And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. (John 3:15)
Did you ever hear of this cat Pelagius? He was a monk back in the fifth century and he had some rather queer ideas. He claimed to be a Christian. He was into Jesus and his teachings, but he really didn’t care for this Original Sin thing. He figured that if God so loves the world, why would he make sinful people? Why, Pelagius wondered, would you bother getting your baby baptized when your baby hadn’t done anything wrong? At least not yet. Pelagius liked to believe that we’re all born basically good and that God has given us free will. Therefore, we ought to be able to live lives free from sin. Simple, right?
I
start this little meditation on the Revised Common Lectionary texts for Lent 2,
Year A with a word about Pelagius because this Second Sunday in Lent happens to
fall on one of my favorite commemoratives: the Feast of Saint David[i]. David is the fifth-sixth
century Welsh bishop who, in addition to being Patron Saint of Wales and Patron
Saint of Poets and Vegetarians, is the guy who scored the winning point in a
debate against the followers of Pelagius back in 550 CE. If you happened to
live in Dark Ages Britain in the mid 500’s, Pelagianism was all the local rage
until David set everybody straight.
Of
course, you could always argue that, being a good Catholic priest, David had a
self-motivated interest in stomping on the Pelagians. If you believed you could
live a sinless life without the Church, the Church might go out of business.
Nevertheless, David and the rest of the Church denounced Pelagianism because it
really is wrong. Think about it. When was the last time you went even
twenty-four hours without sinning? Even if you could make it for a day being
sweet as bubble gum and spotless as the inside of a new Camero, you’d still be
living off the aftereffects of someone else’s sin. You’d be using products from
oppressed laborers or enjoying privilege not granted to others. The stink of
sin is all around us. If you’re born on the beach, you’re going to get sandy.
If you’re born on planet Earth, you’re going to deal with sin—yours and
everyone else’s.
And
how’s that free will thing working out for you? Yeah, there are some people who
believe they are the masters of their own fate. They’re free to do whatever
they want. They’re the sort of people who end up in the dock at Nuremburg or in
the Epstein files. The rest of us realize that we’re free to choose which pair
of socks to wear, but the majority of our lives are at the mercy of forces we
can’t control or even understand. We didn’t choose to be born, and we don’t
choose to grow old and die.
I
always wonder when this gospel lesson (John 3:1-17) rolls around what Nicodemus
was thinking when he came to visit Jesus. Since he was a Pharisee, it’s easy to
believe he was into all the rules and regulations which those guys lived by to
insure they kept off God’s naughty list. Before the poor guy even gets a chance
to ask a question, however, Jesus cuts him short and tells him he’s got to be
reborn. The Greek is a little sketchy here John uses the word anothen.
It can mean “from above” or “from the beginning,” or “from the very first.” I
always think Jesus is telling old Nicodemus, “Buddy, you have to shake off all
the preconceptions you’ve been lugging around all your life about yourself and
God. All that crap about good deeds and pious living and holy tiruals. You have
to start again from jump.” And how would he do that? He’d have to look at the
cross. As Christians, that’s how we deal with sin and our own powerlessness
over it. When we see that godless instrument of torture and death, we have to
be thinking just how cruel and vicious we human beings are capable of being.
But we also have to see on it the form of someone who loved us enough to enter
into that cruelty and know all the pain and despair and abandonment and shame
that is part of life in this messed-up world. There is no pain we’re ever going
to feel which Jesus hasn’t felt.
All
the lessons for this Sunday in Lent[ii] are really about
faith—faith reckoned as righteousness. We can’t keep ourselves from screwing up
like Pelagius thought we could. We try, but we mess up every time. We can’t
give God anything which isn’t God’s already, and if we think we earn God’s
blessings we lose the joy of receiving God’s gift. We don’t need to understand
why God loves us. We just have to believe God does.
It
all begins with faith. But it shouldn’t end there. Abraham’s faith sent him on
a journey to be a blessing to the world. He didn’t know where he was going or
why. He just believed. We are also being called to believe we can be a
blessing, but not by our own power. Our human will has always been insufficient,
but the will of God sustains us, inspires us, teaches us, and gives us the
stamina to be the blessing God intends us to be. This world is a mess, but God
loves it and wants us to love it too.
Sorry,
Pelagius. I’m just not up to being what God wants me to be on my own. Thank
you, Saint David. And Saint Paul. And Saint Agustine, Martin Luther, John
Calvin, and all the preachers through the centuries who reminded us of both our
frailty and God’s exquisite mercy.
Thank
you, my friend, for joining me during these sacred forty days. I appreciate
your company. Leave me a comment if you wish and come see me again.
[i] I
have thus far been unsuccessful in getting the ELCA to recognize this important
saint on our liturgical calendar, but I will keep trying.
[ii] The
first lesson is Genesis 12:1-4a. The epistle is Romans 4:1-5, 13-17.
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