There is Sin [Trinity 9]

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READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:

• 2 Samuel 22:26-34
• 1 Corinthians 10:6-13
• St. Luke 16:1-9

To you all who are beloved of God in Rensselaer (Monticello), called as saints:

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

 

Whom we hear today, speaking to us, saying,

“There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was wasting his possessions.”

 Everything that God made was very Good, including all His angels (Job 38:7). As our Old Testament has told us, creation was full of mercy, blamelessness, and purity. In the rest of the reading, we also had humility, Light, strength to run, and perfection. We had a shield in God, a refuge, a rock, and security.

In a cosmic tragedy, the Scripture does not detail, some angels rebelled against the gifts of the Trinity. Satan wanted to be worshiped and other angels fell with him. Satan in Hebrew means adversary. Devil in Greek means accuser or slanderer.

As we see in the Old Testament reading, the good words are only in every other phrase. Every other phrase is sin: crooked, tortuous, haughty, darkness, troops, walls, shields. Things that shouldn’t be necessary in a very Good realm. The devil brought sin into the world through temptation, tempting Adam and Eve, who of their own free will yielded to the temptation.

The problem with sin is that it is never quite what it seems, to the sinner. There are the obvious ones to be sure. Those we call Actual sins, sin that is acted out or enacted in plain sight. However, it is the not-so-obvious sins that throw us for a loop. We can dog-pile on Actual sins, but how do we deal with the sins that are hidden and seem to have no victim?

A  victimless crime is defined as “illegal activity which appears to have no victim”. For example, there are no victims in any violation of any tax law. The state always claims its the victim, but only because you are not paying it off. Using and selling drugs are also victimless crimes, as they are perpetrated between consenting parties or done alone. 

 There are many other examples. In fact, as Christianity traveled the world, it encountered some cultures where these illegal-to-us activities are not-so-illegal. How do you love a people whose entire culture and being are dead-set against not sinning in this not-so-obvious way?

 Turns out, even the parable Jesus told you today, in His Gospel, seems to be a victim-less crime, because both parties consent, in the end. The crime is serious, true enough, at the start. There, the victim is a rich man who hires a man to steward all His possessions. Instead, the hired-hand proceeds to steward the possessions into the wind, scattering and wasting them as if they had no worth.

 So, what changed? What turned the crime-of-the-century into a laurel and hardy hand shake? It happens at the same time that the rich man turns into the Master, or, as the Greek tells us, the Lord. If the rich man is the Lord, then the impossible becomes possible and the rich steward can be saved from his unavoidable sin.

 It matters that the rich man is the Lord Jesus Christ, because with sin, there is always a victim: the Lord. No matter how confusing law, order, and justice is on earth, sin is always the complete and utter disregard of the fear, love, and trust God desires.

 God is always the victim in 2 ways: 1st because He is supreme, overlord, almighty over all He surveys, which is everything, so crossing Him is breaking the law. 2nd, because He is the victim/holocaust/sacrifice made and given for those sins. We see this also in the parable. In the beginning, the Lord is Almighty, handing down punishment with an iron fist. 

 Towards the end, He takes on all the debt and losses Himself. The steward pays nothing, but the Lord ends up paying for what was wasted at first and also the losses on the bills written out later. He ends up paying for the Actual sin, actuated against Him and His belongings, AND He pays for the intent behind those sins when He praises the unrighteous steward. We would call that intent Original Sin.

 Herein lies our true problem, our only problem in this life. Original sin is sin we can do nothing about and leads us inevitably to death. It is where all other sin comes from. It is our potential to sin. It is our thoughts that entertain sin. It is our mind that fights against and names sins in our lives. It is a disease, a virus, a corruption in our system that has no cure.

That is, until the Lord steps in to forgive our debts. That is, until the Lord comes in, not to justify our sinful works, but to justify us, body and soul. Our sinful works don’t just go away, neither are they winked at and swept under the rug. No, to forgive a debt means to pay that debt. Pay it in full.

 How big is the debt? How big is the Creditor? 

 Your sins that Jesus forgives are God-sized. And yet, in the crucifixion of God, they become nothing. A god-sized debt paid by a god-sized atonement. This atonement makes even the shrewdness of the dishonest manager as a holy deed. This forgiveness that Christ pays for with His Body and Blood covers the lack of honesty, diligence, and mathematical know-how of our attempts at purity.

 Love covers a multitude of sins and God’s love to us is shown in Christ on the cross. The cloak of Christ’s sacrifice hides us and our sin in His wounds. Baptism in His Blood washes the sinfulness of our day to day deeds and turns them into the holy life of Jesus, in God’s sight. 

 In the cross of Christ, is this refuge and shield from Original Sin. On the cross we find a God Who is able to secure our footing as we traverse the tightrope of death. In the suffering of Jesus, God has made a blameless way for us, which is the perfect and true way of the Lord. 

Walls crumble before this cross. Armies fall back as dead men. Darkness flies away. In Baptism, the haughty are changed into the humble, the crooked and tortuous are purified, and the blame-filled and the oppressed are shown mercy.

 We may delight in playing the victim day in and day out especially in front of God, but that is our sin creeping out again. The only hope and comfort found in this world is the Victim of God that takes away the sin of the world. Sin, both Actual and Original, is what separates us from God and from our neighbor and is the cause of every single one of our troubles today.

 God alone offers forgiveness of sins only in the Gospel, the good news that we are freed from debt; freed from the guilt, punishment, and the power of sin. Because Christ kept the Law and suffered and died beneath our sin, we are saved eternally.

 “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.” (Rom. 10:4)

“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree’” (Gal. 3:13)

“He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” (Col. 1:13-14)

 We worship a victim God. We run to and cling to the Paschal Victim, the Easter Victim. We offer thankful praises to the Lamb that paid the ransom for sheep gone astray. Christ, Who alone is sinless, has reconciled sinners, debtors to the Father. In the contention between guilt and innocence, death and life, the Prince of Life Who died, reigns immortal.