He Started It!

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
July 27, 2008

He Started It!
Romans 7:14-20
Romans 8:1-8

I had a fascinating couple of weeks on Study Leave.
It truly is a blessing to have time to read,
to study,
to immerse myself in books and articles.
We Presbyterians have always been people of the book,
and it is a wise policy that we have in the Presbyterian Church
that pastors are granted at least two weeks of Study Leave each year.

Most of my time was spent, of course,
working on my dissertation for my doctorate.
I sent my work off to my faculty advisors at Princeton
and based on their comments this past week,
it was a productive and fruitful two weeks.

I did other reading as well;
I always have a pile of books and articles
clamoring for my attention.
But the topic that occupied my time
when I was not working on my dissertation
was one that came out of
our Thursday evening Bible Study group:
the topic of sin.

Now you have heard me define sin
as meaning very simply,
anything that causes us to turn from God.
Anything we do or say
that turns us from Jesus’ teachings,
or from God’s laws and commandments
is a sin, no matter how small.

The question the group had was
where did this business of “original sin” come from?
Is there someplace in the Bible where we can read about
and learn about “Original Sin”?
And if there really is something called original sin,
are we all infected with it,
as though it was some sort of virus?

Just dealing with the topic of sin can be awkward for a preacher.
We really don’t like to talk about it,
and no one wants to hear it thundered from a pulpit.
It wasn’t that long ago, however, that the topic and the word
were the focus of most worship services.
Back in the 18th and 19th centuries,
preachers were quick to use terms like
“wretched” and “unworthy” to describe
the “miserable” sinners filling the pews each Sunday.

No one could match the great 18th century preacher
Jonathan Edwards for the sheer power, and even terror,
he was able to convey through his sermons:
“There is nothing that keeps wicked Men,
at any one Moment, out of Hell,
but the meer pleasure of God.
…The Wrath of God burns against them,
…the Pit is prepared, the Fire is made ready,
the Furnace is now hot, ready to receive them,
the Flames do now rage and glow.
The glittering Sword is whet, and held over them,
and the Pit hath opened her Mouth under them.”
(Jonathan Edwards, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”, 1741)

Preach like that today,
and you would probably not find many willing listeners,
not only because that’s not the kind of message
any of us wants to hear,
but because it also isn’t very good theology.

Still, for more than 1500 years
we have wrestled with the idea that we have been infected
with sin since Adam and Eve took that first bite;
That through that original sin,
a virus of sinfulness has passed from generation
to generation infecting everyone,
with none of us immune to it.

The reality, though, is that “original sin”
is more myth than fact.
Read through the Bible
and you will not find term “original sin” anywhere.

It was the theologian and church leader Augustine
who coined the term Original Sin in the 5th century,
almost 400 years after Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection.
He built his theory on Paul’s writings,
especially the words we heard in our First Lesson.

Did you hear Paul express his frustration
with how he lived his own life:
“I do not understand my own actions,
For I do not do what I want,
but I do the very thing I hate.”
Paul concluded that he behaved that way because,
“sin dwelled within” him,
sin he had inherited from Adam,
for as Paul put it,
“sin came into the world through one man”
(Romans 5:12)

Augustine built on Paul’s theory
that once Adam and Eve sinned,
that ruined it for the rest of us for the rest of time.
Each generation was born corrupt and
would pass their corrupt genes to the next generation:
“…[Man] being of his own will corrupted,
and justly condemned,
begot corrupted and condemned children.
For we all were in that one man,
since we all were that one man who fell into sin
by the woman who was made from him before the sin.…
And thus,…, there originated the whole train of evil,
which, …convoys the human race from its depraved origin,
as from a corrupt root…” (City of God, 13.14)

Simply put: Adam started it.
At least that’s how Paul viewed it.
Augustine may have focused on Adam as well,
but he made clear in his writings
that it was all Eve’s fault.

The Reformation did nothing to shake this notion
We’ve got three Confessions that date from that time
and they don’t hold back.
The Scots Confession of 1560 states:
“By…original sin, the image of God was utterly defaced in man,
and he and his children became by nature hostile to God,…
and servants to sin.” (3.03)
The Heidelberg Catechism, also from the 16th century,
goes this dreary language one step farther in stating,
“…our human life is so poisoned
that we are all conceived and born in a state of sin.”
(4.007)

It wasn’t until about 40 years ago that we took a fresh look
at this hopeless situation we seemed to have been in.
A more careful reading of the Bible has helped us to understand
that there has been more myth and misunderstanding
than knowledge and reality.

The truth, as the Bible makes clear
is that we are not born corrupt
and we are not fundamentally bad.
We have not inherited some genetic viral sin strand.

When God created us, he created us good.
God also created us with free will, however:
the ability to make decisions and choices,
and that means that we can make good choices
and we can make bad choices.
We can choose to be obedient to the will of God,
and we can choose to be disobedient.

It was Milton, in his classic Paradise Lost,
who imagined God speaking of his children:
“I made [them] just and right,
sufficient to have stood,
though free to fall….
Authors to themselves in all,
both what they judge and what they choose;
for so I formed them free
and free they remain.”
(Book 3, line 96ff)

One look at a baby like Rachel
and how in the world could we ever think
that original sin lurks within just waiting to blossom?
Now I know the response to that may well be,
then how do we explain the “Terrible Twos”??
Well, original sin is not the cause!

The answer to Paul’s dilemma,
why do we do the things we know we should not do
is simply because we choose to.
Nothing forces us to;
we just make bad decisions
and bad choices.

But that’s not the worst thing we do.
Even worse than making a bad decision,
a bad choice,
is then failing to acknowledge our decision,
failing to take responsibility for it.
We seem to live increasingly in a society
in which we don’t want to take responsibility,
where it is always someone else’s fault,
where we are victims,
and never the responsible ones.

That rush to get ourselves out of a bad situation,
of not wanting to take responsibility,
of trying to blame something or someone else --
that may well be genetic,
something we inherited from Adam and Eve,
a virus that has been passed on through the generations.
Do you remember how they responded to God,
when God confronted them:
Eve was quick to blame the serpent,
and Adam was quick to blame the woman,
and even God himself: “this woman you gave me!”

Even as Augustine built his theory of original sin,
he acknowledged that the greater sin
was probably the failure of Adam and Eve
to accept responsibility for their actions.
And the enticing question,
the one to which we will never have an answer is,
how might things have turned out
if Adam and Eve, after taking the fruit,
and eating
had said to God,
“Yes, we did it.
We don’t deny it.
We take responsibility and we have no one
but ourselves to blame.
We are truly sorry.”

We have been created by God for good
and to do good.
Even Augustine was clear on that
“God…made man upright, and consequently with a good will.”
(City of God, 14.11)

We are created in a state of grace
by God’s love given to us in Jesus Christ,
given to us when we are obedient and good,
and given to us when we are disobedient and not so good.
God’s love is given to us
even when we try to run away from our own actions.
Paul makes clear:
“there is no condemnation
for those who are in Christ Jesus,”
and that’s you and me.

A better path always lies before us,
the path that Christ calls us to,
the path the Spirit will help us stay on.
the path that is, as Paul refers to it,
the path of the Spirit, the path of God.
We have only to embrace it,
to choose to embrace it,
to decide to embrace it,
and turn from self-indulgent, self focused,
self centered lives.
And the hard truth is that
if our lives are not focused completely on God,
on the life of the Spirit,
then they are self-centered and self-indulgent,
and self-centered.

Take stock of where you have turned from God
turned in small ways, as well as large,
turned by something you’ve done,
and by something you know you should have done
but haven’t;
turned by things you’ve said,
and by things you know you should have said,
but didn’t.

Acknowledge your sins to God,
and you will know forgiveness,
For we are not “wretched” in God’s eyes.
On the contrary, God makes clear again and again
that we are honored,
and precious, and loved.
After all, weren’t we created,
each of us, in God’s very image?

“See what love the Father has given us,
that we should be called children of God,
for that is what we are.”
Now this is the Word of the Lord!
AMEN