Jesus was realistic about sin. However, he did not spend too much time or energy on the sins committed by common people. He spent more time and energy on the sins committed by rulers. Their personal and social sins caused far more harm – to the people. The harm was apparent to Jesus’s own body when the rulers tortured and murdered him. In this Sunday’s post-cross Resurrection appearance, Jesus stands before disciples bearing the wounds rulers inflicted on him and tells them, “Look at my hands and my feet.” “Touch me and see.”
Institutional christianity reverses Jesus’ life and death witness on sin. Unlike Jesus, it emphasizes common peoples personal sin and diminishes rulers social sin. What is the intended effect of the reversal? 45 years ago Karl Menninger pondered, ‘Whatever Became of Sin?’ Menninger upheld what is considered a generally conservative view – that a sense of guilt over personal sin has been lost in the U.S. culture. However, Menninger then departed from the view held by conservatives. He asserted their emphasis on personal sin did not indicate a helpful desire to correct behavior but an unproductive desire to punish people. Many conservatives reacted by charging the Kansas psychiatrist with aiding and abetting the therapeutic society. It meant they believed the necessary harsh judgment of sin was being replaced by the soft diagnosis of mental illness. But it is actually conservatives who are soft on sin. It is evident in their ethics on guns. They are currently replacing the sin of mass shooters who are white males with the diagnosis of mental illness. They indicate no knowledge of mental illness, only a desire to alleviate punishment of their ‘own kind.’ Punishment has been shown to not ultimately instill change nor personal responsibility in an offender. Besides, if personal punishment for personal sin is so effective and so necessary for justice, why is it not applied to Bush or Obama or officials committing war crimes in Iraq? Have we heard many, a few, or no sermons on the personal and social sins of war? We routinely hear sermons on anger but rarely on war, on disobedience but rarely on oppression, on gossip but rarely on torture, on lying but rarely on propaganda. Institutional christianity softens us into normalizing and sanctifying the personal and social sins of rulers. It is the normalizing and sanctifying currently apparent in the nomination of an individual person, Gina Haspel, to the social rule of CIA Director. In the name of the U.S.’s sinful military and in sinful obedience to sinful CIA directives she oversaw sinful torture propagandized as necessary, even as good. Rulers have always claimed the necessity and even goodness for their own personal and social sin – against Jesus, against human beings in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Homan Square, Iraq, and other U.S. torture chambers. Are rulers guilty of committing sins or are they mentally ill or are they both?
Whatever became of sin amidst the clichés, euphemisms, and acronyms rulers of empire use to camouflage the reality of their personal and social sin – GWOT, enhanced interrogation, collateral damage, air campaigns, and so forth? What is the likelihood of change in such offenders? There is little likelihood of change unless rulers touch the wounds of the Christs they produce in this world. Every day, in some fashion, those who are wounded say to us, “Look at my hands and my feet.” “Touch me and see.” What is our response?
Prayer: Spirit of Vulnerability, give me courage to put my fingers into nail marks.
Question: How do I know the reality of sin?
April 15, 2018 Gospel Luke 24:35-48 Third Sunday of Easter