Preached at First Presbyterian Church, Baldwin, NY, April 15th, 2012
A printable PDF file can be found here
I must have been about thirteen years old. There was great excitement in the house. I grew up near Liverpool, England, a place which was once a bustling, active port. Sadly, by the time I came on the scene the city was a dismal shadow of it’s former self. But that day there was a big ship coming in, sailing up the River Mersey taking crude oil to one of the Oil Refineries further down stream.
This wasn’t just a big ship, it was a super tanker, a mega tanker, a monster tanker! The sort of boat that you could have five full size football pitches on deck, all with games going on and still have enough room to land a Jumbo Jet. Well, maybe not quite that big, but it was the biggest thing that had sailed down the River Mersey ... ever.
So my dad drove me and my friend down to New Brighton, where you could get a good view of the river. Of course it was raining and gray and visibility was poor. Then along it came. A huge, ugly, bulk of a thing, being towed by a whole fleet of struggling tug boats, it slowly transported it’s oily cargo up stream.
I remember reading in the newspaper about how hard it was to turn this monstrous mega machine around out at sea. We’re talking a required area of many, many square miles. If you’ve ever been out on the water in just a little boat, and been going full belt, and then want to turn around and go the other way - you know how hard it is. Multiply that situation by many miles and many tons - and you get the picture. And if the boat was going with the flow and had to turn and head back against the tide, then the distances grew even greater.
The first letter of John is addressed to a church that John felt was headed at speed in the wrong direction. He knows that the inertia involved in the process was going to be hard to deal with; that turning things around was going to be a laborious process. He sets about reminding them of some of the basics of their faith.
In the first chapter (and on into the second), he recalls a fundamental Christian teaching. Humankind by nature prefers the darkness to the light. That there is in our make up, a driving force, a spirit of rebellion, a twisted desire towards unrighteousness, a bias towards what is bad rather than what is good. He calls it by a three letter word slept S-I-N.
Sin. For John sin is not unlike the crude oil that fills the belly of the mega tankers. If ever you have been on a beach that has suffered the catastrophe of a large oil spill then you will be aware of crude oil's capability to cling and spoil and destroy. It’s a heart breaking sight to observe sea birds trying to get the oil off themselves, trying to prune themselves and in the process covering their beaks, just becoming more and more overwhelmed by the oil, coating their wings so they can’t fly, in their eyes, in their mouths and into their bodies, slowly they die. Their only hope is for some animal rescue organization to take them to a safe place, and over a period of time clean the oil off with detergents and chemicals, until, stained, but capable of survival, they can be set free.
John use two words to describe sin. He firstly uses Greek word ‘skotos’ which means 'darkness'. He recognized such darkness within himself. He felt he had lived much of his life in the dark when it came to the things of God. He felt it was a universal human failing that we turn a blind eye to the needs of others and focus just on ourselves.
Secondly John uses the Greek word ‘harmatia’. 'Harmatia' meant 'going beyond the boundary line' or 'trespassing'. In many traditions when they say the Lord's prayer they say, forgive us our 'trespasses'. Forgive us when we overstep the mark, forgive us those times when we deliberately and purposefully choose to act in ways we know aren't right. He tells us that we are driven by sins that we commit because we can’t seem to help ourselves (we are in the dark) and we are driven by our desire to do the wrong thing (we trespass).
Because of sin, because of the darkness in our lives, we don’t walk in the light. We cherish the shadows. We are content with our masks, and our excuses, and our false reasoning, and our blind spots. We are ships headed in the wrong direction and it takes more than high ideals to turn us around.
John really hates what sin does to our world. He saw how sin destroyed and polluted all creation. He saw how it was such a powerful thing that many people didn't even recognize it in themselves. He tells us “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” (1Jo 1:8). We have this tendency when talking about 'sinners' that we mean somebody else other than ourselves. We like to shift the blame. Here's John saying, “Don't play that game, take the blame!”
You may have seen the Harry Potter books or movies. The death eaters are the dark spirits dispatched by Lord Voldermort to create havoc at Hogwarts. In Harry Potter terms sin is like your own personal death eater. Sin is a dark disturbing and destructive power.
Most of all John hates sin because it is a joy killer. His whole reason for writing his letter is stated in verse 4. “These things we write to you that your joy may be full.” (1Jo 1:4 NKJ). God's people were meant to be joyful. And when they walked in the darkness rather than in the light, then the joy quickly evaporated from their lives and the life of their churches.
The dilemma is 'How do we turn this ship around?
How do we get out of the darkness and ‘Walk in the Light’?'
How do we get out of the darkness and ‘Walk in the Light’?'
John’s remedy is that there was no way of turning around, no remedy for the condition of sin - other than the forgiveness and grace found at the Cross of Jesus Christ. That there's nothing we can do to help ourselves. That we are like those seabirds coated with oil, we need an external agent to cleanse us and free us. That just as the only way crude oil becomes useful is when it becomes refined, so the only way our lives become the sort of lives God wants us to have, is when we are refined by the Grace of God we discover in Jesus Christ.
In the King James Bible Verse 2 of 1 John Chapter 2 reads, “Jesus Himself is the propitiation for our sins”. Propitiation. Not a word you hear very often! “Jesus is my Propitiation”. It’s not the sort of slogan you find emblazoned on Christian T-Shirts and Bumper Stickers or put on church noticeboards. Propitiation. 'Jesus is the propitiation' What does it mean? Propitiation means "getting something out of an impossible situation".
When John speaks of Jesus ‘being the propitiation for our sins’, John is telling us that 'Only Jesus is the One who can get us out of the impossible situation that sin creates'. Jesus Christ, and He alone, is the One who can turn the big, ugly, ship of our lives around. Jesus is the only one who can cleanse our lives from sins pollution. That the answer to our darkness and our trespass is found at the Cross.
Other translations use the phrase 'reconciliation' or 'atoning sacrifice'. Again the meaning is that Jesus has done for us at the Cross what we could never do for ourselves. His death reconciles us to God. His death means we can be in fellowship with God. We have through Jesus 'At-One-Ment'.
How do we make the forgiveness offered at the cross our own? Again John offers the solution. 1 John 1:9 “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”
Another way to think of confession is to see it as admitting to something. Sometimes you will hear people involved in a confrontation and one will challenge the other, 'Come on, just admit that you messed up, then we can start putting things right!”
That's what it takes to allow the grace of God to impact our lives. That we admit to ourselves, to each other and to God that we are messed up and need all the love and hope and healing and forgiveness that God offers to us at the Cross of Jesus Christ. To admit that it was because of sins like ours that Jesus was crucified. To get down off our high horse and admit that unless God helps us through we are lost.
When we take that step, God shines light on our path. How? God offers us the presence of His Holy Spirit as a comfort and a helper and a Guide. We read God's Word in scripture and it starts to come alive and make sense. We find that worship in church is not a matter of dull repetition or duty but a living inspiring encounter with Jesus whom we know as our Lord and our Savior.
We see people in need not as a nuisance but an opportunity to serve our Lord. We find that issues become not a matter of who is right or wrong but we dream of how peace or reconciliation can be found. In moments of tragedy we do not despair but recall how death became a place for resurrection and a cross became an empty tomb.
And we find mixed up in all this... moments of indescribable joy... because we know that God is our God and we are God's children and that somehow all of this is related to the death of Jesus on the Cross, the reconciliation, the atonement, the 'propitiation' that God in love created there.
It doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time. It takes consistency. Like that monstrous mega super oil tanker I saw heading up the River Mersey a long time ago, we are a tough vessel to turn around. But in the hands of the right captain, it’s amazing what can be done.
John invites us 'Walk in the light'.
Rejoice that through Jesus we can live free and forgiven.
But don't take it for granted.
Show you are truly thankful by working with God
to be all that you can be,
to the glory of God's name.
Amen.
Rev. Adrian J. Pratt
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