Grace to you and
peace from God our Father and our Risen Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ. Amen
Life is more
complex than we sometimes imagine.
And what is true,
often involves two things that are mutually exclusive, but which are both true,
and remain in tension with one another.
We live within a “dialectical
tension”. There’s your new concept for
today. Dialectical tension.
“Dialectical
tensions, defined as opposing forces that people
experience in their relationships, are important for relational development.
Predictability-novelty, for instance, is an example of a tension manifested
by partners simultaneously desiring predictability and spontaneity in their
relationships.”
And so in this example, people can at one and
the same time desire to know what to expect, and yet want to be surprised. “Expect the unexpected”.
One example of a
dialectical tension comes from the Gospel lesson today:
“While in their joy they were disbelieving
and still wondering, . . .”
The disciples
were at one and the same time, overwhelmed with joy at having seen the risen
Lord – and yet still disbelieving.
Another example
of a dialectical tension is the old adage:
“doubt is the handmaiden of faith”.
The two things, doubt and faith, are held together, in tension. Not only that, but I would suggest that you
cannot have one without the other.
John writes about
what is probably one of the most powerful dialectical tensions with which we
live, one that defines the very nature of the life of faith.
Luther called it “simul
justis et pecattor”.
Simultaneous “Saints”,
without any sin, and “Sinners” that are entirely sinful.
John writes in
the first chapter of his letter:
“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive
ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If
we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and
cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If
we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.”
And then, over
and against that John also writes in our lesson for today:
“You know that he was revealed to take away
sins, and in him there is no sin. No one
who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him. Little children, let no one deceive you.
Everyone who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous.
If we read on in
the letter he says:
“Everyone who commits sin is a child of the
devil; for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The Son of God was
revealed for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil. Those who have been born of God do not sin,
because God's seed abides in them; they cannot sin, because they have been born
of God.”
Saint and Sinner.
Child of the
Devil, and Child of God.
Both and.
Simul Justis et
Peccator.
This tension
between being both a Saint and a Sinner really hit home during our debates over
homosexuality.
One example of
this came to me via a person who I got to know as a young woman.
She had shared
with me that she was transgender.
Transgender is
the “T” in “GLBTQ”. “Gay, lesbian,
bisexual, transgender, and queer.”
Variants of human sexual identity that we often struggle to understand,
and, I will add, often condemn.
Well, she ended
up having “sex reassignment surgery” and became a “he”, whom he would tell you
is who he always had been.
OK, now I have to
admit that it is easier for me to understand gay and lesbian, than it is to
understand transgender, the condition of being a man in a woman’s body, or visa
versa.
But that’s not
the point.
What happened is
that this woman, who became a man, asked us about becoming a welcoming place.
“The congregation
wants to grow. I know that there are all
sorts of GLBTQ people out there longing for a church to be part of that will
welcome them. Could we become a “reconciling
in Christ congregation” and go on the record saying that GLBTQ people are
welcome here?”
So I asked that
question of the congregation council.
The response of
one member of the council was “of course everyone is welcome, but if we have to
say “gay people are welcome”, we will leave the congregation because that would
condone their sin.”
We are all both
sinner and saint.
The woman who
raised the question of welcoming GLBTQ people is both a sinner and a saint.
And the woman who
objected is also both a sinner and saint.
Simultaneously
children of the devil, and children of God.
As Christians we
are often viewed by those outside of the Church as being guilty of hypocrisy.
Hypocrisy is the
practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior
does not conform.
And indeed, we
often say one thing, and do another.
But what those
who would accuse us of being hypocrites don’t understand is that what they are
seeing is not hypocritical, it is part of the dialectical tension of being both
saint and sinner.
As children of
God we are called, even commanded to love one another, to, as we confess in our
congregation’s statement of purpose, “welcome, love and serve all in our local
and global community.”
As children of
the devil, we fall way short of that. We
are often not loving, and we tend to welcome those who are most like us, and
exclude those not like us. Certain
sinners are acceptable, other sinners are not.
And in making that judgment we are sinful, ourselves.
Oy vey, the
tension.
How do we resolve
this tension?
Well, first of
all, “WE” don’t resolve the tension.
Christ does.
Paul writes in
Galations the 3rd chapter:
“Therefore the law was our disciplinarian
until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith. 25 But now that
faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, 26 for in Christ
Jesus you are all children of God through faith. 27 As many of you as were
baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is no longer
Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and
female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”
Again, from John’s
lesson today:
“Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we
will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is
revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. And all who have
this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.”
We are “in Christ”.
We are “clothed with Christ”.
“We will be like him.”
We are sinless,
because Christ is sinless and his righteousness has become our own.
“All of you are one in Christ Jesus.”
That’s why we do
not judge one another, because we are all one in Christ Jesus. One.
The same. Holy and pure in God’s
sight because Christ is holy and pure in God’s sight.
We are perfectly
obedient children of God, even unto death, because Christ was perfectly
obedient even unto death.
We are loving,
because Christ is loving.
One of my
favorite passages from 1 John is found in the fourth chapter:
Beloved, let us love one another, because
love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever
does not love does not know God, for God is love. 9 God's love was revealed
among us in this way: God sent his only
Son into the world so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not
that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning
sacrifice for our sins. 11 Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought
to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God
lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.
God lives in us, and his love is perfected
in us.
Perfect love, in
us.
Think about that
for a moment.
Can you believe
that God’s love is perfected in you, that because you love with Christ’s love
you are sinless and righteous in his eyes?
And yet we are
sinful.
There we are,
back to the dialectical tension.
Another woman, a
dear member of my first congregation once said, “The more I grow in my
Christian faith, the more sinful I become.”
What she meant
was that the more she understood how perfect God’s love is, the more she
recognized how imperfect her love was.
And yet, in God’s
eyes, she is Jesus. His righteousness is
her own.
You know that he was revealed to take away
sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him sins.
As Lutherans we
are used to beginning our worship with the confession of sins. And there is good reason for that.
But one could
also argue that what we should do is begin our worship with the declaration
that we are in Christ, and as such, without sin. Now there’s an absolution. “You are now in Christ, and your sin is no
more.”
In Psalm 103 it
is written:
For as the heavens are high above the earth,
so great is his steadfast love toward those
who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west,
so far he removes our transgressions from
us.
We are sinful,
yet those sins have been removed from us.
That’s the tension of faith. We
are sinners without spot or blemish, because Christ has redeemed us.
Amen
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