“Atonement”

“Atonement”

Text: Hebrews 5:1-10

© October 22, 2006 by C. Edward Bowen at Crafton United Presbyterian Church.

Back in the 1800s Henry Ward Beecher was one of the most famous ministers in the United States. But despite all the notoriety and acclaim he received as preacher, he always said that one of the most memorable things that ever happened to him occurred during his childhood years. Henry Ward Beecher said that he always remembered the year that Mr. Fitzgerald was his teacher, and how stern and strict Mr. Fitzgerald was. One day when they were working on math, Mr. Fitzgerald called on Henry to go to the blackboard to write out the answer to a problem. But after just a few seconds of writing, Henry heard Mr. Fitzgerald bellow “No!” And so, somewhat embarrassed, Henry erased his work and started over. But thirty seconds later again he heard Mr. Fitzgerald say, “No.” So Henry gave up, and with his head down he slowly walked back to his desk.

Mr. Fitzgerald then called on another student to go to the blackboard and write out the same problem. As that student began writing out the answer, Mr. Fitzgerald again bellowed, “No.” But that student kept right on with his work until he was finished. And when he was done, the teacher said, “Very good.”

Henry couldn’t understand what had just happened. He blurted out, “That student came up with the very same answer to the problem that I did, but you told me No.” Mr. Fitzgerald looked at Henry and said, “Then why didn’t you say Yes, and stick with it? If all the world says No to you, your business is to say Yes and to prove it!”[1]

Is No the final word? Or is there a Yes that we can find beyond all the No’s that we hear in life? When we read the Bible, we come across a fairly large number of No’s. God says no to our greed, no to our anger, no to our jealousy, no to our self-centeredness – no to our sin in all its forms. And so the question becomes: What do we do with those No’s? We know that from time to time, in different ways, we sin. And we know that God says No to our sin. But is No the final word?

When it comes to dealing with our sin, there are several different options that we have. The first option is – and it’s a quite popular thing to do – we can ignore our sin. We can pretend that it’s not there, or at least we can pretend that our sin isn’t really all that bad. It’s like a gag gift that came out on the market a few years ago. It was a small spray bottle with scented water inside, and it was called “Guilt Away.” The ad for it said: “Hounded by nagging guilt? Then get rid of it the modern way – spray it away with Guilt Away!” And for $3.98 you could purchase that bottle to spray away any guilt that you might feel about your sins.[2] That’s certainly one way to deal with sin.

Another option when it comes to dealing with the sin that’s there in our lives is to try and fix the problem all by ourselves. With this option, we’re not ignoring our sin. Instead, we figure: “Hey, if I sinned and got myself into this mess, then there must surely be something I can do to get myself out of this mess.” But that’s easier said than done.

For instance, we’ve probably all seen those antibacterial hand soaps that come in a pump dispenser. You find them in public restrooms, and many of us have probably bought them for our homes as well. I know I bought some, figuring that if I get myself into some germy situation, then antibacterial soap should be just the ticket to make myself clean again.

But a study in the last year found that antibacterial soap is actually no more effective than regular soap in killing germs. And it turns out that antibacterial soap may, in the long run, even end up doing us more harm than good. That’s because whenever we wash our hands with antibacterial soap, unless we do a really good job, there are usually at least a few germs that we miss. And over time, those germs that survive learn how to become resistant to antibiotics, so that eventually we could reach a point where the germs we get on our hands becomes so strong and so smart that there won’t be anything we can do to kill them and get rid of them.[3]

That’s the same basic reason that your doctor warns you to take all of the antibiotic pills in your prescription, and not stop taking them just because you’re starting to feel better. That’s because if you don’t take all the pills, some of the germs inside you quite possibly will survive, and somehow they’ll have a way of learning how to ward off antibiotics in the future, in which case if you ever got another infection, you could find yourself in a real fix, because there could potentially be no medicine available to help you.

And it’s the same idea when it comes to sin. We might think that all by ourselves we can deal with the sin that’s there in our lives – that we can clean ourselves up. And at first, when the amount of sin in our lives seems to be kind of small and manageable, we end up convincing ourselves that sin is something that we can handle, without any help from other people and certainly without any help from God. But sooner or later, at some point we discover that there is some sin that has taken hold in our lives that we can’t get rid of by ourselves – it’s there, it’s sunk down its roots, and it’s not going away, no matter what we try to do. And so, when that happens, what do we do?

Well, that leads us to the third option that we have when it comes to our sin. If we stop ignoring our sin, and if we stop trying to deal with our sin all by ourselves, the third option – and the only option that really works – is for us to seek atonement for our sin.

Now, for most people gathered here today “atonement” is one of those churchy-sounding, religious words that they’ve probably heard before, but they’re not entirely sure what it means. Well, atonement is based on the idea that when we sin we create a separation between ourselves and God. And so atonement is the process where we are brought back into relationship with God – it’s the process where we become “at one” with God again. Really, to make the meaning of the word more clear, instead of saying “atonement,” we should call it “at-one-ment.”

And what the book of the Bible called Hebrews reminds us of is that throughout the Old Testament, God established a system for atonement to take place. And that system involved people who had sinned going to a priest and offering a sacrifice, offering a certain kind of animal like a dove, a sheep, or a bull, to be killed. And the basic idea in the Old Testament was that the shedding of the blood of those animals brought about atonement. The shedding of the blood of those animals caused people who had sinned to be made “at one” with God again.

And in the Old Testament, the holiest of all the days for the Jewish people was called the Day of Atonement, or Yom Kippur. In addition to offering special sacrifices on the Day of Atonement, one of the things they also did was they took a goat, and the high priest would take his hands and put it on the goat’s head, and symbolically the priest would draw in all the people’s sins and transfer them onto that goat, which became known as the “scapegoat.” And then the people would chase that goat out of the city and out into the wilderness, never to return again. And the idea was that by that goat carrying all of their sins off into the wilderness, they could then be “at one” with God again.

But the book of Hebrews points out that even though those rituals brought about atonement for the people year after year, year after year sin would keep re-entering the people’s lives and make it necessary for them to have to do those very same sacrifices and ceremonies over and over again. And so, according to Hebrews, that’s why God sent Jesus into the world. By Jesus, the Son of God, becoming the sacrifice – by Jesus, the Son of God, dying on the cross – no other animal sacrifice would ever be needed again. By Jesus, the Son of God, dying on the cross, our sins – all our sins, now and forever – are atoned for.

And so the good news, of course, is then that if we do sin, not only will we hear God’s No to our sin, but at the same time we can also hear God’s Yes – the Yes that God speaks to us through Jesus Christ – the Yes that means that even though we fall short of what God wants, God still loves us, and God forgives us.

One of the most troubling things I’ve read in recent times was about a study that found that about a quarter of all Americans have no one that they can confide in. In other words, they found that about 1 out of every 4 people in this country feel that they have absolutely no one that they can turn to if they messed up and needed a sympathetic ear to listen.[4] But the good news of Jesus is that he’ll listen. The good news of Jesus is that even when we mess up our lives with sin, he tells us that he understands, and that he stands prepared to show mercy to us so that we can be “at one” with God again.

Back in the 1200s, a Christian writer said that the prayer that we should always be carrying in our hearts is: “Sin! Sin! Sin! Help! Help! Help!”[5] Is that the prayer that you carry in your heart? Sin! Sin! Sin! Help! Help! Help! Is that your prayer? Because if it is, Jesus stands prepared to answer that prayer and give us the help that we need.