SOMETHING HAS GONE VERY BAD

The sermon at this morning's worship service was from Genesis 2, the account of what most people call "The Fall," that is, when the serpent tricked Eve and Adam and God banished them from the Garden of Eden.  Our pastor talked about how that sin – of mistrust in a Heavenly Father to do good – has seeped into all people and families and relationships since then. 

 

I felt a certain poignancy about that message later that afternoon when I read in today's paper about the awful abuses committed by Catholic priests and the even more awful covering up that took place by their higher-ups.  I do not mean to point a special finger at priests or the Catholic Church – I know that childhood sexual abuse happens in all religions and all cultures – but it is particularly despicable that such evils were committed by people in positions of intimate trust and religious stewardship. 

 

Many of the people who I have spoken to who have themselves been victims of sexual abuse at the hands of people in religious authority have told me that of the many distortions that result – self-image, sexuality, relationships – the hardest by far is the sense of warping of spiritual truth.  Sometimes the perversion is explicit – abusers have quoted Scripture to justify their repeated sexual acts.  Other times it is implicit – abusers count on the shame of the abused, the disbelief of those they tell, the assumed trust in the authority of the office.  Either way, it tarnishes what is meant to be a beautiful thing – God in intimate relationship with us, God placing us in intimate relationship with one another. 

 

Something has gone very bad in our world.  The sin of our ancestors – of not trusting God's goodness – has seeped into all of our lives, and as a result we are torn asunder from ourselves, each other, nature, and ultimately God.  The Christian belief in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ as a conquest over sin and death is something that ought to move us much more than it does today in our inoculated, numbed-down society.  For it is an audacious, sweeping claim – that by the blood of One all might be made clean.  Given just how dirty we all are, and how much we continue to dirty ourselves and get dirtied, it is indeed an audacious, sweeping claim. 

 

To paraphrase two of the common themes in the writings of the apostle Paul: First, if this claim is not true, we who believe in it are of all men most to be pitied.  But second, if it is, should it not demand all of us?  Oh, may I neither despair because of the evil in me and in the world, nor numb myself or convince myself that I'm OK and you're OK.  Nor assent to what I believe to be true but live it out only half-heartedly.  No, may I believe, and live accordingly.