Archives For Sin

‘Re-turning’ to Repentance

October 3, 2010 — Leave a comment

We often have a shallow understanding of repentance.  In our study in Matthew, John the Baptist calls the people to “Repent, for the Reign of God has arrived!” (my translation)  What does that mean and what does it mean now – for today’s disciples?  Here is a portion of a poem by Orthodox poet Scott Cairns and an article by Frederica Mathewes-Green.  They help to remind us that it is ‘repentance that brings hope and joy!’

Cairns ends his poem by contrasting false and true repentance:

The heart’s metanoia,
on the other hand, turns
without regret, turns not
so much away, as toward,

as if the slow pilgrim
has been surprised to find
that sin is not so bad
as it is a waste of time.

–Scott Cairns

[from Adventures in New Testament Greek: Metanoia in the anthology, Compass of Affection, p. 93, Paraclete Press, 2006.]

and the article from Frederica Mathewes-Green:

Whatever Happened to Repentance [first published in Christianity Today, Feb. 2002 and available on her website.]

Forget what the Billboard charts say; to judge from church ads in the Yellow Pages, America’s favorite song is “I’m Mr. Lonely.” Churches are quick to spot that need and promise eagerly that they will be friendly, or be family, or just care. Apparently this is the church’s principal product. When people need tires, they look up a tire store; when they start having those bad-sad-mad feelings, they shop for a church.

Here, for once, denominational and political divisions vanish. Churches across the spectrum compete to display their capacity for caring, though each has its own way of making the pitch. The Tabernacle, a “spirit-filled, multi-cultured church,” pleads, “Come let us love you,” while the Bible Way Temple is more formal, if not downright odd: “A church where no stranger need feel strangely.” (The only response that comes to mind is “Thank thee.”) One church sign in South Carolina announced, “Where Jesus is Lord and everybody is special,” which made it sound like second prize. And one Methodist congregation tries to get it all in: “A Christ-centered church where you can make new friends and form lasting relationships with people who care about you.”

But when Jesus preached, he did not spend a lot of time on “caring.” The first time we see him, in the first Gospel, the first instruction he gives is “Repent” (Mark 1:15). From then on, it’s his most consistent message. Continue Reading…

In Disciplines, Eastern Orthodoxy, Gospel, Matthew, Sin
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Disordered Anger: a quote and a poem

February 23, 2010 — Leave a comment

Jeff Cook defines Wrath (disordered anger) as “the love for  justice perverted into bitterness, revenge, and violence.”

We think we’re justified when we ‘loose it.’ We think we have a just cause, but the cause is usually a wrong goal at best or just our own ego at worst.  We need to get angry about the right things and be gentle reconcilers who are slow to anger – wounded healers – like Jesus.

George MacDonald was a writer who greatly influenced Tolkein, Lewis, and L’Engle.  He loved poetry and his spiritual poetry is deep and experiential.  He once wrote a poem every day for  year, and the 366 poems were compiled as “The Diary of an Old Soul.”  He encouraged readers to take a white page and write their own poems in response.  This poem is in the book shown here and speaks to the sin of wrath.

Keep me from wrath, let it seem ever so right:
My wrath will never work thy righteousness.
Up, up the hill, to the whiter than snow-shine,
Help me to climb, and dwell in pardon’s light.
I must be pure as thou, or ever less
Than thy design of me – therefore incline
My heart to take men’s wrongs as thou tak’st mine.

You can also hear the sermon, Beyond Anger Management, at the Christ Church Website.


In Fully Human, Lent, Sin
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Sweeter Than Honey!

February 18, 2010 — Leave a comment

We begin the 40 day journey called Lent. At our Ash Wednesday services I again shared the story and commentary around the Prayer of Ephrem the Syrian, a 4th century teacher whose prayer is used constantly in the Eastern church especially during the week leading to Easter. I have learned and prayed and been helped by this prayer as part of my own spiritual life for many years now. (Go to this previous post for the text and commentary.)

Fasting, along with prayer and compassionate giving, is a spiritual discipline Jesus expected his followers to continue (Matthew 6:1-18). The pattern of fasting in much of the church has been to extend a rhythm of Wednesday and Friday (abstaining from meat, dairy, oil, and wine) to virtually the whole 40 day period. Joan Chittister writing on The Liturgical Year, says this about fasting in relation to the Seven Deadly Sins. (our current teaching series)

…consciousness of life beyond the material come(s) more easily when the material is not allowed to smother us. Having conquered our impulses for the immediate, having tamed our desires for the physical, perhaps we will be able to bring ourselves to rise above the greed that consumes us. Maybe we will be able to control the anger that is a veil between us and the face of God. Perhaps we will have reason now to forswear the pride that is a barrier to growth. Possibly we will learn to forswear the lust that denies us the freeing grace of simplicity. Maybe we will even find the energy to fight the sloth that deters us from making spiritual progress, the gluttony that ties us to our bellies, and the envy that makes it impossible for us to be joyful givers of the gifts we have been given.

Lent is the period in which, learning to abstain from adoring at the shrine of the self, we come to see beyond the divinity we have made of ourselves to the divine will for all the world. (p. 113)

For some other resources on Lent, go to the Christ Church page here.

In Ancient-Future Faith, Fully Human, Lent, Sin
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Replacing the god of Greed with the God of Mercy

February 10, 2010 — Leave a comment

He entered Jericho and was passing through. And there was a man named Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector and was rich. And he was seeking to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was small of stature. So he ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him, for he was about to pass that way. And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, ”Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.” So he hurried and came down and received him joyfully. And when they saw it, they all grumbled, “He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.” And Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, “Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold.” And Jesus said to him, ”Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.

“Zacchaeus is one of my favorite Jesus encounters to preach on.  He is a vivid picture of how – in the words of Tim Keller -“Jesus had replaced money as Zacchaeus’ God and Savior, so money could go back to being just what it is: a tool for serving people.”  (Keller has a chapter on Greed in his book Counterfeit Gods)

In Fully Human, Gospel, Sin, Stewardship
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Acedia – The Disease of ‘Whatever!’

February 1, 2010 — 1 Comment

Like the Greek word Paraclete is hard to translate as a title of the Holy Spirit (John 14-16), and can mean ‘Helper’, ‘Comforter,’ ‘Counselor,’ etc. – so Acedia [uh-SEED-ia] is the deadly sin that defies simple words like ‘sloth’ or ‘apathy.’  So we’ll call this third deadly sin by its new/old name!  It literally means ‘the absence of care’ or ‘spiritual indifference.’  And it is dangerous! (Click here to hear or view the sermon from this teaching series.)

I’ve quoted Alexander Schmemann – worth reading again:

The basic disease is sloth (acedia). It is that strange laziness and passivity of our entire being which always pushes us “down” rather than “up” — which constantly convinces us that no change is possible and therefore desirable. It is in fact a deeply rooted cynicism which to every spiritual challenge responds “what for?” and makes our life one tremendous spiritual waste. It is the root of all sin because it poisons the spiritual energy at its very source. (From The Lenten Prayer of St Ephrem the Syrian)

For those who want to explore Acedia in depth, I highly recommend Kathleen Norris’ Acedia and Me: A Marriage, Monks, and A Writer’s Life. If you or a loved on are ‘stuck’ or stagnated or like C.S. Lewis’ illustration of “an instrument unstrung” – then this book will take you into some deep waters of scripture, history and Norris’ own compelling story.   You can listen to an interview with PBS’s Bob Abernathy.  Finally here’s an excerpt that explores how the Psalms can be God’s tools for getting through the darkness. Continue Reading…

In Fully Human, Sin
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A Prayer Against Envy

January 25, 2010 — 1 Comment

We closed our worship service yesterday with a prayer against the green monster sin of envy.  Some have asked for the words.  And it may be good to pray more than once!

O Lord,  let Your Holy Spirit so rule my life
that I may love You with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength
and my neighbor as myself.
Take from me a spirit of comparing and analyzing.
Help me instead to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.
Move me from resentment to contentment;
from restlessness to peace,
that I might know the joy of communion with You
and with Your people,
to the glory of Your name.    Amen.

In Fully Human, Prayer, Sin
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“Deadly Sins” – C.S. Lewis Poem and Commentary

January 10, 2010 — Leave a comment

For those who love poetry and C. S. Lewis, you’ll be happy to know he was a poet as well as a master of most other genres! Being a medieval scholar he was very familiar with the historical development of the Seven Deadly Sins (our current ‘mini-series’ at Christ Church),  and more importantly the biblical meaning of each.  He wrote a poem called Deadly Sins. It is available on the internet and I’m  linking to an article by Lewis scholar, Paul Ford.  Read the poem and the great notes that are beside it.

Ford ends with this summary.
…Lewis is saying here that, if the sinner would look along, or perhaps better look through, the sin and see what was really the object desired, the temptation process would become an opportunity for deeper growth in the Spirit.

It’s another way of saying that the Tempter can only take the good passions and get us to misuse them in some way.  Or, as we have been saying, to get us to live sub-human lives.    link to the poem.

[One other article of interest is from the fantastic Into the Wardrobe website where the author conjectures that Lewis may have consciously or unconsciously  weaved one of the sins into each of the Chronicles of Narnia!  Check it out here.]

In C.S. Lewis, Fully Human, Sin
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‘Shalom Vandalized’ -or- What’s So Deadly About Sin?

January 7, 2010 — Leave a comment

“Fully Human, Fully Alive!”  That’s the goal.  Union with Christ is what we were made for!  It’s the new way of being human.  We need the new way because of the “infection of sin” or as Cornelius Plantiga has called it – “The Vandalism of Shalom”  (in Not The Way It’s Supposed To Be: A Breviary of Sin.)

In our Jan-Feb ’10 teaching mini-series we want to take a close look at the problem of sin and evil and how it works in our lives and in our world.  We will look at what the church has historically seen as ‘The Seven Deadly Sins’ and the corresponding virtues as taught by Jesus in the Beatitudes.  We will trust God to give us a new sensitivity to our own sin and these “ways we assault ourselves, those around us, and the world as a whole.”  Jesus wants us to be restored and energized as the Good News of the Kingdom breaks into a world infected by sin!  I don’t know about you, but I want to live passionately without being controlled by my passions! (i.e. disordered desires)

One resource that will be helpful to have is a book by Jeff Cook, Seven: The Deadly Sins and the Beatitudes. It comes highly recommended by Scot McKnight and Peter Kreeft (and I concur!)  The author reminds us that “these deadly sins often seem pleasing and good for gaining what we desire, but they are thoroughly poisonous.” We want to see “How Sin Dishonors God and De-humanizes People” - including ourselves!

Oh yes, the seven?  Pride, envy, sloth (or spiritual apathy), greed, lust, wrath, and gluttony.  Go to  our website for a schedule of teachings.

In Fully Human, Sin
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