SIN IN THE SINGULAR
The title of my homily for this Second Sunday in Ordinary
Time - Year A - is, “Sin In the Singular.”
Today’s gospel begins with John the Baptist seeing Jesus
coming towards him and he says, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the
sin of the world.”
Notice "sin" is in the singular.
Right before communion at every Mass the priest holding Christ up above the altar says, “Behold the Lamb of
God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world.”
Notice "sins" is in the plural.
Through the years I’ve noticed preachers and teachers
speaking about sin and sins. Singular and plural …. mostly plural.
Sometimes I get a grasp on the difference, sometimes I
don’t.
WHAT WAS THE
SERMON ABOUT?
There is an old sermon story - with variations - about the
kid who skipped church - to play basketball with some buddies in the playground
across from the street from the church. When he saw folks coming out of church he yelled to his
buddies, “I’ll see you!”
He runs across the street and says to this man coming out of church, “What was
the sermon about?”
He did this because he knew his parents would ask that very
question when he got home.
The man says, “The sermon was about sin.”
The kid asked, “What did he say about it?”
The man answered, “He was against it.”
Well, if you want to know what this sermon is about - it’s
about sin.
And what am I going to say about it?
I am going to say that everyone has sin in the singular in them and it goes
against us. As for sins in the plural - the sins varies.
CATECHISM ANSWERS
As Catholics we are very aware of hearing about sins in the
plural.
All our lives we’ve heard about original sin - and then
mortal and venial sins. We’ve heard about the Seven Capital Sins and we’ve
heard about Sins of Omission and Sins of Commission.
A few years back there was talk about 3 types of sin:
mortal, venial, and in between, serious sin. It was an attempt - I think - to deal
with degrees - and to help people who thought they were committing mortal sins
every day of the week - mortal meaning deadly.
But I’ve heard less about that serious sin -“tweeers” -
between mortal and venial - these last
25 years.
Then our catechisms teach us about conscience: to have a healthy
moral conscience, Then they add that we can have a scrupulous conscience or an uninformed conscience - or a warped
conscience.
Then we know that some people - including priests - are much
stricter - and some much more lenient than other people.
And on and on and on.
Then we hear sermons where the preacher talks about C.S.
Lewis or Dante - telling us that sins of the flesh - are less in soul damage
than the deeper sins of pride - and betrayal - so Dante puts those folks in the
lowest circles of hell.
Hopefully we’ve read and taken some adult formation in our
faith - and we’ve gotten a better understanding of Christian morality.
SIN IN THE
SINGULAR
What about sin in the singular - the title of this homily?
St. Paul in Romans and St. Augustine in his Confessions tell us about
sin in the singular.
It’s this tendency in all of us - more or less - towards
laziness - or evil - or not wanting God in our lives - and it sneaks out of us
with sins in the plural.
St. Paul and St. Augustine both scratch their heads and
say, “Why do I make these self promises and keep breaking them?” “Why do I say
I’m going to do this and I do that? Why? Why? Why?
I always remember Theodore Roethke bemoaning “the lies we
tell to our energies.”
Last Monday we celebrated the feast of St. Hilary of Poitiers who wrote the
following around the year 350, “There is an inertia in our nature that makes us
dull.”
We’ve all heard the example from Native American theology -
that we have two dogs inside of us - the good one and the bad one - and they
are often fighting and barking inside of us. And the kids ask the teacher or
wisdom figure: “Which dog wins?” And with a smile on his or her face, the
wisdom teacher says, “The one we feed.”
20 years back there was lots of talking about this same Good
Dog vs. Bad Dog - inner human reality going on in our soul. We all have within
us the Original Blessing and Original Sin - Light and Darkness, Grace and Sin,
Dr. Jeckle and Dr. Hyde. It’s also described as The Dream vs. The
Nightmare. We’re aware from Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream Sermon” that we have Dreams for the Best in us
and he experienced the horror of the Worst - The Nightmare of Evil - coming out
of folks.
So sin in the singular is not specific sin - but an overall
- deep - slow self pushing for self tendency - a deep giving in or giving up or
grabbing, grabbing, grabbing, or me, me, meism - or a deep spiritual laziness
that can kill us.
We don’t know what Adam and Eve’s sin was - so we call it
the original sin. I don’t know about you, but when I am at a baptism it feels
funny to be talking about sin - when seeing and talking about this beautiful
little tiny baby girl or boy in our midst.
I know the Catechism stuff on all this - both the Baltimore
Catechism and the Catechism of 1992 - and the theology book stuff - but it
still feels strange - till I think of sin in the singular. It’s then that baptism makes more sense for
me.
We’re asking God to bless this baby from the beginning with help in dealing
with me, me, meism - and that this baby experiences around him or her support
and love and challenge and good example from a family and a community of we,
we, we - that we’re all in this together.
That right from the beginning this little one gets good
example - support - challenge - with his
or her tendency - which will be with him or her for life - this deep tendency
towards good and evil - the choice for
me or we.
Adults who are
baptized as adults obviously have
the great advantage and opportunity to be aware of all this - as well as to
look into their life so far - and get a fresh start like all those adults
baptized by John the Baptist - as well as all those adults - as well as kids -
coming into the Christian Community in the early church.
TODAY’S READINGS
Today’s first reading from Isaiah says that the basic
posture towards life is to serve - to become a servant - and the little person -
or adult being baptized - hopefully learns that by being served. They then follow suit. Today’s first reading also
has the image of light - and sin in the singular is a tendency to hide in the
dark - like Adam and Eve did when they sinned. Little kids do this instinctively
when they do bad bads. Adults caught put coats or bags or newspapers over their
face as they head into a court house.
Today’s second reading from 1st Corinthians adds
that the human call is also to holiness - to see ourselves as with God and the
whole human race - and that’s one more reason Christ came - to make us holy -
whole persons - not just loners. As the song goes, “One is a lonely
number!” As in every 12 Step Program -
there are things we can be powerless over - and we need God - and God’s Higher
Power and Grace - to get going in a better direction - step by step - not going
it alone - but with help and support and presence from each other. We all know alcoholics
who keep failing because they try to recover on their own.
Anyone - and that’s all of us - have our addictions. It’s up
to us to know and name our poisons. Poison in the singular - addiction in the
singular - sin in the singular - I hold are basically the same human tendency -
that nasty dog inside of us - that makes
us powerless. But for the grace of God, there go I over and over and over
again.
Grace - a gift and the opposite to evil - Hail Mary full of grace - is the gift of help
from God and church that’s already inside of us - as well as all around us
- by our baptism - by the love of God
for us - and we can work together as family and faith community - and great
groups that we can belong to - that keep us going in great directions.
CONCLUSION
This is big picture stuff - this Sin in the Singular inside
of all of us stuff. We know about those
two dogs inside us - Goody and Badie - the Dream and the Nightmare. We know
about the light and darkness inside us - especially in moments of temptation. All
of us have been humbled by our mistakes and sins - they bring us down to earth
- humus from which the word humility comes from.
I’ve always been impressed by the writings of Nathaniel
Hawthorne - where people wanted to throw rocks at Hester Prynne and has to wear
The Scarlet Letter - A for Adultery. That town forgot what happened in another
town - when a crowd of men with rocks in their hands brought a woman caught in
adultery to Jesus. They forgot Jesus’ words, “Let him without sin throw that
first stone!” and those in Jesus’ story dropped their rocks and walked away.
They knew they had sin in their hearts. Hawthorne
also has another story about the two ladies in this one town. One lady who knew
sin said to the very proper lady who thought she was above sin and was always “tch,
tch, tching” everyone else. “Hey you ought to go out and commit a really good
sin and then you’ll understand the rest of us.”
Understanding sin in the singular, can help us understand not only
ourselves, but each other.
Understanding sin in the singular, can help us see what John the Baptist saw in
today’s gospel: Jesus in our midst always coming towards us and we say, “Behold
the lamb of God who takes away the sin
of the world.”
