I am not one to drop names of course (that would be quite wrong), but as I was saying to the Archbishop of Canterbury only a couple of weeks ago: ‘Life can be a bit challenging sometimes’. The Archbishop and I agreed that stuff happens and not all of it is good.

It is a sad fact that not absolutely everyone is wonderful company absolutely all the time. It is a sad and even more awkward fact that I, myself, am not quite as nice, or quite as effective, as I really should be. I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but you are not perfect and neither am I. It is uncomfortable and we do not want to dwell on this. You not being utterly wonderful all day every day, and me not being quite and entirely nice are things that neither of us really want to talk about very much. Good gracious, I am English and I am an Anglican. I am hardly going to talk about awkward truths, am I? I am much more likely to stare at my shoes, or talk about the weather.

It is one of the great achievements of the Church of England that we so often manage to steer the conversation away from the tricky things we do not want to discuss. This afternoon though I have to break the rules. This is the season of Lent, the time to think about sin and repentance and that rather forces the issue. Tonight, on the Fifth Sunday of Lent, we have just heard the fifth chapter of Romans. St Paul who was not English and not a typical Anglican, talks about sin. He names it:

Sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned. (Romans 5: 12)

This is St Paul telling us the way things are. Sin is our reality; we have to talk about sin.

The trouble is that, after dodging this conversation for so long, the moment I start talking about sin, all of us shift in our seats. The novelist Francis Spufford makes just that point: ‘If I say the word sin to you, I’m basically stuffed’.[i] He goes on to explain that if we talk about sin we sound as though we have a problem with people enjoying themselves, a problem with joy, a problem with bodies, a problem with sex. We have always had this problem. Spufford quotes William Blake (his memorial is in the Abbey) who grumbled about the clergy—people like me—forever ruining things, rushing into the green place where people play and building a chapel

And tomb stones where flowers should be:
And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars, my joys & desires.

It is hard to talk about sin. Yet, this afternoon we have Paul insisting that this is the language we must use. The letter to the Romans is all about sin. More than three quarters of Paul’s references to sin come in this letter. Listen to this:

There is no one who is righteous, not even one; there is no one who has understanding, there is no one who seeks God. (Romans 3: 10–11)

Or Romans 5 in another translation:

No one exempt from either sin or death.

Let’s be clear: Paul believes that we—you and me—are fundamentally corrupt. Not weak, not careless, nor accident prone, but corrupt. The word he uses for sin—harmatia—means essentially that we will forever take aim and then we will forever miss the mark. Paul thinks we have a fatal flaw, bred in the bone. He thinks we mess up always and forever.

That is a startling thing to say. We don’t talk that way. We prefer not to think that we will fail. We now read books that tell us how to succeed. Personally, I have some sympathy for Quentin Crisp, who said, ‘If at first you don’t succeed, failure maybe your style’. But the books on the shelf say ‘failure is not an option’; aspire, perspire, succeed.

St Paul disagrees: we will miss the mark.

This afternoon we should pause and think about that. Let me bring in one more poet, Philip Larkin (also memorialised here). Now Larkin was another man who was not over fond of priests, but he knew about missing the mark. Larkin knew about failure. He wrote a poem called As Bad as a Mile about throwing an apple core, badly:

Watching the shied core
Striking the basket, skidding across the floor,
Shows less and less of luck, and more and more

Of failure spreading back up the arm
Earlier and earlier, the unraised hand calm,
The apple unbitten in the palm.

There is Larkin telling us about the failure that spreads up the arm, the failure that is lurking there in your hand, even before you have bitten the apple. Larkin does not use the word sin, he never would, but it is exactly what Paul is talking about. Paul knows, as I do, that we mess things up, you are not always wonderful and neither am I. The Archbishop knows it too—even Justin Welby is not perfect. We mess things up, we miss the mark. We mess up, and we need saving. That is the message of Romans. That is all Paul is saying. That is precisely what Paul is saying. Paul tells us that we all share in an identity. We all mess up. It is common to us even if we do not like to admit it. We share a tendency and Paul calls that tendency sin.

Then Paul tells us that Christ takes that human identity and makes it behave differently. When we keep company with ourselves and one another we keep company in sin. But when we keep company with Christ, we meet a different way of being human. We were all alike in failure, but in Christ we can all be alike in hope.

Just as one man's trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man's act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all. (Romans 5: 18)

That is what Romans 5 says. Human life as we live it is messed up, but if we live that life in Christ, it is a different story.

We make Lent into a season of self-determination; we eat less, drink less, pray more. The trouble is that we get very focussed on ourselves and, worse still, on whether or not we are going to succeed. In truth, Lent is a journey towards Good Friday when sin, our tendency to mess up, clung so closely to our fear that we drove God himself out of the city and crucified him. We have to know that about ourselves. Lent is not a season to note our effort and our success, it a time to take sin seriously and remember what sin does. That is what Paul asks of us. Sin is real, sin is dangerous, and sin is deep. We need saving, saving from this world and saving from ourselves.

We mess up. We will always mess up. If salvation is down to us, we will mess that up. However, salvation has to come to us. When salvation comes, we must notice that and not drive it away.

Know we are sinners, know we need saving, know that salvation is offered. That is all Paul is saying.

 

[i] That’s not actually the word he used, but this is tricky enough already – see Francis Spufford Unapologetic Faber and Faber 2012, p.26