Is It Life-Threatening?
Sermon
I have a story for you, and it may be quite a common story, which some of you will recognize in one way or another. It concerns a man was a heavy smoker. Because he knew smoking damages health, he'd tried to give up from time to time using all sorts of aids like filters and reduced nicotine cigarettes and patches and so on. But when you start smoking at the age of ten it's already an established habit by the time you're twelve, so giving up isn't easy.
Then one day this man had awful squeezing, choking pains in his chest and found himself in the coronary care unit of the local hospital. Fortunately it wasn't a heart attack, but it was severe angina and his doctor said to him, "Put it like this. If you don't give up smoking you will definitely have a heart attack." The man gave up smoking instantly and never smoked again.
Being told that his life was threatened, that he was likely to die as a relatively young man, changed his perspective. Suddenly his scale of values reversed, so that things like smoking which were of the utmost importance before faded into insignificance, while things like life and death which hadn't previously merited much thought, leaped to the top of the list.
But none of that happened until his life was threatened. Until then he went on smoking and enjoying it so much that he never really considered change, even though he knew intellectually that he needed to change. Although his brain knew that his lifestyle in the long run was life-threatening, because there were no immediate signs of any problem, his heart refused to change.
And it's much the same spiritually. As St. Paul pointed out so graphically in his letter to the Romans (6:23), the wages of sin is death. Death is what results from sin, because sin is life-threatening. And if I glory in that which ought to cause shame, my end will be destruction. But in practice, most people never give sin much thought, because even though the Bible might warn against it, there are no immediate signs of any problem.
We can, for instance, watch global warming increase. We can see poorer countries exploited. We can spot friction in different areas of the world. All of us may know intellectually that all those things signal self-destruction on a massive scale, but we still do nothing about it. And the whole topic is so unpopular that any political party which speaks out too loudly on any of these issues stands no chance of election to government.
That's a kind of mass sin, original sin, which drags us all down because the energy needed to stand against it is so great and the whole problem seems too overwhelming for little people like us to tackle. And destruction of the world still seems a very long way off, not immediately life-threatening, not an immediate problem.
What of personal sin, individual sin? One way of avoiding facing sin is to trivialise it, and we're really good at that in church. Whenever we have a service we confess our sins to Almighty God, but what that often means is that we make a list of apologies and excuses. "God, I'm sorry I told a white lie the other day, it was only to spare her feelings." Or, "God, I'm sorry I'm not a better person." Or, "God, I'm sorry I lost my temper," or so on. All of that manages to avoid the real, crippling nature of sin, because by trivializing it, it manages to avoid even looking at sin.
Sin is that which separates us from God, and because in the short term it's quite comfortable being separated from God, most of us go out of our way to keep it like that. Just like smoking is comfortable and not immediately life-threatening.
But sin is a barrier between God and us. It effectively prevents God reaching us, like a thick, black curtain through which only a thin stream of light can trickle. Peel back the curtain a bit, and more light can flood in. Remove the curtain altogether, and the place will be flooded with light.
The curtain can be made of many different materials. It may be a shrinking material, which means that I shrink from standing up for what I believe in, from putting myself on the firing line, in case other people don't approve of my behaviour or my beliefs.
It may be a lazy material, which means that I'm not prepared to do anything about my own fears or anxieties, because that would mean hard and painful work. It's easier to leave things as they are, even if that means I'm a slave to my own fears and anxieties. And my excuse will be that I don't know how to change, I can't do anything about it, that's the way I am.
It may be a proud material, which means that if I've made a stand somewhere and for something, I'll never be shifted from that position because I might lose face. Rather than lose face I become more entrenched in my own ideas, and refuse to hear what anyone else says. And I may justify that quite easily from the Bible, by picking out a few verses from here or there which support my position.
Or it might be a fearful material, which means I'm so afraid of being alone with God that I find all sorts of reasons to be too busy to spend time with him. Too busy helping other people, or too busy doing things, because if I stop and rest I tell myself I'm being lazy, or I feel bored.
All of these thick black curtains, and many others like them, dilute God's healing light to a thin trickle. And if God's healing light can't get through, then dis-ease results.
Physical disease has many causes. Infection, heredity, congenital, unknown origin, chemical pollutants and so on. One cause of physical disease is spiritual disease - sin - the black curtain preventing God's healing light.
If that black curtain remains, then eventually it results in death, in a kind of drying-up inside which leads to a condition of deep unhappiness, ill-health, misery and no laughter.
Fortunately for all of us, there's an antidote - Jesus. When Jesus voluntarily died on the cross, he explored every aspect of that black curtain of sin. He suffered the pain, both physical and emotional, but he kept on going through that curtain until he reached the other side. He didn't shy away from it, or avoid it or evade it, but continued straight through, maintaining his integrity throughout.
The result was resurrection - radiant new life and shining health. And that's what he promises for us if we follow him through the black curtain, facing up to our sin, doing something about it, making the effort to seek help.
None of us should be slaves to sin, because Jesus set us free. Whatever the circumstances of your life, what Christianity offers to all is laughter and happiness and deep contentment and shining health, because that's what God's light flooding your life brings you. And if you don't experience that, then it's time to do something about it.
St Paul said, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ and their end is destruction. But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that Jesus will transform us. Therefore, stand firm in the Lord and grasp his gift of forgiveness and transformation with both hands. And then, watch your life blossom.
Then one day this man had awful squeezing, choking pains in his chest and found himself in the coronary care unit of the local hospital. Fortunately it wasn't a heart attack, but it was severe angina and his doctor said to him, "Put it like this. If you don't give up smoking you will definitely have a heart attack." The man gave up smoking instantly and never smoked again.
Being told that his life was threatened, that he was likely to die as a relatively young man, changed his perspective. Suddenly his scale of values reversed, so that things like smoking which were of the utmost importance before faded into insignificance, while things like life and death which hadn't previously merited much thought, leaped to the top of the list.
But none of that happened until his life was threatened. Until then he went on smoking and enjoying it so much that he never really considered change, even though he knew intellectually that he needed to change. Although his brain knew that his lifestyle in the long run was life-threatening, because there were no immediate signs of any problem, his heart refused to change.
And it's much the same spiritually. As St. Paul pointed out so graphically in his letter to the Romans (6:23), the wages of sin is death. Death is what results from sin, because sin is life-threatening. And if I glory in that which ought to cause shame, my end will be destruction. But in practice, most people never give sin much thought, because even though the Bible might warn against it, there are no immediate signs of any problem.
We can, for instance, watch global warming increase. We can see poorer countries exploited. We can spot friction in different areas of the world. All of us may know intellectually that all those things signal self-destruction on a massive scale, but we still do nothing about it. And the whole topic is so unpopular that any political party which speaks out too loudly on any of these issues stands no chance of election to government.
That's a kind of mass sin, original sin, which drags us all down because the energy needed to stand against it is so great and the whole problem seems too overwhelming for little people like us to tackle. And destruction of the world still seems a very long way off, not immediately life-threatening, not an immediate problem.
What of personal sin, individual sin? One way of avoiding facing sin is to trivialise it, and we're really good at that in church. Whenever we have a service we confess our sins to Almighty God, but what that often means is that we make a list of apologies and excuses. "God, I'm sorry I told a white lie the other day, it was only to spare her feelings." Or, "God, I'm sorry I'm not a better person." Or, "God, I'm sorry I lost my temper," or so on. All of that manages to avoid the real, crippling nature of sin, because by trivializing it, it manages to avoid even looking at sin.
Sin is that which separates us from God, and because in the short term it's quite comfortable being separated from God, most of us go out of our way to keep it like that. Just like smoking is comfortable and not immediately life-threatening.
But sin is a barrier between God and us. It effectively prevents God reaching us, like a thick, black curtain through which only a thin stream of light can trickle. Peel back the curtain a bit, and more light can flood in. Remove the curtain altogether, and the place will be flooded with light.
The curtain can be made of many different materials. It may be a shrinking material, which means that I shrink from standing up for what I believe in, from putting myself on the firing line, in case other people don't approve of my behaviour or my beliefs.
It may be a lazy material, which means that I'm not prepared to do anything about my own fears or anxieties, because that would mean hard and painful work. It's easier to leave things as they are, even if that means I'm a slave to my own fears and anxieties. And my excuse will be that I don't know how to change, I can't do anything about it, that's the way I am.
It may be a proud material, which means that if I've made a stand somewhere and for something, I'll never be shifted from that position because I might lose face. Rather than lose face I become more entrenched in my own ideas, and refuse to hear what anyone else says. And I may justify that quite easily from the Bible, by picking out a few verses from here or there which support my position.
Or it might be a fearful material, which means I'm so afraid of being alone with God that I find all sorts of reasons to be too busy to spend time with him. Too busy helping other people, or too busy doing things, because if I stop and rest I tell myself I'm being lazy, or I feel bored.
All of these thick black curtains, and many others like them, dilute God's healing light to a thin trickle. And if God's healing light can't get through, then dis-ease results.
Physical disease has many causes. Infection, heredity, congenital, unknown origin, chemical pollutants and so on. One cause of physical disease is spiritual disease - sin - the black curtain preventing God's healing light.
If that black curtain remains, then eventually it results in death, in a kind of drying-up inside which leads to a condition of deep unhappiness, ill-health, misery and no laughter.
Fortunately for all of us, there's an antidote - Jesus. When Jesus voluntarily died on the cross, he explored every aspect of that black curtain of sin. He suffered the pain, both physical and emotional, but he kept on going through that curtain until he reached the other side. He didn't shy away from it, or avoid it or evade it, but continued straight through, maintaining his integrity throughout.
The result was resurrection - radiant new life and shining health. And that's what he promises for us if we follow him through the black curtain, facing up to our sin, doing something about it, making the effort to seek help.
None of us should be slaves to sin, because Jesus set us free. Whatever the circumstances of your life, what Christianity offers to all is laughter and happiness and deep contentment and shining health, because that's what God's light flooding your life brings you. And if you don't experience that, then it's time to do something about it.
St Paul said, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ and their end is destruction. But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that Jesus will transform us. Therefore, stand firm in the Lord and grasp his gift of forgiveness and transformation with both hands. And then, watch your life blossom.
