Defining Sin

My husband, Neil, is the interim pastor of a small church up in the Northeast Kingdom. He has developed a weekly tradition. Each Sunday after he has turned out the lights and closed the doors to the church, he heads down to Stowe. There is a café there where he buys the New York Times, orders the Number 2 sandwich and peruses the Times with his lunch. They know him so well in this café that despite leaf peepers and assorted other tourists, when he walks in the door the counter person yells, “Number 2.” Neil likes this a lot. It is great to be recognized, if only for your taste in sandwiches.

Last Sunday when he came home, he told me to read an article in the Book Review section written by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., called Forgetting Reinhold Niebuhr. (NYT Book Review, Sept. 18, 2005) I did and found the article quite compelling. I didn’t know Reinhold Niebuhr. I didn’t even know of him until I expanded my own theological vision in crossing the divide between the Roman Catholic and Reform Protestant traditions. Yet as I read the article, I realized how much this man influenced my life and ministry. He was perhaps the most influential Reform Protestant Theologian of the 20^th Century. Born just prior to the 20^th century in 1892 in Missouri, he lived his life during the great and terrible times of that century. He was the son of an Evangelical Synod Minister. That denomination of his youth and ordination was one of the 4 streams that became the United Church of Christ so he was one of ours. He followed his father into ministry, studying at Eden Seminary and Yale. Then in the tumultuous 1920’s, he became the pastor of a church in industrial Detroit. The city and, I’m sure, the congregation were caught up in divisive and bloody labor disputes. It was in that setting that Niebuhr became an activist theologian, supporting the rights of workers and defining sin in terms of greed, injustice and national blindness over class and racial divisions.

Invited to join the faculty of Union Theological Seminary in New York, Niebuhr accepted and remained at Union for the rest of his ministry. He was never static in his theology. He refined and changed it as he spoke, wrote of and observed human dynamics within Twentieth Century society. He was an ardent pacifist who could not retain pacifism in the face of the atrocities of Nazism. He both influenced and was influenced by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The German Theologian had come to Union Seminary as a visiting professor where he was safe from the Nazis. He also chose to abandon his own pacifism. He felt that he could not in conscience remain safe while his country was being torn apart by the Nazis. He returned to Germany and joined a group seeking to assassinate Hitler and end the evil. He was captured, jailed and executed in the last days of the Nazi empire.

Niebuhr also played a large role in the life of Lon Dring, a colleague with whom I worked for many years in Maryland. Lon is a Union graduate who established an interfaith social justice organization in one of the richest counties in the nation. Not content simply to feed the hungry and shelter the homeless, Community Ministry of Montgomery County has served as the conscience of the local community, reminding law makers, members of congregations and the poor themselves that it is a sin to deny a basic standard of living to any member of the community. Lon absorbed the theology of the man he called, “Rheiny,” and Montgomery County Maryland is a better place today because in the1920’s Rheinhold Niebuhr defined his theology and in 1956, his student, Lon Dring absorbed that theology and put it to work in his ministry. I learned from Lon who learned from “Rheiny.”

Niebuhr was influential but not always popular. He saw in human society an inclination to seek and hold power; an inability of restraining cruelty; an attraction to evil. He defined these traits as the effects of Original Sin. People did not like to hear that there may be something within the human psyche that is flawed or imperfect or attracted to evil. His friends and his enemies both argued with him that we humans are evolving, are we not, into superior beings replete with wisdom and discernment. This is our destiny as God has so blessed us. And yet, as Niebuhr looked around at the world; he seldom saw the effects of wisdom. More often he saw the effects of evil. He invited us to see with him.

We humans have not changed in 50 years. We still do not want to hear harsh truths about ourselves and our society. Schlesinger suggests that we should be paying attention to Niebuhr just because despite the evidence, we still need to be reminded that we are not perfect. Schlesinger says: “..Niebuhr emphasized the mixed and ambivalent character of human nature – creative impulses matched by destructive impulses, regard for others overruled by excessive self-regard, the will to power, the individual under constant temptation to play God to history.”

Perhaps we need Rheinhold Niebuhr to help us understand what is going on within our human family. Not to belabor the issue, but we all saw the face of poverty as we watched the news coming from New Orleans following Katrina. We heard about rescue boats and helicopters being turned away by gunfire and we couldn’t understand why that would happen. Oh, occasionally stories filtered out about courage or generosity. Those felt good, didn’t they? Did you hear about the young man who daily swam across the toxic floodwaters to bring food and water to an elderly neighbor unable to move; or the little boy who shepherded 6 other children to safety; or the other young man who commandeered a bus and drove 69 people to Houston on his own? These folks represent the human spirit we all hope we have; not that of the power intoxicated gunners; or the frightened bureaucrats; or the looters. Ultimately, when we watched the nightly news from New Orleans, it was as if we were looking at a microcosm of our society and it was not edifying, was it.

I am not comfortable with the Original Sin mentality that is almost an excuse

for evil in the world. “It’s inevitable,’ this mentality proclaims. “Can’t fight it so live with it.” Do you remember Geraldine, one of the characters of Flip Wilson, the 60’s comedian: Her all purpose excuse for her numerous peccadilloes was, “The devil made me do it.” And we all laughed, didn’t we? Flip understood his audience. Don’t we all yearn to blame something or someone beyond us for all the pain or brokenness that we cause as individuals, communities and human society? I know that I do. It is humbling to own our individual and collective weakness. When Neil is right and I am wrong about something; I get angry. How dare he be right? It is inconceivable that I am wrong. This is usually followed by a period of door slamming and pot banging until I remember that I am an adult and am no longer allowed the pleasure of a good tantrum. I wonder if war is the ultimate tantrum of a community, a tribe, or a nation.

Whether one calls it the effects of Original Sin or evil or inherent flaws in the human character, Niebuhr examined it and was unafraid to name it. During his time the evil was personified in Stalin and Hitler but also in the injustices, class distinctions and racism that plagued his time and persist in today’s world. He feared the ‘innocence’ of a community or society that believes so blindly in its inherent goodness that it refuses to see or to name the injustices that lie hidden out of sight.

Those of us over a certain age have been witness to dark days in history. We saw the bombed church where little girls were killed because they were black. But we also saw Dr. King surrounded by Catholic, Protestant and Jewish clergy in a walk for freedom. We walked also in our own communities; held hands and sang together with our black sisters and brothers, “We shall overcome.” We just didn’t sing when. Many years later, when we saw New Orleans; we found out when; not yet, but some day.

A lifelong student of the bible, Niebuhr studied at the feet of Jesus. The passage for this Sunday addresses sin in an oblique way. In Matthew’s gospel Jesus is frequently found in debate with the leaders of the temple. So it is within this reading. The Temple authorities were both jealous of and threatened by Jesus’ popularity and influence over the people. He was a threat to their power and they sought ways of destroying his credibility. In this sequence, they have not yet learned their lesson and are trying again to outsmart Jesus. Before all the people who listened to Jesus, they demanded him to tell them by whose authority he taught. “Who is your teacher?’ ‘What school are you from?” “Where did you get your credentials?” Today we would be asking, “Did you graduate from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Williams, Middlebury or some state school like UVM?” Having been trained in the very best rabbinic schools and quite confident that they and they alone were endowed with God’s authority, those temple leaders walked right into Jesus’ trap. “I’ll answer your question if you answer mine,” Jesus responded. “Was John’s baptism inspired by God or was it his own invention?”

They could not answer because any answer would bring them grief.

They daily sinned in their arrogance. They refused to believe that any but themselves could or should be the conduit for God’s love and mercy. They believed that they, and they alone were the interpreters of God’s word and wisdom. Only in the temple worship and in the authorized temple schools; in the meticulously kept rules and in the perfect forms of sacrifice could the believers be assured that God was honored and assuaged. Piety was conformity. Jesus reminded them that in their prideful ownership of the God franchise, they left out one important item: God. John, on the other hand, invited all the marginal people into the community of God’s love and care. No one cared about tax collectors or prostitutes. They were sinners. They were beneath contempt. John said, “God cares.” The people who came to be baptized were sinners: women who sold their bodies; men who extorted money from their neighbors. They may have been forced into their sinful existences by poverty. They did not seek excuses for their sin. They sought only understanding. They may have long desired to seek forgiveness but could not afford the cost of a ritual cleansing paid to the temple priests. John invited them to immerse themselves in the flowing waters of the River Jordan where their past would be washed away even as they committed themselves to newness of life. Speaking the words of God that flowed from his heart, John told all who came, “Be at peace. You are forgiven.”

The two sons in the parable can represent any of us; our community; our nation; our world community. We all want to stand on the side of justice, of love, of compassion; however, when any or all of those are inconvenient, we, individually or collectively, can forget or ignore the stand we say we take. The consequences of forgetting or ignoring begin within ourselves, our community, our nation, our world community and spread like the polluted waters in New Orleans: guilt, cynicism, blindness, anger, moral decay. But we have a choice, Jesus point out. Even if we don’t want to do something; to say something; to act in a certain way; when we finally choose to act; we also feel the consequences of our actions: relief, pleasure, quiet conscience, far-sightedness and lightness of spirit.

Sin is personal. Sin is collective. Forgiveness and growth are also personal and collective. There is a prayer written by Rheinhold Niebuhr that is used in Alcoholics Anonymous: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

We are imperfect beings living in an imperfect world. Let’s not sugar coat our imperfections or deny them. Rather, can we seek the courage to change the things we can? Paul writes a passionate letter to the Christian Community in Phillipi: “So if in Christ there is anything that will move you, any incentive in love, any fellowship of the spirit, any warmth or sympathy, I appeal to you, make my joy complete by being of a single mind, one in love, one in heart and one in mind. Nothing is to be done out of jealousy or vanity; instead, out of humility of mind everyone should give preference to others, everyone pursuing not selfish interests but those of others. Make your own the mind of Christ Jesus.” (2:1-5)

May it be so.