BIBLE READINGS: Isaiah
6:1-8 Luke 5:1-11
SERMON
We sin.
Theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr said that the Christian doctrine of
sin was about the only self-evident doctrine we had. That is, even if you don’t
believe in Jesus, you believe that we sin.
Human history is
the history of sin.
If Niebuhr is right, whatever happened to sin?
Isaiah is in the temple at worship. He has a stunning vision. It
was as if the heavens open and he sees the very throne of God. “Holy, Holy,
Holy,” sing the cherubim. And Isaiah cries, “The choir was heavenly today!”
No. Isaiah declares, “Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips.”
And today’s gospel. Jesus and his disciples are out in a boat,
fishing. After a night of fishing failure, Jesus takes charge. “Cast your nets
on the other side,” he directs.
And the nets are full. And Peter falls to his knees and cries, “Depart from me,
for I am a sinful man.” And they left everything and followed him.
Yet we can’t be honest about our sin because we are dishonest about the human
condition, because we know not how to describe ourselves except through
therapeutic categories (we are sick rather than sinful), or sin as an
educational problem (we are racist because we don’t have proper understanding
of other cultures), or as an expression of our anxiety about being human (we
are frail, vulnerable creatures who respond to our creatureliness in
inappropriate ways). There is some truth to all of that, but none of it gets to
the heart of a specifically Christian view of sin.
Today’s scripture demonstrates that sin is a by-product of our being confronted
by God. The Christian doctrine of sin adheres to our notions of God rather than
to our ideas about humanity. When we say “sin” we’re not talking about the
result of natural human anxiety about the limits of being human, or occasional
foibles and slip-ups. We are saying that face-to-face with the awesome
righteousness of God, the holiness of Jesus, we fall to our knees. We have our
noses rubbed in the great gap between who we are and who God is. To be brought
close to the claim, “Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God Almighty. The whole earth is
full of his glory!” is to cry, “Woe is me for I am one of unclean lips and
dwell amid a people of unclean lips.”
Martin Luther said he would know nothing of his sin had not the Holy Spirit
taught him.
William Willamon tells the story of a theological
student who briefly served as a chaplain in a prison. He received a request
from a father of a young man who was in the prison. The young man had committed
a robbery in a little town and had been sentenced for many years in jail. He
was angry, embittered. The boys father came each week
to visit him, but the boy steadfastly refused to see him. The chaplain was
asked to intervene, to plead with the boy to see his father, but the young
prisoner refused.
Despite his refusal, the boy’s father took of work every week, boarded a bus,
and travelled across the state in the hope of seeing his son. Every week. It
became the young chaplain’s difficult task each week to ask the son, “Do you
want to see your Dad?” then to bear word of the refusal to the waiting father.
The father would thank the chaplain, gather his belongings, and head toward the
door for the bus trip back home.
One day, after telling the father that once again, his son would not meet with
him, the chaplain said, “No one would do what you are doing. Your son is an
embittered, defiant young man. Give up. Go back home and get on with your life.
No one would put up with this kind of rejection, week after week. Nobody would
do this.”
“He has put up with it for centuries,” said the father, as he picked up his meagre
belongings and headed out.
And the young chaplain literally fell to his knees at this vision of the
righteousness of God. Woe is me! I am a sinful man whose lips and life are not
worthy of the greatness of God.
Sin is a by-product of faithful worship. Karl Barth declared that, “Only
Christians sin.” The sins of non-Christians are peccadilloes, slip-ups, small
potatoes. Christians sense sin as a huge gap between us and our loving,
forgiving, seeking Saviour. Christians confess only because of a prior
confidence in a forgiving, gracious God. Before that, confession is mere
child’s play.
Peter cried, “Depart from me, I am a sinful man!” The good news is, he never
does.
Ackowledgement: William Willamon