It’s easy to suggest that if only everybody made the effort to be good, and to stop being bad, then the world’s problems would be solved. There are many Christian texts that seem to support this view. St Paul writes today in our 2nd Reading: “Everybody must be self-effacing. Always consider the other person to be better than yourself.” (Phil 2:2) But although there are many texts like this, St Paul also makes it clear that however hard we humans try to be good, we can never succeed all the time. He knows this because before he became a Christian he was one of those very strict Jews, that Jesus was often in conflict with, called the Pharisees. They had a very strict code of life and believed that being perfect was possible. He knew it was not.
St Paul certainly wanted people to aim to be perfect, but also to face the reality that something more was needed if people were to be acceptable to God. He writes, “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.… For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my body another law at war with the law of my mind.” (Romans 7:19-23) I expect we all know what that is like, when we get irritable with people we live with, and make some cutting remark, or even lose our temper and say things that later we regret. Then we might, with St Paul again say, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:24) Well maybe we wouldn’t be as dramatic as that; but we certainly wish at times that there was something that would stop us when we go over the top like this, and hurt someone we love!
Christianity is based on the view that however hard we humans try, sometimes we will fail. Jesus knew this only too well, which is surely why he expresses again and again how much God loves us, even when we mess up. It is absolutely central to our Christian faith that we admit that we fail, that unlike some people out there in the world, we do not have a “so what” attitude. Some of you may have seen on the TV or on the Internet cases where someone caught out doing something selfish, like parking in a disabled space, simply said “So what?”- displaying no sense that he or she might have done something wrong. This ignorance of what is right and what is wrong is normal in a tiny child; but gradually good parents teach their child about caring about others and sharing what they have. What is sad is that some are either never taught or never learn that they can do things that are wrong and then need to say sorry. At its worst this attitude leads to the violence and war that we hear on the News every day. Things we just wish would not happen.
Of course we think that we’re not like that, don’t we? And that’s our danger; that we begin to think that we, unlike other people, are good and kind all the time, and conveniently forget the times when we have failed, as well as the many other times when we could have done good but didn’t. Then, we are just like the son Jesus talks of in the Gospel today, who said he would go and work in the vineyard, but then failed to do so. (Matt 21:28-32)
We Christians have a couple of technical terms that we use to describe this situation in which we find ourselves – with war and violence around us, and the failings that we can’t cope with within us. We call the whole messy situation “The Fall”. This comes from the idea that God intended us to be good and perfect from the beginning, but by giving us free will, also allowed us to fail. And fail we did! It’s expressed in the story told at the beginning of the Bible (Genesis 2:15-3:19) where the story teller imagines a man and a woman living originally in a beautiful garden in perfect harmony with each other and with the world around them. But then they become aware of other things they could do that were not good, and so everything goes wrong and they have to leave the garden for the big hard world outside. Yes – it’s the story of Adam and Eve. That’s what we mean by the Fall.
Our second technical term is the one we use to describe the way each of us seems programmed to mess up despite our best intentions. We call this “original sin”. This is not the same as “the sins” – plural – that we commit. By sins we mean all our imperfections and failures, not just very bad things. No, original sin (singular) is something in all of us humans that we cannot solve, that leave us, like St Paul, from earlier, saying “Who will deliver me from this body of death?” Death!- you might say – surely it’s not as bad as that? Well yes it is, because we Christians believe that if we are to be with God in eternal life when we die, we must be perfect as he is perfect, and that is just what we cannot be, despite our best efforts. And the alternative to eternal life, is eternal death.
I am not going to talk today in detail about the solution that Jesus brings us to sort out our mess, this problem that we humans find ourselves in; but we certainly have to accept that we need a solution, that we need to be delivered, or to be saved – as we sometimes say. This is why we disagree with humanists and atheists. They can often be very good people – sometimes better than us – but they believe that humanity can save itself – that it is just a matter of everyone being kinder and more loving, and then the world will be at peace. All of humanity needs to realise instead that we are more often like the son who said “No” to his father, and need to change our mind. Every day we need to realise how much help the whole of humanity, including you and me, needs for this change of mind to happen, help that can only come from the source of goodness and love that is God rather than from our own resources. We all need to be saved.
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