Pentecost VII - Parish of the Advent

from Saint Paul's Epistle to the Colosssians:
...You, who once were estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him, provided that you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel which you heard....

Just as our Lord showed his appreciation of Mary's devout piety - in contrast to Martha's busy activism - in today's Gospel, so I shall rather be focusing on our status as forgiven sinners rather than our sinful acts this morning. We are so constantly reminded of our sinful deeds, our actions that shut us off from our neighbor and our God, our repeated falling short of the glory of God's perfection, that some of us get into a dangerous spiral, a cancerous concentration, a paralyzing assertion.

That is, they are beset with the sin of scrupulosity, the conviction that, no matter what Jesus Christ has said or done about their sinfulness and reconciliation, they are engaged in a perverse narcissism, a deadly egocentricity. "Look at me," they say, "I am so evil that I cannot be forgiven; I have so offended my God, my neighbor, and myself, that nothing can cleanse me from my sinfulness." They no longer think of themselves as having done sins; they now believe themselves to be sinners without hope of redemption. Let us look at this phenomenon this morning.

God has offered us salvation, has bled for our reconciliation, has died for our forgiveness - Has offered us Himself. All of us some times, some of us at all times, refuse this perfect gift, decline this proffered salvation, reject this generous reconciliation, shun this complete expiation. How can we? How is it possible that we reject, despise, foreclose on our Saviour?

I read this week in an unattributed passage on the World Wide Web the following account of a person's terrible preoccupation with scrupulosity:
My guilt overwhelms me. Did I disobey you? I do not know, but I wish to be released from my guilt. I have prayed for release and received it...for a time. But it comes back. Do you wish your child to be tormented like this? My eyes well up in my turmoil. The battle is inside! Comfort me, bring me peace. I cannot undo what I have done. If I can make amends let me know how and let me hear your voice clearly. I had peace at the time and made my decision based on your word. I ask you for peace in my soul and to never think on this again. I beg for forgiveness and i will strive for a changed heart towards giving. Help me to forget and give me peace.

The writer goes on to quote from Psalm 38: "O Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger or discipline me in your wrath. For your arrows have pierced me, and your hand has come down upon me. Because of your wrath there is no health in my body; My bones have no soundness because of my sin. My guilt has overwhelmed me like a burden too heavy to bear"

The person beset with scrupulosity continues:
It seems like King David and I had something in common. We felt that God was mad at us and there was no way to win back his love. Research on depression shows that one aspect of this condition is an overactive conscience. If you read down the list of descriptions of different aspects of it, you will find again and again the fear of doing something "wrong" and dealing with the consequences of that action. ie: fear I might harm other people, violent or horrific images in my mind, fear I will blurt out obscenities or insults, fear I will act on an unwanted impulse, fear I will steal things, fear that I'll harm others because I'm not careful enough. I fear I'll be responsible for something else terrible happening, {I have} concern that I will contaminate others, checking that I did not harm others, check that I did not make a mistake. Sometimes the obsessions have to deal with social or spiritual "sins". ie: forbidden or perverse sexual thoughts, images, or impulse, obsessions about aggressive sexual behavior toward other people, concern with sacrilege and blasphemy, excessively concerned with morality.

As I read the above and thought about the scrupulous sinner, the image came to mind of bag people trundling through the streets of Boston with their shopping carts full of the detritus of civilization. Certainly there is nothing on those carts we envy or desire; we would be loath to take home this jetsam of our society. However, approach the owner of this ark of worthlessness; they will defend vigorously their treasured cargo, as if it were of incalculable value. You see, in their penury, the bag people own nothing else; they have no other treasure, their castle is empty without these possessions. So, before you scornfully condemn these vehicles of shattered dreams (and possibly their owners) to the dump of worthlessness, consider what little else they have.

Similarly, might not we hold tightly to our past lives, to our former habits, to our customary practices, to our old ways of doing things, simply because we do not realize there is a better life, a new virtue, a fresh custom, a creative manner before us? Could we not be hanging on to our bad habits (that is, our vices) because we have not yet undertaken good habits (that is, virtues)? Might we not be scrupulous about our sinfulness, clinging intractably to our old terrible ways, because we with the bag people do not yet accept that there is a better way, a new life, a more valuable possession, in the life of reconciliation to Jesus Christ?

This clinging to a known past life, even if it is sinful, characterizes not only how we think of our own life, but also how we look at the lives of our loved ones and neighbors. That is, even if we are so spiritually keen as to allow God to forgive us our trespasses, we forget the second half of the sentence; we neglect the codicil which adds, "...as we forgive those who trespass against us."

Oscar Wilde suggests, "Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." We should probably go on the Wilde side in this matter. We must take the direction of Christ, given us not only in words, but also in His action on Maundy Thursday. When he took the chalice at the end of His last meal with His disciples, Jesus says to eternity, "For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins."

These were not the facile words of an orator: these are the active life- giving and world-changing actions of our King as He launches the new perfected life without sin. Some would say their sins (or those of others) are so heinous that God could never forgive them. The reading we heard from Genesis this morning is right to the point:

And the Lord said, "I will surely return to you in the spring, and Sarah your wife shall have a son."
And Sarah was listening at the tent door behind him. Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in age; it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women. So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, "After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?"
The Lord said to Abraham, "Why did Sarah laugh, and say, 'Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?' Is anything too hard for the Lord? At the appointed time I will return to you, in the spring, and Sarah shall have a son."

A contemporary illustration of all things being possible to God: Another eighty-year-old woman, living in the suburbs, until three weeks ago blinded with cataracts, who had never driven to Boston, determined to come to the Advent today to hear her son preach. She got as far as Brookline, totally lost, explained her predicament to firemen at a station, ended being escorted by a Brookline Fire Dept. engine to the Church of the Advent, where she's now listening to this sermon.

Certainly, the King of the Universe - who can overcome what we see as the rules of nature, who can make it possible for a woman beyond the normal age for conception to give birth to a child, or for a near-blind and lost 80-year-old widow to drive to church - certainly this God can overcome our sins.

In fact, He not only knows all our sins (and thus takes away from us the responsibility of remembering them after we have confessed them) and their heinous history, He not only knows them but takes them upon himself. He not only forgives our sins, He appropriates them, He suffers for them, He pays the ultimate price of death for them.

So, when Jesus tells us, "For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins," He is not only forgiving us, he is TAKING AWAY our sins. They are no longer ours; we no longer have them, we cannot lay claim to them. He takes away our sins, the sins of the world.

In the suburbs, I remember it was something of a ritual each Saturday to load the car with the past week's trash and junk and take them off to the town dump, before coming back into town and making the next week's purchases, stocking up with what was to sustain us for the next week.

Might we not similarly make it a habit - whether at particular confession with spiritual counsel or at every Sunday Mass in General confession - to bundle up our own sins and our awareness of the faults of others and dump them finally into Christ's perfectly complete forgiveness?

Many people now keep little baggies attached to the doors of their cars, so they can conveniently accumulate bits of trash and get rid of them. It might be well for us to keep a figurative baggie in an otherwise unused pocket, there to stuff our sins and those of others as soon as we become aware of them.Then, when next making our confession and receiving absolution, we take that figurative baggie out and throw it out of our life.

We must let go of sin so that we can make room for the provisions for our new start on life, the provisions provided us when we come- having dumped our sins at the foot of the Cross - when we come to receive the Body and Blood of Christ, to whom, with the Father and the Holy Ghost, be all glory, might, and dominion, now and forever. Amen.
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