Sermon: “Wiping Out Your Sins”

Text: Acts 3:12-19

3^rd Sunday of Easter (B)

April 26, 2009

Scripture introduction.  Our second reading this morning continues the post-Easter selections from the Acts of the Apostles.  As chapter 3 begins, Peter and John have come to the temple for afternoon prayers.  As they arrived at a gate in the temple precincts, they saw a man who had been lame all his life, sitting by the gate and asking for money.  Peter said, “We don’t have any money, but in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, stand up and walk.”  The man arose, completely healed from his lameness, skipping and leaping and praising God as he accompanied Peter and John into the temple.  Of course many persons witnessed these happenings, and soon a crowd began to gather.  As the crowd followed, Peter and John repaired to one of the long colonnades along the perimeter of the temple courts, the formerly lame man actually clinging to them as they went.  This is where our verses for today begin.

Peter is the spokesman, and he first directs any praise for the healing away from himself and John and toward God, who accomplished the healing through faith in the name of Jesus.  Then he becomes more critical, reminding the people that they had handed Jesus over for crucifixion; yet God had raised Jesus from the dead.  “To be sure,” says Peter, “you and your rulers did this in ignorance and, in any event, it was all in God’s plan.”  “Repent and return to God so that your sins may be wiped out.”  They must repent—be sorry for their sins—and also must actually “return to God,” changing their behavior.  And while each individual will make a personal decision in response to Peter’s speech, in a sense it is also true that all the people are being called, collectively, to repentance so that their great sin in rejecting Jesus can be wiped out.[1]

Sermon.  Christians must be very careful when interpreting texts like the one I just read.  Used wrongly it can be wielded like a weapon against the Jews, and so it has been throughout the Christian era.  Peter accuses the Jews of handing over Jesus to the Romans for crucifixion, and that is how we Christians have inherited the story through the gospels.  But whoever was responsible for crucifying Jesus died long ago.  The Jews we know today had nothing to do with the crucifixion, and we must guard against any attempt to fix blame upon them.  As I have said on other occasions, I think of the Jews as our cousins in faith.  I follow the apostle Paul, who in the 11^th chapter of Romans concluded that God has not forsaken God’s covenant with the Jews.  We don’t know the specifics of God’s plan for them.  We simply should leave that to God and recognize the many things we have in common with the Jews.

I give you this disclaimer because the part of Peter’s speech that I want to lift up for your consideration is the most dangerous part—his implication that sin attaches not only to individuals, but also to groups.  If we are careful I believe we can acknowledge this truth without blaming contemporary Jews for the crucifixion.  I recognize that in our culture I am swimming upstream when I suggest that sin can attach to groups of persons.  Our culture celebrates the freedom and autonomy of the individual, values enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights.  Yet the biblical worldview—however it may agree with preserving the dignity of each individual—also understands that groups of persons have identities that make a theological difference.  The majority of the Old Testament tells the story of God’s special dealings with the Israelites.  The Old Testament understood sin almost like a disease—it had to be cleansed by sacrifice or some other curative step or else it would be imputed to the entire community.  Given our emphasis on the individual, we modern readers find many Old Testament stories repugnant—stories of how God judged and punished an entire family or city or nation, when we imagine that there were probably some righteous persons in those groups.  Even Jesus, as he described the activity of God in the world, referred to groups of persons rather than individuals.  Notably, he preached about the “kingdom” of God, not the individuals of God.

So it’s fair to ask, “What does group sin look like?”  I guess the most obvious example is when folks get whipped up into a mob.  People will do things in the relative anonymity of a mob that they probably would not do by themselves.  Whatever causes a person to join a mob—anger, fear, envy, or greed—the individual’s identity has been subsumed into the mob.  In that case it’s fair to understand the sin attaching to the mob.  Even our criminal laws recognize this.  A person who is part of a conspiracy may be guilty of the crimes committed by any individual in the conspiring group.  They may have started out only planning to rob a bank, but if one of the group shoots and kills a bank guard, then all may be charged with murder.  Another example of group or corporate sin would be the behavior of the German people during World War II.  As historian Daniel Goldhagen has shown,[2] tens of thousands of ordinary Germans complied willingly and enthusiastically, without coercion, in the scheme of Nazi leaders to exterminate the Jews.  If we seek an example closer to home, we might name the racism that has infected our national life.

Group sin—corporate sin—is even possible within the church.  If someone in our church mistreats another and we allow that mistreatment to go uncorrected, then we all share the guilt, even though only one person may originally have been guilty.  Likewise, if we as a church develop harmful and unhealthy habits in the ways that we deal with one another—if there are unspoken and inaccurate assumptions that oppress certain individuals, then we all share the guilt.  For years it was the case that women were not allowed full participation in the life and governance of the church.  I’m glad that we have repented of that sin and have taken actions to correct it, although it is still true that women pastors must work harder and wait longer than their male counterparts to receive a call to a church.  For the longest time, this was not even understood to be a problem.  “That’s just the way the world is,” someone might have said.

In fact that’s a pretty good clue to where there may be corporate or group sin.  If we see suffering and oppression and immediately tell ourselves, “That’s just the way the world is,” we already have become participants in the group sin because we have considered it to be natural and make no effort to change things.  Why are there so many hungry people in Africa?  Well, there just are.  They have always been hungry.  Why is income throughout the world so unevenly distributed?  Well, that’s just the way the world is—some people will always have too much and others too little.  Why does it seem like war is always breaking out, and why do wars so often involve our country?  Well, that’s just the way the world is: people and nations will always be in conflict, and often those conflicts will become violent.  When we realize how often the natural state of the world seems to involve oppression and suffering, then the enormity of sin’s infection of our world becomes apparent. 

Jesus and others in the New Testament spoke of the “ruler of this world,” often personified as the devil.  However we understand evil to be present—either personified or abstract—we can see just how often “the way the world is” goes contrary to God’s intentions.  Does God accept that some people will necessarily be hungry?  I don’t think so.  Is it in God’s plan that nations would constantly be at war?  Hardly.  Sin is pervasive in our world.  And I hope I have demonstrated to you that, even if we have been pretty righteous as individuals, we are members of systems and groups and communities that commit group sins and we participate in those sins.  That is the reason we have a corporate confession of sin in our worship services: even if we have not committed the specific sin mentioned in the prayer, we confess on behalf of the groups we are members of.

Of course there is no way that any of us can extricate ourselves from group sin.  No matter how hard-working, no matter how self-disciplined, no matter how well-intentioned, we are stuck in our condition.  In a complex society we have no choice but to involve ourselves in larger groups—churches, businesses, national economies, and governments.  We are stuck, that is, until we consider God’s gracious work in Jesus Christ.  In a way that remains a mystery, but which we affirm at the very heart of our faith, when Jesus was killed by sinful persons and was raised by God to new life, this event marked the turning point in the ages.  The resurrection of Jesus is the sign to us that the power of sin in the world is not absolute.  Evil will not always have the upper hand, strong as it may seem now.  In Jesus we have glimpsed the kingdom of God, and one day that kingdom will arrive in fullness.  Christ did not simply arise: he arose victorious from the tomb.  This is what we celebrate in our own baptisms: when the water is applied we are buried with Christ and then are raised to new life, washed completely from sin.  Of course, just as the world continues to be affected by sin, even though God’s kingdom has broken in, so we, too, continue to be affected by, and infected with, sin.  Yet though sin remains powerful in our lives, nevertheless our victory is assured.  For by faith in the name of Jesus, whenever we repent and do our best to amend our behavior, our “sins are wiped out.”

In the meantime, we must live in a sinful world, part of complex organizations that involve us in sinful patterns.  We can repent of this in our own minds, but then what do we do?  I received an E-mail this week that suggested a partial answer.  Earlier, in our joys and concerns, I mentioned our member William Seo, who currently serves as an Army medic in a forward operating base in Afghanistan.  Under the leadership of our Mission Committee and the deacons, our church already has sent several boxes of personal items to William for distribution to American troops in his unit.  He and they have been very grateful to receive them.  Recently William has been giving medical training to Afghan soldiers, who are very poor.  Compared with his Army salary, their pay is meager indeed.  Their T-shirts are threadbare.  Their shoes are ill-fitting and worn out.  This led William to ask whether—if his commander approved—we might be willing to collect needed items for the Afghan troops and villagers who work with him.  I replied that we could probably help.  With William’s permission I want to read his latest message:

Rev. Davis,

I talked to the commander this morning about the project and he welcomes it.  But he gave me a few pointers.  He suggested we focus on the kids in the villages instead of soldiers and local national workers on the army base.  He added that Afghan soldiers and local nationals who work for the U.S. military are making more than three times per month what normal Afghan people do.  . . .  The people who really need help are the people in the village.  And the kids are really in need of everything.  

He also said that if I am doing this, he is going to arrange meetings with the sub-governor to set up special missions, in which we will all go out together to villages and hand out the gifts.  This way everyone, U.S. and Afghan, gets credit, not just the U.S. military. 

I am planning on building a small blog online and keeping journals of everything I am going to do.  This way if more people want to participate they can as well.  

People all over the world are suffering from poverty, and I always agonize to find things to help them.  Now, I am here in Afghanistan and if I can reach out and touch few souls, it will be a great joy.  In the process, I hope many people receive Christ. 

This might be a small project now, but if God is willing, I am ready to work a lot more for HIM and them.  And I am happy that I have you and Central Presbyterian Church supporting the idea. 

 After the conversation with the commander, I do agree with his point.  Perhaps we start with kids’ shoes and clothes: the goal is about 200 pairs each.  What do you think about this?  If everything is okay with the church, how long do you think it will take?  I was hoping we could do it in May, the month of Family and Children.

Thanks,

William

Dear friends, I don’t know how we would do this, but it seems important to respond.  I have asked the Mission Committee to begin thinking about the logistics.  I believe this is how we respond to group sin—to “the way the world is.”  Our leaders may have had good reasons to begin the war in Afghanistan, but we all can agree that in general war is bad.  Poverty is bad, especially when it affects children.  War and poverty do not represent God’s plan for the world.  By accepting William’s challenge, we could show God’s love even in war.  Our soldiers must participate in the war—they are in a group that gives them little choice—but we could give them a way to participate in peacemaking at the same time.  Our nation may be viewed by Afghans as a necessary evil, but as we assist William and his comrades to provide relief to the children, the Afghans might develop a different understanding of Americans.  To the Muslims who live in Afghanistan, we Christians are infidels—“unbelievers.”  The kind of aid that William proposes may convince them that we, too, can be compassionate and merciful. 

And so group sin need not have the last word.  From the inside out, we can begin affecting for good the very groups and systems that connect us to warfare and poverty—the sinful ways of the world.  If we must live and work in groups and systems, then we can strive to help them—at least sometimes—reflect God’s values.