I'm OK, You're OK (But We're Not)

Talking about sin is uncomfortable. I doubt it has ever been fun, at least for those with a self reflective practice. But there is a strong current among many church leaders today to do away with sin. We might call it the "I'm OK, you're OK" Gospel.

The argument goes something like this: If we truly believe all that God created is good, then the notion that we are horrible depraved people is outdated and medieval. It is unhealthy, and has caused self hated, abuse, and depression. It causes seekers to go elsewhere for spiritual nurture because they do not want to hear how awful they are. Further, the coupling of the resurrection with death on the cross for our sins make it hard for people today to find hope in the resurrection because of their difficulty that we are all "worm and no man."


I understand the desire to speak less about "utter depravity." I love my people. They're delightful, and sweet, and caring. They're hard working and wonderful. And it isn't terribly fun to talk about sinning, or that we're all sinners. After all, life is hard, and people really are trying. We're all just struggling to get through this world, to find a little bit of love. The thing I want to do most as a pastor is share the love of God with God's people, not tell them they're horrible!

How ostracizing it must be, we pastors muse, for someone to wander into our doors and hear "I am a worm and no man." Or to hear how God actually died for our sinfulness. Of course people aren't coming to church, the argument goes, they don't want to get shamed and guilted and made to feel horrible on Sunday mornings. And that's a valid point. Shame and guilt aren't the goal.

But I am afraid the "I'm OK, you're OK" approach is actually doing spiritual violence in the name of reducing it. I've had deep, honest conversations with enough people to know that what we say, and the face we show the world often bares little resemblance to our interior life. Yes we work hard, we support our families, we volunteer, we give money to charity. But we also curse the driver who cuts us off in traffic, we think horrible petty things about our coworkers, we get angry and frustrated at our children, we're jealous when our friends have good fortune and we don't, we carry hurt and resentment deep in our hearts. And most of all, we are afraid that all those little uglinesses might mean we're really horrible people. We won't admit it out loud, but we're all afraid of it. And so we work harder, and we volunteer more, and we read self help books, and we smile really hard, and we try to pretend that everything is OK.

That same person, with all their inner fears and self doubt (or even loathing) walks into a church full of smiling faces and hears that really we're all pretty good people and God loves us. And it all seems so nice, and polite, and safe. But we look around and we listen to the message that we're all OK, and we begin to suspect that we are the only really horrible person there. That we're alone in our pettiness, or jealousy, or anger, or doubt. That the sadness we feel, or lack of control are our own particular and unique failings. And if that's true, then God doesn't love us, certainly not like God loves all those smiling faces around us who must be the OK people the minister is talking about.

No wonder we don't come back to church, no wonder we try to forget that God exists entirely. The very act of being assured, by someone who cannot know our interior life, that we're OK, proves we aren't. It creates hidden shame, and fear. Little devils of doubt whisper in our ears: "if he really knew me he wouldn't say that, if he ever finds out what I'm really like he'll hate me!" And we hide ourselves as deep as we can, deep down inside, and try to ignore our terror that all those good smiling people around us will someday discover who we really are, and loathe us.

That isn't the Gospel. The Gospel of Christ tells us that God has looked deep into our hearts where our frightened, lonely, judgmental, greedy, resentful, sinful selves live and God loves us anyway. That is grace. Not to be told that you are OK, but to be told that despite all the things you may hate about yourself, you are loved. (And that you are a beautiful, good creation, just one in need of healing.) To be told that we're all sinful and broken, that those polished faces around us are no more perfect than we, that we do not need to hide our imperfection from one another. That is freedom. The Gospel invites us to be a community that loves one another, not just the faces we show the world, but hidden warts and all.


The Episcopal liturgy begins with this prayer:

Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your holy Name; through Christ our Lord. Amen.

The God who loves us is a God from whom we may hide nothing. Our secret hidden hearts open before God, beautiful flowers in the sun. And all those dark hidden places we dread are warmed by the Son, by a God who Lights the darkness and drives out all shadows with overwhelming love. That is the good news. That we are all of us broken and beautiful, and all of us loved. That the very worst we could do, in hanging the Son of God on a cross, has been redeemed by love through the Resurrection. That nothing we can hide in our hearts makes us unloveable. That nothing about us can take us out of the reach of God's love and mercy.

The good news is that we are the broken people we're afraid we are. The good news is that no matter how hard we try we cannot be perfect. The good news is that we are loved anyway. We are God's.

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Sermon: The Good Shepherd

(This was preached the 4th Sunday of Easter, but I got rather busy and forgot to upload it. Better late than never!)

Josephine Robertson
Easter 4B
Psalm 23, John 10:11-18
St Paul’s, Waco

I was a voracious reader as a child. And one of my favorite series was C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books. I especially loved the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The copy I owned as a child is still on our book shelf at home, very much worn and creased and loved. From the first moment the beaver whispered the name Aslan, and implied that he wasn’t at all safe I was fascinated. I loved Aslan, and I was in awe of him. He was powerful and majestic, and so quietly confident. In every book I’d read eagerly, wondering where Aslan would appear, and what he would do. In that first book, Aslan, who stands in alternately for God or Jesus in Lewis’ world, willingly allows himself to be killed by the wicked queen, and in the process breaks her hold over Narnia.

Yet something never felt quite right to me about the death and resurrection of Aslan. There was something missing. C.S. Lewis is a masterful writer but Aslan seemed too mighty, too majestic, too terribly good. It wasn’t until years later that I realized: Aslan wasn’t human enough. As beautiful as his story was, I missed the Jesus who I knew as my friend. The Jesus who could understand my struggles, and sorrows, and joys: because he had been like me.

During the triumphal 50 days of Easter, the greatest celebration of our year, filled with miraculous appearances, great commissions, the very glory of God roaring into our lives, it can be so easy to forget that the One who became Christ, was also a human being. A real flesh and blood person. It was perhaps the greatest battle between orthodoxy and heresy our church has ever known, in those first years of the infant church. The battle over just who Jesus was. Just a man, some said. Purely divine and pretending to be human others argued. That the baffling, confusing, ever so frustrating answer of “BOTH” won out, helps assure me that we got it right. That Jesus, the Christ, is both man and God. Fully human, fully divine.

And how comforting, how reassuring that impossible contradiction can be. Jesus who is only divine cannot be our friend and guide, Jesus who is only man, cannot help us. Today we read the 23rd Psalm. A psalm so beloved our prayer book prints two translations of it directly in our burial rite. A psalm that millions have clung to for comfort in times of loss and grief. Perhaps the most memorized piece of poetry or song in our world: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” It is part of who we are.

Michael Lodahl, a theologian, and church of the Nazarene leader points out that the 23rd psalm would have served the same comforting purpose among the Jewish synagogue and Temple communities of Jesus’ day as it does in our own. The psalm has been so beloved, for so long, that Dr. Lodahl suggests we read it as Jesus’ own prayer. We can be assured that Jesus knew this song of David, as well as we know it. Lodahl believes that in its words we can hear the echoes of the life of Jesus of Nazareth. That when we pray this psalm, we pray it over Jesus’ shoulder, and as we pray it not only through Jesus, but with Jesus it’s power for us becomes so much more.

We know so little about Jesus’ childhood. We can only guess at much of his early life. But if he grew up in rural Nazareth he knew sheep, and he knew shepherds. Sheep are everywhere in that part of the world, being led from one sparse pasture to another, one watering hole to another. They dot the hills, their calls filtering into the life of the village. I imagine the boy Jesus, at work in Joseph’s shop watching the shepherds and their sheep moving toward the folds at night, down the dusky hills. Everyone knew which shepherds were good, and which were lazy, which never lost a sheep. And he remembers. “The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.”

Years later, the boy has become a man, and has laid down his carpentry tools and stood in the Jordon river with John the Baptist. Alone in the harsh dry wilderness, does he walk, reciting this psalm? “He makes me lie down in green pastures, and leads me beside still waters.”

As hunger and thirst grow through his fast the words take on new and deeper meaning. God is to be trusted not only to provide for the needs of our stomachs, but will provide the spiritual food and drink that will sustain him through his ministry. Food and drink, he tells the devil, that are far more necessary than loaves of bread! This is living water, the water he will someday offer the Samaritan woman at the well.

Through rejection in his own synagogue, stubborn disbelieving disciples, and the numberless crowds needing his all, the psalm rolls on: “He revives my soul.” God who refreshes and renews, who knows when the last of our own reserves are spent and pours out his Spirit upon us. In all those quiet times alone between the healings, and the teachings there is renewal. A wellspring flowing from God in those quiet moments of prayer. Promise of support and love to even the most weary, in the face of even the greatest need.

And when the Pharisees come, and the Sadducees, and his own disciples doubting and arguing, and hoping for a different way the psalm rolls on: “and guides me along right pathways for his Name’s sake.” Listen, the psalmist whispers, listen to the scriptures. Listen to the prophets and the poets. Listen for the word of God. Jesus has listened, through him the Holy Spirit opens the ancient scriptures he was bathed in as a child. Through him God makes those words live and dance. Through him, God reveals the Way and the Truth. For God’s name, for God’s glory, and for our redemption.

And always, since he left Joseph’s carpentry shop, since he chose to be more, the psalm sings: “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil;” Who has walked closer to death than Jesus? He walked just out of reach of that dark specter throughout the dusty hills of Judea, always it seemed just one step ahead of the authorities. Always with the threat of violence looming. But its shadow casts no fear, it does not make his foot falter, it does not make his hand shake as he reaches out and touches the leper, the crippled, the lame, the hopeless. Its shadow cannot touch him. It slides away powerlessly, set to flight itself, for the rod and staff that protect and shield him are no less than the Almighty’s.

As he stands in chains before the chief priest, and then before Pilot, that psalm rolls on assuring and promising: “You spread a table before me in the presence of those who trouble me, you have anointed my head with oil, and my cup is running over.” How ironic those words must seem, yet they are all that his people have had through exile and destruction, through slavery and war. The promise of God who is constant. The pledge of a God who gives lavishly, who loves extravagantly. Who does not bother to stop pouring when the wine brims the cup, but laughs and continues to pour, letting the sweet liquid foam and cascade down our hands and our arms. And over the pounding of the nails the psalm/prayer that has been Jesus’ entire life swells in defiance of all the world can do: “Surely your goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.”

There is nowhere, not even the grave where the Lord who is shepherd to this world will not go. Nowhere we may find ourselves beyond the bounds of God’s house. When that same LORD raised Jesus from the tomb, we were raised with him. And he who was shepherded by the Father, who the Father knows, became our shepherd. He became the one whose hand gives safety and protection, who renews our very souls.

Jesus is our good shepherd, because he came to know God as his shepherd. We may trust Jesus Christ, because he was walked our path. He was human for he had to be. It is the death of the truly human Jesus that we are baptized into; and the life of the Word, God’s Anointed, member of the Holy Trinity that we are raised into with his resurrection. We become members of the flock of Christ, assured of our place in his care because before us he went, following the Shepherd of Israel.

No lion for us, a lion would not do. We have a lamb, a lamb who carries a shepherd’s crook and leads us to the green pastures of God’s mercy, and waters us with the still waters of God’s peace and guards and guides us through all the ways that we must go.

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