Grant us so to die daily to sin, that we may evermore live with (You) … Collect for Easter Sunday
I don’t talk a lot about sin. It’s all around us, like the air we breathe. There’s no getting away from it. There’s no avoiding it. Even if we deny there is such a thing as sin, the fact is we see the evidence of people behaving badly, and so even if we want to give it a different name (like shortcomings, mistakes, or bad choices), it covers the same territory.
One reason I don’t talk about sin is I worry the minute someone hears the word, they will close their ears and stop listening. No one likes to feel like they’re being judged, or the person talking to them is a narrow minded nincompoop or holier-than-thou prig (all of which may be true anyway).
No, I just think that when we start with what’s wrong, we’ve started from the wrong spot. Yes, we are all sinners. We all fall short of the mark, whether it is the mark we set for ourselves or a mark some one or some One sets for us. Even the Rifleman, Lucas McCain missed every now and again; there’s no shame in that. The only real question we have to answer is what we can do to improve, and then do that.
A friend of mine is a bow hunter, and he went out to a ranch to get in some target practice before hunting season. The first few arrows never came close to where he wanted them to go. Not being an archer, I asked him if his bow had adjustable sights. He just looked at me a moment and said, “No, I just need the target to cooperate and move to where the arrows go.” The rancher said, “No, you just need a larger target (and maybe a bigger barn to shoot at).”
As a photographer, I’ll often move my subject if I don’t like the background or lighting, but I’ve found that mountains, trees, and barns often don’t move. When that happens, I need to find a different time of day or a different place to stand to get the shot I want.
Sin isn’t anything to be ashamed of. Our task is to identify what we’re looking for, what we’re aiming at, and discerning if we need to adjust our sights, move our subject, secure a bigger target, or find a better time and place from which to take our shot.
Sin, for me, you see, isn’t breaking a commandment as much as it is a distortion of who we are meant to be. It’s losing focus on the big picture: Loving God with all we’ve got; loving our neighbor (even when it is nigh on impossible – for with God, all things are possible), and loving ourselves the way God loves us – for God thinks we were worth the ultimate sacrifice.
This week marks the ending of Lent and our final approach to Easter. Once again we will peer into an empty tomb and some stranger in white will say, “The One you are looking for is not here. Go home, for he promised to meet you there.”
All of a sudden, we who tramped around during our Lenten pilgrimage will discover we’re home, and God is there waiting for us. God will have put on an apron and invited us in to feast because, well frankly, God doesn’t look at either sin or sinner. God looks at us. We don’t need to move. God moves. We don’t need to be perfect (or ashamed), for God is perfect and perfectly happy to have us join in the festivities.
The only sin God cares about is God’s SINcere love for each and every one of us. Enjoy your Easter and bask in the warmth of God’s love. Remember, God hung up the bow – God is no longer using us for target practice, and that is good news for everyone here in this, our valley!
Keith Axberg writes on matters concerning life and faith. Author of newly released: Who the Blazes is Jesus? Good News for a Vulgar World (available exclusively through Amazon in Print and e-book)
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