6th Sunday

There's a great irony, I think, that on one hand, If I ever want a crowd of people to show up for an evening talk, I've learned that all I need to do is say we're going to have a talk on the Devil, demons, exorcisms, and the occult.  While those are important topics, I'm always amazed at the volume of people who are very interested in those things and will show up at the drop of a hat to learn about them.  Yet, I think the truly ironic part…is that for all of those same people, when we stop to talk about sin, hell, repentance, and changing their life….suddenly they're not quite as interested.

At the same time, As I listen to the news, as I read articles posted online, as I look at what the world around us seems to be saying, I'm beginning to wonder if one of the realities we're missing in our conversation as a culture, is a word that we sometimes don't like to talk about, a word that's been often abused in the past, and so we try to get rid of it, but once we begin to understand what it really means, it…might be one of the keys to healing our culture.  That word is Sin…and only when we understand sin, can we understand it's counterpart, repentance.

On one level, I think we ask ourselves, how could a God who is completely good, ever condemn someone to eternal pain and suffering?  It seems so foreign, so strange.  Why would a God who is completely good choose to punish us?  How could a good God possibly create something as terrible as hell?

On another level, when we hear about a horrific act in our world, our hearts first cry out for the victims, but then, very soon after, we want that person punished, and we'll often hear it said that we want that person to burn in hell for what they did.  In the minds of some, at least, nothing they could ever say or do could possibly make a difference,

Both of those views, I think are missing a fundamental piece of the puzzle.  Neither one really talks about the person, what do they think, what do they feel, and neither one talks about the critical reality, human beings can and do change, we're capable of both sin…and repentance.

I hope you'll humor me for a minute to give you an example from CS Lewis,   Sometimes it helps us to imagine just what we're asking for….Imagine for a moment, the worst possible man, the one who lies, cheats, and steals to get what he wants, and slowly rises to the top.  Imagine the man who does all sorts of terrible things to those around him, who isn't even remotely concerned who he hurts.  Now for most of us, if we were to act like that, we might at least feel a hint of guilt, or shame, but imagine that for this man, he feels no guilt or shame about what he's done, and he's completely happy with himself.  He actually enjoys getting everything he wants at his neighbor's expense.  Now imagine that he's lived his whole life that way, never given even the slightest reason to think that anything he has ever done was wrong.  When that man dies, do we expect God to just accept that man in, the way he is, never knowing that anything he ever did was in the least bit wrong?  When we get down to it, the idea seems absurd.  God at least at some level, it seems, if he's really good, has to at least let that man know the truth about what he has done wrong, how evil the things he did to others really were. 

At some level, there's a certain reality.  There are some thing that are right and some things that are wrong.  The more serious the wrong, the easier it is for most people to recognize it and agree that it's wrong.   At every point in our lives, we make choices that will affect our future.  Our path is constantly changing.  Sometimes we make good choices, sometimes we make bad ones.  Sometimes we make heroic ones, and sometimes we make dreadful choices.  Sometimes we realize where we've gone wrong and repent.  Other times we're doing well, but are tempted and sin.  Every day, we make choices for good and for evil.  Every day, we can be virtuous or sinful.

As we live our lives, we hear the words of our first reading from Sirach,  "Before man are life and death, good and evil, whichever he chooses shall be given him."  Ultimately, God gives us what we willingly choose.  He gives us every opportunity to come to him, but that also means that those who refuse to the end, have made their own choice….to borrow the words from many of the Church fathers, Those gates of hell have been locked from the inside.

So as we hear today's Gospel, we must, each of us, really hear what Jesus is saying.  The Ten Commandments, the law given to us, is just the beginning.  Today we hear what has been called the "New Law" from Jesus.  Throughout the new law, Jesus makes it very clear.  It is the choices we make that determine the direction of our lives.  They are not limits of our behavior, but directions to avoid.  When the Law says do not kill, it's not as if we can simply be angry with someone, play all sorts of games, belittle them, and treat them as if they were dead, but as long as we don't actually kill them, we have nothing to worry about.  No, Jesus calls us to rise above that, we're truly called to do the opposite.  We're called to forgive the person we're angry with, to truly desire from the bottom of our hearts that they can be made better.  Then the same with all of the other commandments.  They're not simply limits on what we can do, but directions that we're called to run after.  I could say the same about Adultery, and taking a false oath, but I think you get the idea, As we look at the commandments, we realize that they are really directions for us to choose.  Will we walk toward God, or away.  We must realize that every day of our lives we have the opportunity to change our direction.  Every day we must ask, which way am I going….and am walking toward God, or away?