"Center of the Storm"

It is easy to see the sin in others – the father who shouts abuse and throws things; the opponent who doesn’t see the world the way you do; but also the neighbor who spreads malicious gossip; or the dictator who makes war against the innocent. It is harder to admit the sin in ourselves. But it is there. In everyone.

[1] “Christ shows himself to Thomas” by Rowan and Irene LeCompte, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN

1 John 1:1-2:2

April 7, 2024

Dr. Todd R. Wright

Most weeks when I stride to the baptismal font to lead the confession, I invoke a phrase:

“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”

As you have just heard, it comes from 1 John. It is not just liturgical language; it is a response to a rift in his worshipping community. Easter may have been last week on our calendar; and the resurrection of Christ may be something that the people in John’s community “have heard, seen with our eyes, looked at and touched with our hands” but that has not banished sin from their experience. The pain of relationships broken by sinful acts is not a theory for them; it is real!

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Somewhere Carol Howard Merritt is nodding her head. She starts her most recent book with a story:[2]

“I paced the small room, wringing my hands … What should I do? I breathed the question through choppy gasps as I listened to the human explosion down the hall.

Fear choked me as I heard the voices of my mother and father, rising and cresting, the angry rhythm. I tried to figure out my strategy if it became dangerous. I could barge into the living room with some sort of demand and start redirecting my father’s rage toward me. I regularly used that trick because my dad had never hit me, and so the interruption would confuse his fury …

What should I do?

I thought about my bank account. I started it as soon as I could and filled it with as much exit money as I could gather. My classmates spent their money at the mall, but I’d been saving mine for a while. I had to have a plan. I had older friends who would take me in when it got too bad, but I didn’t think I could leave yet. I didn’t have enough money and I had too much time before college. No one had enough patience for somebody else’s teenager invading her space for three years.

What should I do?”

Carol paced back and forth until she was dizzy.

She considered running over to the neighbors, but her mom warned her they would call child protective services if she kept going to them for help.

She resolved that if she were to leave it would be on her terms. But what were her terms?

Again and again she asked, “What should I do?” but no answer appeared.

Her family was Christian. She had gone to church for help before, but the church’s teaching – that the father was the head of the household and they needed to submit to him – didn’t help.

“The voices grew louder. Dishes banged and clattered.” Carol writes, “I stood next to my door and tried to figure out if it was from jerky, angry handling, or throwing. I didn’t think he was throwing things. Not yet.”

“What should I do?” became a chant, the soundtrack to her pacing, a plea for wisdom.

But then things took a small but significant turn. She added an address to her pleading: “O God, what should I do?” It became a prayer, and as she describes it:

“As if I entered the eye of a tropical storm, peace blew its hot, humid breath. My feet stilled. I looked down at my hands and they were motionless too. I inhaled smooth, deep air. I no longer heard the fighting. I wasn’t sure it had actually stopped, but I didn’t hear it any longer. Instead, this overwhelming sense that it would be okay – that I would be okay – flooded me. God surrounded and embraced me.”

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Carol’s experience parallels that of John’s community.

They are in the center of a storm: the harsh words of an argument about the nature of Jesus

had fractured their harmony and left people asking, “What should we do?”

John begins his answer where Carol finished her story: don’t rely on human wisdom; seek God.

If you ground yourself in what God has done, what you have seen and heard, peace will come.

Part of that grounding has to center around recognizing, and confessing, sin.

Of course, that is where things get tricky!

It is easy to see the sin in others – the father who shouts abuse and throws things; the opponent who doesn’t see the world the way you do; but also the neighbor who spreads malicious gossip; or the dictator who makes war against the innocent.

It is harder to admit the sin in ourselves. But it is there. In everyone.

The winds this past week brought down mighty trees and tore off shingles. Sin can be dramatic like that! The winds also littered the ground with twigs and loosened siding. Maybe your sins are more like that. But sin, like the wind, does not leave anything untouched.

So John writes to his broken community: “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves.”

That deception is insidious. It’s not just that we believe we are innocent and guilt only stains others – it’s that we fail to see our need for what Christ did on the cross.

But with the next breath, John reminds them that if they confess, God is faithful to forgive!

God will not leave them blown about by the storm winds of sin; God will wash the sin away.

That’s good news for John’s community, and for us, and for Carol.

Carol closes her story saying, “As I breathed in my complicated peace, I prayed that God would protect my mother. I asked that God would give me compassion for my father. I prayed for the courage to forgive. [I]t wasn’t as if the peace lulled me into complacency and made me want to stay in the house. Instead, it gave me a connection to God and strength to leave when I could.”

John’s words are just that complicated and powerful and beautiful. They speak to us in the midst of the storm and push us forward to follow in Christ’s path of compassion and courage, of faithfulness and forgiveness, of peace and power. May you experience John’s words in all their fullness! Amen

[1] “Christ shows himself to Thomas” by Rowan and Irene LeCompte, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN

[2] Here and following, from Healing Spiritual Wounds: reconnecting with a loving God after experiencing a hurtful church, chapter 1