NOTE: I am putting my weekly sermons on the church website. It will be on for two weeks (usually posted on Friday) and then placed in the Archives area by date. You can download in a matter of seconds.

Let me know what you think. The church Email is: SLUMC@att.net, Phone: 480.895.8766

August 11, 2002
"In Your Eyes Only"
Romans 10:5-15
Reverend Larry Gerber

The modern world gives us a deep and disturbing sense that there is something terribly wrong with us. From both the secular and the spiritual sides, our souls are saddled with an ever-growing list of reasons to feel guilty. How can we break free?

It's pervasive. It's persistent. Worse than a summer cold, more annoying than seasonal allergies and completely unresponsive to the Paxils and Prozacs provided by modern medicine, this condition grips you like a free-floating sense of worthlessness or an existential dread. It burrows deep down inside you, an agonizing writhing of conscience permanently lodged in the soul.

Jane and I recently went to a Diamondbacks game. We were sitting along the 1st base line, in the middle of the third teir. It was hot, it was in the 12 inning. a man in his early 30's, I would guess, seated just below us,stood up when it looked like we might put an end to the Braves for the night. He clapped and cheered, and turned to us and said, "I am not sitting down, stand up and cheer, all real Diamondback fans stand and cheer." It was hot, and it had been a long night. I simply looked at him and said, "Some of us are too tired, and too old." He reached out and shook my hand, and said: "I'll give you that one!" and smiled.

There are times in my life, when someone says that I should do something, I simply do it, because I feel guilty if I don't respond.  The live billboard at the ballpark for instance, gets instant response when it flashes: Clap, get loud, let Gonzo hear you. A rather subtle crowd immediatley response. The frenzy begins. Do we some respond out of a sense of guilt, or at least a sense of "every else is doing it.?"

Ever watch someone leaving a store when the alarm goes off. Usually that person stops dead in their tracks and looks around, and then into his or her bag, as if they did something wrong. A person from the store comes over, looks in the bag, and says "O.K., go ahead." Watch that person walk away. Sometimes still looking in the bag, shaking his/her head, showing a sense of guilt, even though there was absolutley nothing wrong.

In his book, Infinite Desire: A Guide to Modern Guilt, Paul Oppenheimer believes that modern secular guilt squats inside us constantly, unrelieved and unarticulated, growing ever more rancid. He writes that millions of seemingly innocent people feel guilty. Yet they have committed no crimes, done nothing truly shameful. "Nonetheless their guilt persists, at least in their own eyes," he observes, "and often neatly folded away, though it cannot help but inject their other emotions and acts with unmentioned pain."

Where does this guilt come from? And what does it mean? Oppenheimer suggests a number of possibilities.

First, there are the lawn-watering laws and their ilk. We feel hemmed in by all kinds of new laws that regulate every aspect of life: littering laws, seat-belt laws, lawn-watering laws, drink and drug laws, gambling laws, parking laws ... you name it. Cross any of these lines and you immediately feel a twinge, if not the burden, of guilt.

Second, there's our day-to-day respectability. Oppenheimer believes that there is another kind of guilt that arises out of mediocrity, conformity and unfulfilled potential. We believe that we can do more with our lives, be truer to ourselves, take more risks and have more fun, and we feel guilty when we compromise our potential by following the safe road of quiet respectability.

Third, we feel guilty about rejecting guilt. We think that a clear conscience is the sign of a bad memory. We feel guilty about our modern abandonment of genuine morality, nagged by our rejection of traditional guilt. When everything was black and white, we knew precisely why we felt guilty, and we knew what to do about it. We live in a world of grayness and confusion and moral relativity; we have no widely accepted moral truths to give shape to our guilt. We need a strong morality to make sense of our suffering conscience, or else our guilt festers and consumes.

Oppenheimer's overarching insight is this: The modern world gives us a deep and disturbing sense that there is something terribly wrong with our lives. We're facing a guilt glut, and it feels absolutely awful.
So, what are we going to do about it?

Enter the apostle Paul. He begins by mocking Moses a bit, quoting the words that God spoke to Moses in Leviticus: "You shall keep my statutes and my ordinances; by doing so one shall live: I am the LORD" (18:5).

Like anyone can really keep all those statutes and ordinances. The requirements of Leviticus alone make all of society's laws about littering, seat belts, lawn-watering, drinking, gambling and parking seem like child's play. Paul seems to be saying that if you think that keeping all God's statutes and ordinances is easy, then you don't know all God's statutes and ordinances. Righteousness that comes from the law just ain't gonna happen.

Paul, like many today, draws a distinction between guilt and shame. Guilt for Paul is a juridical concept. You don't "feel" guilty any more than you "feel" innocent. You are either guilty or you're not; innocent or you're not. You either had your hand in the cookie jar or you didn't. I saw a cartoon recently depicting a judge and the person charged with a crime. The judge said: "Look, you are either guilty, or you are not. You can't just say,'Beam me up Scotty.'"

But you can "feel" shame. Paul notes that the law declares us guilty, and thus it is normal to feel shame because of our condemned condition.

Fortunately, the apostle has a better idea. It's called "the righteousness that comes from faith" (Romans 10:6).

This righteousness has its root in faith, and it's not initiated by repentance or good works or anything that originates in human beings. This righteousness is all God, all good news, all gospel -- in fact, it's a free offer just waiting to be claimed, one that is "near you, on your lips and in your heart" (v. 8).

The good news is that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved; or, in the classic coinage of the apostle, "if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved" (v. 9).

That's the solution to sin, the one and only antidote to the guilt glut. Both the juridical declaration of guilt and the emotion of shame are lifted in and through Christ. "No one who believes in him will be put to shame" (v. 11).

This makes a surprising but oddly logical sort of sense, when you think about it. After all, we know from painful personal experience that freedom from sin and guilt is never going to come from human effort.

Can the damage that we have done over the years be fully repaired, the cruel words retracted, the mistakes erased, the betrayals obliterated, the failures reversed and the long list of selfish and sinful acts wiped clean? Not by our own efforts. It usually requires the gracious forgiveness of another party.
We have no "spell-check" or "sin-check" for our condition. No computer icon that will take us back over the story of our lives -- from the very beginning of the document -- and instantly repair all the mistakes we've made.
No sin-check. But we do have a savior.

Paul reminds us that freedom from sin and guilt never comes from doing, but from being; not from law, but from grace; not by works, but by faith. We are invited to enter into a relationship with a savior, Jesus Christ. We are offered the grace of a God who truly wants to free us from the burden of our guilt. We are told that we can access this gift of forgiveness through faith in God's Son, Jesus. It's all about being in relationship, receiving grace and experiencing faith.

What frees us from the guilt glut is not a lot of feel-good, do-gooder works -- deeds that make us proud of ourselves for an hour or two. What really lifts our burden for all time is the good work of our Savior on the cross, when through his selfless sacrifice he absorbed the guilt of all people everywhere and performed a spiritual sin-check for the world.

Christ's death on the cross turned our glut of guilt into a flood of forgiveness.

Greg Jones, the dean of Duke Divinity School, tells the true story of a 12-year-old boy named John who was playing one day with the 9-year-old girl who lived next door. Her name was Marie. They found a loaded pistol in a dresser drawer, and before long their make-believe game turned into a tragic nightmare. Little Marie was shot dead.

Everyone in the small town attended the funeral of the little girl -- everyone except John, who could not face anyone and refused to talk to anyone. He was completely overwhelmed by guilt.

The morning after the funeral, the families of that neighborhood went to church again. Then Marie's older brother went next door to talk to John. "John, come with me," he said. "I want to take you to school." John refused, saying, "I never want to see anyone again. I wish it was me who was dead." The brother insisted and finally persuaded John to go with him.

The brother talked with the school principal and asked him to call a special assembly. Five hundred and eighty students filed into the gymnasium. Marie's brother stood before them and said, "A terrible thing has happened; my little sister was accidentally shot by one of your fellow classmates. This is one of those tragedies that mar life. Now I want you all to know that my family and John's family have been to church together this morning, and we shared in holy communion." Then he called John next to him, put his arm around his shoulders and continued: "This boy's future depends much on us. My family has forgiven John because we love him. Marie would want that. And I ask you to love and forgive him, too." Marie's brother knew that the blood of Christ was shed for John. And for himself. And for each and every one of us.

He believed that "the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him" (v. 12).

He discovered that only one thing could lead to forgiveness and salvation. Something that is pervasive and persistent. Something that is always near you, on your lips and in your heart.
Not a glut of guilt but a flood of forgiveness.

If you have a sense of guilt, or if you are the reason for someone elses sense of guilt, it is time to open your heart and your lips, and seek the one who needs release from that burden of the sense of guilt. It is time to allow that person to be set free from a burden that needs release. No one can "make you feel guilty". Your feelings are based on your attitude, and your own actions. No one can make you stand up and cheer if you are feeling too tired. I'll give you that one!

Let us pray........

Let me know what you think. The church Email is: SLUMC@att.net, Phone: 480.895.8766