Last week, Doug challenged us to appreciate the miracle of God choosing us.  And so it seems fitting that this week’s scripture passages would include Psalm 89, which focuses on David, the chosen one, God’s anointed, the one who gets it all started for us.  After all, this is the David whose lineage brings us Jesus.  Verses 20 to 37, which Joyce read, describes in intimate detail that special relationship between God and David, and David’s descendants.  Prominent as David is, it strikes me that he presents a real problem for us. It would seem fair to assume that God’s chosen servant would be the most upstanding role model, but this guy is a big-time sinner.  King David makes Bill Clinton look like a choir boy. This is the man who bedded Bathsheba and then had her husband killed in order to cover his sinful deed. Here is a man whose prominence in the Bible is perhaps second only to Jesus, whose sins would land him on death row in most states in the union.  What are we to make of this?  There’s clearly something going on here with David’s sin and God’s justice that just doesn’t add up, and it bears further exploration.  So for the next few minutes we’ll take a closer look at sin and how David and his descendant Jesus reshape our understanding of it.

No matter how hard we try to be grounded in scripture, the way we define sin has an undeniable cultural component.  The Middle Ages gave us the seven deadly sins--anger, sloth, envy, greed, gluttony, lechery and pride.  But a twentieth century reinterpretation of those sins goes something like this:  Anger is something you shouldn’t repress, sloth is leisure, envy is keeping up with the Joneses, greed is capitalism or the profit motive, gluttony is all-you-can-eat or maybe a potluck, lechery is a healthy sex drive and pride is just healthy self-esteem.  We live in an era which is more likely to ascribe human failings to low self-esteem and a deprived childhood than to some innate human tendency toward sin.  Even in the church, we’re tempted to define sin in self-serving ways. We define sin to exclude all the behaviors and activities we don’t want to confront in people, or have simply become numbed to by the constant Hollywood sleaze barrage.  The alternate temptation is to define sin in ways that exclude the people you don’t want in your church.  There’s my sin, and then there’s the serious sin that we certainly cannot tolerate in the church.  Neither view is very satisfying.  The first leads us either to a kind of moral numbness and decay, or leaves us burdened with unresolved guilt from the sins we’ve tolerated.  The second leaves us open to charges of hypocrisy and drives away people who might otherwise grow into Christ’s likeness.  The truth, I believe, lies somewhere else.

The Greek word for sin in the New Testament, Hamartia, literally means ‘to miss the mark.’  This is great way to understand sin.  Jesus calls us to perfection--that’s the mark--and when we fall short of that perfection, that’s sin.  Simple as that.  Of course the problem is that throughout the gospels, Jesus makes it clear that none of us will enter the kingdom by our own righteousness.  Like the Pharisee, we are easily tempted to pray, “Lord I thank you that I’m not like other people: lawyers, radio preachers, hawks, gays, democrats, or even like this tax collector. “ and forget that it was the tax collector who went home justified because he asked for mercy.  How hard it is for us to believe, that after a lifetime of striving towards Christian perfection, sinfulness links us with unredeemed humanity, rather than distinguishes us from it.  To use a very imperfect analogy:  if you looked into an ant hill, among the millions of ants, there might be ants that were vastly morally superior to other ants in the hill, but you, caring far less about ant culture and morés than most ants, would be inclined to treat them more or less equally.  Unless of course one bit you...

While I wouldn’t want to push that analogy too hard, I think it’s quite useful for quashing any inflated sense of our moral superiority.  What separates us from unredeemed humanity is not our goodness, but our relationship--our special relationship with God, a relationship which finds it roots in Abraham and David.

This is where today’s scripture passages begin to kick in.  The Psalm 89 passage talks about the special relationship between God and David, and the language used here is significant.  Down in verse 26, David is to refer to God as Father, and in verse 27 God makes David firstborn.  This is family language and it’s quite rare to use family language to describe our relationship with God in the Old Testament.  It’s just found in the royal Psalms and a few isolated occurrences in Isaiah and Jeremiah.  Twice in the ensuing verses the Psalmist uses the word steadfast love, faithfulness and covenant--words we tend to associate with marriage.  The language is intimate and familial.  Furthermore, in verse 30 and following, we see that this special relationship passes to the heirs of David.  And if they sin?  God punishes them but does not withdraw that special relationship. So it was with David too. In the section that follows, David is indeed feeling the rod.  He goes so far as to claim God has broken his covenant with him.  But history bears out that God was faithful to David. Just as parents punish their children’s bad behavior or let them suffer the consequences of their decisions, God dealt with David’s sin, but maintained that special familial relationship.

Now if all this warm, family language in our reading is just for David and his line, then it’s pretty irrelevant to us.  However, the New Testament makes it very clear that through Jesus, we are heirs to the covenants God made with David and Abraham.  As Joyce read in Ephesians 2:19 “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.” When it comes to sin, this is really good news for us.  If God were only a God of justice we’re in big trouble. In court of law, you get what’s coming to you, or sometimes you just plain get it.  But the New Testament makes it clear that we are part of God’s family.  Listen to this passage from Galatians 4:3 and following:
Gal. 4:3-7   While we were minors, we were enslaved to the elemental spirits of the world. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children. And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God. “

I’m sure I heard these passages as a child, but it’s only recently that I’ve begun to view them as integral to my understanding of how Jesus saves me.  I don’t really understand blood atonement.  It’s is a prominent metaphor for understanding Jesus death and I accept it as a mystery, but I don’t particularly find it compelling or helpful.  On the other hand, the imagery in Galatians 4:3-7 is vivid for me.  To be transformed from a slave under law and judgment into an heir in God’s household is a very tangible salvation. There, God meets my imperfection with correction, teaching, love, grace and relationship--not as before, with judgment.

Jesus has accomplished this transformation in our relationship to God through his life and death. But too often we don’t live as though we actually believe it, and our life together often doesn’t reflect its reality.  So, one challenge I leave with you today, is in the coming week think about this question:  “How would church be different if our primary metaphor for understanding church and our life together were ‘family’, rather than ‘religious institution’ or ’social club’?” Think about that and see how it squares with what I’ve come up with.

First, let’s talk a bit about families.  The defining element of families is relationships:  covenant relationships as between husband and wife, and blood or adoptive relationships as between parent and child.  These relationships shape us, who we are, how we think and feel and act.  These family relationships are primary agents of change and growth.  Healthy relationships are characterized by love, support and acceptance, while unhealthy relationship put the whole family system at risk.

Mapping this onto the church, relationships would become primary for us, relationship with God and relationship with others.  I think this actually more radical than it sounds.  There are plenty of churches out there where God is worshipped, but not known, feared but not loved.   At their worst, such churches become purveyors of empty, worthless religion, rather than the good news of Christ.

When family becomes our metaphor for understanding church, our relationships are characterized by love and acceptance, rather than judgment, because that is what we have experienced in our relationship with God.

When church becomes family, sin is taken seriously because of its destructive power, but the restoring power of Spirit-filled relationships is also taken seriously.  After all, it’s hard to influence people you don’t know and it’s hard to restore people you’ve kicked out of the church.

When church becomes family, we recognize the place and contribution of each imperfect individual.  The God who worked through a big-time sinner like David has things for us to do, too.

Earlier I asked you to think about how the church would be different if ‘family’ were the primary metaphor for understanding our life together.  There’s a corollary to that question and it is “How would our families be different if ‘grace’ rather than ‘judgment’ infused our relationships?”
(pause)

Late one night a few weeks ago, Patsy and I sat out on her parents back porch with her sister and brother-in-law, talking about, of all things, the atonement. Over the years, our relationship has at times been strained by our differences, and it appeared that this might be yet another divisive discussion which just served to illustrate how far apart we really were.  Instead, something miraculous happened.  As we talked, I felt our relationship being transformed by acceptance of one another. It was an acceptance that grew out of an appreciation for the depth of one another’s faith, and out of a realization that over the years, our relationship had changed all of us and brought us closer together.  Grace, extended to us first by God and now to each other, was healing our relationship.

Living in families is not particularly easy.  It takes time, energy, wit, wisdom, and perseverence, and sometimes it still doesn’t work.  I harbor no illusions that applying a familial model to church would be any easier.  But rather I am drawn by a vision, a vision where our churches become like families and our families become channels of God’s grace.  In such a church, the power of sin is broken and salvation becomes a present reality.  Every so often, I get a glimpse of that church and it’s a compelling sight.  That’s what keeps me going.

I want to close by again reading Ephesians 2:13-20, which proclaims the Christ through whom we have received the promises to Abraham and David, and through whom we have become heirs in the household of God.

But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it. So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone.

Grace and Peace to you all.  Amen