Today I will continue the series of sermons I began last Sunday. Last Sunday concerned the Creation, and the other sermons are on Sin, Judgement, Repentance and Salvation. This sermon is about Sin, and I must point out to you that in a few minutes I cannot do justice to such a complicated and difficult topic - one which the church has been meditating upon for twenty centuries.
We believe in God, creator of heaven and earth. God's Creation arose out of God's love and God's will. God's love has given us a universe of beauty and splendour, a universe which sustains us and which we share with a whole community of other creatures. Because we are created in the love of God and in the image of God, we are created for relationships - a relationship of interdependence with creation, community with each other, and communion with God. Because creation arose from God's will, it has a purpose and a reason for being, and through God's will, creation will achieve its purpose. God has also created us with free will so that we can choose to share the creative purpose of God.
However, when our choices separate us from God, or from each other, or from the rest of Creation, then we call those choices sinful. And when our choices go against the creative purpose of God, then we call those choices sinful. There are two concepts of sin to be explored here, and we find them both in the Bible. The concept of sin as separation from God; and the concept of sin as going against God's will and purposes, or disobedience.
We see them both in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve chose to separate themselves from God when they hid from God, and of course they disobeyed God when they ate the forbidden fruit.
Let's explore disobedience first. If sin is disobedience, then we need to know what it is we have disobeyed. According to the Old Testament the Law of Moses, based on the Ten Commandments, was the revealed will and instruction of God, and any disobedience deserved punishment.
One problem with this legal approach is to decide what laws are the will of God. Over the years, the Teachers of the Law developed and expanded the Law of Moses until it grew into a huge number of laws which were almost impossible to keep. Another problem was that this legalistic position actually took away any personal responsibility for sin or righteousness. If you obeyed the rules without thinking you would be safe.
This attitude, which is still with us today, was strongly criticised by the prophets, for example Amos , who declared that God hated the worship offered by people who neglected justice. Jesus , too, criticised those who demanded a tithe of mint and dill and cumin, neglecting the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith. St Paul was even stronger in his criticism. He pointed out that the Law could actually create sin. If there is a law against something, then that makes it sinful. If there is no law against it, it is not sinful.
Does this mean that we can disregard the Law of Moses? Certainly not! However we do need to look at in the light of another Biblical concept of sin; the concept of separation from God. This concept is not opposed to the Law - it is an understanding of what lies behind the law. Throughout the Bible, those who "walk with God" or "know God" are the ones who are described as righteous. Obedience comes into it, of course, but is a right relationship with God which fulfils the law. Jesus said, "I come not to abolish the law, but to fulfil it." Jesus did so by always being in communion with God. "I and the Father are one," he said, meaning our relationship is perfect. Jesus summarised the Law and the Prophets in relationship terms by saying, you shall love the Lord your God, with all your heart and soul and mind and strength, and your neighbour as yourself. What relationship is closer than that of lovers?
Jesus and his disciples often disobeyed the letter of the law in order to show that a personal commitment to love God and other people was the real way of fulfilling the law. Jesus taught that those who turn their back on a loving relationship with God and with their neighbours are the real sinners, not those who have disobeyed various laws, however good those laws may be.
Jesus' teaching and example stresses the serious nature of Sin. Sin is much worse than simply disobeying the Law, it is worse than simply going against God's will.
Sin, as the Bible describes it, not only destroys who we are as people, but also damages the whole relationship between God and Creation. This damage, once it occurs, persists. The Bible describes the consequences of sin carrying on to the third and fourth generation. Human misuse of the environment is an appropriate illustration and, I believe, an appropriate example of sin. Through human insensitivity to the environment the natural world is damaged and our children and our children's children will have to deal with what we and our parents have done. It might be appropriate then to say that our treatment of the environment has disregarded God's creative purposes and is therefore sinful.
I have used my judgement to describe the destruction of our environment as Sinful. This brings me to the subject of next week's sermon, which is Judgement. There is, of course a great deal more to discuss about sin, after all, the word occurs in almost every chapter of every book in the Bible.
However I would like to leave you with two ideas about sin. Firstly, that it is a disregard for the creative purposes of God and disobedience to God's will. Secondly, sin is that alienation from God, from our neighbours and from the rest of Creation which diminishes us as human beings, offends our neighbours and damages our environment.