Rooting Out Sin

ROOTING OUT SIN

(A sermon for Ash Wednesday)

When I was at college, there was particular student who I found to be a pain in the neck.

It is difficult to say what exactly I disliked about him. Whatever he did or whatever he said he just seemed to rub me up the wrong way.

Now, I am sure you will agree that this is no way for a future priest to behave! In fact, I felt very ashamed of myself. How could I preach about forgiveness, if I could not practice it in my own life?

So in Lent I decided to pray for that student every day. Now I do not pretend for a second that it was easy, especially as I watched him walk into chapel every day, do a profound bow at the altar, then kneel down, and almost give the students either side of him a black eye as he crossed himself. But I did pray for him for the forty days of Lent. And do you know what happened to him? Absolutely nothing! On Easter Day he was the same objectionable person he had been forty days earlier. However, it did not matter any more. He may not have changed but I had!

Incidentally, I met that person a few years ago at a sherry party in Plymouth. He did not recognise me, but I recognised him. He was still objectionable, but it still did not matter.

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Now why have I told you this story?

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the penitential season of Lent, and it lasts for forty days, recalling our Lord's time in the wilderness, following upon his temptations.

It is a traditional time when Christians make a determined effort, over a limited period of time, to deepen their commitment to God and one another.

It is a time when we look at ourselves and decide what needs to be uprooted and thrown on to the fire until only ashes remain.

Now the problem is that, when we look into our lives we find there is so much that needs to be uprooted and burned to ashes that we do not know where to start. As a consequence, we either give up before we have started, or else we become so overwhelmed, that we do not know where to start.

And so my advice to you this Lent, is for you to pin point your most besetting sin, and having identified it, to work at it for the forty days of Lent. Don't worry about those other sins. Hopefully there will be other Lents when we can learn to overcome them.

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But where do we begin? How do we go about selecting that most besetting sin?

First of all we need to put ourselves through a programme of self-examination. True, this is something we should do every week before going to communion. However, Lent provides us with the opportunity to dig deeper.

The word 'sin' comes from the Greek word meaning to 'miss the mark', as an archer does when his arrow misses the bulls eye. Now the bulls eye to which we aim is to live a life like Christ, in thought, word and deed. And when we fail, we fall short of the mark and commit sin.

But what was Jesus like? One of the best methods for self-examination is to read through Paul's hymn of love in 1 Corinthians 13. After all, the word love sums up the whole character of Jesus.

Let me remind you of those words, using the word ‘love’:

‘Love is slow to lose patience,

Love looks for ways of being constructive,

Love is not possessive,

Love is not anxious to impress,

Love does not cherish inflated ideas of its own importance,

Love has good manners,

Love does not pursue selfish advantage,

Love is not touchy,

Love does not keep an account of evil,

Love does not gloat over the wickedness of other people,

Love knows no end to its endurance,

Love knows no end to its trust,

Love knows no fading of its hope,

Love can outlast anything,

Love stays when all else fails.’

Now I suggest that you reread that list of the attributes of love, substituting the word 'Jesus' for the word love. Finally, I suggest you reread that list again substituting your own name for Jesus.

It is not easy. We are suddenly brought face to face wwith how far we have fallen short of the mark of being like Jesus, in our relationship to God, to others and to ourselves.

Now all you have to do is to select that most besetting sin, and work at it over the forty days of Lent, and I guarantee you will be surprised how much you will have changed by the time Easter Day arrives, just as I was surprised when I prayed daily for my colleague way back in 1965.