Guilt kills
2 Corinthians 3:4-11
Mark 7:31-37
Here’s the problem: every
week of our lives we confess our sins, we kneel before God, we receive the most
precious body and blood of his own son.
But perhaps even while we do these things, even while we say the summary
of the law, we know very well that we will break them, if not today, then
definitely tomorrow. Are we then
hypocrites? How can we presume to come
back for more when all we do is deny what we have claimed to believe by our
actions. We come here for forgiveness,
but leave with guilt.
I don't know if that
describes how you feel, or have felt.
But I believe for lots of us who call ourselves Christians an experience
of our faith is one that imposes a secret burden of guilt on us which never
leaves us, and in a way coming to worship seems to make its worse. A lot of people walk around with a kind of
quiet despair. Thinking of God becomes
an exercise in trying to get in touch with someone who is distant, a figure who
brings unease into our lives, someone we can never please. Someone we are always letting down. It makes us in force our Christianity into
some private corner-we can't share with anybody else because we know we are
such bad examples. If we open our
mouths, our lives will let us down.
If this is how you sometimes
feel you are not alone. Martin Luther
felt the same. "Although I lived a
blameless life as a monk, I felt that I was as sinner with an uneasy conscience
before God. But I also could not
believe that I had pleased him with my works.
Far from loving that righteous God who punished sinners, I actually
loathed him. I was a good monk, and
kept my orders so strictly that if ever a monk could get to heaven by monastic
discipline, I was that monk. All my
companions in the monastery would confirm this. And yet my conscience would not give me certainty, but I always
doubted and said, "You didn't do that right. You haven’t tried enough.
You left that out of your confession."
And more recently the
catholic writer Henry Nouwen writes of this same tension: "I know, from my own life, how
diligently I have tried to be good, acceptable, likable, and a worthy example
for others. There was always the
conscious effort to avoid the pitfalls of sin and the constant fear of giving
in to temptation. But with all of that
there came a seriousness, a moralistic intensity - and even a touch of
fanaticism - that made it increasingly difficult to feel at home in my Father's
house. I became less free, less
spontaneous, less playful."
Jesus said, "I have
come to bring you guilt, and guilt in all its fullness." Well, no he didn't. He said, "I have come to bring you
life, and life in all its fullness."
Life means freedom from guilt.
The freedom to know that we are loved and forgiven. Yet somewhere along the way we seem to have
missed the point.
It's because we have
misunderstood who we are. We are those
who are unable to keep the law. We are
those who are not God, therefore we are not perfect. We will never be able to live one day of our lives in such a way
as we know God requires. We are broken
people. We need to come back for
forgiveness precisely because this is our condition.
In fact, the realisation
that this is the way things are is the only way we will ever understand how
much God loves us. Because to be a
hypocrite does not mean to say one thing and do another. To be a hypocrite in its original meaning
means to wear a mask. Hipocretes were
actors who would entertain people in ancient Greece. A hypocrite is a person who puts on a mask to make a good
impression. So when we come to confess
our sins is that what we are doing?
Putting on masks before God?
Rather, I think we are taking them off.
“Lord I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall
be healed”. We may like others to think
that we are decent folk, but we acknowledge the truth before God. “We are not worthy so much as together up
the crumbs from under your table.” We
may be able to pretend one thing in front of our friends, but before God the
real me can safely be exposed. To
pretend that we are not desperately in need is to be a hypocrite.
And it's because we have
misunderstood who God is. He is the
father of the prodigal son, running with arms outstretched and tears cascading
down his cheeks to embrace us, putting the fine robe on us, a ring on our
finger. towel story.
He is the God stretched out
on the cross for us. Bleeding for us,
aching for us with every breath of his body.
God loves us more than we love our own children, he has a place for us
in his church, he has gifts for us which he wants to see us using, he longs to
see us blossom, set free from the guilt we have been talking about. There is no condemnation for those in Christ
Jesus. This is a trustworthy saying and
worthy to be believed-that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.
Our trust is not in what we
can do to live up to the commandments, but what God does for those who are
unable to keep them. Such is the
confidence that we have through Christ towards God. Not that we are competent of ourselves to claim anything as
coming from us: our competence is from God, who, as last week’s collect
reminded us is always more ready to hear than we to pray, and to give more than
we desire or desrve.
We want to live holy lives,
we want to make ourselves worthy. But
in trying to do this there lies the nub of the problem. We will never be worthy. Our worthiness has been given to us, and it
is in response to that fact that we change.
If you struggle with guilt, meditate on the father of the prodigal son,
meditate on the cross of Jesus. When I
survey the wondrous cross
On which the Prince of Glory
died
My richest gain I count but
loss
And pour contempt on all my
pride
The way to change is not by focussing on our own
failings - they will never go away - but to stop being actors and pretenders
and to rejoice in this undeserved love.
Jesus proclaimed unmistakably that God's laws are so perfect and absolute
that no one can achieve righteousness.
Yet God’s grace is so great that we do not have to. By striving to prove how much we deserve
God's love, we miss the whole point of the Gospel, that it is a gift from God
to people who don't deserve it. The
solution to sin is not to impose an ever stricter code of behaviour. It is to know and love the God who first
loved us.