Denial to despair, or action? (21 Feb, Ash Wednesday).

Lord, warm our hearts that we may overflow with love for You and stir our spirits into action that we may live life Your way; in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Denial to despair with little or nothing in between. Al Gore, in his documentary film An Inconvenient Truth - that several of us were watching in the Forum theatre this time last week! – said this is the reaction many folk have to climate change. First, they deny that climate change is happening or that human beings have any significant impact on the environment. Then, when the facts are staring them in the face in an undeniable way, they move into a state of despair. ‘It’s all so awful; it’s too late; we won’t try to do anything because we can’t possibly make things better now’. Denial to despair – leaving no room for the possibility of taking action. Denial and despair both engender apathy and inertia: I don’t need to do anything – because nothing’s wrong. I can’t do anything – cause everything’s wrong.

But it’s not only with regard to issues like global warming that so many people respond like this. Whether it’s the environment, or homelessness, famine and poverty, or the AIDS pandemic, or economic and political corruption, or drug and alcohol addiction, or sexual immorality and perversion – whatever the issue, so often the reaction is the same: Denial to despair with little or nothing in between.

That threatened to be case for the adulterous woman in this evening’s Gospel reading. Until caught in the act, she herself was probably in denial about the sinful nature of the relationship she was enjoying with a man who was not her husband, and who was almost certainly the husband of another woman. ‘But we love each other’, they would have whispered; how can it be wrong to express our love? Yet such so-called expressions of love are wrong; to say otherwise is to deny the pain caused to others and the ultimately destructive effect of their behaviour upon the ‘lovers’ themselves.

Jesus did not deny the sinfulness of sex outside marriage. But nor did Jesus collude with the attempt made by the teachers of the law and the Pharisees to thrust this woman from denial to despair. As in all His encounters with hurt and hurting humanity, Jesus hates the sin but loves the sinner. And in this love there is hope. There is the possibility for change, repentance, renewal, redemption, transformation. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

What Jesus said to that woman, He says to each one of us. We may not share the same areas of weakness and failure; the sins that we deny might not be adultery or murder or stealing or other explicit contraventions of the Ten Commandments. But all have sinned; all fall short of the ideal that God’s love sets before us. And if we persist in denial, if we say that we have no sin, then we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. The New Testament leaves us with no excuse for denying that sin is sin. That even those things we brush aside as innocent expressions of our particular personality type are a real ‘missing of the mark’ in terms of the way God calls His people to live. Here’s a random selection of biblical rules that many church-goers ignore much of the time: Never take private vengeance. Be positively kind to one another. Offer hospitality. Give away money cheerfully. Don’t be anxious. Always be thankful. Say ‘No’ to desires – including sexual desires – which are impure and unholy. Learn how to cope with your anger. Always forgive.

If we really have a relationship of love with God through Jesus Christ and have begun to experience for ourselves the victory of His Cross and the power of His Spirit - then we will move out of our state of denial, not into despair, but into a new way of life, the way of reconciliation and true righteousness. St Paul put it like this in tonight’s epistle: “We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God”. (2 Cor. 5: 20-21)

Or as Bishop Tom Wright says in his book, Simply Christian, the death of Jesus “has accomplished our forgiveness; very well, we must then pass that on to one another. We must become, must be known as, the people who don’t hold grudges, who don’t sulk. We must be the people who know how to say ‘Sorry’, and who know what to do when other people say it to us... From the very beginning, in Jesus’ own teaching, it is clear that people who are called to be agents of God’s healing love, putting the world to rights, are themselves to be people whose own lives are put to rights by the same healing love. The messengers must model the message.” (p. 196, 174)

And that is what Lent is all about, isn’t it? Neither denying our sin, nor despairing over it. But owning up to our weakness, remembering that ‘we are but dust’; then turning away from sin and being faithful to Christ. Neither being complacent nor apathetic about the state of the world or our own personal state; but rediscovering in Christ the God-given energy to do something about it.

The God who counts the birds of the air and the hairs of our heads, sees every little thing that we do, or don’t do. So, if you haven’t yet bought and started to use your Love Life Live Lent booklet, please do that today. And pass a copy on to someone else outside the church. This initiative has been commended by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York. They say: ‘With God’s help we can change the world for good a little bit every day … Together we can build better and more generous communities. Together we can lighten our load on the planet. Together we can show God’s love when we do these things.’

Denial to despair with little or nothing in between? Please God, may that not be so with us.

Mary Barr