SIN BOLDLY!

Galatians 1: 11-17, 2:19-21
Steve Lindsley
January 22, 2012

The 2004 movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is weird – the kind of weird I like in movies.  And yet, for all its eclectic nature and odd twists and turns, the main storyline is pretty basic: a love story between a man and a woman.  What’s more basic than that?  Jim Carrey plays the reserved Joel, and Kate Winslet the impulsive Clementine.  Now the cinematography makes it kind of hard to follow, but the basic plot goes like this: Boy meets girl.  Boy and girl start dating.  Boy and girl get serious.  Boy and girl start having some problems.  And here’s where the eclectic part comes in: Girl pays a visit to a company that specializes in erasing painful memories from one’s mind.  Girl wants to completely forget everything about Boy, as if their relationship never happened. 

Boy is subsequently puzzled and distraught when Girl treats him as if she never knew him – which, in a sense, is the case.  Boy later finds out what Girl did and decides to go through the same thing to erase her from his memory as well.   

Like I said, it’s a weird movie!  The good news is that the movie actually has a happy ending; as Boy and Girl manage to find each other a second time and fall in love all over again.  It’s the kind of ending my wife loves!  But what stuck with me after I turned the TV off wasn’t the romantic storyline.  What kept churning around in my head was this whole notion of erasing bad memories. 

I mean, think about it.  Every one of us has our “skeletons in the closet;” things we’ve done or stuff that’s happened that we regret and would love to forget about if we could.  And I daresay that if the technology really did exist, a lot of folks would jump at the chance to erase their bad memories.  I mean, think of the painful pasts that could be eliminated forever – a bad relationship, an accident of some sort, or, in my case, the 29 I got on a Calculus exam my freshman year in college.  Believe me, I’d love to get that out of my head! 

But we can’t do that, can we?  I’m hopelessly stuck with that 29 for the rest of my life!  So instead we try to sweep those things under the carpet, keep them under wraps.  We don’t bring them up in conversation; we certainly don’t drawn attention to them if we can help it.  And God willing, they’ll remain out of sight and out of mind, hopefully never to resurface and reveal themselves to anyone, including ourselves.   That’s just human nature to want that.

Which is why, I think, you and I are left collectively scratching our heads when we read today’s scripture.  Because for some reason, the apostle Paul, writing his letter to the church in Galatia, goes against the grain and actually brings up his checkered past. A past that took place before Jesus paid him a little visit on the road to Damascus; before he became the great spokesperson for the early church and our faith’s first missionary and theologian.

That past included, among many things, a different name: Saul.  It included his zealous and unbending hatred toward those misguided people who’d later be known as “Christians.” It included Saul traveling around Palestine, writing synagogue leaders and asking for the names and addresses of those in their flock who leaned a little too much to the Jesus side of things.  It included Saul paying these folks a visit and using his “persuasive powers” (otherwise known as “threats”) to bring them back to the fold.  Saul’s past was about a man who did everything in his power to see that the Christian movement was wiped of the face of the earth.

Now granted, Paul was a bold soul who didn’t shy away from speaking his mind.  But as one who devoted his post-Damascus life to building bridges in Christian circles, as one who was trying to build up the church instead of tearing it down, surely the last thing he’d want to do was dredge up his own horrible past.  And you know there were plenty of skeptics in the bunch who were never quite comfortable around Paul, who always assumed he had some hidden-agenda thing going on and would turn on them in an instant.

So why – why in the world would Paul have wanted to bring up his past?  I don’t know.  Maybe there was no use denying it, since everyone already knew it.  Kind of like a seasoned politician who decides to “face the music” rather than look like he’s hiding something.  Perhaps he’d retain some credibility that way.  Maybe that’s why.

Maybe.  But you know, I can’t help but think there’s more to this than just that. See, Paul was a smart guy, but he wasn’t in it for himself.  His primary concern – in everything he did and everything he wrote, was simple: to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ.  That was his sole motivation.  That’s what he was all about.

And if anyone knew anything about the life-changing effect of that gospel, how it can turn someone’s life around 180 degrees, it certainly was Paul.  That little encounter with Jesus had made Paul an entirely new person, totally different from who he used to be.  Even the name change – Saul to Paul – symbolized that.  And that is how Paul was able to trumpet the Christian cause when he formerly sought to snuff it out; that’s how he was able to preach “Christ crucified” when before he worked to see that those followers suffered the same fate as their Master.  That’s how Paul could claim his troubled past – because it was proof in and of itself of the power of the gospel to radically change lives.

I wonder if you’ve seen the cartoon clipping posted on the wall outside my office.  It’s a Calvin & Hobbes cartoon where Calvin’s father is pulling into the driveway, grabbing his suitcase and getting out of his car after presumably a long day at work.  His day is about to get even longer.  That’s because he is greeted there by his mischievous son Calvin, sheepish grin on his face, holding high a sign that says in big letters, “Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin!”  Calvin’s pre-emptive act is surely a sign of some bad news that awaits his father once he gets inside the house.

Now I’ve always liked this cartoon – perhaps because it reminds me in a way of my own past, although I would’ve never been clever enough to think up that whole sign thing.  No, I think what has always drawn me to this cartoon, and the reason it’s been posted in my office in both churches I’ve served, is because it depicts in simple form, in a one-panel cartoon, the bare-bones predicament of humanity.  We are creations of the living God – and yet we are sinners.  We try to be good – and even so, we still fail.  We want to do what is pleasing to God – but somehow we find a way to do the exact opposite.  And so it is now us – we are the ones standing in that driveway, holding that sign high and wearing that sheepish grin, waiting for judgment to come rolling up the driveway.  That is our plight.  That is our little human predicament. 

You know, I’ll never forget one of my seminary professors and something she said to us.  Or showed us, really.  Her name was Isabel Rodgers, but we all called affectionately her “Dr. Izzie.”  It was a t-shirt Dr. Izzie wore on the day her theology class talked about Martin Luther. Luther, she told us, had written a letter to a friend who was struggling with this “sin and sinner” stuff – a struggle Luther knew all too well himself.   And I’ll never forget what Dr. Izzie told us he wrote.  Listen:

If you are a preacher of grace, then preach a true and not fictitious grace. God does not save people who are only fictitious sinners. Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly…..

This t-shirt of hers was a stark contrast to her regular class attire – usually a blouse with slacks or skirt.  The shirt was navy blue, short-sleeve with white lettering; the block kind you used to get ironed on at the sporting goods store.  And it simply read: SIN BOLDLY!  How about that!  Our esteemed seminary professor – the first female moderator of the Presbyterian Church (USA), in fact! – showing up for class with a t-shirt that said, SIN BOLDLY! 

Now there are those who might take issue with her doing this.  There may be some who get their feathers ruffled by this notion of “sinning boldly,” thinking the last thing the world needs is people sinning with encouragement and enthusiasm.

And that would be a travesty, if that’s what ol’ Martin Luther meant.  But it wasn’t.  What Luther was trying to get at the limitlessness of God’s mercy – addressing the reality of sin for the Christian and God’s capacity to forgive those who put their trust in the cross.  Luther is imploring us to acknowledge and confess our troubled past – but he is also pushing us to recognize the power of God’s grace in that past, and how that grace shapes our present and our future. Sin boldly, he said, but rejoice in Christ even more boldly…

You know, sometimes I think God sits up in Heaven – if “up” is where God and Heaven are – I think God sits up there and looks down on us and shakes the almighty head back and forth.  And God says it, over and over again, as if one day it might make a difference: Don’t they get it??  Don’t they understand??  Because even the best of us still live our lives as if we’ve heard only half of the gospel – as if its worship, and we’ve confessed our sins, but forgotten all about the Assurance of Pardon.

We continue to want to bury the ugly past, fooling ourselves into thinking it’ll just go away.  We want to brush aside the self-centered things we’ve done, or the horrible thoughts that run through our mind and come from only God knows where.  We want so much to deny our cynicism or our greed or our envy or our apathy.  And God calls out: Don’t they get it??  Don’t they understand?? And we don’t.

And we won’t – not until we follow Paul’s lead; a man who “sinned boldly,” as Luther might say.  Not until we see the radical way that God changed him inside and out, and realize that God can do the exact same thing in you and in me.  Not until we come face to face with all of our skeletons, all our regret, all our painful pasts; and rather than avoid them, head straight into them.  Because it is there, in all the messiness of life, where God does God’s most amazing and glorious work.

You know, it took a day or two for me to fully process that movie, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.  And I’ll admit, there is something attractive about erasing bad memories and starting with a clean slate.  But the more I think about it, the more I realize that doesn’t really solve anything. 

That’s because when all is said and done, our relationship with Jesus is not about what we’ve done or haven’t done, but about what God has done and is still doing.  It is because of our faults, because of our sins, because of our humanity, that we know God in the intimate way we do.  Not as Master or Teacher or Leader.  Not as a wise sage, or a powerful revolutionary.  Not even as Lord.  No, you and I come to know Jesus as Friend – one who loves us even when we are unlovable, one who claims us even when we are unworthy, and one who forgives us even when the world might cringe in horror if they could see what’s really inside. 

So maybe Luther had a point: “Sin Boldly!”  Let me hear you say it: SIN BOLDLY!  Not because you should sin, but because you will.  Claim your past; claim your imperfections – because there is power in embracing every last bit of who you are.  And know this: God always remembers, and God always loves.  Thanks be to God.  AMEN.