In the case of my credit card, I had to expend the effort to cancel the card and then notify all the services that utilize my card number to make automatic payments. In short, I lost time, energy, and a sense of personal security all because of sin. And that’s but one small, comparatively trivial, example on a long, long list.
To borrow a term from our own current, global experience, sin is pandemic. It’s bad enough that we’re dealing with a global health crisis resulting from an amoral, natural virus. It’s far worse that sinful people are exploiting these circumstances for their own sordid gain. News reports are beginning to reveal cases of individuals and companies seeking to profit from the pandemic. We are seeing stories about hoarders of hand sanitizer and toilet paper, people seeking to re-sell these products in price gouging ways. These are but the more obvious examples. I don’t need to belabor the point that human sin is variously making the pandemic worse than it otherwise would have to be.
As we have been hearing in the gospel readings throughout Lent, Jesus, God’s Word made flesh, enters into the fullness of human reality, including the pervasive, pandemic reality of sin.
The Passion from St. Matthew makes clear this reality. It’s a lot of verses in two chapters and thus a lot of narrative. Because of the length of the story, I’ve distilled from the Passion single words and phrases that convey a sense of how it was that Jesus endured the ravages of human sinfulness in the course of the events leading to his crucifixion and death.
Brace yourself to listen to these words and phrases which express our sinful condition, words which are drawn directly from Matthew – feel the weight of the realities which these words convey: • Betrayal, desertion, denial, jealousy • Sleeping when asked to stay awake • Fleeing, forsaking, looking on at a distance • Accusation, false witness and testimony • Derision, taunting, mocking, cursing, shaking heads • Stripping, spitting, striking, slapping, flogging
These are words full of weight that fell squarely on Jesus’ shoulders. It hurts just to say them aloud. These are realities that perhaps we, too, have experienced on occasion, making the petty theft of my credit card number pale in comparison.
It is these realities of the ravages of human sinfulness that make the weight of the cross exponentially heavier for Jesus.
Sunday School children sing that “he’s got the whole world in his hands.” From the perspective of the cross which is firmly planted in the mess of human sinfulness, Jesus has the full weight of our sinful world on his shoulders as his arms are nonetheless spread wide in embrace of that same world.
In response to the reality conveyed by my listing of the painful words associated with sin, Jesus offers his own words in retort, also recorded in the Passion according to Matthew: “Drink from [the cup], all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” That’s powerful medicine, a healing elixir to combat the ravages of sin.
Jesus’ words at the supper are in keeping with a saying of Jesus from the cross recorded in Luke’s Passion narrative: “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34a)
It grieves me that we cannot currently celebrate together the healing and holy meal of the Eucharist, the Holy Communion of Christ’s body and blood. Nonetheless, the reality conveyed through sacramental means, namely, the forgiveness of sins, is still available to us, and is made known through other means as well.
Recall these familiar words: “As a called and ordained minister of the church of Christ and by his authority, I therefore declare to you the entire forgiveness of all your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
There are also those holy encounters and holy conversations when we manage to speak the gospel of forgiveness to each other in ordinary, non-liturgical ways.
These holy words of Jesus, the language of worship, and our ordinary words of forgiveness to each other, are all antibodies, vaccine if you will, curative of the ills of human sinfulness.
Jesus’ fight against the scourge of sin and death, and his resurrection victory over the same, are what this Holy Week is all about.
May God in Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit working in the Word convey to you in your home worship this day and during the coming week God’s power to heal and to forgive and to reconcile.
I pray that you will engage in the other occasions for home worship this week on the Three Days of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil when additional resources will again be provided for your use at home. God be with you until we meet again.