One of the things I said I wanted to explore with you during this Lent was the many ways in which the Scriptures teach us how to deal with evil, to resist and overcome evil. In this regard, I think we have a great example of that with this passage from the New Testament, where Paul is giving quite the stern warnings to the young Church in Corinth. After reminding them that all their ancestors had been led by God when they left Egypt to follow Moses, passing through the red sea, eating and drinking from the food God gave them, after witnessing all those miracles and receiving all these graces, what happened to them is that they were all struck down in the wilderness because they became idolaters and Paul says: God was not pleased with most of them. And then Paul adds: Now these things occurred (are related in the Scriptures) as examples for us, so that we might not desire evil as they did.
Now we may think: Well, what does it mean to desire evil? Paul actually starts talking about sexual immorality, which is something that can come easily to mind when we think about sin. Sexual immorality was specifically a temptation in Corinth that was a pagan city and a port city and a place where many divinities were worshiped with fertility rites that included what we call politely “Sacred prostitution”. So we can understand that. But more interestingly, it looks like, from that, Paul is looking for the root of sin in a deeper sense, and as he does that we may want to remember that the city of Corinth was in Greece and most of the people there, including recently converted Christians, held the belief of many Greek philosophers: The body as the whole material world is doomed, but the spirit is always pure because it lives in the divine realm. And so Paul is introducing a very disturbing idea, that actually we may sin with our body, but sin is not skin deep or a business of the body, rather sin starts in our minds, in our thoughts, and it’s not even about having twisted ideas or suspicious desires, rather sin is about thinking well of ourselves. Sin starts when we think well of ourselves. And Paul gives this warning: If you think that you are standing, watch out that you do not fall.
Indeed, as the Israelites when they left Egypt, the people in Corinth have been led by God, have received God’s grace through baptism and they also have received the sacred food and drink through communion, and so you would think that’s the time they’re really out of the woods with sin and yet no, that’s the time of trial, that’s the time of temptation, that’s the time they’re bound to think so well of themselves that they think they cannot do bad things because they have become good people through God’s grace and God’s grace will always be there for them. I think that’s what Paul means when he says to them: We must not put Christ to the test. Yes Christ will receive us and have mercy on us and forgive us, but it’s not a license to do whatever we want and abuse his kindness towards us. We have to watch out that following Christ certainly does not make us immune to evil, rather we are going to be all the more tempted, and again just because we may start looking at ourselves as good people and we don’t pay attention anymore.
In this, it seems to me that Paul is sticking very closely to Jesus’s teaching about sin, of which we have quite the example in our Gospel today. So let’s have a look. Some people come to Jesus and report a tragedy that has taken place: Some Galileans were attacked and killed by Pilate’s soldiers while they were offering their sacrifices in the Temple. And I guess the unformulated question they are asking Jesus is the following: Why? It is the same question we ask each time a tragedy strikes, especially when tragedy strikes innocent people who go about minding their own business, or in this case, even more tragically, these people were attacked while they were worshiping. Was God displeased with them, like he was with their ancestors in the wilderness? It seems that Jesus catches the unformulated question when he replies: “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you (…) Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem?”.Instead of focusing on the (assumed) sin of those who have been struck, Jesus, as Paul will do a few years later, reminds people of their own sin. And this is what he says: Those people weren’t worse sinners than anyone else, but yet if you do not repent, you will perish just as they did.
And now, if you think about it, it does not make much sense at first. Listen: They didn’t die because they weren’t worse sinners than others but yet if you don’t repent, you will die in the same way. So it’s like Jesus says this contradictory thing that they didn’t die because they were sinners, yet if you are a sinner you will die. I think to understand that we have to realize that, as always, Jesus is using earthly facts to speak of spiritual realities: In the same way these people perished on earth, you will die spirituallyunless you turn to God and repent.Jesus is making a parallel between the way some unfortunate people can die a cruel or meaningless death in a mass murder or in a mass accident, and the way we can lead a sterile, meaningless life when we refuse to turn to God. We will die in the same way, not in our body but we will die in our soul and in our heart. If you remember Matthew’s Gospel, that’s quite literally what Jesus said to the Pharisees: “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.” (Mt 23:27-28) This is what Jesus says to all who think well of themselves: You’re dead inside.
Well, I think it’s a little scary if we think about it, because we have gotten use to blame the Pharisees, but we see that Paul thinks that even Christians are not immune of this disease of self righteousness. And they’d better watch out, and watch themselves. We’re all sinners, even when we have received the grace of God, and it’s actually even more tempting to sin, again, because we tend to think well of ourselves.
I am going to give you an example because this it reminded me of a book I read a few years ago written by a very straightforward young woman, Ijeoma Oluo. It’s called “So…You want to talk about race?“And one of the things she says in the book is that it’s like there is nothing more offending to a white person to tell them that they have said or done something that was discriminatory. She says, from her experience as a black person, that if you point that out, it either enrages people or they will go at length to justify themselves and to prove their good intentions. And after she makes this observation, she adds: But guess what? If you are white in a white supremacy society, you are racist. If you are male in a patriarchy, you are sexist. And you know, I really didn’t like that when I read it the first time, that just because I am white I am a racist. It’s not my sin, is it? Who was she to tell me something like that? Does she know me? And yet, I realized I needed to acknowledge that she may have been saying something quite similar to Jesus when he said to the good people: You’re all sinners. I had to think, not so much about my professed, righteous beliefs, but about my behavior, everyday expectations, my gut reactions and what they said about me, would it be only my defensiveness, how I thought of myself as good people, and the way I assumed I knew as much about racism as a person of color. We’re all sinners indeed, guilty of turning against each other, guilty of racism, sexism, ageism, homophobia, each time we find reasons to ignore, fear, exploit or even hate each other. Sin is like this sticky yellow pollen we have right now, we may not always see it but it’s all around us and all over us and it’s making us sick.
So what do we do? We repent, of course. We turn to God, not only once in a lifetime, when we become Christians, but every day, ten times a day, a hundred times a day if necessary. We don’t assume we’re good people. We watch out, we listen, we learn, and we try to change. That’s actually our baptismal covenant. Our baptismal covenant does not say that once we’re baptized we’re good to go, beautiful people in God’s sight from now on. It does not say either that God is mad at us, disappointed or displeased when we are just what we are: sinners. But it asks us this question (BCP p.304): Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord? And we respond: I will, with God’s help. And to me in a way,it’s liberating to know that we are all sinners, like it can be liberating to acknowledge that we all have prejudices, that we all discriminate, because we can stop fighting so hard to defend ourselves, we can stop trying so hard to find proofs that we are different, that we are accepting and good and loving. And we can use this energy to watch ourselves, and to learn more, to ask for forgiveness and try again. As Maya Angelou puts it: “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”According to Jesus, that’s how we become fruitful, that’s how we escape a meaningless life and spiritual death, that’s how we stay alive and continue to grow, like the fig tree with all the manure at its feet with God’s grace we can grow fruitful out of our own sin. Isn’t it kind of an amazing and a terrible truth?