If you didn’t already know it already, I am a quote
junkie. And what I mean is that I love quotations that inspire and capture deep
truths in a nutshell. They say brevity
is the soul of wit. Based on the number of quotes I throw around, one might
think I am some kind of book worm.
The truth be told – I
follow blogs and news feeds of avid readers and use quotations from what they
are reading. Now, I am not a total bum. I do go back and read some of these
books. I might just read the chapter where the quotation comes from, but I read
nonetheless.
Anyway, there is one
particular quotation that has haunted/challenged me for the last several years.
And it happens to be from a book that I myself picked up to read. Now, don’t
ask me for the title and the author because I don’t remember…
My recollection of the
quote reads, “Your vocation as a preacher is to convince good people that they
let their institutions do their sinning for them.” As you might
imagine, this is not a quote I throw around a lot. These are heavy words that
begin complicated conversations about the nature of corporate sin and our
complicit nature in all the sins which plague society. These heavy words remind
us that even the best of us with the best intentions have the power to destroy
and corrupt.
I am very aware that this
quote initiates a conversation that we are not used to having and it certainly
initiates a conversation we are not comfortable having. In my experience, when
Christians talk about sin, we usually talk about individual sin. What have I
done to damage the body of Christ? What have I done to grieve the Holy Spirit?
But sometimes we must ask, “What have we done?” What has the church done? What
has our country done? What has my tribe done to harm another tribe?
This quotation has re-surfaced
in my consciousness during this Lenten season. Some of this relates to the
unrest that our country is currently experiencing. Some of it relates to the
unrest that Selma is currently experiencing. But the rubber hit the road when I
read today’s Old Testament lesson from Numbers.
In this lesson fromNumbers, God sends poisonous snakes to convince the Hebrews of their corporate
sin. (Now, that’s a thought…!) Finally,
Moses intercedes for the people and says, “We have sinned…” In much the same
way, we as a church kneel together to confess our corporate sin. We confess
that we have sinned against thee…
Before
I hit the gas pedal again, a story that I hope will bring a little levity and
clarity to this passage from Numbers…Did you know that in all the years that
Camp McDowell has been the Episcopal Camp and Conference Center for the Diocese
of Alabama, only one snake bite has been reported. This snake bite occurred
just a few years ago to a summer camp staff member.
Using the logic from the
Numbers passage, I guess this means the summer staff at Camp McDowell has been
especially holy and sin-free over the years since God has only sent one snake
to bite a summer staff over the sixty years of summer camp.
But this is one of those
cases where you can’t take scripture too literally. Remember that God gave us
reason and intellect to further discern God’s presence in our lives. And my own
reason, based on my experience as a summer staff member, tells me that more
than one summer staffer should have been bitten over the years!
But because we don’t take
this passage literally, this does not mean that we should not take this passage
seriously. In fact, we should take this passage as seriously as a snake bite.
The summer camper who was bitten by a baby copper head was airlifted to UAB
because the local hospital in Jasper was out of anti-venom.
As you may know,
anti-venom is highly expensive and doesn’t keep for very long. And curiously
enough, anti-venom contains the poisonous venom injected by the snake bite. In
other words, the same stuff that poisons is also used to cure.
Now, I hope this curious
passage from Numbers seems a little less bizarre now. This passage reveals
truth that we too are familiar with in our day and time. While God isn’t
turning snakes into bronze statutes, at least not to my knowledge, God does
continue to show humanity that the way to healing and wholeness begins by facing
fears, by facing death, by enduring pain and suffering. And in
Jesus resurrection, we are shown that our greatest fears, sin and death, have
no power over us if we are in Christ.
Like receiving a dose of
anti-venom for a snake bite, there are a lot of serious side effects associated
with facing the very corporate sin we try to run from. Side effects include but
are not limited to feelings of extreme vulnerability, feelings of aloneness, complications
in our relationships with members of our tribe or family, long periods of keep
our mouths’ shut because we must listen to someone else talk, changing the way we’ve
always thought about things, letting go of grudges and suspicions that keep our
hatred for the other alive.
As Christians, we believe
God’s most potent dose of anti-venom comes on the cross of Jesus Christ. This
truth is proclaimed by Jesus in today’s gospel, “Just as Moses lifted up the
serpent in the wilderness, so too must the Son of Man be lifted up, that
whoever believes in him may have enteral life.” This is Jesus’ first Passion
prediction and indicates that salvation doesn’t come through the avoidance of
pain and death but through the endurance of pain and death.
I have learned many times
that any attempt to achieve healing and wholeness by going around pain and
death simply delays the inevitable. We will eventually face the things that we
run from – sin and death. We live in a world that hands out band aide after
band aide, we seek temporary solutions for long term problems. And the longer we wait, the worse the
diagnosis gets.
My spiritual diagnosis of
our culture and our nation tells me that we’ve waited long enough, and we need emergency
surgery. We need to have those uncomfortable conversations where we risk
hearing how we have sinned against God and neighbor, where we risk telling the
other how they have sinned against us. And the only way those conversations will
work if we call on the God of mercy to help us through. Otherwise, we will
resort to arguing over whose temporary fix is better.
Unfortunately, I am not
convinced that our county is ready to have this conversation because I am not
sure our county has been convinced of its corporate and institutional sin. And
I want to be clear that while this statement has political and social
implications, this statement is rooted in my understanding of human depravity
regardless of your political party, race, or socio-economic class.
And so I wonder, how many
snake bites must we take as an American culture before we confess, repent, and
seek a better way together? How many
snake bites must we take before we risk putting our pettiness and pride aside
for the sake of our country, for the sake of our children, for the sake of the
gospel, for the sake of Jesus? How many times must we get bitten until we, as
an entire country, repent and humbly beg God to help us live more faithfully?
At this point, you might
be wondering, “Where is the grace? Where is the mercy?” Well, if I am
understanding scripture and my life experiences correctly, then true grace and
true mercy cannot be experienced until we are confronted with the destructive
nature of our sin, until we’ve been bitten by a venomous snake and cry out for
mercy. And it is there were our God, whose property is always to have mercy,
will come and show us the way of salvation.
And my faith tells me
that when we come to the place where we cry, “Lord, have mercy” in unison, then
our churches, our communities, and our and nation will be empowered to confess
how we as individuals and institutions are contributing to the problems that
plague our society. Crying, “Lord, have mercy” is the first step toward healing
and wholeness.
And the cry, “Lord, have
mercy” has the most power at the foot of the cross, at the place where the Son
of Man is lifted high for the sins of all humanity. It is here where every man,
woman, and child is humbled by the sins that destroy the image of God in the
other. And it is here where God can finally get to work and initiate in
humanity the work of Christ’s reconciling love through the process of
absolution, true repentance, amendment of life, and the grace and consolation
of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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