Go here first! Romans 6:1-11
In the fourth grade, I had my first sacrament of reconciliation. In the Catholic church, it’s one of seven holy sacraments. This particular sacrament is one where you go before a priest to confess your sins. And then, after listening to you, the priest absolves you of your sins in the name of Jesus, gives you a penance of some sort, usually in the form of a few Hail Marys, and then sends you on your way. Done. Forgiven. Well, as a kid who always wanted to please, who always wanted to do the right thing, and who never wanted to disappoint, Reconciliation was particularly daunting for me. I’d have to go in front of a priest and say, out loud, all the ways that I’d screwed up, all the ways that I’d fallen short, all the ways that I’d disappointed God? It was terrifying. But we all had to go through it.
That day, the day of my first Reconciliation, wearing the itchy dress and the shiny shoes mom made me wear, I had to make a choice. Go to the short line with the scary priest who’d listen to you from behind a screen. Or, go to the long line with the nice priest whom you’d have to talk to face-to-face? Well, I chose the long line and the face to face confession. And as I stood in that line, waiting with a bunch of other sinful ten year olds, I racked my brain for all the ways that I had disappointed God.
I was a “good” kid. I mean, I was sad a lot, but the worst thing that I could hear coming out of my parents’ mouths was not “get over here young lady,” or “go to your room,” but rather, “I am so disappointed in you.” To disappoint my parents, to not meet up with their expectations, was devastating, shameful, an unforgivable sin. So I always strived to “do my best,” which is all that my parents ever asked of me.
It’s a well-intentioned expectation, to “do your best,” meant to inspire greatness and leave room for failure if need be. But it was so amorphous, so unclear, so undefined, that you never knew when you hit the mark, you never knew if you’d succeeded. You never knew if you’d really, truly done “your best.”
It’s a question that still haunts me. Did I do “my best” when I got that B- in handwriting in the fifth grade, or got that C in Calculus my senior year of high school? Did I do my best when I ran a 5:20 mile, or was there always that chance that I could do better, go faster, run harder? It’s a really inspiring saying to some, “do your best,” but for me, it was simply another way for me to question if I was ok. In every day, every action, every decision, I asked myself, I asked others, “am I ok?” Am I ok? Tell me I’m ok. Yes. I know you told me last week, but things have changed, we have more information now, are you sure I’m still ok? Each day, with each choice, with each action, the ok-o-meter reset, forcing me to ask, once again, “Am I ok?”
Well, I finally reached the front of the line and entered in to the room. It was brightly lit with buzzing fluorescent lights, and it was strange. There were vestments hanging in an open closet on the right, candles and brass holders and banners and extra communion cups on the left. And in the middle, two chairs. One empty, for me, one occupied by Father Tony, who, now that I think about it, must have been slightly annoyed and slightly tickled by the endless conveyor belt of one fourth grader after another, confessing their deepest darkest sins from their short ten year old lives. But for me, at the time, it was a gravely serious moment, and I was terrified. I was going to go in there, sit in that big chair, and confess to someone, someone I admired, someone my parents admired, that I was not ok. That I screwed up.
That I hadn’t, in fact, done my best. So I took a deep breath and recited the words we’d been trained to say by the nuns at the school. “Forgive me father for I have sinned. This is my first holy confession.”
And then I confessed. “I hit my sister,” I said.
He smiled. We talked for a minute about why I hit my sister and brainstormed ways to avoid doing so in the future. “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, your sins are forgiven,” he said. Then he told me to go back out there, kneel in the front pew, pray two Hail Marys and ask God to help me not hit my sister again. I said I’d try my best.
Of course, I’d fail that challenge within the week. So much for doing my best.
Later, I’m not really sure how much later, Father Tony came over to our house for dinner. We lived right across the street from the rectory, so this was not an uncommon occurrence, and my mom kept a special supply of Coca-Cola Classic just for him. We called them “Tony Cokes” and we’d get a frosty mug from the freezer, fill it with ice and hand him a can as soon as he’d walk through the door.
Well, that night, I was feeling particularly rebellious. I took a can from the box and felt its weight in my hand. I set it on the counter, and I got one of those frosty mugs and I just stared at it. The devil on one shoulder and the angel on the other must have been dueling it out for some time because Father Tony walked in and asked me what I was doing. I told him the truth: “I really want a Coke,” I said. “But we’re not really allowed to have them.” And that same priest who’d absolved me for hitting my sister, who’d told me to “go and sin no more,” said to me, “Well, it’s better to ask for forgiveness than for permission.” And then he walked away.
I pondered the meaning of those words as the bubbly fizz popped up from my frosty mug. I pondered the ramifications of those words as the icy corn syrup tickled my tongue and slid down my throat.
“Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound?”
Is it better to “ask for forgiveness than for permission?”
Should I drink the coke? What if I hit my sister again?
Should I always strive to “do my best?”
“What if my best isn’t good enough?”
What does “doing my best” even mean?
“Well,” Paul says in our reading today, “You’re asking all the wrong questions.” “You’re measuring with the wrong tools. You’re trying to use a ruler to determine how many ounces there are. You’re trying to use kilograms to determine how many miles we have left to go.”
“Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means!” He says.
And he spends the next ten verses breaking down the binaries that we have set up for ourselves. There are so many dichotomies here. Life and death. Enslavement and freedom. Separation and unity. Sin and grace. And he breaks them down, one by one. You who are baptized are baptized into Christ’s death and his resurrection. You who are full of sin have died to sin, just as Jesus died on the cross. And because Christ’s story didn’t end in death, but in resurrection, so does your story. He is alive in God, and thus, so are you. Paul tells us that our identities are now beyond dichotomies, they’re beyond questions of “either/or.” The binaries are broken down. We are dead to sin and alive to God.
Sin isn’t even the question anymore because Jesus is more than a get-out-of-jail-free card. Jesus is relationship. “Doing my best” in order to please, in order to be assured that I’m ok, in order to be loved, is to bark up the wrong tree. It’s asking the wrong question. It’s striving for the wrong thing.
In the previous chapter, Paul preaches such a radical, impossible, overwhelming, immeasurable grace, that it begs the question, “Should we continue to sin in order that grace may abound?” Paul proclaims such a radical, impossible, overwhelming, immeasurable freedom that it forces us to ask what its limits are.
So, too, should we explore the depth and breadth of God’s grace for us, so, too, should we preach a gospel of grace that is so intense that it begs the question, “Well, if there’s so much grace, shouldn’t we sin some more so that we realize and recognize the grace all around us?” Shouldn’t we sin some more so that we can get more grace?
And even as it begs the question, even as we are logically forced to ask the question, to wonder how far grace goes, in the asking of the question, we come to find out that it’s the wrong question. It’s no longer about sin or no-sin. It’s no longer about following the rules or breaking them. It’s no longer about “doing your best” and “not disappointing” and asking “am I ok” all the time.
Sin becomes a non-issue. Following Christ surpasses questions of sin or no-sin. Just like a temper tantrum is calmed when the child tires herself out and falls asleep in her mother’s arms, when we enter in to relationship, when we form our identity around Christ and God’s love for us, the either/ors fall away. “Good enough” no longer becomes an issue. “Am I ok?” No longer becomes a question. We are dead to sin. We are alive to God in Christ Jesus. We don’t have to focus on sin anymore. We get to focus on God instead. Sin or no sin, you’re already ok, because you have both died and lived with Christ. Sin or no sin, “doing your best” is no longer the goal, because you are already a beloved child of God. There is no “best.”
Sin or no sin, belief or unbelief, your best or your worst, all gets wrapped up in you, in who you are, the beloved of God. God just wants you to be more you. God just wants us to be more us. Because that’s who God loves. You. Us. As we are. Warts and all. Flailing, striving, worrying, questioning, all of it. God loves. God redeems. God puts to death and resurrects.
Of course we’re going to sin. And of course, we should try not to. There is grace for both.
This is more than “I’m ok; you’re ok.” This is more radical than simply accepting that we are broken people, simply accepting that we’re going to sin and that’s just how we’re built. This is more than just getting comfortable with our own sin so that we don’t feel bad anymore. And it’s more than striving for a perfection that we will never reach. It’s about identity. It’s about not having to prove yourself anymore. It’s being freed from the question of whether or not you’re ok. It’s freedom from measuring altogether. It’s freedom from dichotomies that define what is “doing evil” and what is “being good.” It’s freedom from perfection and failure. It’s freedom from the weariness of trying to make yourself acceptable to your God, your neighbors, your friends, your family, yourself.
I hope I’m making sense. I hope that you’re able to see that there is a difference between asking “am I ok,” “am I good enough,” “am I failure” “am I a disappointment” and “am I a child of God?” It’s no longer about sin or no sin. It’s about identity. And that has already been determined, simply because you are who you are. Simply because you are a child of God.
It’s a question of identity. So that, when you realize who and what you are, when you realize whose arms you fall asleep in after your massive temper tantrum, you wake up wanting to do a little better, wanting to be a little more, wanting to embrace more of who God created you to be. When your identity changes, so do your actions.
When you see that you are loved for who you are, that you are embraced because of who God made you to be, questions of being ok fall away.
When we come to understand our own stories in the story of Christ’s life, death and resurrection, we learn to hold both things: that we’re broken, sinful people who are also beloveds of God. We can hold both.
I shouldn’t hit my sister. It’ll be ok if I drink the Coke.
Thanks be to God.
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