Never Again

In today's reading from Genesis, God promised that "never again" would the creation be destroyed to eliminate the sin which infects it.  In today's gospel reading from Mark, we see how far God was willing to go to keep his promise and "remember the covenant" made to us.  In Christ, God was willing even to suffer temptation, and eventually death, in order to destroy death and the only power sin had over us.  Now, in our baptisms, we are free to live in community with our fellow sinners who stand redeemed by the same grace and love of God.

1^st Sunday in Lent (Year B) – Sunday, February 26, 2012

Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church, Lancaster, PA

Texts: Genesis 9:8-17, Mark 1:9-15

If you've ever worked in healthcare, or even just spent much time in a hospital, you know that infection is a serious matter. Everything that happens in hospitals, we hope at least, is done with the priority of preventing infection in mind. When infections go unnoticed, when they get in too deep, not even our powerful antibiotics can stop them from taking lives. Prevention and vigilance are our weapons against it.

The Bible is, in many ways, the story of God's struggle against the infection of sin. For two chapters in Genesis all seems well in this holy experiment called creation. The beautiful order of God's universe is set out in chapter one, and in chapter two we hear of the garden where God thinks of everything and provides for every human need. God and the humans are humming along in perfect harmony until the two humans decided they needed more. Paradise wasn't good enough, no, they had to be in control. They said, “God, you know, we got this. Why don't you take a coffee break?” And with the crunch of the fruit in their teeth the infection of sin spread into the hearts of the first two human beings, and then into all the earth.

God had a world-wide pandemic of sin to deal with. What was God going to do? Sin was an airborne infection, spreading like wildfire. There would be no containing it. No antibiotics, no targeted radiation, no fine surgical work would be able to eliminate this infection that was destroying the world God made. So what do you do with something that is hopelessly infected? You cut it out, you eliminate it. The problem was that, in this case, only one household, Noah and his family, weren't infected. So everyone else had to go. God opened the flood gates and hit the reset button on humanity. God eliminated the problem.

If our faith is about us trying to eliminate the sin infection on our own, I think we'll find we have a flood-sized problem on our hands. We may find we have to cut out more than we can stand. We may have to eliminate the infection entirely. We can so easily see the symptoms in others. History shows religion that demands that we eliminate sin where we find it has always resulted in terrible bloodshed. Christians accused Jews and Muslims of the ultimate sin of denying Christ, but inquisitions and crusades couldn't get rid of them all. Catholics tried to wipe out Protestants and Protestants did their best to return the favor. Today we condemn genocide, but if we can isolate a certain smaller group of people, a group of people on the margins of society, we can cut them out and cleanse ourselves of their sin a whole lot easier. In some places today, people are still being killed for whatever sin others find in them. In our society, our antibiotic is exclusion, that is, cutting people out of communities, cutting them off from the rest of society, however possible. Sometimes we try to eliminate the infection from ourselves. We cut out one thing or another, we try the latest treatment. We scrub and scrub to get it all out, we take every precaution, but it doesn't take a blood sample or a microscope to find out that every time we turn around, the infection of sin is back even stronger.

God figured this out. God realized that sin was in deep. God realized sin was a terminal illness. There's no doubt that if God had kept wiping out sin along with its hosts, he would have gotten it all. But God realized that to stamp out sin forever, all God's beloved children would have to be eliminated. We can't get into God's mind, but from the scripture we heard today, it seems as though this was a cost God was not willing to bear. We hear that God said, “never again.” “I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood.” Never again will I eliminate the infected along with the infection. Don't worry, God says, “I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.” 

 

It's not as if God gave up the fight against sin. But God changed. God limited God's options. God decided he was going to have to work with his infected children some other way. God would have to find a way to free them of it. The Old Testament is the story of all the ways God tried to get rid of sin – he chose a person, Abraham, who would become a nation, Israel. God gave them laws, and judges, and kings, and prophets, led them to freedom and even dwelled among God's people in the temple. But Israel, let alone the rest of the people on the earth, would not accept the instruction. They would not listen. They would not obey. Their infection was too strong.

Brothers and sisters, we're here because God didn't give up. God remembered his words, “never again.” God remembered his covenant with us, and fulfilled it in the most surprising way. Instead of quarantining God's self from the infection, instead of wiping it out from afar, God got closer to his sick, infected children than they thought possible. The Word became flesh. The Son came to earth. God was born as a human child. God became exposed to the most contagious and deadly infection of them all, that is, our sin. God crossed the line. God allowed God's self to be vulnerable, susceptible to the symptoms of our infection.

In the story we heard today from Mark, we see the consequences of God's decision to “never again” strike us down from above. We see God alone, in the wilderness, facing the devil's temptations just as we face them every day. Mark reveals that Jesus faced what we face, that for forty days in the wilderness Jesus faced what Israel had faced in the wilderness for forty years. In Jesus of Nazareth, God allowed God's self to be laughed at, ridiculed, mocked, rejected, betrayed, tried and beaten. We did not change – we were and are as infected as ever, and the prognosis remained terminal. But God the Son, Jesus Christ, went to the cross, and took upon himself the terminal prognosis of all the human beings who have ever or will ever live. God the Son, Jesus Christ, died, but death could not contain him. God's power to give life was and is greater than sin's power to take it. 

 

In our baptism, we become a part of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We die the only death that will ever matter – we die to being in charge of ourselves, we die to trying to eliminate the infection on our own, we die to trying to eradicate it in others. We are raised to new life, free from the power of sin. The infection remains in our earthly lives, but it no longer controls our future. By facing sin's final symptom – death – and thereby destroying death, God stripped sin of its power over us. For us and for the world, sin is no longer a terminal illness. Sin tries to tempt us, to trick us, that it still has power. It tries to tell us that the sin in us or someone else is fatal. It tries to make us hurt or exclude each other, it tells us we must protect ourselves from infection. It tries to make us afraid. But because of Christ, we've been set free from all that. If you look inside yourselves, you will find sin everywhere you look. You will find it in others. You will see it in our life together – in every newspaper headline. But because of Christ, you don't have to be afraid. You don't have to isolate yourself. You don't have to spend your life trying to scrub it off. You are free right now to let Christ, the great physician, handle infection control for every person, and even for you. You are free in Christ to get close, to break through the quarantines we set up, to stand together with your fellow redeemed sinners and shout with your lives that all power and glory belongs to God alone! You are free to give thanks with your whole life that God has remembered his covenant, that God will “never again” destroy the earth, that God has conquered death and given you new life! In Christ, you are healed, now and for all time. Amen.