You may remember a few weeks ago I
gave a sermon on whether or not we can know God. The point was that
we can only know God as he reveals himself to us. In the account the
Bible gives of how God has revealed himself we find that God is
Trinity, the loving communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
To say it even more confusingly we encounter God the Holy Spirit and
in this encounter we are brought to share in the relationship that
the Son has with the Father. In this relationship we come to know
the love of the Father and what our proper response should be in the
Son. Jesus’ relationship with the Father in the Spirit is the God
we know. As the Apostle John writes in his Gospel: “And
this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and
Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” The
question arises then, “How can we know this?”
Well, if you remember, in that sermon
I said we relate to God personally or we know God in the same way we
know another person. It was Martin Buber who said that we are not
able to know other people as they are within themselves. We can only
know the change that comes about in us having been in a relationship
with them. This is true even of husbands and wives who have been
married fifty-plus years. They know so much about each other that it
almost seems they can read each others' minds, but they still don’t
know what it is like to be the other. Even with best friends this is
the case. I remember several times my best friend and I from my
school days thinking the same thing at the same time, but that did
not mean that we had somehow come to know who each other was within
himself. Therefore, since we cannot know what it is like to be
another it is very important that we learn to listen to each other.
The closest we can come knowing what it is to be somebody else is to
listen to them and try to put ourselves in their shoes. That’s
called empathy. People need empathy not just sympathy. Sympathy is
simply to share an emotion. Empathy is to understand. Listening is
very important in relationships because the need to be heard and
understood is so profoundly there within us each.
All of us have a deep-seated need to
be heard and understood, indeed to be known. But, unfortunately our
inner worlds are so cluttered up and there are things about us that
we don’t want anybody to know. Therefore, we hide our
inner-selves from others. This is what the writer of the Adam and
Eve narrative in Genesis 3 sought to highlight by describing Adam
and Eve hiding themselves from the Lord God in the Garden after
eating the fruit after clothing themselves inadequately. Despite our
hiding of ourselves and the ill-fitting “clothes” of self-image
we portray. We need to be heard and understood most particularly in
the parts of ourselves where we feel the greatest shame.
In
the Roman Catholic church they have a ritual of listening called
regular confession. They understand that God has given confession to
us as a gift of his grace to help us give our sin to the Lord and let
him bear it away. Outsiders looking in think that Catholics do this
because they believe that God won’t love them unless they confess
their sins to a priest. That is so wrong of us to say. The Trinity
has given his people confession because it is so incredibly freeing
to have another human being listen to you and know your deepest,
darkest secrets. People in Twelve Step programs for recovery from
addiction know full well the benefits of steps 4, 5, and six where
one takes a “fearless” moral inventory of oneself and then
confesses it all to another person and then knows that God will in
time heal them of these hurts and character flaws. Step Five the
confession part is remarkably freeing. To confess sin is to confess
one’s brokenness. It is incredibly restorative, incredibly healing
when we confess our brokenness and find forgiveness there.
The
concept of forgiveness in both the Hebrew and Greek languages is much
richer than the penal almost contractual exchange between victim and
perpetrator that we have in Western thinking. Forgiveness for us
follows the pattern of an offense occurs necessitating an apology and
forgiveness may or may not follow. Or, an offense occurs which
necessitates an apology yet the apology never comes but we teach we
must still forgive meaning not hold a grudge. The Hebrew word we
translate as forgive means to lift up or carry away. Likewise, the
Greek word means to let go, to release, to leave behind. The concept
is one of expiation like putting a teabag on an infected tooth to
draw the infection out and cleanse the wound. The forgiveness which
the Trinity has extended to us by Jesus Christ through his death is
expiatory. He takes the infection of sin in our inner being and
cleanses us with his very self.
Well
anyway, I’m beginning to get the cart before the horse here. In
our passage from Jeremiah the Trinity says there will come a day when
people “will no longer teach one another, or say to each other,
‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of
them to the greatest, for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember
their sin no more.” Ever since God’s revealing himself in,
through, and as Jesus Christ as the loving communion of the Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit that day has been in effect. In Jesus Christ
the Trinity has revealed himself as the one who forgives our
iniquity, our wickedness, our unfaithfulness, indeed our
shame-stained inner-selves. The Trinity has come to us and revealed
that he knows the bum-side of our hearts and forgives us. All the
brokenness that is in us by our own hands and by the hands of others,
the Trinity has heard and says, “Forgiven.” That is who the
Trinity is in himself. The Trinity is as he does. We’re not. The
effect that the Trinity has on us, the change that is rendered in us
that we know by encounter with God is forgiveness – the bad stuff
is taken away from deep within us. To know this forgiveness is to
know the loving communion that is at the very heart of the Trinity.
It is to be heard and healed by hearing the Trinity say “I know who
you are and you are forgiven and welcome in my presence. Live a new
life.”
Sin
is something greater than bad behavior. It is that we are alienated
from the Trinity. We don’t know who the Trinity is in his heart.
The Bible says we should. We were created to know the Trinity as the
Trinity is in himself, but we rebelled by wanting to be god ourselves
and wanting to know as he knows without any limitations. Sin is also
a problem with our perception in that we can’t see the Trinity
because “all I can see is myself.” This problem of
perception also affects our relationships. I cannot see Dana, my
wife, for who she really is because all I can see is myself. I don’t
think we were created to know one another to the point that there is
no longer uniqueness of person where we all mold into one. The
Trinity created us so that we would look at one another seeing one
another not through the warped perspective of myself, but rather with
the love the Trinity has for us each. We are created to see each
other from the Trinity’s perspective. To know the Trinity is to
see the world from the perspective of the Trinity’s love and grace.
That is what it is to live without sin.
In
John's Gospel who recounts an incident of a woman having been caught
in the act of adultery and being brought by an angry mob of men to
the temple. Fortunately for her Jesus is the first person of
“religious” authority they run into. So they decide to test him
and hopefully drag him down with her. They say, “The law of Moses
said we should stone her. What do you say, Teacher?” I love
Jesus’ response here. He just squats and starts to write in the
dirt. He’s not going to get caught in their little power game of
morality. So they keep at him. Eventually, he stands up and says
“Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to cast a
stone.” Then he squats down again yet by that question he has
dragged them down with the woman. They leave in silence. One by one
they walk away beginning with the elders; the one’s who had
authority to render a verdict concerning the law of Moses. So we’re
left with Jesus and this woman face to face. “Woman,” (a term of
affection) “where are they? Has no one condemned you?” He asks.
“No one, Lord.” Lord…she has realized who he is. Then Jesus
says, “Neither do I condemn you. Go about your life and from now
on sin no more.”
By
telling her to sin no more he wasn’t just telling her not to commit
adultery again. Nor was he telling her to go and live a perfect,
sinless life. That would be impossible. He was pointing out that
now that she knew who he was and now has come to know the loving
heart of the Trinity in forgiveness, she would no longer live by sin
but rather by faith knowing the Lord…just as the Trinity said
through Jeremiah. The mob, they thought they knew the Trinity
because they knew the law of Moses. They taught one another to know
the Lord meaning to learn what it says in the law of Moses about the
Trinity, but the law wasn’t on their hearts. If it were, then they
would have had a right to stone the woman for her adultery. But as
all people sin and fall short of the glory of the Trinity, the
Trinity’s choice would be either to destroy everyone as in the days
of Noah or to forgive us and give us his Spirit and give us a new
life to live knowing the Lord.
Friends,
the day has come. We know the Lord. He has revealed himself, shared
himself with us. There is now therefore no sentence of death for
those who are in Christ Jesus. The Trinity seeks a relationship with
us each, a relationship that changes us as any relationship does, but
this one is different for the Trinity really is as the Trinity does.
He really does forgive us. He bears our sin away and makes us able
to leave it behind. What he uses my mouth to say to you right now, I
hope he is saying to you himself by his Spirit as we are gathered
here in Christ. The Trinity says you are forgiven and he remembers
your sin no more. Go live you life knowing the Lord Jesus and sin no
more. Amen.
