‘I tell you,’ says Jesus, ‘there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need of repentance.’ [Luke 15.7]
I was once reading about problems of Bible translation. Translation, of course, is much more than simple transliteration – as the new Roman mass amply demonstrates! Sometimes, there’s just no word in the new language that expresses the original meaning. I recall an example from the 15th chapter of Luke – the same verses we’ve heard this evening. How could one say ‘much joy in heaven’ in Inuit, the language of the Eskimos? Inuit is very short on abstract nouns like ‘joy’ – but Eskimos have plenty of dogs! The translation was: ‘There will be much wagging of tails in heaven over one sinner who repents.’ It’s a lovely picture!
The very first thing Jesus says, in the first Gospel to be written (St Mark), is ‘Repent!’ Sin and repentance are major themes throughout the New Testament, and they’ve dominated Christian thinking ever since. Today, the notion of sin is largely absent from secular consciousness. Yes, people accuse their neighbours of all sorts of wrong-doings – but sin?
St Paul was right. It makes no sense to talk of sin apart from some notion of law. If I do something that hurts someone, it’s only a ‘sin’ if I knew it was forbidden. Yet people today, who never talk of sin, still speak of ‘a sense of right and wrong’. What’s the difference between that, and God’s commandments? The answer is simply, ‘God’. But if we’ve hurt someone, they probably don’t care if we believe in God or his commandments – whether we knowingly broke a commandment, or just made a mistake. The hurt is the same, either way.
None the less, when people speak of ‘right and wrong’, they mean more than mistakes that cause hurt. They assume we know our action will be hurtful – or would know, if only we thought about it. All too often, we don’t think about it: don’t weigh our words or actions in advance. People like being ‘spontaneous’. They don’t like rules. Rules are constraining. We want to feel free, unconstrained. So we blunder on, ignoring the damage we do by our unthinking actions.
Some years ago, a popular psychologist* suggested that ‘sin’ is often linked to laziness. I think that’s probably right. We just don’t bother to think ahead. Thinking ahead is too much like hard work. It gets in the way of hedonistic individualism – ‘just being ourselves’. Alas, ‘just being ourselves’ is can be remarkably selfish and careless, and other people often get hurt.
What about our words or actions that hurt other people in ways we’ll never know? The effects of what we do may be too distant to recognise. Perhaps we buy goods we suspect – or would suspect, if we thought about it – are made by sweated labour, or enjoy foods grown and harvested by virtual slaves on the other side of the world. Are these actions sins? I suspect they are.
For me, at least, it seems obvious that ‘sin’ has not just a legal dimension (doing something forbidden), but a social dimension. Because we live together in community, we share collective responsibility for all sorts of injustices which are essentially ‘sinful’: they break the laws of God, and hurt other people. Does our lack of awareness exonerate us? I don’t see how it can….
Should we ‘repent’ of such sins? What might repentance for social injustice mean? Is it enough that I, as an individual, repent of my own lack of awareness, my lack of concern, when I participate in what I can see is collective injustice? Such repentance does little to rectify the systemic injustices that cause the hurt; but standing aloof hardly exonerates me. I see the injustice (or would see, if I dared to look). I know. And knowing, but not acting, surely implicates me in collective guilt.
I think perhaps western Christianity has made sin and guilt more tolerable by individualising them. We don’t feel we’re tainted by sins we don’t commit personally. But doesn’t that make us like the Pharisee in the temple, who congratulates himself on his virtue before God? Jesus contrasts him with the wretched publican, who won’t even raise his eyes to heaven, but beats upon his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner’. It was this man, says Jesus, and not the other, who went home ‘justified’.
‘Justified’. That’s not a word we use much today. It’s obviously allied to ‘justice’. It means ‘being put right with God’. And it’s this, says Jesus, that will cause ‘much wagging of tails in heaven.’ But we draw back from any sense that we need to be justified. We even draw back from the idea that God actually notices what we do – either as individuals, or collectively – and that he cares. This may be partly due to our very reasonable reaction to an old problem: ‘scrupulosity’.
Scrupulosity is nit-picking concern with rules. It’s actually an impediment to being justified before God. The scrupulous person becomes totally self-absorbed. ‘Have I eaten too much cake? Is that a sin? Did I offend Mrs So-and-so by my careless remark? Have I been as kind to people as I ought to be?’ It’s all I and me! Genuine concern for our neighbour focuses on the neighbour, not our own performance. Scrupulosity is itself probably a sin….
I’ve suggested that we see sin as something that individuals do. We also make repentance too personal – and too simple. Have I sinned? Yes, I see that I’ve sinned: I’ve done something that’s hurt someone – something which God’s laws should have warned me would cause hurt. I’m sorry. But what does that mean, exactly? Do I fear punishment? (St Augustine said tartly that fear of sinning is not the same as fear of burning!)
I tell God I’m sorry. I may even receive formal absolution. Fine. It’s all OK now. I can go home and forget it. Except, of course, it’s not OK. The person I’ve hurt still hurts. The relationship is still damaged. I need to do what I can to put things right, and that may take much time and effort. Furthermore, if I just confess about my past sins and then blunder on cheerfully, I’m likely to hurt people again. To repent means more than feeling sorry for what I’ve done. It’s about trying to change the person I am. To quote Augustine once again: it is a great grace not to sin, but the greatest grace is to become so Christ-like that we’re unable to sin.
That, of course, is the work of a lifetime – and it’s never a solitary task. We become Christ-like within our communities, sustained and guided by God’s grace. And Lent can help us, if we use it intelligently. Rather than give up jam or something, try spending regular time examining your life, and the way you conduct it: not just as an individual, but as a member of the local, national and international community. How can you become more Christ-like?
For every sinner who repents, there will be much wagging of tails in heaven. Dogs don’t wag just once. They wag a lot; and we need to repent a lot: not out of silly scrupulosity, but from a hard-won sense of realism about who we are, seen in the light of who we’d like to be – of who, by God’s grace, we might be. There is a technical term for this process. It is called, ‘Growing up’.
May I wish you a really useful and intelligent Lent!
* M. Scott Peck