Sin: The Lost Language of Salvation

Genesis 3-11

Psalm 51

Romans 3-11

John 9

I’ve been musing again recently about the powerful story of Les Misérables. In the past 25 years since the musical has been on the stage, 60 million people have experienced the Gospel according to Victor Hugo. It is gospel. While the story breaks your heart with its dark picture of human brokenness, the gospel breaks our hearts wide open with its promise of unlikely redemption and amazing grace. 

Jean Valjean spent 15 years laboring in a French prison for stealing a loaf of bread for a starving child. After he left prison on parole, he came to realize that he was not, in fact, free; he was still trapped deep in a vicious cycle of guilt and blame and brokenness that continued to feed his bitterness and hatred. It was finally a poor, gentle priest who broke the cycle with a radical gift of grace. “I have redeemed your life for God,” the priest pronounced to the incredulous man. 

But first Valjean had to let go of his anger in order to live now in the circle of grace. Letting go of the brokenness that binds us is no small task. The recent movie shows Valjean wrestling with his choices in a small chapel under a crucifix: an image of the body of Christ also broken by the brokenness of the world. 

 It’s a powerful scene as Valjean comes to repentance and gives himself over to redemption. But this grace, he discovered, must be lived day by day, moment by moment and his choice for redemption needed to be made again and again. 

Again and again, he found the need to reorient himself to that forgiveness and to remember who he is: a broken man made new; a lost man redeemed. Again and again he recommitted himself to stand in that grace in order to find the wisdom and power to live truly in redemption; in order to live as an agent of reconciliation for others. 

This is not at all easy. We humans are naturals at self-righteousness. We have such excellent skills at self-deception. Martin Luther used to talk about sin as the self curving in on itself. ('Homo in se incurvatus').

We humans are very good at this. Each of us individually. All of us together. The nations we build, the societies we form, even the churches that are supposed to offer a radical alternative to this human tendency for self-sufficiency - even a church can be a self curving in on itself.

When Paul wrote his letter to the church at Rome, his description of human sinfulness in the opening chapters is stark. Something like the Genesis description of the downward spiral of humanity in the days of Noah. Something like the systemic brokenness of the world of Jean Valjean. Something like the current news coming out of Paris or Pakistan or Ferguson. 

The human condition is shot through with a sense of separation from God, estrangement from one another, and a deep fragmentation within our own souls. Our bending in upon ourselves is a deeply embedded pattern that perpetuates itself from generation to generation. Awareness of these realities can spiral us down into despair. Or it can be the soil within which grace finds life and redemption bears fruit. Like our friend Valjean, we all need the shocking injection of grace into our vicious cycles of self-seeking. 

The Gospel according to Paul stands against our human tendency to try to fix ourselves, remodel ourselves, save ourselves. 

Here is what he says

But now, apart from law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed, 
and is attested by the law and the prophets, 
the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. 
For there is no distinction, 
since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; 
they are now justified by his grace as a gift, 
through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 
whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, 
effective through faith. 
God did this to show his righteousness, 
because in his divine forbearance
God had passed over the sins previously committed; 
it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous 
and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus  
Romans 3:21-26

Grace and redemption, justice and right-making are God’s work in the world, and it is all for the purpose of realigning, recreating humanity so that we might truly reflect the image of God in which we were created.

Barbara Brown Taylor says it is all about relationship. (I want to be like Barbara when I grow up!) In her fine little book, Speaking of Sin: The Lost Language of Salvation, Brown Taylor explores the scriptural models and traditional Christian theology that frequently use medical or legal language to describe sin. If we think of sin as sickness then its solution is a healing. If we think of sin as crime then its solution is a punishment. But in her effort to recover “the lost language of salvation,” Taylor prefers a third way that acknowledges the core problem is broken relationship. 

“In theological language, the choice to remain in wrecked relationship 
with God and other human beings 
is called sin. 
The choice to enter into the process of repair 
is called repentance, 
an often bitter medicine with the undisputed power to save lives.”

That makes me think of the Adam and Eve story. “Where are you,” the Creator calls, walking in the garden in the cool of the evening. “Where are you? I miss you.” But this sad story tells us they were hiding, their eyes opened to the heart-breaking estrangement that had come into existence. Their eyes opened to their new independence that felt a lot like isolation; like they were now untethered and felt set adrift from the source of their life. 

That’s what broken relationship looks like, feels like. Instead of calling “sin” either sickness or crime, Barbara Brown Taylor prefers to call sin “separation.” These broken relationships are everywhere we turn, and they break our hearts. Or at least, I hope this breaks our heart; I daresay it breaks God’s heart. 

But even so, I think the Creator created this world knowing full well what pain that was in store. I think God created this world knowing full well the cross was in view. The stories from Genesis tell us God calls out “where are you?” and God’s own people hide themselves. The prologue from John tells us the Word became flesh and came to his own and his own people did not know him. 

The opening chapters from Romans tells us that:

Ever since the creation of the world God’s eternal power and divine nature, 
invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things God has made…
But even though people knew God, 
they would not honor him as God or give thanks...  
Romans 3:20-22

                       

The story in Genesis 3 - the story where God judges Adam and Eve when they ate the fruit and hid themselves - has always bothered me. It took me a long time to find a way to think about God-as-judge that makes sense for me. I still remember the moment of my epiphany when I was studying this passage years ago and recognized how the story tells us truth about how actions do have consequences. The Creator didn’t need to impose punishment on these hapless creatures because they themselves had opened this Pandora’s Box so that now the natural consequences of the brokenness and stubbornness began to have their way. That’s not God’s doing; we humans do this to ourselves.

Barbara Taylor says it this way:  “God’s judgment is not so much some kind of extra punishment God dumps on [us] as it is God’s announcement that we have abandoned the way of life. Like some divine jiu-jitsu master, God simply spins the rejection of life around so that we can feel the full force of it for ourselves.” 

When God is our “judge,” God tells us the truth about ourselves; God the “Judge” sees and names what is real. God is the One who opens our eyes to our own nakedness and hopelessness so that we can enter into repentance, enter into grace. God is the One upon Whom we are called to bend ourselves so that our lives will be in alignment with that which is true and good and right and just. 

In these Living in The Story scriptures, I keep going back to the odd little story John tells us in chapter 9 about the man born blind. “Who sinned?” the disciples ask Jesus in verse 2; “this man or his parents?” 

You may have noticed plenty of people still asking these kinds of questions to this day; and some people think they actually have the answers. “Someone must have sinned,” preachers and talk show hosts and protesters at funerals tell us. Some particular kind of people sinned some particular kind of sin and that’s why this hurricane roared through New Orleans – or Indonesia or wherever. Religious communities have never had a shortage of people who will hurt our ears with their self-righteous judgments about other people’s sins and their consequences. 

But here is something really interesting and helpful and important about John chapter 9.

You may already know that John didn’t write his gospel with those little chapter and verse numbers; those designations were added to our Bibles many years later. But what you may not know is that most likely John wrote his gospel without any punctuation marks. So when we read the Greek text, we do the best we can to translate and interpret where the sentences and paragraphs ought to begin and end. John 9:3-4 shows us how significant this challenge is. 

“Who sinned?” the disciples ask;” and Jesus answers: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him; we must work the works of him who sent me while it is day…” That’s the way the translators of the New Revised Standard Version place the markings (the markings, remember, that are not really there.)

Now - read these same words this way: Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind. (period) So that God’s works might be revealed in him, (comma) we must work the works of him who sent me while it is day…”

Sometimes people are born blind (period.) Sometimes bad things happen (period.) Sometimes consequences come into our lives because of someone else’s doing. Sometimes consequences come into our lives because of the brokenness of the cosmos. This is our reality and I don’t see that changing until Jesus comes again. 

But – right now, here and now - WE are the body of Christ working God’s work in the world while it is still day. Like the priest who offered radical grace to Jean Valjean, if God’s works are going to be revealed in any of life’s impossible circumstances, WE have to do it. If God’s light is going to shine in darkness, then WE must be that light. If the gospel of Jesus Christ is going to be proclaimed to those who have lost their way, then WE must BE that good news. 

We are called to do God’s work in our broken communities. We are created to shine God’s light into this stubborn darkness. We are motivated to move for wholeness in this fragmented world. We are challenged to inject grace into the vicious cycles of whatever Jean Valjeans may show up on our doorstep. And we don’t stop. We don’t stop entrusting ourselves and our families and our communities to our Creator who is still creating and re-creating goodness out of our every chaos. 

It seems to me we have a choice: we can keep on curving in upon ourselves and die. Or we can die to ourselves, bending ourselves toward God for the sake of the world - and live.

© Charlotte Vaughan Coyle, January 2014