“Fer” It or “Agin” It?

Did you ever hear the dialog of the person whose housemate was just coming in from having been to church? The homebody asked, how the church was, and the churchgoer said it was good. Then the question came, “How was the sermon; what was it about?” The response was, “It was okay. It was about sin.” To which the homebody inquired, “Sin, huh…well, was he fer it or agin it?”  We hope we know the answer to that. It would not be good if one couldn’t tell if the preacher was for or against sin. Yikes! I guess that could happen. There is no question where Jesus stands. Jesus was revealed as the divine agent, God incarnate, entering the world to defeat sin and its power over humanity.

Sin is an important and interesting topic. Hebrew understandings of sin are complex with different categories, but the main concept is “transgression.” My informal thoughts about this word move me to the notion of struggling not to move off the path of the law. If you are on a path to righteousness, one can progress, regress, or transgress. You can move forward, backward, or just move completely off the path altogether. In Hebrew thought such departures can be either intentional, accidental, or because of utter unfamiliarity with the law itself. The study gets a bit involved because there are separate words for in as rebellion (deliberate defiance of God), iniquity (uncontrollable emotion or the sin of lust), and a sin, crime, or fault (a truly unintentional missed-step, a missing of the mark.

In the New Testament, we find the Greek word hamartia, which also means “to miss the mark” the way an archer might miss, attempting to hit the target. In ancient and classical Greek, however, hamartia carries a fascinating meaning. People in sin are people who are twisting and misshaping they're being away from its intended form. The sinner is making a monstrous form of themselves. This image of sin interests me because it corresponds more naturally to aspects of Anglican moral theology. The Middle Ages advanced ideas of sin along the lines of infractions against the standard. People either lined up with the rules or were rule-breakers. Anglican theologians, harkening to early church theology, utilized the imagery of the state of the soul. Anglicans asked the question, what shape is our soul in? Is it lithe and healthy, or is it thick, gross, and pocked?  In a sense, the sickness of sin, in this view, is something we bring on ourselves. This is something of a contrast to the picture of an external, abstract set of rules which lower the boom upon us as punishment.

I always appreciated the Anglican view. It puts the onus of responsibility on the individual to lean significantly on the grace of God to help that person to freely choose spiritual health and discover the person she or he is created to be. However elaborately we analyze our notions of sin, let’s all agree we are “agin” it, not “fer” it. Let us think of ourselves in partnership with God, knowing we are accountable to God for the shape and form we choose for ourselves. It makes interesting the biblical concept of the Final Judgement, a topic in the Scriptures this Sunday and the Sundays ahead. Wow, what if the Judgement is a spirit and soul exam, like the physical exam you have with your doctor? What if it is an accounting akin to the assessment you might have with your physical trainer? Still pretty ominous, isn’t it?

It is one thing to analyze theologically the nature and effect of sin and to do word studies. It is another thing to get a sense of sin experientially, that is, to sense where things are with your soul and whether deep in your soul you feel connected or distant from God. Unless we have calcified our inner sensor for it, I think we can feel whether or not “it is well with our souls.”

It would be smart for us to take a look at the Collect of the day for this Sunday. It is easy to roll right through these pretty prayers and move on, but I am just not willing to do that. In the prayer form, we call a “collect” we often find a description of God, a request, and a hoped-for result. In this case, the main request is that we be purified as Christ is pure. This is asked in order for us to be made like the blessed Son of God, Jesus, in his eternal and glorious reign. God is described as the One Who’s blessed Son came to destroy the works of the devil and make us children of God and inheritors of eternal life. That is a lot, don’t you agree? Can you believe how much belief, how much spirituality, how much theology is packed into a single long sentence? Look it over:

O God, whose blessed Son came into the world that he might destroy the works of the devil and make us children of God and heirs of eternal life: Grant that, having this hope, we may purify ourselves as he is pure; that, when he comes again with power and great glory, we may be made like him in his eternal and glorious kingdom; where he lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

This is such a high request. We believe God can do this for us and does accomplish this for us.  We want to be made pure as Christ is pure. We want our whole selves to be sound, healthy, connected to God, and purified. We want our souls to be wonderfully and uniquely formed not monstrous; to hit the mark not miss it; to be on the path and moving forward not off the path. We want our exam at the end of the term to be amazing: showing that we have made progress coming into likeness with Christ.

Then, think of it, our loving Creator makes up all the difference by grace. What love, what mercy, what forgiveness! It should feel good that you and God are on the same page. God, like you, is against the work of the devil and for the work of sanctification. You are against the destructive effect of sin and for the purifying grace of Christ. You are for the love of God, the love of neighbor, even the love of enemies. To conclude, you and God are working together to see, “that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made.” (From the Ordination Rite, BCP p. 528)