William H. Willimon - "Ordinary Sin" (March 28, 1999)
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Transcript
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- | Peter remembered the saying of Jesus, | 0:09 |
before the cock crows, | 0:13 | |
you will deny me three times, | 0:16 | |
and he wept bitterly. | 0:20 | |
Measured by mere numbers, | 0:25 | |
the final solution of the Nazis | 0:29 | |
was not unique. | 0:32 | |
Stalin killed many more people, | 0:35 | |
so did Mao. | 0:38 | |
The Hutus slaughtered a larger | 0:41 | |
proportion of their population, | 0:45 | |
and in a shorter amount of time, | 0:47 | |
and so did the Khmer Rouge. | 0:50 | |
The British wiped out | 0:53 | |
the entire Tasmanian race, | 0:57 | |
not a one is left today. | 0:59 | |
And where are the Apaches, | 1:02 | |
and the Sioux? | 1:04 | |
And yet, I suppose the Nazis | 1:07 | |
have a special place in our imagination, | 1:10 | |
in our characterization of evil. | 1:16 | |
If for no other reason than that | 1:19 | |
they were so ordinary. | 1:22 | |
In the words of Hannah Arendt, | 1:26 | |
"The evil committed by the Nazis, | 1:28 | |
was so banal". | 1:31 | |
They weren't some kind of frenzied, | 1:35 | |
spontaneous mob. | 1:38 | |
The Nazis arose from of the best educated, | 1:40 | |
most enlightenment-saturated, modern of modern nations. | 1:44 | |
I remind you that they received their first, | 1:51 | |
and best affirmation | 1:54 | |
within the universities. | 1:57 | |
The Nazis killed 6 million Jews, | 2:01 | |
but this century's wars, | 2:05 | |
and utopian governmental programs | 2:07 | |
have murdered at least 150 million people. | 2:11 | |
And paradoxically, | 2:18 | |
I wonder if that is one the reasons | 2:21 | |
why we are so drawn this week | 2:24 | |
to this story of Simon Peter. | 2:28 | |
Simon is like us. | 2:32 | |
One fine day, he was the top student | 2:36 | |
in Christology 101. | 2:39 | |
That day at Caesarea Philippi, | 2:41 | |
when Jesus had a pop quiz, | 2:44 | |
he turned to his disciples and said, | 2:46 | |
"Who do people say that I am?". | 2:49 | |
And Peter's hand was the first to go up. | 2:51 | |
"You are the Christ, the Son of God". | 2:54 | |
And Jesus told his disciples, | 2:56 | |
"I wish all of you could be | 2:58 | |
"as sharp as Simon". | 2:59 | |
And we don't like him for that, | 3:05 | |
because who loves a nerdy little teacher's pet? | 3:06 | |
(audience laughing) | 3:09 | |
But this week comes the final. | 3:12 | |
And the one giving the test this week is not Jesus, | 3:17 | |
it's the maid in the courtyard, | 3:21 | |
and Simon blows that one big. | 3:24 | |
"Weren't you with the Galilean?", she said. | 3:30 | |
And Peter responds, "By God, I don't even know the man". | 3:36 | |
That's some denial from | 3:44 | |
a man who Jesus once called the "rock", | 3:46 | |
the "premier disciple". | 3:50 | |
Surely when Jesus nicknamed him, the "rock" | 3:52 | |
he was speaking as a joke. | 3:55 | |
And we love Peter for that, | 4:00 | |
because... | 4:02 | |
Maybe it reminds us of our brash declarations of faith, | 4:04 | |
which are also often a joke. | 4:09 | |
"I believe", we say as we're sitting here in church. | 4:14 | |
But then on Saturday night in the dorm, | 4:18 | |
when there's a price to pay, | 4:21 | |
we say... | 4:25 | |
"You know, I really-- | 4:27 | |
"I didn't know him that well, actually". | 4:30 | |
Some of you are ancient enough | 4:37 | |
to remember Lloyd Douglas's novel, The Robe. | 4:39 | |
Don Schriver reminded me how there's | 4:43 | |
that scene on Good Friday evening, | 4:45 | |
after the crucifixion, | 4:47 | |
after the evil has been done, | 4:48 | |
and it finds Peter and a Roman centurion in conversation. | 4:50 | |
And the centurion hangs his head and says, | 4:55 | |
"I crucified him". | 4:59 | |
But Peter hangs his head even lower and says, | 5:03 | |
"Oh, but I... | 5:07 | |
"I betrayed him". | 5:10 | |
And we can identify with that, | 5:14 | |
because for most of us, | 5:16 | |
the level of our betrayal | 5:19 | |
hardly ever gets up to the level of a cross. | 5:21 | |
More likely it's the kind of ordinary, | 5:25 | |
everyday, denial. | 5:27 | |
In ordinary, everyday situations, | 5:32 | |
"I didn't really know him". | 5:35 | |
50 years ago, Eric Auerbach wrote | 5:41 | |
Mimesis: The Representation | 5:45 | |
of Reality in Western Literature. | 5:47 | |
In Mimesis, Auerbach contrasts | 5:51 | |
the picture of humanity | 5:55 | |
which appears in the Roman and Greek plays and poetry, | 5:57 | |
with that that you find in the Bible, | 6:03 | |
in the New Testaments. | 6:06 | |
In the Classics, ordinary folk almost never appear. | 6:08 | |
Greek drama is about kings and queens. | 6:13 | |
Auerbach noted that if an ordinary person appears | 6:16 | |
in a Greek drama, it's only for comic relief, | 6:18 | |
or as some kind of buffoon. | 6:22 | |
But, in Simon Peter, in this story | 6:26 | |
we just read for our Scripture, | 6:28 | |
Auerbach finds... | 6:30 | |
a much thicker description | 6:33 | |
of what it means to be a person. | 6:35 | |
Of Peter, and that exchange | 6:39 | |
with the woman in the courtyard, | 6:42 | |
Auerbach says, | 6:44 | |
"Here's a story that takes place | 6:45 | |
"entirely among everyday men and women, commonpeople. | 6:47 | |
"In classical literature, this could only be | 6:52 | |
"a farce, or a comedy. | 6:55 | |
"And yet here, it is neither. | 6:57 | |
"Why does it arouse our most serious, | 7:00 | |
"and most significant sympathy? | 7:05 | |
"Because, it portrays something which neither | 7:08 | |
"the poets nor the historians | 7:11 | |
"of antiquity set out to portray, | 7:12 | |
"the birth of a spiritual movement | 7:16 | |
"among common people. | 7:18 | |
"It is concerned with the same question, | 7:21 | |
"the same conflict with which every human being | 7:23 | |
"is basically confronted, which therefore remains | 7:26 | |
"infinite and eternally pending. | 7:29 | |
"What we see is a world which on one hand, | 7:32 | |
"is entirely real and so average, | 7:34 | |
"you can identify the place, | 7:38 | |
"the time, and the circumstances, | 7:39 | |
"but which on the other hand, | 7:42 | |
"in the background it's being | 7:44 | |
"shaken to its very foundations. | 7:45 | |
"Its being transformed and renewed | 7:47 | |
"before our very eyes. | 7:49 | |
"It's what happens when | 7:54 | |
"the extraordinary touches the ordinary." | 7:55 | |
I love the way Alcoholics Anonymous | 8:01 | |
teaches its members to introduce themselves. | 8:03 | |
"I am Jane. | 8:08 | |
"I am a alcoholic, | 8:10 | |
"but by the help of a higher power, | 8:12 | |
"a recovering one." | 8:15 | |
And I think we love Peter for embodying that. | 8:19 | |
For we are, most of us, | 8:22 | |
quite ordinary in our sin. | 8:23 | |
And no redemption would do people | 8:27 | |
like us any good, | 8:29 | |
if it first required us to be pure, or heroic. | 8:31 | |
We need a higher power willing to get | 8:37 | |
its hands dirty in the ordinary. | 8:40 | |
And maybe the first step towards redemption, | 8:45 | |
the first fumbling steps, | 8:47 | |
is the one AA encourages members to make, | 8:50 | |
it's just simple honesty. | 8:53 | |
Some of you were here on the first Sunday of Lent. | 8:57 | |
We had a lively guest preacher | 9:02 | |
tell us all we're sinners. | 9:03 | |
The whole lot of us. | 9:06 | |
And now it's been pretty much like that | 9:08 | |
for the last 40 days of Lent. | 9:10 | |
When the church has been using its | 9:13 | |
various means, the hymns, | 9:15 | |
the prayers, the Scripture, | 9:16 | |
to try to get each of us to say, | 9:19 | |
"I'm Will, and I'm a sinner, | 9:22 | |
"but by the help of a higher power, | 9:25 | |
"a recovering one." | 9:29 | |
The Church always told us that Simon Peter | 9:32 | |
was the foundation of the Church, | 9:35 | |
the first disciple. | 9:38 | |
The Pope in Rome says that | 9:39 | |
he sits in direct apostolic succession from Peter. | 9:41 | |
I don't know if the Pope is so closely connected to Peter, | 9:48 | |
but we sure are, | 9:52 | |
we ordinary, unspectacular, betrayers. | 9:54 | |
If I were writing the Gospels, | 10:02 | |
I think I would have been tempted | 10:05 | |
to kinda clean up... | 10:06 | |
The rock of the Church, | 10:09 | |
the spiritual great-great-great-grandaddy of everybody here. | 10:12 | |
But no, the Bible is truthful and honest. | 10:17 | |
It tells the whole story of who we are. | 10:23 | |
And it's so hard | 10:29 | |
to tell the whole story. | 10:32 | |
It's a child saying to me the other day... | 10:36 | |
that he was thinking about | 10:41 | |
going to school that morning- an 8 year old- | 10:42 | |
and said, "I just hate it when we start out the day | 10:45 | |
"with self-esteem class." | 10:50 | |
(audience laughing) | 10:53 | |
See he's smarter than the school system. | 10:55 | |
Back in the 1960s when the Civil Rights Movement | 11:00 | |
began to impact the American South, | 11:04 | |
and some of us, for the first time, | 11:06 | |
began honestly to review our past. | 11:08 | |
To admit that our parents, and our grandparents, | 11:12 | |
did wrong in participating in, | 11:15 | |
and benefiting from, | 11:18 | |
racial segregation. | 11:20 | |
I remember Governor Ross Barnett of Mississippi complained, | 11:23 | |
that of all the critics of the south, | 11:28 | |
the worst were the southern-born critics. | 11:30 | |
He said, "You people are thieves, | 11:33 | |
"you are stealing the dignity, and the honor | 11:36 | |
"of your dear, dead ancestors". | 11:39 | |
And in a way, Governor Barnett was right. | 11:42 | |
Honest Christians... | 11:47 | |
look back at our past, | 11:50 | |
and beg, by the grace of God, | 11:52 | |
to tell our story, | 11:54 | |
in ways that deprive our ancestors | 11:56 | |
of their alleged innocence. | 12:00 | |
There is no greater sin, we feel, | 12:04 | |
for a people to claim that we are without sin. | 12:06 | |
That we are innocent. | 12:10 | |
That there is no blood on our hands. | 12:12 | |
It is a great spiritual feat, | 12:15 | |
to be able to tell our story | 12:17 | |
- | our story- | 12:20 |
and to be able to tell it straight. | 12:21 | |
Thus, as Peter scurries into the night, | 12:25 | |
cursing Jesus, all of us betrayers, | 12:29 | |
oh, we love him, | 12:34 | |
and we thank God that the Church | 12:36 | |
had the guts to leave his story | 12:38 | |
in our history. | 12:42 | |
Dietrich Bonhoeffer paid the ultimate price | 12:47 | |
for his opposition to the Nazis, | 12:50 | |
and we rightly celebrate his witness, | 12:53 | |
we rightly call Bonhoeffer a saint. | 12:55 | |
But, maybe even more we ought to celebrate a poem | 12:59 | |
that Bonhoeffer wrote | 13:03 | |
one dark night, in 1944, in a Nazi prison cell, | 13:05 | |
a poem he called Night Thoughts in Tegel Prison, | 13:09 | |
in which this saint confessed honestly | 13:14 | |
his own complicity in the sin of Nazism. | 13:18 | |
He wrote, "We saw the lie raise its head, | 13:26 | |
"and we did not honor the truth. | 13:29 | |
"We saw brethren in direst need, | 13:33 | |
"but we feared only our own death. | 13:36 | |
"We come before thee as men, | 13:41 | |
"as confessors of our... | 13:44 | |
"sin." | 13:48 | |
It takes someone extraordinary | 13:51 | |
to confess such ordinary sin. | 13:54 | |
Daniel Goldhagen's book Hitler's Willing Executioners | 14:01 | |
struck me as a compelling book. | 14:07 | |
It's a chilling account of how ordinary, everyday Germans | 14:10 | |
participated in Hitler's final solution | 14:14 | |
of the Jewish problem. | 14:17 | |
But it was only later that I realized | 14:21 | |
what was wrong with Daniel Goldhagen's book. | 14:23 | |
And what was wrong was Goldhagen's attribution | 14:27 | |
of the massacre of the Jews | 14:30 | |
to something that was sort of peculiar in the Germans. | 14:33 | |
He calls it their "special brand of eliminationist | 14:37 | |
Anti-Semitism" that infected German culture, | 14:41 | |
in a peculiar, particular way. | 14:45 | |
Oh, if there were only some special, | 14:49 | |
peculiar, attribution of evil. | 14:51 | |
Then the evil that would be deeply regrettable, | 14:57 | |
but the main thing is it wouldn't be ours. | 15:00 | |
It would be like, peculiar to the Germans. | 15:05 | |
It would be their particular problem. | 15:09 | |
No. | 15:13 | |
The horror was that the Germans were so normal. | 15:15 | |
The evil was so horribly, undeniably... | 15:19 | |
Typical. | 15:23 | |
And we're so ordinary. | 15:24 | |
And our sin in so typical. | 15:27 | |
I've always thought that one of the most chilling phrases | 15:32 | |
was that term "domestic violence". | 15:35 | |
It's the domesticity of our evil that is so chilling. | 15:41 | |
And, this week... | 15:48 | |
this week we wonder, | 15:52 | |
what would God do with sinners | 15:53 | |
whose betrayal is so utterly ordinary? | 15:56 | |
What shall become of us | 16:02 | |
in our ordinary sin? | 16:04 | |
Jesus was being led away to torture, | 16:10 | |
and to death, | 16:15 | |
as his own twelve best friends | 16:17 | |
scurried into the night. | 16:19 | |
You remember what he said to them? | 16:23 | |
"I give to you, as my Father has given to me, a kingdom". | 16:26 | |
To the very ones who had forsaken him, and denied him | 16:34 | |
and betrayed him, in their oh-so-ordinary sin. | 16:38 | |
He promises... | 16:43 | |
to us... | 16:46 | |
"I go now, to prepare a kingdom..." | 16:48 | |
For you. | 16:53 | |
Amen. | 16:56 |
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