy Spirit. He knows this; yet it is one thing to know it, it is another to live it day to day. He says, "I detect another force at work in my life." Even his best efforts can be corrupted. Such is the power of sin.
Walker Percy once asked:
Why is it that the self - though it professes to be loving, caring, to prefer peace to war, concord to discord, life to death; to wish other selves well, not ill - in fact secretly relishes wars and rumors of war, news of plane crashes, assassinations, mass murders, obituaries, to say nothing of local news about acquaintances dropping dead in the streets, gossip about neighbors getting in fights or being detected in sexual scandals, embezzlements, and other disgraces?2
Paul says we are at war with ourselves. Why do we do some of the things we do?
I went to see a man in the hospital. He smoked cigarettes his whole life. The doctor told him he had to stop, so he changed doctors. He kept smoking. He got emphysema. He got really sick. He went to the hospital. They told him he had to stop. He kept smoking. He got lung cancer. He went back into the hospital. They removed a lung. The day he got out, he started smoking again. They wheeled him into the hospital again. This time he had burned out his trachea. They had to remove his voice box. They put a little tube in his throat. I heard about it. I went to see him. He wasn't in his room. I looked all over the place. Finally one of the nurses said, "I'll show you where he is." She took me downstairs, out the back door. There he was, out in the courtyard, taking a long drag from the Marlboro that he put in the hole in his throat.
Why does he do that? Doesn't he know better?
There's a woman who likes being a good friend. She has a pleasant personality, a gentle demeanor, a pretty smile. She loves to listen to people when she meets them for coffee. She's very friendly when she stands next to people at a soccer game. People tell her all kinds of things. She listens sympathetically, intuitively nods her head. Then she excuses herself, pulls out her cell phone, dials a number, and says, "You'll never believe what I just heard."
One friend got damaged by her gossip and confronted her. "Why did you treat me like that?" There were a lot of tears, an apology, "I'll never do it again." The accuser slips away, still wounded. The woman watches her go.
Then she pulls out the cell phone, dials the number, and says, "Can you believe the nerve of her?"
Why does she do it? Doesn't she know better?
Paul says, "I don't understand my own actions." We can take him at his word. All of us do stupid things, destructive things, things that don't make any sense. I remember when I was ten years old, I threw a snowball at the windshield of a moving police car, and hit it. What was I thinking? Surely I knew better, but I couldn't help myself.
A few years ago, some of us went to Haiti. We lived among the poor in an effort to understand how two--thirds of the world's people live. Rice and beans were our daily diet, except for the day we received fried goat and fresh Spam. The experience opened my eyes to see just something of what it must be like. Then we hopped on a plane and flew back to New York. As soon as we hit the ground, I begged our group to stop at a Burger King so I could gobble down two double Whoppers with cheese. What was I thinking? When it dawned on me what I had done, it made me sick. Of course, the Whoppers didn't help.
Sometimes, we like to rebel against some standard. Some authority says this is the way things are, and we say, "No, it's not." Somebody says, "Short hair," and we grow it long. Dad says, "Turn down the music," and we turn it up. Most of us have been there.
I had a philosophy professor in college. It was a class on consciousness, if you can imagine that - for college students. This guy would walk over by the window, then put his foot up on the desk. He would stand in front of a "No Smoking" sign and light up a hand--rolled cigarette. What was that all about? I think you know.
Earlier in this chapter, Paul says, "I wouldn't have known what it is to covet, except the law said, 'Thou shalt not covet.' As soon as I heard that law, I started wanting what other people have."
It's like the mother who says, "Now, kids, don't get dirty. Stay out of the mud." The kids look at one another. There's mud? Where's the mud? Next thing you know, they are up to their ears in it.
She yells at them, "I told you to stay out of the mud!" But, Mother, they didn't know it existed until you told them to stay out of it.
Paul says this is the dark power of sin. Sin takes something good, like the Law of God, and twists it all around. The Law says don't covet. Paul says, "Sin, seizing an opportunity, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. I was deceived, and it killed me."
Now pay attention here: He was trying to do the right thing, and he got all messed up. Do you think it's possible for people to comb their hair, go to church, sing the hymns, pray the prayers, make the offering - and then turn on one another? Attack one another? Yes, it can happen. Even at the point of our best efforts - personally, nationally, ecclesially - sin seizes whatever it can.
In one of her books, Kathleen Norris writes about "good old sin." That's how some of the ancient Christians called it, sin as a persistent and troublesome force in our lives. She writes:
These days, when someone commits an atrocity, we tend to sigh and say, "That's human nature." But our attitude would seem wrong--headed to the desert monks, who understood human beings to be part of the creation that God called good, special in that they are made in the image of God. Sin is an aberration, not natural for us at all. This is why Gregory of Nyssa speaks so often of "returning to the grace of that image what was established in you from the beginning." Gregory saw it as our lifelong task to find out what part of the divine image God has chosen to reveal in us ... We can best do this by realistically determining how God has made us - what our primary faults and temptations are, as well as our gifts - not that we might better "know ourselves," or in modern parlance, "feel good about ourselves," but in order that we might become instruments of divine grace for other people, and eventually return to God.3
The early Christian mystics understood both the perils and possibilities of the human heart. The great danger is rooted in the ever--present power of sin, that frequently fatal tendency to turn in on ourselves and turn away from God. But the great possibilities come in the power of God through Jesus Christ. In Christ, God has come right into our tangled messes to rescue and restore. Jesus came to us, and our sin was so pervasive that we killed him. But God raised him up. And Jesus Christ keeps after us, keeps rescuing, keeps restoring - until the day comes when he turns his kingdom over to the Father - washed, renewed, redeemed.
That is our Christian hope. We trust that the work of Christ is greater than the work we can do. On the cross, he takes away the sin of the world, and serves notice that God's forgiveness can cancel every debt and trespass. In the power of his resurrection, he remains with those whom he has claimed, offering guidance and help in time of need.
That is one reason why we don't rush through our prayers on Sunday morning. We take the time to name before God the places where we have fallen short and fallen down. We try to be as honest with ourselves as Christ our judge.
Then we take his hand and let him lift us out of the mud, always trusting that we have a second chance and a new beginning.
____________
1. As discussed by Robert L. Short, The Gospel According to Peanuts (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1965), pp. 35--39.
2. Walker Percy, Signposts in a Strange Land (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1991), p. 153.
3. Kathleen Norris, The Cloister Walk (New York: Riverhead Books, 1996), p. 127.
It was awkward, and more than a few worshipers thought she had lost her place or mislaid the piece of paper with the proper words written on it. Finally someone was overheard to murmur, "Just hurry up and forgive us, so we can shake hands and sit down."
I wonder sometimes, if that is how we feel when we come to the prayer when we confess our sins. For some people, it seems rather perfunctory. Read a short prayer that mentions some things that you may or may not have done or felt. Pause for a moment to appear properly penitential. Then move on to more cheerful and uplifting aspects of the service.
We don't talk much about sin any more. It's not a topic of public discourse, and if it is, it's usually reduced to some obvious misdeed of some prominent public figure. And since we would rather joke about our public figures on late night television than forgive them, we often regard sin as some extravagant mistake that any intelligent person would laugh about.
We hear about a congressman accused of taking bribes and making a fool of himself. We pretend to be shocked, and poke fun at his rough language. It is our way of saying it couldn't happen to us. Either we are not that stupid, or we are not that extravagant.
In other words, "Just hurry up and forgive us, so we can shake hands and sit down."
We don't like looking too closely at the dark side of human existence, unless, of course, we can turn it into some form of entertainment. But all of us know it's there. All of us are acutely aware of the dangerous power of sin.
Years ago, there was a Peanuts cartoon where Lucy was explaining to her brother Linus about the division in the human heart. She drew a picture of a heart, put a line down the middle, and said, "One side is filled with hate and the other side is filled with love. These are the two forces which are constantly at war with each other." Linus says, "I think I know just what you mean. I can feel them fighting."1
So Lucy has him tip to one side, so the good part can drain into the evil part. If only it were that easy!
The Apostle Paul describes a constant war going on within himself. "I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate ... I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do ... I find it a rule that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my body another law at war with the law of my mind. Wretched man that I am!"
A lot of people don't like the Apostle Paul. They think he ought to act more like a twenty--first century person. But the truth is, he understands us better that we understand ourselves. He knows that to be human is to find yourself in one tangled mess after another. Sometimes the mess is of our own making. Sometimes it comes from our own rebellion. Sometimes our best efforts are corrupted by the power of sin. Today he simply holds up a mirror and invites us to look at ourselves.
Paul speaks about his own spiritual struggles in the seventh chapter of Romans. He holds up himself as a sermon illustration. A lot of scholars think he is talking about the old life before he became a Christian. He says, "I am a slave of sin, a captive to the law of sin," even though one chapter before he said we are no longer under sin's dominion. Now we are slaves to the righteousness of God. Our lives are directed toward serving God.
That is true, as far as it goes. But most of chapter 7 is in the present tense. He speaks about a war continuing within himself. He tries to do the right thing, but it doesn't always work out that way. He knows he has been claimed by Jesus Christ, called to live as God's apostle, and filled with the gifts of the Holy Spirit. He knows this; yet it is one thing to know it, it is another to live it day to day. He says, "I detect another force at work in my life." Even his best efforts can be corrupted. Such is the power of sin.
Walker Percy once asked:
Why is it that the self - though it professes to be loving, caring, to prefer peace to war, concord to discord, life to death; to wish other selves well, not ill - in fact secretly relishes wars and rumors of war, news of plane crashes, assassinations, mass murders, obituaries, to say nothing of local news about acquaintances dropping dead in the streets, gossip about neighbors getting in fights or being detected in sexual scandals, embezzlements, and other disgraces?2
Paul says we are at war with ourselves. Why do we do some of the things we do?
I went to see a man in the hospital. He smoked cigarettes his whole life. The doctor told him he had to stop, so he changed doctors. He kept smoking. He got emphysema. He got really sick. He went to the hospital. They told him he had to stop. He kept smoking. He got lung cancer. He went back into the hospital. They removed a lung. The day he got out, he started smoking again. They wheeled him into the hospital again. This time he had burned out his trachea. They had to remove his voice box. They put a little tube in his throat. I heard about it. I went to see him. He wasn't in his room. I looked all over the place. Finally one of the nurses said, "I'll show you where he is." She took me downstairs, out the back door. There he was, out in the courtyard, taking a long drag from the Marlboro that he put in the hole in his throat.
Why does he do that? Doesn't he know better?
There's a woman who likes being a good friend. She has a pleasant personality, a gentle demeanor, a pretty smile. She loves to listen to people when she meets them for coffee. She's very friendly when she stands next to people at a soccer game. People tell her all kinds of things. She listens sympathetically, intuitively nods her head. Then she excuses herself, pulls out her cell phone, dials a number, and says, "You'll never believe what I just heard."
One friend got damaged by her gossip and confronted her. "Why did you treat me like that?" There were a lot of tears, an apology, "I'll never do it again." The accuser slips away, still wounded. The woman watches her go.
Then she pulls out the cell phone, dials the number, and says, "Can you believe the nerve of her?"
Why does she do it? Doesn't she know better?
Paul says, "I don't understand my own actions." We can take him at his word. All of us do stupid things, destructive things, things that don't make any sense. I remember when I was ten years old, I threw a snowball at the windshield of a moving police car, and hit it. What was I thinking? Surely I knew better, but I couldn't help myself.
A few years ago, some of us went to Haiti. We lived among the poor in an effort to understand how two--thirds of the world's people live. Rice and beans were our daily diet, except for the day we received fried goat and fresh Spam. The experience opened my eyes to see just something of what it must be like. Then we hopped on a plane and flew back to New York. As soon as we hit the ground, I begged our group to stop at a Burger King so I could gobble down two double Whoppers with cheese. What was I thinking? When it dawned on me what I had done, it made me sick. Of course, the Whoppers didn't help.
Sometimes, we like to rebel against some standard. Some authority says this is the way things are, and we say, "No, it's not." Somebody says, "Short hair," and we grow it long. Dad says, "Turn down the music," and we turn it up. Most of us have been there.
I had a philosophy professor in college. It was a class on consciousness, if you can imagine that - for college students. This guy would walk over by the window, then put his foot up on the desk. He would stand in front of a "No Smoking" sign and light up a hand--rolled cigarette. What was that all about? I think you know.
Earlier in this chapter, Paul says, "I wouldn't have known what it is to covet, except the law said, 'Thou shalt not covet.' As soon as I heard that law, I started wanting what other people have."
It's like the mother who says, "Now, kids, don't get dirty. Stay out of the mud." The kids look at one another. There's mud? Where's the mud? Next thing you know, they are up to their ears in it.
She yells at them, "I told you to stay out of the mud!" But, Mother, they didn't know it existed until you told them to stay out of it.
Paul says this is the dark power of sin. Sin takes something good, like the Law of God, and twists it all around. The Law says don't covet. Paul says, "Sin, seizing an opportunity, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. I was deceived, and it killed me."
Now pay attention here: He was trying to do the right thing, and he got all messed up. Do you think it's possible for people to comb their hair, go to church, sing the hymns, pray the prayers, make the offering - and then turn on one another? Attack one another? Yes, it can happen. Even at the point of our best efforts - personally, nationally, ecclesially - sin seizes whatever it can.
In one of her books, Kathleen Norris writes about "good old sin." That's how some of the ancient Christians called it, sin as a persistent and troublesome force in our lives. She writes:
These days, when someone commits an atrocity, we tend to sigh and say, "That's human nature." But our attitude would seem wrong--headed to the desert monks, who understood human beings to be part of the creation that God called good, special in that they are made in the image of God. Sin is an aberration, not natural for us at all. This is why Gregory of Nyssa speaks so often of "returning to the grace of that image what was established in you from the beginning." Gregory saw it as our lifelong task to find out what part of the divine image God has chosen to reveal in us ... We can best do this by realistically determining how God has made us - what our primary faults and temptations are, as well as our gifts - not that we might better "know ourselves," or in modern parlance, "feel good about ourselves," but in order that we might become instruments of divine grace for other people, and eventually return to God.3
The early Christian mystics understood both the perils and possibilities of the human heart. The great danger is rooted in the ever--present power of sin, that frequently fatal tendency to turn in on ourselves and turn away from God. But the great possibilities come in the power of God through Jesus Christ. In Christ, God has come right into our tangled messes to rescue and restore. Jesus came to us, and our sin was so pervasive that we killed him. But God raised him up. And Jesus Christ keeps after us, keeps rescuing, keeps restoring - until the day comes when he turns his kingdom over to the Father - washed, renewed, redeemed.
That is our Christian hope. We trust that the work of Christ is greater than the work we can do. On the cross, he takes away the sin of the world, and serves notice that God's forgiveness can cancel every debt and trespass. In the power of his resurrection, he remains with those whom he has claimed, offering guidance and help in time of need.
That is one reason why we don't rush through our prayers on Sunday morning. We take the time to name before God the places where we have fallen short and fallen down. We try to be as honest with ourselves as Christ our judge.
Then we take his hand and let him lift us out of the mud, always trusting that we have a second chance and a new beginning.
____________
1. As discussed by Robert L. Short, The Gospel According to Peanuts (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1965), pp. 35--39.
2. Walker Percy, Signposts in a Strange Land (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1991), p. 153.
3. Kathleen Norris, The Cloister Walk (New York: Riverhead Books, 1996), p. 127.
