“…Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful
man.” (Luke 5:8)
So what’s up with Virginia’s Governor Ralph
Northam? Both Republicans and Democrats are urging the Virginia Democrat to
step down after someone noticed that he posed in blackface next to some other
idiot dressed in a Ku Klux Klan robe in a photo in his med school yearbook taken
over thirty years ago. Does this make the governor a racist bastard? Should a stupid,
insensitive, and demeaning act committed in one’s youth brand one with the Mark
of Cain forever?
And what about Justice Brett Kavanaugh?
Should the loutish and quasi-violent act of a drunk, horny teenager scar a man
for life?[i] Are we all like Dorian
Gray? What if our subsequent good works are never enough to restore the portrait
of our innocence, and we must forever hide the shame of our youthful
indiscretions? Are there some sins for which there can be no forgiveness? Are
we doomed to be defined by our own worst act or word?
Shoot. I hope not. If anyone looked too
closely into my past—which is filled
with substance abuse and lots of other stuff a Lutheran pastor would rather no
one knew about—I’d be pretty darned ashamed. For one thing, I grew up in a home
with parents who, however loving, were not exactly enlightened on the subject of racial justice. The vile “N Word” was
used routinely in my home, and, I’m quite certain, I used it myself as a child.
Now I know better. I’ve repented the narrow, dehumanizing views of my youth,
and I hope I’ve become a servant, advocate, and friend to all of God’s children.
I see the theme of sin’s stain in all
three of the readings in the Revised Common Lectionary appointed for Epiphany
5, Year C. In the spectacularly image-laden passage from Isaiah 6, the prophet
laments:
“Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of
unclean lips[ii],
and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the
Lord of hosts!”
Nevertheless, the King, the Lord of hosts,
doesn’t seem to care that Isaiah has a potty mouth. He has an angel take a burning
coal and burn away the sin from the prophet’s mouth so that Isaiah can be
cleansed and speak the Word of God to his stubborn people. It’s a pretty
impressive passage (Isaiah 6:1-13), and it strikes me that it’s about how God
uses even those who feel themselves unworthy. God made the prophet for a
purpose, and the prophet’s past foolish speech is nothing to God. What matters
to God is how the man uses his gifts going forward.
A more dramatic illustration of the same theme
is found in 1 Corinthians (1 Cor. 15:1-11 is the passage in the RCL). Here St.
Paul confesses:
“For I am the least of the apostles, unfit
to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.” (v. 9)
Persecuted? This guy set out
to get Christians arrested and killed. If he were around today we’d want him
tried in the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Paul was a religious
purity Nazi. Yet Jesus needed him to be on the side of righteousness. To his credit,
Paul laid low in Arabia and Damascus—well out of the spotlight—for about three
years until everybody became convinced that his repentance and conversion were
real. Then God let him loose as a voice for the Gospel. I like the way Paul
handled this, because it demonstrates that, although God may be infinitely forgiving
of even the most repugnant behavior, we sometimes have to earn our way back into the human community.
The Lectionary for this week in Epiphany
also gives us this touching miracle story from Luke 5:1-11. It’s about how
Jesus reveals himself to his disciples through a miraculous catch of fish. The
boys are so blown away by this that they leave their nets and follow Jesus. This
always struck me as pretty radical since fishing—rough way to make a living as
it is—seemed a lot safer than following around behind an itinerant rabbi doing
God-knows-what. But what really gets me in Luke’s version of the story is Peter’s
sense of shame in the presence of the Messiah. Once he realizes Jesus is the
real deal, he’s afraid to be in his company. He begs off saying, “…for I am a
sinful man.”
Jesus knows this already. We’re all
sinful. But Jesus has a plan for Peter. He has plan for the rest of us, too,
but we just may be too burdened by our own sense of guilt and shame to believe
this. We’re all both saint and sinner, but the trick is not to let the sinner
of the past keep us from being the saint of the present. The challenge of faith
is to believe that true contrition brings true salvation, and this does a work
on our hearts every day if we’re open to letting it do so.
No, I don’t want a racist to be my
governor, and I don’t want a sexual predator on the Supreme Court. But I do believe
in repentance and forgiveness, and I’m sure I’ll be surprised by the people I’ll
meet some day in Heaven.
If not before, I’ll look forward, Dear
Reader, to meeting you there! Thanks for reading this week!
[i]
Just for the record, I’m pretty certain the future Supreme Court Justice really
DID hurt that girl—he was probably too drunk to remember it. He most likely
wasn’t even aware of the damage he did to the future Professor Ford—but she’s
had to live with it ever since.
[ii]
Me too. I learned cussing from my dad, and he was master of the craft!
Good and Bad times, we are always BLEST.
ReplyDeleteAmen Pastor