How God Changes Us: “God Takes Our Sin Away"

Robert E. Hall
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

January 16, 2011

Text: John 1: 29, 35-42

I will be preaching a series of sermons on the general; theme, “God Changes us.” Here are the subtitles:

God changes us (and the world) by….
Taking away our sin
Putting us to work
Teaching us how to be
Challenging is to be courageous

Sin is separation….

Within ourselves
We are inclined to put ourselves down or puff ourselves up. We are full of ourselves, or we think we are good for nothing. We are prone to think we are God’s gift to everyone else, or that we have not gifts which will bless anyone.

I hear people say, too often, “I am just….a housewife, a layperson, a high school graduate, from the sticks….” I have told this story before:

A pastor asks a layman to teach the fourth grade class. “Pray about it this week.” The layman comes back the next Sunday and says to the pastor, “Pastor, I am just a layman, I don’t think I can do this job.” The pastor knows this kind of escape mechanism. So the pastor replies, ‘Charlie, do you think we would’ve asked you if we could have found someone better?”

We are, each of us, persons of worth, with gifts to bless. And, we are, each of us, limited.

 We have a hard time keeping balance between pridefulness and poverty of ego.

Between ourselves and others

We tend toward separation, even in our closest relationships---- such as with children, spouse, friends. In these intimate relationships, there is a  tangle of experiences, fears, and betrayals. They result is barriers and an uneasy truce.

We are separated often by the sense that we are always in competition with others. Even pastors experience this: we find ourselves competing for the “best” churches and we are tempted to resent others who get a break when we don’t! I noticed the other day on television that even chefs are competing for first place! There they are, lined up in their chef hats, glaring at each other like prizefighters!

We are, too often closed off from people of other religions, nations, races, and economic conditions. We can live in isolation from people different from us, which creates fear.

We are prone to turn the eyes away from the suffering of desperate people, such as in Haiti. We can sleep at night when children in desperate places die from preventable diseases, or from war and visits from thugs with automatic weapons.

Between ourselves and God

We are led to fear God---whom we have heard is a cosmic snoop; We find ourselves relying on things in place of God, becoming serial monotheists---worshipping success, wealth, beauty, etc. Paul Tillich wrote that that which is our ultimate concern is our god. Even religion can be worshipped. We can experience a “twilight of the gods,” “wandering in the supermarket of amusements until something clicks.”

We bought a new car recently, a beautiful maroon one (sorry UT fans). In have “dingphobia” with regard to this new car. I do not want it to get dinged by someone opening their door on it. So I park about quarter mile away when we go to shop---which is not making my wife happy! I do not worship this car exactly…or do I!?

Sins (plural) arise out of these estrangements. We hurt others, neglect responsibility, and damage ourselves.

The result according to the New Testament is that we are. Enmeshed in sin as separation. We may experience guilt, discouragement, lack of focus, and exhausting restlessness.

A saving factor is that God has planted in us, from the beginning hungers of the heart.

These are hungers of the heart for hope, identity, belonging, and meaning. (From Ken Callahan, Keys to Effective Leadership)We long for peace of mind and heart, for a purpose larger than ourselves, for a fulfilling future, for a community of caring.

John the Baptist Message: “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”

The is the language describing the sacrificial lamb in the temple. Worshippers indentified with the lamb as they offered their lives to God. Identifying with the lamb’s life being given to God.

Here, The Lamb is strong in a servant life, a sacrificial life. The giving up of his own life for our sakes, for love of us, so that we will not any longer be enslaved toward our own unhappiness.

How does Jesus take away the sin of the world?

It is not by a not an appeasement of an angry God, as if we need to make God love us again! We are the ones whose minds need changing, not God’s. Always, already God loves us and the world. Jesus re-presents God pure unbounded love. (Schubert Ogden, The Reality of God)

This best relayed in metaphors and symbolic actions:

It is like a pall removed from us; like a chain which is broken, removed and destroyed; like a prison door opened, so that we are not controlled by Sin anymore. It is like the stones in the hands of those who would throw them at the woman who committed adultery---- being dropped to the ground.

Jesus is the bridge by which we can walk to God. Jesus represents us to God.  “This is what they are up against, the ways that they suffer”) and God to us (“Here is what God has done and is doing to save you, to liberate you, to reconcile you within yourself, between you and your neighbors, between you and God.”

God in Jesus abolishes the condemnation proceedings.

Marshall Dillon (Gunsmoke TV show, you may or may not remember) steps in between you and the bad guy and saves your life.

God in Jesus presents us with the gift of newness of life. God in Christ breaks the dominating power of Sin.

True? How proved to be so?

The proof is in the pudding.

Those who decide to follow Jesus find their lives transformed…
What they once ignored, now they regard as most important….  You can only say that Christ makes this difference and you believe it will make a difference for others. From Van Harvey, The Role of the Church and Its Ministry, adapted)

The Self:  The focus becomes love of God with heart mind soul and strength, the source of our true happiness.

Toward others? We begin to take baby steps toward reconciliation; friend-making, trusting, forgiving.

In relationship with God? God is not longer regarded as distant or our enemy or as a powerless observer but as the God who is with us and for us in the thick of our human condition, to break our patterns of the old life: to be those who are born again, who are born from above.

Note: There is still the potential of genuine meanness in us and we are responsible for what we have done and left undone. We are called to make amends where we can.

But there is nothing we have done that cannot be forgiven. Where sin abounds, grace abounds more.

We do not have to live with crippling guilt and regret.
And we can “give up the desire for a different past.” (Source lost)

We turn, receive, and commit: we freely give ourselves to God in Jesus Christ. And we begin living in the grace which frees us to love God, to rightly love and accept ourselves, and to love our neighbors as ourselves

This what God does to change us: In Christ, God takes away the sin of the.  God empowers us to be friend-makers--- to invite others to “come and see,” as Jesus did for those earliest disciples.

Listen to this story: In a church, their AC quit working on December 31, just before a New Year service. The pastor tried everything to fix it, including asking a member to help him troubleshoot. They finally decided to open the doors side and back, to have a flow of air from outside. Two hundred people gathered. They concluded their time together with Holy Communion.

A woman nobody knew came up to receive. She was not familiar with the sacrament and was guided to receive. After the service, she told the pastor her story. Her husband had been arrested and would not get out of prison for 2 years. She was pregnant with twins. What was she to do? She had driven around aimlessly, asking, “How could God do this to me! What am I to do now?” The pastor asked her, “What led you to come here this evening?” She said, “I saw this church and the doors were open, so I stopped and came in.”

The church is the body of people who keep the doors open, so people, even strangers can “come and see” Jesus Christ, the One who is God’s Word, the One who takes away the sin of the world.