Idols and Bones

The Light Within, by Foggy Winters

Propers: Whitsun Pentecost, AD 2023 A

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for you know his sins are great.

Alleluia! Christ is Risen! He is Risen indeed! Alleluia!

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Let’s talk about sin.

Most of us, I think it fair to say, imagine sin in terms of morality, of right and of wrong. Do the right thing, the good thing, and you will reap a just reward, either from some divine arbiter or as the natural results of the actions themselves. Conversely, should you choose the wrong thing, the wicked thing, your nemesis shall follow. Sins have consequences, as you and I well know.

In the ancient world—the Bronze Age, the Iron Age—the highest authority in the land was of course the king. He stood as representative of the gods, embodying laws both human and divine. His was the court of last resort. When cases came before him, evidence would typically be presented both by a paraclete, or defense attorney, and by a satan, or prosecuting attorney. The king would then pass judgment, his the final word.

This is quite naturally how much of the Bible imagines the justice of God. Various books use concepts and ideas familiar to the peoples of the ancient Mediterranean in order to speak obliquely of higher realities. It made sense to them to think of sin in terms of kings and courts. To a certain extent it still makes sense to us today. It is easy for us to imagine God as a judge, weighing evidence, hearing arguments, measuring out our sins—easy but not accurate.

Remember that God is always beyond, always greater, always truer than any words or images that we might use to speak or think of God. That’s why the biblical authors continually warn us away from idol worship. They’re not concerned with the little resin Thor that you picked up on your last trip to Iceland. They want us to remember that God is ever better than we think He is.

Even our greatest religious analogies, our most beloved stories, are but truths that point beyond themselves to Truth beyond all knowing. Sometimes it’s helpful to imagine God as a judge and Satan as lawyer. Oftentimes it’s not. When Jesus’ disciples see a man born blind, they immediately fall into this paradigm of judgment and ask who sinned, this man or his parents. Because it has to be somebody’s fault, does it not? Karma’s just cause and effect.

Jesus must change their thinking, to break them of this idol they have fashioned, this misuse of their imaginations, such that now they blame the victim. The image of God as a judge only works when it teaches us not to judge. As soon as we usurp that judgment, weighing out sins for ourselves, it then becomes idolatry.

John’s Gospel speaks of sin in ways which we do not. For John, sin is not so much a moral category as it is theological. Sin is our forgetting of God, our ignorance of God, preferring as we do our darkness to His light. This was Jesus’ work in the world: to make God known, to shine amidst the darkness, that we might see the truth, and the truth would set us free. Sin is forgiven not as a court proclamation but as truth dispelling falsehood, as vision to the blind.

Forgiveness, then, consists neither in penance nor in legal decrees from on high, but is the community’s Spirit-empowered mission to continue Jesus’ work of making God known in our world. You are the light of the world; you are the salt of the earth. And judgment, for John, far from being capricious or unknowable, hanging like the sword of Damocles above our heads, is nothing other than the world’s response to Jesus—which is to say, the Cross. The Cross, for John, is the judgment.

Today we celebrate Pentecost, the 50th and final day of Easter, when the Holy Spirit descended upon the Apostles as wind and tongues of flame, empowering them, sending them out, to proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom of God in Christ. They went out speaking all languages, driven by the Spirit to include in one body all of those whom we would exclude, until our identities are all wound up, each in each other, and all in Jesus Christ. The Church is one body with Christ as our head.

Keep in mind, in all of this, that God’s plan from the beginning has been to form for Himself a people in whom His Spirit so evidently abides that the world cannot help but notice, and God is made known through them. God has no Plan B. The giving of the Holy Spirit is the promise of our peace and the cause of our joy. To have Her is none other than to have the life of God, the life of Christ, in our breath and our blood and our souls. This community is the life of God.

Yet part and parcel with this is that we are then sent out. The Spirit is ever sent, ever breathed out into the world from Father and from Son. Thus, to have the Spirit in us, the life of God within us, the Incarnation in us, is to be sent out as well. We go into the world to make God known, in word and in deed, in religion and in life.

That’s what Jesus means, in John’s Gospel, when He says, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” That’s not magic. And it certainly isn’t clericalism. Once He told Philip, “Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father.” Now He’s telling us, “If they see you, let them see Me in you.” Do you get it? Forgiveness is light in the darkness. Forgiveness is showing Christ to the world in our lives.

And to retain the sins of any simply means that how should they see Christ if they can’t see Him in you? Live with the light of Christ within, and we are all forgiven. Hide that light of Christ away, and we remain in darkness. It’s not about the judgment of a court. It’s offering sight to the blind, and truth to a world that’s forgotten. All of this comes together. All of this is of a piece. Christ came as light in darkness; that light lives now in you. Let us not conceal it. Let us never block its way.

Brother and sisters, the world as we know it is constantly in flux. Philosophers and theologians call this contingency, dependent origination, even conditional genesis. It basically means that everything’s wrapped up in everything else, and everything is always changing. We are forever dying and rising, forever impermanent. Every good thing in this world is temporary, and every bad thing too. We thirst for stability, security, certainty, but all of that’s an illusion.

Money, food, housing, health, sex, fame, power, all of it’s passing away. All of it slips through our fingers like sand. How foolish then to spend our lives reaching, grasping, clutching, fearing, fretting, hating others, accruing junk. Everything in this life is temporary, subject to change and to chance. Even what we call a self—the ego whom we think we are—isn’t really there, isn’t really you. None of us are the same person that we were 10 years ago, or even 10 minutes ago.

Do not put your trust in the idols of this world. They will fail you; they will fall. We have to see the world for what it is, as it is, so that we then may look beyond it. This is how Jesus lived: fully in the moment, fully human, fully alive. He encountered without judging. He accepted without grasping. He was utterly selfless, and so was more Himself than any man has ever been.

Christ trusted not in kings and princes, not in powers and principalities, but in the infinite, eternal, transcendent love of God for all that He has made. He never pretended that sin was God’s will, nor that evil could come from above. Yet Jesus entered fully into the wounds of those around Him, offering forgiveness, healing, peace, and joy, the literal life of God in us, within our very veins.

Eternal life, then, is not something reserved for the future, for a court date yet to come. Eternal life is to live as Jesus here and now, to trust in the Father here and now, to welcome the Spirit here and now; such that the uncertainties and vicissitudes of life no longer disturb us, no longer enslave us, no longer prevent us from living selflessly, fearlessly, passionately.

With the Spirit of forgiveness in our bones, neither can the world disturb our peace, nor the grave erode our joy. We see things as they are. We see the light in darkness. And as that light so shines in us, so shall it illumine our world. “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them. If you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

O my Christians, do not hold back.

Alleluia! Christ is Risen! He is Risen indeed! Alleluia!

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

 

 

 

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