July 6, 2008
The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost (Year A)
Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49; Song of Solomon 2:8-13; Romans 7:15-25a;
Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30
These are interesting lessons this morning: the story of the arranged marriage of Rebecca and Isaac; the passage from Song of Solomon that is often used at weddings; Paul, part of his letter to the Romans confessing his own struggles with doing that which he doesn’t want to do; and the gospel, which contains two familiar and wonderful quotations, “You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants,” and “Come unto me all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.”
Each reading would make a sermon, and all together they could make a book worth reflecting on! But as it is a lazy summer weekend, the celebration of the 4th of July, and those of us who are here are truly here to be together, I will skip the book and choose one lesson, perhaps the one least connected to the others, the letter from Paul, his confession.
Confession is a strange thing in the church; it is not like a criminal confession to a crime. For us confession is not like that at all. Crimes have certain punishments, and the laws which are broken were/are constructed by human beings and designed to make it possible for us to live together in human community. They were created for the purpose of keeping order and worldly justice possible in the imperfect world in which we live.
Sometimes the secular laws overlap the religious laws. For instance, in both cases killing is not acceptable – and in both cases, with exceptions! But confessing to the breaking of a secular law comes with certain consequences that are predetermined or negotiated.
When we confess our sins, and, yes, we are talking about sins when we speak of religious confessions, it is an entirely different matter. Our judge and jury are not bound by a penal code, rather our judge and jury is God alone. For the faithful, that is far more awesome than facing a jury of twelve peers. God can be feared, of course, and some religions try to put “the fear of God” as judge into their members; but the truth I have come to know and believe is that the fear of God is really about one’s own fear of disappointing the One who loves us so much.
It is with a sense of having let God down that we faithful people confess. It is with honesty about our own human failings, desires, lusts, excuses, and self-deceptions that we begin our confession. Unlike a secular confession to a crime where we carefully weigh what we say and consider the consequences of each word, a confession of sins to God is free of all need for deception and meting out blame or adding “but” several times in excuse. When we confess to God, we stand naked, maybe not literally but figuratively, naked, all trappings of the world gone and with them hopefully all trappings of the ego.
That is what I love most about this particular passage from Romans, Paul’s humble forgoing of all pretense or position. He is a mere mortal speaking aloud his deepest self knowing to the One who knows him even better. Paul confesses to doing what he doesn’t want to do and not doing what he wants. It reminds me of the corporate confession we say each week, “things done and left undone.” Paul’s words, in this case, are ones I can easily relate to.
Through the centuries preachers have read into Paul’s confession some sort of sexual sin, either sex outside of marriage or an attraction to men. They have used this passage to promote their vilification of a particular sexual act or way of being. Modern scholarship would deny their interpretation. This confession of Paul’s is almost certainly not at all about sex.
And I admit that when I read this passage, I do not hear anything that has to do with sexual misconduct of some sort. Rather I hear in this passage a reflection of my own internal struggles. I see broad struggles, such as the racism I battle internally as well as see daily in the world around me, and the struggle I have with feeling so powerless to stop the war that I believe to be killing so many innocent people, especially our young soldiers, and women and children in Iraq and Afghanistan. And I see other huge sociological struggles that sometimes are too big to even name let alone claim as my own.
And I also hear in Paul’s confession a very personal confession and struggle of my own, with food: “I should not eat this.” “I won’t eat this.” And then my member, also called that pesky hand of mine, reaches out and puts that food I don’t intend into my mouth! – chocolate chip cookie, potato chip, French fry, etc., etc., etc. I know that eating incorrectly is to denigrate the creation God made and yet I do it anyway. Who can resist French-fries? And we won’t even mention chocolate!
And the list can go on! Every time I throw a can in the garbage instead of recycling, or work so many hours in a week that I do not have time for my family and the people I love. Others wrestle with alcohol, “Tomorrow I will stop drinking,” or, perhaps, “Tomorrow quit smoking.” Maybe you are one who can’t say “no” to someone, a child or relative perhaps, who keeps asking for you to save them from catastrophe, or – well, you get the idea. All of us have struggled with what one commentary calls “the knowing better syndrome.”
Every one of us suffers from “knowing better syndrome“ in some way. Without exception! That is the reality of being human. Even Mother Theresa spoke of her internal struggles with “knowing better.” We all know when something is right and good and holy but doing that right and good and holy thing simply lies beyond our ability to accomplish, not because of external forces that enslave us, but because of the internal forces that let us down. It is that struggle between knowledge and action that we call sin. (And the knowledge is not about what we have learned from books, but the knowledge we have learned from being in relationship with God.)
Sin is a part of who we are and always has been, always will be. The internal battle we wage is far more contentious than any we have beyond ourselves. For we alone are the ones who can change and follow the heart of God, we alone, and, I would say, with God’s help which is what makes faithful confession so powerful. We cannot “fix” such “knowing betters” by following a law or negotiating a better sentence; we can’t even atone for them by acts of contrition as some were taught in grammar school.
True confession calls for true repentance which calls for true change in action. Sins are best not confessed unless the confessor truly wants God to intervene and change the person who is confessing. We do not know if Paul was able to allow God to help him overcome the will of flesh he was struggling with. But we do know that even if Paul was never able to overcome the particular internal struggles he is confessing so publicly in Romans, even so we know that he is forgiven by God. It isn’t magic, and it isn’t that we are not accountable, but the judge and jury of one, God, forgives. That is the nature of God.
But it is also the nature of God to desire that each of us – all of creation – live full, healthy, happy, loving, holy lives. To do that, we must overcome our own internal “knowing betters.” God will help us if we are strong enough to allow it. God will help us if we are able, in our own confessions, to admit our sin and ask for God’s help.
It is my prayer this 4th of July weekend that we all come to the point where we are both doing “what we want” and “doing what we know is right,” in our personal lives and in our corporate life. And by faith, I trust, I believe, and hope that until we get to that point, God will forgive us and keep working with us.
Amen.
The Rev. Dr. Gale Davis Morris
Church of the Good Shepherd