Passion Sunday 10 April 2011 Sermon

Passion Sunday 10.4.11 Sin binds and blinds

Isa 58:1Cry, cease not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and show my people their wicked doings, and the house of Jacob their sins. For 2000 years the Church has been proclaiming the need for the world to repent from sin. It is not a popular message and a very difficult one to ‘sell’ to the public.

Why is repentance so unpopular? One of the unfortunate effects of sin is that the sinner suffers at least a partial blinding every time he sins. Every sin moves us further away from the divine Light, pushes us further into the darkness.

From that darker position our power of perceiving reality becomes weaker; our capacity to judge clearly is warped. Everything looks out of shape.

The darkness can be in the form of presumption or despair.

Presumption can take two forms. a) when people say: I have no sin. I am good, or good enough at least. I never do anything wrong. I haven’t killed anyone....
To say we have no sin in us is to be a liar (cf 1 John 1,8). The person saying this does have sins but has become unable to register them. Repeated and unrepented sin has blunted the conscience and dulled the intellect so that the person can no longer see his own sin, great as it might be.

b) when people admit they have sinned but presume that God will not ‘mind’; will forgive them anyway, whether they repent or not. It is the come-as-you-are mentality. God loves me no matter what I do, so I will do whatever I please and know that He will still welcome me into heaven. Very dangerous theology!

Despair is when a person concludes there is no ultimate good in the world, no source of salvation. What we see is all we have. There is nothing for it but to take whatever pleasure can be got while life lasts. This is a denial of any difference between right and wrong, good and evil; a kind of amoral floating through life, very common today.

All these positions are a kind of spiritual blindness, brought on by sin and kept captive in that state.

Repentance would bring a person out of that darkness very quickly; but the difficulty is that when one is in the dark the appeal of repentance is not easy to see.

The above positions all involve a defensive attitude. Don't come near me with your preaching and your religious messages. I am all right thank you. Leave me to my own ways of looking at life. I can cope without you.

Sin blinds as well as binds.

Our Lord faced the same problem in His own preaching, and He had the advantage of working miracles. Even with miracles He had great trouble cutting through the hard edge of cynicism which surrounded many of His audience.

But He is determined to save us, resistant or not. He loves us in spite of our rejection. (The Presumptives have got that much right.) But there must be some bending on our part; some humbling of self before this great mercy which is offered us.

Over the next two weeks we will have many reminders of human obstinacy (as in today’s Gospel) - Herod, Pilate, the Pharisees, the crowd... they could not see the right thing to do.

We must humble ourselves before Him. Then the blindness will be lifted and we will see the way forward.

We have sinned; we do need mercy; there is a way out of all this.

Saviour of the world, save us and all who need Thy mercy.