On the church
liturgical calendar, we are in the season of “Lent,” a six-week period of
spiritual preparation, leading up to the celebration of Easter and the
Resurrection of Christ. This spiritual preparation
includes prayer, confession, repentance, atonement, and self-denial. The focus
is on our mortality and our need for forgiveness and healing. We believe that this six-week focus will help
us to re-calibrate our lives and more closely align ourselves with the ministry
and example of Jesus Christ—before we celebrate his Easter Resurrection.
During this Lenten
season, our worship themes and proclamations are focusing on “Reclaiming Sin: A Biblical Guide.” I believe that popular culture has largely
abandoned the concept of sin. Instead,
of taking responsibility for our sinful actions, popular culture encourages us
to try and explain away sin as not really our fault. In this series, we are reflecting upon
stories of persons in the Bible who sinned; the consequences of that sin, and
whether they received forgiveness and reconciliation with God. We will discover that recognizing and
acknowledging sin is a first and essential step towards eventually achieving
forgiveness, healing, and reconciliation.
I believe that it
is important that we begin by defining what “sin” actually is. For our focus during Lent, we have defined as
the rupture of relationships. Each of us
lives in an interconnected web of relationships which include our relationship
with the Divine, our relationships with other persons, our relationship with
Creation, and our relationship with ourselves.
Let me provide some examples of how sin can occur in each of these four
types of relationship.
1.
Relationship with the Divine. God seeks to be in a loving relationship with
each individual person. In our
relationship with the Divine, we must put God at the center of our lives. We sin when we displace God and seek to put
ourselves at the center, pushing God to the margin of our lives.
2.
Relationship with Others. God intends for us to be in community with
other people. We have a responsibility
to care for others, insuring that they have a fair share of resources and
opportunities to flourish in their lives.
We sin when we privilege our interests and ourselves over the common
good. For instance, greed is sinful
because it subverts the common good so that we can have more stuff. This ruptures our relationship with
others.
3.
Relationship with the
Environment, God’s Good Creation.
We humans are created in the image of God, which entails special
privileges and responsibilities. One of
our most important responsibilities is to be good stewards of God’s Creation. As stewards, we have a special relationship
with the Creation, and we have a special responsibility to care for it. When we fail to be good stewards of Creation
by polluting or degrading the environment, then we are guilty of a two-fold rupture. First, our relationship with Creation is
broken and this is sinful. But,
secondly, since we are created in the image of God, our relationship with God
is damaged, as well.
4.
Relationship with Ourselves. We have a special relationship with
ourselves. When we fail to take care of
our physical bodies; or, when we fail to be true to ourselves in what we say or
what we do, then we rupture our relationship with ourselves and this is also sinful.
This Sunday, March 4th, our
scriptural focus will be the story of Ananias and Sapphira from the Acts of the
Apostles 5:1-11. Ananias and Sapphira were a married couple,
who became some of the first Christian converts and joined the Church in
Jerusalem. They were fairly affluent
because they were landowners. Although
not required by the Apostles, many of the early converts to Christianity sold
all of their possessions and donated the proceeds to the church. In effect, many of the first Christians
elected to live together in a commune, sharing all of their material resources together,
as any had need. For instance, just
before the story of Ananias and Sapphira, the writer of Acts includes the story
of Barnabas, who “sold a field that belonged to him, then brought the money,
and laid it at the apostles’ feet” (Acts 4:37).
Ananias and Sapphira belonged to the
same social class as Barnabas. However,
unlike Barnabas, they did not give the full proceeds from a sale of property to
the Apostles. Instead, they held back
some money, while giving the remainder of the sale to the church. Yet, in donating their money to the church,
they claimed that it was the entire amount of the property’s sale price. That is, they lied to the members of this
early Christian commune about how much they earned from the sale of their
property.
After some time,
the Apostle Peter discovers their deception and confronts Ananias. In this confrontation, Peter points out that
Ananias and Sapphira were not required to sell their property; neither were
they required to give the proceeds from the sale to the church. Instead, the offering to the community of
faith should have been free and un-coerced.
Yet, Ananias and Sapphira gave the contribution grudgingly. And, they lied about how much money they had
from the sale. Then, Peter tells Ananias,
“You did not lie to us but to God!” (Acts 5:4d). Peter’s harsh judgment
terrifies Ananias and he falls down, dead.
Several hours
later, Sapphira returns to the commune.
She is unaware that her husband has died. Peter asks Sapphira about the sale of the
property, giving her a chance to confess her sin and set the record
straight. Instead, Sapphira decides to
continue the deception—not realizing that Peter already knows the truth about
the sale price. Once again, when Peter
confronts her about the deception, Sapphira drops dead on the spot.
Whenever I read
the story of Ananias and Sapphira, I find it very easy to get sidetracked by
their sudden deaths at the feet of Peter.
What sort of power did Peter wield over the early church? Were Ananias and Sapphira just so overcome by
guilt and fear that they simply collapsed and died? While it is easy to get sidetracked by their
deaths, I believe that it is important to set aside the how of their deaths occurred
and focus on what the story of Ananias and Sapphira can tell us about sin and
discipleship.
Remembering that
we have defined sin as the rupturing and damaging of various relationships,
Ananias and Sapphira damaged two different relationships when they held back
some of the money from their land sale.
First, the couple were greedy. As
we observed above, greed is sinful because it subverts the common good in our
relationships with others. We are greedy
when we decide to privilege our desires and pleasures over the legitimate needs
of other persons. As noted above, from a
Christian perspective each of us has a responsibility to insure that others
have a fair share of resources and opportunities so that they can flourish. When we hoard money and possessions, after
our own basic needs have been met, then we are greedy. This is exactly what Ananias and Sapphira
did, when they held back some of the sale proceeds from the community. In so doing, they fractured their
relationship with other members of the church, and this was sinful.
As bad as their
greed was, their second sin was even worse.
As Peter points out, Ananias and Sapphira also tried to deceive God and
their fellow Christians. They lied to
Peter and the others about the actual sale price of the property. Trust is an essential component in our
relationships with God and other people.
If I cannot trust someone, then it is hard to be in a mutual
relationship of love and support—until trust is built up. In their deceit, the greedy couple undermined
the trust and thereby ruptured their relationship with the Divine and the other
members of their community.
The story of Ananias
and Sapphira has some important lessons to teach twenty-first century
Christians about our relationships with the Divine and others. This story should cause us to pause and
wonder whether we are guilty of the same sort of greed and deceit that informed
their decisions. Are we, perhaps, not
generous enough towards others who are struggling just to have the basic
necessities in life? In what ways do we
sometimes try to deceive God? And, what
can we learn about our own contributions to the church or to charities? Ananias and Sapphira gave out of a sense of
duty and obligation, rather than giving out of love and joy. In so doing, they prevented themselves from
experiencing the Presence of the Divine in their act of giving.
If you live in the Lincoln area and do not have a place of
worship, then I invite you to come and join us at Christ United Methodist
Church this Sunday, March 4th, as we explore what we can learn from the story
of Ananias and Sapphira. Christ UMC is
located at 4530 “A” Street in Lincoln, Nebraska. Our two traditional Worship Services are at
8:30 and 11:00 on Sunday morning.
Come, join us. Everyone is welcome and accepted because God
loves us all.
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