Sermon

Sin as learning disability?

Scripture Text:

Matthew 6:1-6,16-21

Sermon:

In our culture we say that a hypocrite is a person who says one thing but does another.  Some people say that they can’t be Christian because Christians are all hypocrites.  They may be right. Because we can’t possibly live up to the teachings and life of Jesus Christ.  We will never be able to be as righteous and loving as we want to be.  We will never be able to put all our energies toward solving the problems of poverty and injustice.

So, yes, we may be hypocrites.

Although that’s not exactly what the hypocrites in the gospel of Matthew for today are about.  They’re not saying one thing and doing another; they’re showing off. They make sure everyone else knows that they’re making a gift to charity. They pray in public so everyone can see them praying. They fast and screw up their faces and whine about it so everyone knows that they’re fasting.

The reason we wear ashes on our foreheads for Ash Wednesday is not to show off.

On Ash Wednesday, I think we are marked with ashes to remind us that we’re hypocrites in that first way.  We’re never going to be able to be wholly good people.  These ashes remind us that although Jesus tells us again and again that the kingdom of God is just within our reach… we’ll never quite grasp it, at least not firmly enough to make it real every day of our lives.   The ashes remind us, too, that our lives are limited; our time and influence here on earth are only temporary.

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return” are the words that we hear in this service.   We came from dust, we are dust, and we will turn into dust again.  We’re not made of anything more special than dirt and rocks!  We’re not able to be completely good.  And we’re going to die and turn back into dust one day.

Maybe we’re all very morbid to come to church to hear that.

But I wonder if it might be a relief to hear that said to us.  It actually feels very comforting to me; I hear God saying to each of us: “You were made out of dust; you were not made to be flawless.  You can’t save the world, you can’t have a perfect life, and you can’t do everything right.  And one day, you will depart this earth and return to the dust you came from.”  It’s all right.  When we feel like we can’t do it all, it’s because we can’t.

For some reason, this reminds me of learning disabilities, which were something just being learned about when I was growing up.

When I was in middle school, my dad once came home from the barber and told us about the man who’d cut his hair that day – a new barber at the shop.  This man had dropped out of high school because school was incredibly hard for him and because everyone kept telling him that he was stupid.  He could never quite follow things and he’d never been able to learn how to read.  He dropped out of high school and went to barber school instead.  He got married and had children.  Then one year, one of his kids’ teachers helped him figure out that he had dyslexia.

He wasn’t stupid.  He wasn’t lazy.  He had a learning disability: his brain turned letters and numbers backwards or moved them all over the page…  but once he knew that about himself, he could try again.  So, in middle age, he learned to read; a tutor helped him learn to work around his dyslexia.  Now, he didn’t become a great reader – he wasn’t reading War and Peace in his spare time — but he knew there was a reason why he hadn’t been able to before and that the reason wasn’t his own lack of trying.

Sin is like dyslexia.  We aren’t able to be completely good because we human beings have a learning disability in goodness.

The world we live in is mostly broken because we’re all dyslexic, and it’s not easy for us to see the kingdom of God that’s all around us – our brains seem to miss that, or to reverse things all around or move other things upside-down.

We can try as hard as we want, and still, things won’t be totally right.  We’re made of dust!

Now, the grace of God means that God loves us anyway, that God values us anyway, that God believes we have something to offer the world and to each other, anyway.

So, being made of dust doesn’t mean we should stop trying or just give up.  The ashes are not an excuse to say, “I can’t make poverty go away. I can’t love my neighbor perfectly. I can’t be a perfect parent. I can’t forgive totally. I can’t stop my bad habits. I’m going to sit on my couch and just eat bonbons.”

The barber learned to read because once he became aware of his disability and he could see that he didn’t have to beat himself up for his failures in school, he had the courage and self-discipline to find a tutor who could show him how to work around his disability.

If we believe that God loves us just the way we are;  we can also find that same courage and self-discipline to work around our human disability of sin and mortality.

Where can you look for tutors who can help you? Many places probably – God has probably put certain people or books or groups in your life for that reason. You can also look through prayer, reading scripture, coming to worship, or by giving up a bad habit for Lent.

Ashes mean:  we are disabled by sin, but we are forgiven, that we’re going to die, but that we’re loved utterly and completely by God.  We will never be everything we hope to be, and yet, we can still be whole, Christian people, beloved by God.

Amen.

Uploaded on March 10, 2011 in by RevHeidi

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