Archery Anyone?

14 Pentecost, Cp19, September 15, 2019
Exodus 32:7-14   Psalm 51:1-11
1 Timothy 1:12-17  Luke 15:1-10
Lectionary Link

One of the consistent criticisms of Jesus found in the Gospels is that he "ate with tax collectors and sinners."  For us, we are probably okay with Jesus eating with sinners; we'd rather he not befriend IRS agents.  Like Jesus most of us could also say that some of our best friends are sinners.

Is St. Paul a friend of ours?  He referred to himself as the foremost of sinners.  Probably because he was guilty of accessory to the murder of St. Stephen and he was never prosecuted except when he was struck blind in a mystical experience with the Risen Christ who kind of said to Paul.  “Stop it.  You are persecuting me and you are violating the Torah too like that big commandment about not killing.

The criticisms of Jesus as presented in the Gospel perhaps reveals how great Law can become petty legalism in the practice of religious communities.  Mountains can be made mole hills and mole hills can be made into mountains.

It's like the neighborhood association not caring about speeding your car through the neighborhood where children play but you better clean up after your dog or there severe consequences.

How did the friends of Jesus come to be designated as a special category of sinners?  In the great biblical story of creation, didn't everyone get designated as sinner from birth because of the great Fall?

Let's talk about sin and sinners for while and to do so I ask "Archery anyone?"

How is sin related to archery?

In the Hebrew Scriptures the Hebrew word for sin is "chet" which literally means missing the mark.  When that word was translated into Greek, in the Greek version of the Hebrew Scriptures, called the Septuagint, the word used was a term from archery, "hamartia" which means missing the mark.  If an archer missed the target, he sinned.

Today, you and I are invited to ponder the meaning of sin and sinner.  In general, we might say sin is doing something bad and sinners is what we call ourselves because we know that we can be sinful in our behaviors.

The philosopher Nietzsche wrote a book about the genealogy or beginning of morals.  He concluded that good and bad essentially were defined by people who had the power to define what good and bad were.  This went directly against people of faith who believed that there is some transcendent or divine reference to establish what is good.

In the Hebrew Scriptures, the Torah was the document to provide a basis for what was to be regarded as good and bad.  Moses found the people deeply in need of moral education.  He could not leave the children of Israel alone.   Moses realized that his days were numbered; he would not always be with the children of Israel.  “What would the children of Israel do when I’m not here to tell them what to do?”  God called him up the mountain to provide him with a legal document, a constitution for Israel to have when the  “living lawman” would no longer be in their midst.  And what happened while he was gone?  The children got restless and got the pro-tem leaders to build a golden calf to worship.  Moses came down and got so angry that he destroyed the first copy of the commandments.   So he had to return up the mountain to get another copy (long be Xerox).

The Bible uses archery metaphors to talk about sin.  Sin, in both, Biblical Hebrew and Greek meaning to miss the mark, miss the target.  It is the human condition to be born as bad archers; we are born to miss the mark because in our tendency toward “self guided” ego states, we tend to act toward the targets of self interest and immediate desire gratification.  We are born as the “gang that can’t shoot straight,” because we take on the habits of all that is imperfect and misguided in our environments we end up being sinners who sin.

If we are supposed to be moral archers in our life, what do we need? We need to know what we are aiming at and we need to need archer instruction to teach us how to shoot.

The word Torah, in Hebrew, comes from the root meaning, “to take aim.” The word for sin in Hebrew and in the Greek translation of the Hebrew means to miss the mark; to miss the target.  So the Torah was the needed correction for people who were born to be bad archers.

The giving of the Torah to Moses was first to show the people of Israel the target of our moral aim. We are to love the one God with all our hearts, souls and minds. We do this by not having other idols or competitors for God. We do this by honoring God ‘s name with non-hypocritical behaviors, we do this by giving Sabbath time worship as proof of the God priority in our lives. And the rest of the commandments are about how to love our neighbors, honoring parents, valuing life, marriage relationships, truth, property and learning impulse control.

When Jesus came into his ministry in Palestine, he found that the great principles of the Torah had become in practice the division of people into the good guys and the bad guys. Sin and sinners had become redefined. Sinners were those people who could not maintain all of the ritual purity requirements of the religious authorities. This meant that vast numbers of the populace were automatically defined as sinner with no possible way of becoming ritually pure righteous people of faith. The religious leader had the authority to define what was sin and who were the sinners.

They were deeply disturbed that Jesus was hanging out with people who they defined as sinners.

Jesus told parables about being lost. What is good about being lost? If your child is lost at the mall, why is it good that he or she is lost? Because it means mom and dad deeply love and value one who is lost they expend great effort to find the lost one.

Jesus was convicting the religious leaders about not valuing lots of people. And if Jews who did not keep all of the ritual rules of Judaism were lost, what did that mean for the Gentiles?

Jesus declared people as lost because he said that God deeply valued everyone that God wanted to find everyone And if we are found by God, it means we can be on God’s archery team. And if we are on God’s archery team, we can appreciate sin as a positive concept.

If sin means that as moral archers we are missing the target, how that that be good? Well, Jesus gave us an impossible target to aim at. He said that we had to be perfect as the Father in heaven is perfect. That means that we are always going to be missing the target. But what is important? It is important that we know that we are aiming in the right direction.  Being in the archery team of Jesus means that we have a moral exemplar to teach us how and where to shoot. It means we have the “swooshing” energy of the Holy Spirit to carry our moral arrows in the direction of God who is perfect. And though we never quite reach the target, we are assured that the grace of Christ always makes up the difference between us and God, and so we live for another day on the archery team of Jesus learning to shoot at the right target in the right moral direction of God unsurpassable perfection.

Jesus came to say that there is no longer religious people and then there are sinners, you know those other people who are different than I am in the way I describe correct behaviors. We are all sinners, “the gang that can’t shoot straight,” so we need to accept the graceful intervention of the Greatest Archer of all, Jesus Christ, who is better than the legendary William Tell who had to shoot the apple on top of his son’s head.

Today, Jesus says to us, “you are valued people whom I am found.    To us who have been born as the “gang that couldn’t shoot straight,” Jesus say, “ Archery anyone?  Come and join my archery team.  Come and sin under my guidance, that is, come and make sure that when you miss you are missing towards being better today that you were yesterday because you have set as your target loving God with all your soul and might. And we are never done doing that and we are never good enough in doing this to judge other people as “unacceptable lost” sinners.

May the grace of Christ, enlighten our sinning today as we continue to miss the mark, but at least be aiming towards God’s perfection. Amen.