Sin, Righteousness, and Judgment

Marie and I were in Texas this year on Pentecost Sunday, so here is the sermon I preached three years ago at the First Presbyterian Church in Berryville, Arkansas on Pentecost Sunday.

Acts 2:1-21
Psalm 104:24-34, 35b
Romans 8:22-27
John 15:26-27, 16:4b-15

Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen

Sin, righteousness, and judgment, that’s quite a mouthful. The title of this sermon should rightfully remind us of every crime drama books, movies, and television have ever given us. These terms themselves, sin, righteousness, and judgment, were legal words in the first century. These are the words of the courts yesterday and today.

Before we explore the big three, sin, righteousness, and judgment, we need to consider the legalistic format of the beginning of the verse. In the version we read from today, “When he, the Holy Spirit, comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin, righteousness and judgment.” Instead of “prove the world wrong,” other translations say convict the world instead. The nuance what these phrases mean to us is quite different. The word used here, translated as “convict,” or “prove” can mean a number of things. It can mean examine carefully, or recognize wrongdoing, or express strong disapproval, or even penalize for wrongdoing. In the possible range of translation, the Spirit can do all manner of things in relation to sin, righteousness and judgment in the world. From a simple pointing out to administering discipline, there is a broad range in how the spirit exposes the world to the big three of sin, righteousness, and judgment. How we use this phrase says much about how we discern the role of the Holy Spirit.

Sin, I’m not sure if there is a stickier word in theology than sin. People tend to think of sin in two main categories: first, those thoughts, words, and deeds that are horrendous and dramatically outside of the norms of society and second, those we commit ourselves. As horrible as this is to stereotype people, based on information from groups of Presbyterians trying to vie for our attention before the General Assembly meets, this point of view is not wholly inaccurate. Horrifying, yet there is a grain of truth. This oversimplification of mine is another way of saying that people tend to forget that sin is the reality which determines the nature of the world.[1] If placed in relative terms, if horrible sin sits in the very depths of Death Valley and the least of all sins sits on the summit of Mount Everest, then one sin seems to be far graver than the other. Based on how our culture’s views of height and depth, while sin is found in all parts of the world, the sins of the summit might not seem as bad as those in the depths. What is neglected in this little example is that the sun is still 93 million miles away. There may be thousands of feet difference here on earth, but there are still millions of miles to the light of the world. Because of all sin, humanity is millions of miles from the light of God. Redemption is summed up in remission of sins, all sins regardless of their relative shame and horror. This feature is distinctly Christian. Since any sin is a rejection of God’s claim on our life all sin must be confessed and turned from.

Righteousness is based on just judgment and rule—right conduct before God.[2] According to John’s gospel and epistles, all right action must be linked to Christ.[3] John’s gospel tells us that without Christ, we can do nothing; this is never more obvious than in pursuit of righteousness. His resurrection and ascension declare his righteous being. Compared to these works of God, our righteousness is just a shadow. Yes there are some who think they know all that God knows. This sort of esteem is dangerous because it is rooted in nothing more than who we are, what we know, and what we do. Instead, all true righteousness is based on who we are in God. In Acts, we saw a beginning of this when the Apostles began to testify in the native tongues of all in attendance. They did not speak in the language of angels. Angelically, they spoke in the languages of other peoples. And when the people heard, they were amazed, they were utterly astonished. Pentecost allows us a glimpse, a touch of this righteousness. Through the Holy Spirit, God completely transformed the cowering disciples who changed the world.[4] Amazing! And yes, the ability of the Holy Spirit to transform individual people, collections of people and the world are still in effect.

Judgment in the ancient world looks an awful lot like an episode of Law and Order or CSI, starting with discovery and ending with discipline, there is a procedure to judgment. In the ancient Mid East, judgment can come from either divine or human sources. Often it is penal in nature. But in John, judgment comes from Christ. And as seen in Matthew’s gospel, judgment of the world always involves separation.[5] From the parable of the vine, John 15:6, Jesus threatens judgment on the world when he says that vines that are not fruitful will be pruned and burned. Yet one of the most famous pieces of scripture ever quoted comes to us from John 12:48 where Jesus says he comes not to judge the world, but to save it. This may be explained in John 16:11 where Jesus says (literally) the ruler of the world will be judged. This judgment took place the hour when the Son of God resolved to sacrifice himself to the Glory of the Father and God promised to glorify him.[6] Both sides of judgment, discovery and discipline, are present in this single motion. This form of judgment is unique to John’s gospel: the world is judged and the sacrifice is made in one fell swoop. This judgment and offering were made outside of our world in the eternity of the relationship between Jesus and his father, a relationship we talked about last week. A relationship we are invited to join into.

So there is the formula, when the Spirit comes he will prove the world wrong about sin, righteousness and judgment. Because of how humanity responds to the world and to one another, we must be proven wrong, corrected, about the big three. The scripture says “we will be proven wrong about sin because we do not believe in Jesus.” Sin permeates our beings to the core, there is no way we can know of the depth of sin without the leading of the Spirit. Righteousness only comes with the return of the Son to the Father. While Jesus, God walking the earth, God with us, is the perfect teacher—there is one more step needed on our development, the coming and conviction of the Holy Spirit. Finally, judgment comes in the eternal judgment of the ruler of this world. Since before the beginning of time, from the hour when the Son of God resolved to sacrifice himself, the world was judged.

So when the Spirit of truth comes, the Spirit will guide us into all truth. This guide, this advocate, counselor, helper, is the one called alongside us to guide us into the way of all truth. This advocate walks beside us on earth by the guidance of what he hears. This advocate indwells us with the truth of life and life eternal with the words of God the author of creation. This advocate is the one who is called to be alongside humanity as a source of the light of God. This concept of the advocate is exclusive to John’s gospel. From the Greek word, often this person is called “the Paraclete,” the one who is called alongside.

The Presbyterian Church USA has been held for years under a cloud of uncertainty and mistrust because of one particular issue, the ordination of gays and lesbians. I cannot tell you how long this has been an issue in the church. I can only say it has been a hot button issue for as long as I remember. This year, the General Assembly in Birmingham will vote on the recommendations contained in a report called “A Season for Discernment: The Final Report of the Theological Task Force on Peace, Purity, and Unity of the Church.” Much of the discussion about the task force has been on two of its recommendations. One allows ordination standards to remain as they are today, excluding practicing homosexuals from ordination in the church. The other would allow ordaining and installing bodies the responsibility to determine their membership by applying these standards to those elected to office. In a report that is to help the church with its striving toward peace, purity, and unity, I must admit a guilty pleasure. What I like about this report because it has something to make everybody at the church’s theological extremes upset. Those who seek a repeal of sexually based ordination standards will not be satisfied, and those who seek strong and swift disciplinary action in the event of violation of these standards will not be satisfied either.

It is all too easy to see how stereotyping and demeaning others hurts those who receive these slings and arrows. But because of the sins of human judgment against one another humanity hurts not only the opponents, but the whole church as well. The task force sees this and says in its report:

It is not possible for us to claim that we recognize all the ways the church and its members hurt one another. Nor can we claim that we have amended our lives adequately to signal full repentance for the harm we have done. What we can report is that as we became more deeply acquainted with one another’s thinking and life situations, we were chastened and humbled by the recognition that insofar as the body of Christ in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) is broken, we have all played a part in betraying and denying our Savior and in inflicting the damage from which the church, as His body, is suffering today. The recognition that the travail of the church is our fault as much as it is others’ sobered and saddened our task force but also brought us closer together.[7]

The Task Force, twenty people from all walks and political inclinations of the church, came together and through a covenant of worship, celebration of the Lord’s Supper, and prayer. In the end, they did not “find the solution” to the problems of “peace, purity, and unity” in the church. This was not their charge. Instead, what they found in their faith journey with one another in discerning peace, purity, and unity in the church, is that they needed the Paraclete, the one who walks beside all of us to come back into the life of the church. It is time for fresh listening to the tongues of the advocate in the words of those who share the pew and the world with us. It is a very difficult, very challenging call we have been given by the task force and by God. But we have the advocate who walks beside us here on earth in the Holy Spirit and the advocate who stood on the cross for us in Jesus Christ.

There is an old saying, if you are not a part of the solution; you are a part of the problem. We must reject the notion. Because of sin, we are all a part of the problem. We are unable to achieve righteousness, the solution, on our own. Our judgment against one another will always be clouded by our imperfect human nature. When we try to assert a sense of self rignteousness, the Holy Spirit is with us to prove us wrong about our sins and judgments against others. Jesus’ and his redemptive work in life and death and resurrection is the solution. He is the one who sends the Paraclete who stands beside us on earth and he is the Paraclete who stands beside us in eternity. This is the solution. When we try to be the solution, we will eternally fail because what we do is fully infused with sin, we are a part of the problem regardless of how hard we may try. God in three persons is the solution. Yes, this sounds like a platitude and it probably is being offered like one. But we need to take it at full face value. Let us give up our attempts to live into our own solutions and seek the source of the power of the true solution, just like the apostles did on that fateful day two thousand years ago.

[1] Theological Dictionary of the New Testament v. I p. 305
[2] TDNT, v. II, p. 198
[3] Ibid. p. 200
[4] PC (USA) Mission Yearbook, Day of Pentecost entry
[5] Matthew 25:31-46
[6] Interpretation Commentary, John, p 193
[7] PUP Report, lines 340-349

Unforeseen Hope

This sermon was heard at St. Mark Presbyterian Church in Dallas, Texas on Sunday May 31, 2009, Pentecost Sunday.

Acts 2:1-21
John 15:26-27, 16:4b-15

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen

There’s an old expression, “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” We’ve heard it before, it means that it is better to take something certain than it is to risk more where you may lose everything. But when Jesus told the disciples “it is to your advantage that I go away,” we can well imagine the ancient equivalent of this old saw crossed their minds. Then again, the ancient equivalent came from Ecclesiastes 9 where the teacher says, “But whoever is joined with all the living has hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion.”

A living dog, a dead lion? If the teacher was trying to tell the pupils that life is preferable to death the Apostles were in perfect agreement. They were with the Lion of Judah! Life didn’t get better than that. So the thoughts of Jesus going away, regardless of whomever would follow him would fill their hearts with sorrow. Of course their hearts were filled with sorrow. Jesus knew it and so do we. Oh yes, imagine the Advocate, but a bird in the hand…

Jesus had given them hope. Hope for new life. Hope for life eternal. They had seen and heard much. They had learned much too, but there was still much more to learn. For that, they need the Spirit of truth. What Jesus was giving them here was hope, hope that they could not imagine with his absence. He offers them unforeseen hope, the hope which was yet to come.

In John’s gospel, the apostles were promised someone who would be alongside them when the world prosecuted them and persecuted them. They were promised the Paraclete, one who would serve as their advocate. Outside of scripture, the word Paraclete often referred to a lawyer or attorney. The Paraclete is one who advocates on our behalf not before God but in God’s good creation. At this moment, they needed an advocate.

As the book of Acts begins, Jesus tells the apostles “not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father. ‘This,’ he said, ‘is what you have heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.’” This wait could not have been comfortable. Given the events of the Passover, the apostles were marked men. The Romans knew this crew as rabble rousers. The temple leadership knew them as the worst kind of heretics. Yes, Jesus had returned to them, we have just read John’s report on that, but he was gone again. He had promised to return again, but he provided no estimated time of arrival.

They had received great promises. They had high hope. But the advocate, the Paraclete was still a promise, not a reality, not to them. They may have had all of the hope in the world, but with the reality of living in Palestine at that very moment, they would have been foolish if they had not felt fear.

It was at this very moment, on the day of Pentecost, that they were assembled together in one place. It was at this very moment that from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.

This must have been even more frightening. They knew to be leery of the princes of this world. They knew the Governor and the Prelate and the Sanhedrin had them in their sights, but now the violent winds rushed down on them. I watched the Weather Channel on Tuesday night, I saw what was happening north of here. I saw Mike Bettis and the Vortex2 storm chasers in North Dallas talking about how difficult it is to chase storms in an urban area. I can’t imagine what it’s like to see that live from the front porch.

We may be talking about this scripture and praising God for the glory of the coming of the Holy Spirit, but on that day, they were in the midst of a violent wind filling the house where they were sitting. We talk about joy, they experienced terror.

Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared on them. By this gift, the apostles were able to communicate with the Jews from every nation under heaven who were living in Jerusalem. The crowd gathered and they were bewildered. Nobody needed a translator anymore. Nobody needed to find a common tongue, not anymore. The apostles spoke to the masses in their own tongues, the curse of Babel was broken for a great shining moment. There was joy and glory was given to God.

The people asked what this meant. And they heard the answer of the informed crowd. They’re drunk. Peter said that they weren’t drunk; after all it was only nine in the morning. Honestly, I grew up in Kansas City, the bars opened at 6:00 am six days a week. I’ve seen drunks at nine in the morning. But none of them could quote the prophet Joel.

In the latest issue of the Presbyterian Outlook Magazine, Jack Haberer writes:

There is a new wind blowing through the sometimes musty halls of American Churches, and it is sweeping away the hypocrisy, lack of social concern, and unnecessary cultural baggage accumulated by the mainstream churches through the years. Thousands of people, young in spirit, are turning away from the anti-intellectuality of separatist fundamentalism and from mainstream ecumenical liberalism…[and to]…a vital, open, and truly revolutionary answer to Christ’s call to “go and teach all the nations.”[1]

The Good News is that these words come to us with a joy and determination to leave unproductive church-ianity in the wake of a spirit led revival. The bad news is that these words don’t come from a new missional group. They don’t come from the writings of the emerging church either. They come from the pen of Richard Quebedeaux and were written 35 years ago.[2] Asking “What happened,” Haberer pines “The young evangelicals [of the 1960’s and 70’s] grew older.”

We know the statistics; the church has lamented them for over fifty years. But here’s a slightly different spin on them from The Mainline Evangelism Project. In 1960, twenty-six million people were members of the seven mainline denominations. That comes to 14.4% of the population. In 2000, the number of people who were members of the mainline churches fell to 21 million folks and the percentage of people who were members of these churches fell to 7.4% of Americans. The fall in the mainstream ranks is in raw numbers and even more so as a percent of the population. Our only consolation is that there is the company in this misery; these numbers pertain to all of the mainline denominations.[3]

Haberer does not see us as hopeless though, he continues in the Outlook, “we all do well to re-read the gospels’ stories. The clarity of Jesus’ vision, the strength of his resolve, the power of his appeal, the cost of his summons to follow … such words and actions have stood the test of time. Let us all catch that vision together and refuse to let it fade.”[4]

To recapture the Spirit of Pentecost, we must again learn to speak so that those who will hear us will understand we have something to say. And what a thing we have to say. We believe that faith makes a difference in our lives; and there are as many reasons as there are people. Some of the typical reasons include:[5]

· A relationship with Christ makes sense, it’s true
· I love God so much I want other people to know this joy themselves
· The church community provides a great way to serve others
· Life in the Spirit is exciting
· I used to be consumed with guilt and through the grace of Christ there is forgiveness
· I have seen miracles and I want others to know it’s possible
· Christ has changed my life

As the apostles shared with the world on the day of Pentecost, we too are called to share. Our stories tell others about who we are and whose we are. We all have stories, but we only share in the Pentecost when we share these stories. We are called to know our stories, the stories of our faith that shows others the difference a relationship with the triune God makes in our lives. And we must be able to communicate this story so that those with ears may hear.

We, we who carry the cross of Christ into the world must learn to speak so that the world may hear. The blessing of the Pentecost is the immediacy of the ability that the Galileans received to speak to the Parthians, Medes, Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, and so on. But going back to what I said earlier, about the decrease in members in the mainline Christian churches, we don’t need to speak to just Asians, Arabs, Egyptians, and Libyans belonging to Cyrene; we need to speak to our neighbors.

We can gain wisdom on this matter from ancient Celtic Christianity.[6] In 563 AD, about a century after the death of St. Patrick, Columba sought off to an island off of the western Scottish coast. This isle would be his base to reach the Picts of Scotland. Columba took a sizeable corps with him and they learned the culture of the Picts. They chose to pay the price to understand the Picts. Columba’s way of doing mission was the opposite of the model James Michener presented in his novel “Hawaii.” They learned about the people, their language, and their culture. They sent out teams from their island settlement—a little place called Iona—and in 100 years the Picts were significantly Christian.

The lessons we take from this is that there people close to us who do not know the Word of God. We need to learn about how they speak and show them the Gospel in words they understand. Peter and the Apostles did this miraculously; Columba and the Iona community did this diligently. We need to learn how to share the story of faith so that those with ears may be able to hear the word of God.

We talk about speaking in tongues, this gift of the Spirit being the one most accented during Pentecost, but where at Pentecost we talk about speaking in foreign tongues, we have to remember that there is an entire generation of people in America don’t hear the word because we don’t speak their language. In this world of Twitter and Facebook, we need to learn how to take the message of God into the world in a new language, without compromising the cross of Christ.

So today, let us all regain the elemental presence of worship. We come to the font of many blessings overflowing with living water and remember our baptism. We come to the table with the cup and the plate to partake in the food that feeds our bodies and our souls. We hear the Word proclaimed and even more so, we come to know the Word Incarnate, the Son of God, the one who the Lord has set aside since before the creation, Jesus the Christ.

And today, especially today, we need to allow ourselves to be consumed by the fire of the Holy Spirit so that as steel is forged in the furnace, we may be made strong in the Lord for the Lord’s service. And we do this so that in the words of our Lord, “Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” By this, our hope is anything but unforeseen.

[1] Haberer, Jack, The Presbyterian Outlook. Vol. 191-20, June 8/15, 2009, page 5.
[2] Haberer cites Quebedeaux, Richard, The Young Evangelicals: Evolution in Orthodoxy. H&R, 1975.
[3] Reese, Martha Grace, Unbinding the Gospel, 2nd edition. St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2008, page 25.
[4] Ibid, Haberer
[5] Reese, Martha Grace, Unbinding the Gospel. St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2008, pages 19-20.
[6] Hunter, George C. III, The Celtic Way of Evangelism. Nashville: Abingdon, 2000, page 36.