What you don't really want to hear!

I used part of a previously published sermon that I did not actually preach to form the heart of this homily.

Homily preached at Eltham College on Friday 1st May 2009 based on St John v.1-16

Why is it that Christians are unpopular?

For one thing, they go on and on about
trying to lead good lives
and pointing out
everybody’s sins!

When was the last time you sinned?

[PAUSE]

That’s seems rather a rude question
to be asked first thing
on a Friday morning.

How did it make you feel?

Uncomfortable?

Nervous?

Did you find it a laughable question?

Let’s face it.

You don’t want to be told that you’re a sinner.

Nobody does.

The question of sin is not exactly
an issue which makes
Christianity popular.

The idea of sin seems
outdated these days,
just an irrelevance.

What do you think of when you hear the word?

Something rude?

Is saying the word “bum” in chapel a sin?

Is eating too much a sin?

Can a cream bun really be sinful to eat?

Is sin what an MP does
when he runs off with his secretary?

Or is sin just a Christian’s way
of telling everyone to obey
an arbitrary and pointless set of rules
in order to spoil everybody’s fun?

If that’s the image of sin
that we Christians send out,
then we are ourselves failing
to understand what God wants for us,
and that’s a sin too.

[PAUSE]

Whether we are Christian or not,
there is a sense of
right and wrong in all of us
– within limits!


We would agree that deliberately
wiring someone to
the Van der Graaf generator in the physics lab
is clearly a case of murder
and is something
morally and ethically wrong.


Yet, is it murder
to allow a terminally ill patient to die
by turning off their life support machine?

Further than that,
is failing to hold the door open
for someone a sin?

[PAUSE]

Robert forgets to hold the door open for Nancy
and it hits her,
taking the skin off her elbow.

This puts her in a bad mood
so she shouts at her secretary Jean for being,
in her words,
“bone idle”.

Jean takes Nancy’s criticisms seriously
and tries to compensate
by working harder.



She spends more and more time at the office
trying to sort out what to do,
so much so that she forgets
about the needs of her twins
Bradley and Britney.

They crave attention from their mother
and, without her guidance,
start to wander away
from the straight and narrow.

Britney,
in order to numb the pain
of being ignored by her mother,
and finding her life meaningless,
gets hooked on heroine.
Later, she is invited to an eighteenth birthday party
where she meets Taylor.

They get pally.

She introduces Taylor to heroine.

He gets hooked, loses his job
and gets kicked out of his home.

One day, he leaves his filthy squat
lined with dirty newspapers
and even filthier hypodermic needles,
in a frantic search for money
to stop the pain in his stomach.

On his way he meets Kyle.

Kyle refuses to give him any money,
so Taylor stabs him dead with his rusty penknife.

He takes from Kyle a grand total of £3.87.

Not enough.Of course, Taylor is caught
and convicted of Kyle’s murder.

Who is responsible for Kyle’s death?

Taylor? Britney? Jean? Nancy? Robert?

Do you honestly have an answer for that?

[PAUSE]

It’s being said that
it is the greed of bankers
which is to blame for the Credit Crunch.

Do you really agree with that?

But then how did the greed get there in the first place?

[PAUSE]

It could be said that sin is nothing more
than finding different ways of being selfish.

This is a vast subject
and cannot be dealt with
in a couple of sentences.

But even a little selfishness,
as we have seen,
contributes to the suffering of other people.

[PAUSE]

So it seems that sin is serious.

Worse still, we are all guilty of being selfish.

Yes, you knew it didn’t you?

Christians always tell you that you’re a sinner,
but that doesn’t mean that you’re evil.

Actually,
quite the reverse,
it means you are no better,
nor worse than anyone else.

To realise that we all
contribute to the sufferings of others
is a brave thought,
and to seek to stop that suffering
is an even braver thought.

How?


Well it’s all contained in the phrase
“Love your neighbour as yourself”.

To love our neighbours
means that in addition to enjoying our lives,
we need to include
the interests and needs of others
and build them into our enjoyment of life.

To love ourselves means that
we have to see ourselves as we really are,
warts’n’all
and to be happy with who we really are.

[PAUSE]

Yes, we do need to recognise that
sin is a serious business,
that we do fall short in what we do,
but that is not the end of the story.



However far downhill
you think this world is heading
with corporate greed,
teenage pregnancy,
famine and poverty in the third world,
or even vile acts of genocide,
it really doesn’t have to be this way.

We can start
by following the example
of St Francis of Assisi
and look for the image of God
in every single person around us
and treating them
with compassion and interest.

Christianity is all about realising
that we need the direction of God
to prevent sin from destroying us,
and to trust Him to show us how
to limit the effects of Evil.


God has no desire to see us destroyed by sin,
and that’s why He sent Jesus Christ
to die and rise again.

What God offers all of us
is the opportunity to transform the World
into something brilliant,
free from sin and suffering.

After all, that is the message of Easter.

Isn’t it?