Proper 24 – Series B
This sermon wants to connect the brokenness of our lives to the work of Christ. Too often we only imagine that our problem with God is a moral problem. We do have a moral problem, but it is so much more. When the Bible talks about “Sin,” prescribing sin offerings and even suggesting that Jesus is the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world, it often does not talk morals. The sin offering was offered after childbirth, recovery from a skin disease, at harvest time, or after a funeral. These were all moments when the brokenness of our lives and this world bit hard. The woman who gave birth did so in pain. The man who harvested his fields did so by the sweat of his brow. A funeral reminds us most starkly of our broken bodies.
This sermon presumes that it would be a perfectly good confession of sin to sit in the pew and say, “I am exhausted.” Not that there is a moral problem with exhaustion, but because we were not meant to be living lives of exhaustion. God did not intend that for us. Sin has done that to us.
Jesus, without taking on sin’s taint, bore sin’s burden. He did not sin, but he knew suffering, exhaustion, and cruel death. He knows our weaknesses, not in some academic sense, but personally and firsthand. He has endured them.
