On Not Getting Better - II

Psalm 51:1-16 (NRSV)
Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love;
According to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
and cleanse me from my sin.
For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is ever before me.
Against you, you alone, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you are justified in your sentence
and blameless when you pass judgment.
Indeed, I was born guilty,
a sinner when my mother conceived me.
You desire truth in the inward being;
therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.

I need to start today with a confession. I have noticed something about myself over the years and it has gotten to the stage that I just need to admit it. You know that I spent the last two weeks in Dallas teaching local pastors at the Course of Study School. What you may not have known is that I was teaching two classes on…theology. I had about 35 students between the two classes and one group was reading Reformation history and theology and the other was studying contemporary theology. And…(here is my confession)…I liked it. As much as I struggle against the fact, the truth of the matter is…I am a theologian. I happen to think that everyone who calls themselves Christian is also a theologian, but that’s another story. The main thing you need to know for the purposes of today’s sermon is that theologians think funny.

For example, during the weekend when I was there I decided to get ready for this big hike that Joel and I are taking by going on an 8-mile trek through a wildlife refuge in Oklahoma. It was 106 degrees and I had a heavy pack on and all in all it was not too smart an idea, but I need to get in shape. So I went.

I was hiking along by a small canyon and down in the creek at its bottom was a guy fishing. We talked for a minute about what he was catching (not much) and then he said, “Around the next curve there you’re gonna see some longhorns.” There was a herd of wild longhorn cattle roaming the refuge and I was hoping to see them, so I heard his news as an invitation. “Keep an eye open for those amazing longhorns.”

But what he was really saying was, “Look out because there are longhorns around the next curve!” I know that because I came around the next curve and there, staring at me with sinister eyes, was a huge longhorn, right in the middle of the path and she had a few friends near her in the river.

Now here’s where the theology thing kicks in. A normal person would have said, “Here’s an animal four or five times bigger than me. I think I’d better run.” But I think funny, remember? So I say to her, “Longhorn, what’s the difference between you and me?” It was a very philosophical moment. I had been teaching about Martin Luther and considering the question of what it means to be a human being so I really wanted to know, “What qualities separate me from this creature?”

The answer, I believe, is this: Humans have the capacity to delude themselves about who they are. Longhorns don’t have this problem. They know their role in the universe as God’s creatures. Their role is to eat grass and roam the range and charge at theologians who get too close to them in the path. It’s we humans who have delusions and begin to mistake who we are before God. Longhorns never abandon their fields and go off to start a punk rock band in their garage. Only human beings do that.

I survived my encounter in the field. Eventually I let the cow have the path and created a new one. But I didn’t stop thinking: How do we know who it is that we are in God’s eyes? How do we truly understand who we are? And to help think about this, I have a story:


“I just feel so bad, Rev. Filbert. I just don’t know what to do with it. I have never felt this way before and I know that it’s all my fault!”

Zechariah Stonecaster, known as Zack to all his friends, was sitting in the only coffee shop in the small town of Mattaponi with Eleazar Filbert, his pastor. Rev. Filbert has found that the coffee shop is a good place to meet folks, especially since it is part of Rocky Colliflower’s new grocery store that he designed especially for depressed people. Rocky got very tired of going to shop for food in grocery stores that were brightly lit and full of white tile and relentlessly cheerful. He thought some folks might appreciate a place that accepted them where they were and toned down the cheerfulness just a tad. He called it the Melon-choly Market and despite its earth tone décor and recessed lighting folks took a liking to it, or at least to the coffee shop which is the closest thing Mattaponi will ever see to a Starbucks.

Zack was talking with Rev. Filbert because he was going through a really rough time. It was mid-January and he was headed back to college after the long winter break. He should have been excited. After all, Mattaponi was not that thrilling a place and making it through a month of break there had not been easy. He got along pretty well with his mother, but they each needed some space after all the togetherness. And at college he was going to see his girlfriend, Sandy, who was going to be back from the holidays, too, and waiting for him. So he had a lot of reasons to look forward to going back. But he wasn’t. Too much had happened and he needed to talk.
“So,” Rev. Filbert asked him, “why exactly do you feel so bad?”

“Because it’s my fault. I led her on. I told her I wasn’t seeing anyone. I got more serious and more out-of-my-head every night. I told her I wanted to see her more. I didn’t stop her when she started talking like we could be a…a thing. It got way too real way too quick.”

“Wo…Zack, who is her?”

“Tara. Tara Tucker.”

“So this is somebody different from…, who’s your girlfriend?”

“Sandy. Yes. I’ve known Tara since middle school. So we hung out together some over the break and when she asked me if I was seeing somebody I didn’t think it would hurt if I said ‘no.’ And it just kind of grew from there. I didn’t intend for it to be a real relationship. I was going back to school, back to Sandy, and this was all going to be…over.”

“But she didn’t think that way.”

“No,” Zack said. “I used Tara. I mean, I was charming and romantic and kind and in some screwed up way I meant all those things that I said to her, but it was all fantasy. I messed up big time.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I’ve already done it. I sat down with Tara two nights ago and told her the truth.”

“And how did she respond?”

“Ah…not too well. She was angry. Way angry. She cursed me. Threw sofa pillows at me. Called me a…a…well, you get the idea. It wasn’t pretty. In a way it was a relief to have her do that. I deserved it. But man, I know I hurt her bad. And my name is pretty much mud with her. But I had to be honest. Finally. I couldn’t let it go on.”

Eleazar looked over at the anguished young man across the table from him. “So you decided to come to confession?”

“Confession? Yes, I guess that is what I came for.” Zack was managing to look up from his latte just a bit.

Eleazar responded. “You know, come to think of it, it’s so dark in here it could make a pretty nice confessional booth. Maybe I ought to set up in here. So why are you here, Zack?”

“Well, I’ve done bad things before, but I’ve never surprised myself this much. I can’t believe what I did…that I was capable of doing what I did…the lies I told her…the lies I told myself…the deception. It kind of makes me wonder who I am. What kind of person does the things I’ve done? What do I do to get over it?”

“Hmmm, what makes you think you should get over it?”

“What makes me think…well, isn’t that what is supposed to happen in confession? You go into the booth, you say, ‘Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned, it’s been 13 years since my last confession, here’s what I did,’ the priest gives you a few ‘Hail Mary’s to say and you’re free and clear. Sounds like a pretty good system to me right now. Otherwise I don’t know what to do with all this junk I’m feeling.”

“Do you even know what a ‘Hail Mary’ is Zack?”

“No. But you could teach me. I’ll take anything. A bed of nails. A pilgrimage on my knees. A vale of tears. A self-flagellation device. There ought to be something out there for me.”

Eleazar looked at him very closely over the steam rising from his mug. He set the mug down deliberately and continued staring at Zack. Zack began to feel a little nervous. He wondered if he had said something offensive of heretical. But when Eleazar spoke it was not what he expected at all.

“Zechariah Stonecaster, you go down this guilt trip all you want to. Sure…go ahead and feel bad if you want to, but don’t think sin is something you just ‘get over.’ Don’t think you can control the switches to flip on the light again. Don’t think God needs your sentimental gestures, because God doesn’t.”

Zack almost dropped his coffee cup. “O.K…I’m feeling better now,” he said, attempting some mock sarcasm, but Eleazar wasn’t finished.

“You feel bad—great. So does Tara. Does it make it any better if you both feel bad? If you feel bad, too, does it make for some sort of justice? And can you really be equal in tears if you still have the power to choose them, if you still have the power to make some sort of penitential offering and end it?

“No, Zack, in the end feeling bad is just another power trip designed to keep you in control. It’s just one more role. Instead of being the deceptive lover you get to try out being the repentant sinner all decked out in the uniform of anguish. But you’re no less self-absorbed when you do that.”

Zack was frozen in place, wondering where Rev. Filbert had learned his pastoral care skills. He finally found his voice. “I thought maybe you’d tell me it wasn’t so bad. I thought maybe you’d want me to feel bad. I thought confession was the right thing to do, but now you’re laying it on awfully thick. Is that what I’m supposed to believe about myself? That I’m a bad person?”

Eleazar looked back at Zack with a look that was compassionate and weary all at the same time. “No, Zack, you’re not a bad person. God didn’t make junk and you are certainly not junk. You’ve got incredible gifts and confession is the right thing to do, but it means more than getting over sin or feeling bad for a time to pay for what you’ve done.”

Eleazar remembered a time when he didn’t think much of confession. He used to believe that God really got a laugh out of our insistence on it. What a waste of time! To oppress ourselves with the antiquated notion of sin instead of living out of grace and the victory that God has already won. He thought at the time that we were just deluded creatures failing to embrace our created goodness. But he knew his heart was more than that. He knew the world was more than that. He knew now that to grow into the person he had to be he had to name the sin that remained.

He looked at Zack, who still looked a little stunned. “You know, Zack, there’s something really powerful about claiming all of yourself. When I start saying…It’s all good, or I’m all good…it’s too easy to play games. I start to believe that I can get everything right. I start to believe that can make everything work by the strength of my character alone. I’m a good person. People tell me that every day. But it can feed the delusion. What I really want is a voice that tells me, ‘Eleazar, you are a sinner, but I love you—not for what you’ve done, but for who you are.’ And I hear that voice when we say the confession in church and the echo comes back, ‘Your sins are forgiven.’ I hear that voice when a good friend is brave enough to confront me with a mirror.

“I need to be acknowledged for who I am and accepted anyway. And what can do that except God’s grace? I don’t want to ‘get over’ or ‘get past’ my weaknesses because if I forget them I lose sight of that grace and I start to trust in my own abilities…my own goodness.”

“So what do I do, Rev. Filbert? If you’re not going to give me some ‘Hail Mary’s, what do I do?”

“Zack, somehow you knew that confession really was good for the soul. You have started speaking truthfully. You have learned something very important about yourself—that you’re capable of deceiving yourself. It took me years to learn that. But the truth you’re looking for goes way deeper than this.

“There is this Psalm – number 51 – that is supposed to be the psalm David said after he slept with Bathsheba, another man’s wife, and then had that man killed. Horrible stuff. But at one point he says to God, ‘You desire truth in the inward being.’ You had an encounter with that inward place. The trick is staying there. And the only way to stay there is confession. Confess who you are every day. Find friends who will tell you the truth. Because the only sure things we can say about ourselves are that we are sinners and that we are loved anyway. I think that’s good news.”

Zack stared down into his now-cool latte and then looked back up at Eleazar. “Thanks for not telling me it was nothing.”

“It wasn’t. It isn’t. But you can’t let it freeze you in your tracks. You’ve got too much yet to do. And God is waiting for you to join in the work. Thanks for trusting me with your confession.”
They went on to talk about football, war, and the humiliating debacle of the latest episode of Fear Factor. They talked about everything and nothing. But both of them knew when they left the Melon-choly Market that day that they had held something holy about each other. And God was holding them…as God holds us…knowing who we are and loving us, not for what we have done, but exactly because of who we are—children of God, creatures of God. Thanks be to God.