Scripture: Luke 7:36-50
Dear Church,
This Sunday we wrap up our six-week session of ‘Sin School,’ and I’m sure that some of you are wondering what the point of it all was. Given all the harm that has been done in the name of condemning sin, shouldn’t we be retiring this dangerous and arcane theological concept? Don’t we need to focus more on grace and justice? Shouldn’t we be learning about generosity and healing?
The gospels are clear, Jesus came to save sinners. So if we don’t know sin, we don’t really know Jesus.
And once we know sin, we’ll know that we all are sinners. Each one of us is a person separated from God by our individual choices and by the broken and destructive powers and principalities (read: systems) of our culture. if we are too squeamish or precious to wrestle with the hard truth that each one of us is a sinner, then we cannot accept, rejoice and participate in the new life that Jesus is offering us.
The gospel of Luke shows us it’s almost impossible to love Jesus until you know yourself as a sinner.
Without a mature, sober understanding of sin, we might be like Simon, confident in our own ability to live a righteous life in an unrighteous world, carefully, and critically considering Jesus, unaware that we need forgiveness, healing and new life.
But once we know ourselves as people who have been forgiven an insurmountable debt, we are transformed like the saint at the center of the story. We mirror Jesus’ extravagant love. We worship exuberantly. We become witnesses, sent to break in to inhospitable dinner parties, sent out to live joyfully in peace.
It is one of the strange and holy paradoxes of the gospel life: only a church full of sincere self-acknowledged sinners can become a source of Christ’s forgiveness and grace-fueled new life.
I hope you will join me in seeking God’s truth and grace so that together we can be a living sign and source of the glory of God.
Peace,
Pastor Kate
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