The Problem with Being OK (Lent 5B)

Let me apologize for my failure to write this week.  I was busy with book releases, and had little time to write.  I did read and think, however!

One of the great problems for Christianity in the world tdoay is our general feeling of being OK.  Forgiveness is hard in a world where we find it easy to excuse wrongdoing.  In the ancient world there was a sense of fear of the gods, of the results of doing wrong.  Being ceremonially unclean was an important issue and one which one would feel compelled to rectify.  It was nothing like the sort of feeling we get when we skip church too many times.

In our texts we see the contrast multiple times.  In Jeremiah 31:31-34 we see the mystery of a broken covenant that can be replaced by a new and better one.  Broken covenants often resulted in death.  While a new covernant might be made with a country by a conqueror, it was likely that the old king and/or those responsible for breaking the covenant would be dead.  We don’t take breaking agreements that seriously today.

Psalm 51 is a prayer of penitence that reflects a deep sense of guilt.  No excuses, no shifting of the blame.  The Psalmist is definitely not OK, and he knows it.  True penitence results from a very real understanding and feeling that something has gone very wrong and must be corrected.

When we look at the texts of redemption in the New Testament, we will fail to see them in all their beauty unless we recover the sense of wrongness from which we are to be redeemed.

The prolem with being OK is that you don’t think anything needs to be fixed.