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Summary
During the offertory this past weekend, we offered our sins. To facilitate that, I asked each worshipper to fill out a “My Life Scorecard.” In the left-hand column, we listed our goals. In the middle column, we judged ourselves and gave ourselves a grade. In the right-hand column, we plotted our success on a target that was printed on each card, revealing the size of our sin.
“Sin” in the New Testament is usually the Greek word “hamartia,” which is normally defined as “missing the mark,” as in “not hitting the bull’s-eye” in a target.
As we filled out the scorecard, the worship team played that old song “The Lord of the Dance.” We realized that it’s hard to dance while filling out the “My Life Scorecard,” and of course it’s hard to fill out the card while dancing. With our goals, we become a “law unto ourselves.” The Law is like dance steps, and as long as you’re practicing dance steps, you’re not dancing.
At the end of Deuteronomy, Moses reiterates the Law and says, “Choose Life.” God then informs Moses that Israel will choose death, for their hearts are not yet circumcised that they might hear the music. And then God teaches Moses a song (Deut. 32) that Israel is to sing in the day that they realize that they have failed. It’s how the dry bones (circumcised of flesh) rise from the ground and dance into the Promised Land clothed in new flesh (Ez. 37). The last line of the song goes like this: “The Lord atones for his people and his land.”
As we’ve learned in John chapter one, all creation is like a dance — the manifestation of the Logos of God. In John 1:14, we learned that the Logos became flesh and tabernacled among us and in us. Jesus lived his life like a dance — the Lord of the Dance.
John 1:29, “The next day, [John the Baptist] saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, ‘Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.’”
If that’s true, it would be the best possible news, and the story of how it happens would be impossible to tell without dancing. And yet, when we tell it in church, it reminds me of medication commercials — you know the kind, where they dance around singing, and under the music a lawyer starts talking: “…Low blood sugar, and a life-threatening bacterial infection between and around the anus and genitals can occur… etc. etc.”
So, we dance and sing, “The Word of God is really swell, the little lamb with a big story to tell,” and the priests and pastors start explaining, “By ‘take away the sin of the world,’ only ‘some of the sin of some of the world’ is indicated. Serious side effects include: most of humanity suffering endless torment, a heart hardened to the sufferings of your neighbor, and crippling anxiety, for one must save himself from God, our Savior, etc. etc.”
And yet it’s quite clear: “The Lamb of God… takes away the sin of the world.”
He didn’t say “sins,” but “the sin.” It sounds like all sin is really one sin, and the entire world committed this sin, which clearly implies that you committed this sin, and this sin was not committed directly against you. “Against you and you only, oh God, have I sinned” (Psalm 51). David talks as if it was God’s Life in Uriah that he took and God’s Goodness in Bathsheba that he raped.
To sin (hamartia) is “to miss the mark,” which also implies that something is missing in the marksman. Sin is a description of who “I am not”: a great marksman. Adam lacked faith in the Word of Love (“Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin”) and so took the Life of the Word of Love on the tree in the garden and crucified the Good. “God alone is good,” said God in the flesh, that is Jesus. The earth shook, the sun went black, and the moon turned to blood. Every sin is that sin.
And how did Satan tempt “The Adam” (humanity), and how did Satan tempt you in the beginning and every day since? He whispered something like this, “Take knowledge of the Good to make yourself like God. And dying you won’t die. God lied. Save yourself. Create yourself. Exalt yourself.” And isn’t that what we do every time we try to justify ourselves with obedience to laws in the power of our own flesh — every time we fill out a “My Life Scorecard”?
YIKES! Did I make people commit original sin at the offertory? No; I just helped people confess that we commit it all the time. We didn’t just miss the mark; we crucified Him. Just by thinking “my life,” as in not “our life,” we implicate ourselves as having taken “The Life” on the tree. We literally think our sin — exalting ourselves — is “my life,” when, in fact, it’s my/our coffin.
So, if the Lamb takes away the “My Life Scorecard” (my arrogant ego), we think He’s taking our life, when in fact, we’re already dead, and He’s setting us free.
In Revelation 6, at the opening of the sixth seal, Sixth Day of Creation, sixth hour of the day, the earth shakes, the sun goes black, the moon turns to blood, and “The great ones… and everyone” hide in the earth (Hades), “calling to the mountains and rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne and (or ‘that is’) the wrath of the Lamb.’” They’re not hiding from the Lion but the slaughtered Lamb. Just His presence obliterates their “My Life Scorecards.” And what is “The wrath of the Lamb”? It’s blood that’s wine and wine that’s blood, poured from bowls at the edge of the Heavenly Sanctuary upon the face of the earth. It’s what we drink; it’s Grace.
We like the idea that He takes away what we imagine to be the punishment for sin, but not “the sin”; we’re addicted to the sin. We think it’s “life;” I think it’s “my life.”
“He fixes everything.” Sounds great until I realize that I fix nothing. “He forgives everything.” Sounds great until I realize that everything is forgiven, and so I must forgive or be trapped in outer darkness. “I don’t owe God anything.” Sounds great until I realize, no one owes me anything, and everything is Grace. “Everything is Grace.” Sounds great unless I think I have exalted myself.
“The Word of God is really swell, the little Lamb with the big story to tell.” Maybe the lawyer who speaks under the music is me because I’ve listened to a lie in the garden of my own soul? It’s not that Grace doesn’t work all that well, but that it works entirely well. It takes away the sin of the world, and I think I am the sin of the world. But that is who I am not. I am not a self-made man. I am infinitely better.
“Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the World.” “Behold!” It’s the first thing that we’re commanded to do in the Gospel of John. And apart from Him, we can do nothing. He is the Passover Lamb (“To be taken from the sheep or the goats”). He is the Life in every sacrifice. He is the Scapegoat in the wilderness, for He is Faith in us who brings us home and causes us to choose the Good in Freedom which is Love. He is Love in human flesh from the bosom of the Father, the heart of God.
The Sacrificial system was all about blood flow, and the throne of God in the Sanctuary of the Temple of God was like the beating heart of God. We take His Life on the tree, and He delivers up His Spirit on the tree. And that Spirit descends into us in the wilderness and draws us back to the tree, where He tramples the grapes of wrath and turns us all into vessels of Mercy, circulating His own Life in the Dance of Love, which is his very own body and the New Creation.
The sin of Adam is the revelation of who I am not; it’s the scorecard.
The Righteousness of Christ is who it is that I, actually, am: the Second Adam.
You might protest: “But it’s my desires, hopes, and dreams that are listed on the scorecard.”
That’s correct. And I bet that God gave you those desires, hopes, and dreams. He is the one that planted the tree in the garden and predestined you to be filled with the Good and the Life. Remember Abraham, Sarah, Jacob, Joseph, John, Paul, Peter, and basically every character in the Bible? God literally gives them the dream of “their life” (their particular life: “Father of nations, Blessed to be a blessing, They will all bow down to you Joseph, The Rock”). They all sin by trying to create their own life, fail at creating their own life, and then God makes their life, and it’s better than anything they could have imagined because now they’re dancing — they’re Grace-full.
At Communion, we smeared wine on our scorecards, the wrath of the lamb from a bowl at the front of the church. So that the next time we would try to Judge ourselves, save ourselves, redeem ourselves, and justify ourselves, we would see that we’ve already been judged, saved, redeemed, and justified . . . and start dancing.
One day, God in Christ Jesus will fulfill all your dreams. Revelation 21:5, The Lamb of God on the Throne of God who is the Word of God, says, “Behold I make all things New.” That includes you and your dreams. He is all your dreams. Apart from Him you can do nothing, but with Him, you will do all things, and you will be dancing. By faith — by abiding with Him in the sanctuary of your own soul — it begins here, and it’s always now. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for” in you: Christ in you.
“Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the World.” Just look at Him . . . on the throne of God: Body Broken and Blood Shed. Is this not the most obvious lesson? He’s not exalting Himself; He’s constantly humbling Himself. It’s the only way to join a dance; it’s the first step and only step; it’s losing your life and finding it, all in one moment. It’s Life, eternal . . . your life, without sin.