We can't figure out we are sinners

"No sin is more basic than the presumption, the presumption schooled by our pride, that we can know on our own what it means to say that we are sinners. Too often, I fear, our attempt to examine ourselves to discover our sins turns out to be an invitation to narcissism. We do not come to Jesus to because our sins need to be forgiven. Rather, we know we need to be forgiven, because Jesus has come to us as the one alone capable of revealing who we are without that knowledge destroying us." Minding the Web, 2018, Repentance: A Lenten Meditation, p 212.

Stanley Hauerwas on sin.

A Stanley Hauerwas quote on sin from The Peaceable Kingdom.  

We would rather be ruined than changed

Christ is Beautiful - Augustine

"Christ is beautiful wherever he is. He was beautiful in his miracles but just as beautiful under the scourges, beautiful as he invited us to life, but beautiful too in not shrinking from death, beautiful in laying down his life and beautiful in taking it up again, beautiful on the cross, beautiful in the tomb, and beautiful in heaven." Augustine.

I desire to do nothing else other than what I'm delightfully doing

Only God could have thought up the church. I could not have thought the church up. I could not have imagined "church." That we exist, that West Loop Church exists, that our modest collection of people exist, is a miracle. I am honored beyond words to express that you allow me to preach to you each Sunday as we worship God together. Even if I've never been paid for this "job," it is the best job I've ever had, which I would not exchange for anything else in the world. I desire to do nothing else other than what I'm presently doing every week and every day of the year: sharing the Word and living in community with the church. For sure, I did not think this up. For sure, God "thought us up." Only by God's immeasurable grace we are God's imagination for the world.

Last week a few of us gathered at my home to share and speak freely. After over 2 hours of lively engaging conversation, I was surprised to notice that the five of us were five different races: one African American, one Filipino, one Caucasian, one Korean and one Chinese--myself. I was moved to tears in my heart that the five of us--as different as we each are--could be one, only because of the grace of Jesus.

The beginning of love - Thomas Merton

Love is thankfulness for the existence of the beloved

"Love is gratitude: it is thankfulness for the existence of the beloved; it is the happy acceptance of everything that he gives without jealous feeling that the self ought to be able to do as much; it is a gratitude that does not seek equality; it is wonder over the other's gift of himself in companionship. Love is reverence; it keeps its distance even as it draws near; it does not seek to absorb the other; it desires the beloved to be what he is and does not seek to refashion him into a replica of the self or to make him a means to the self's advancement. As reverence love is and seeks knowledge of the other not by way of curiosity nor for the sake of gaining power, but in rejoicing and wonder. Love is loyalty it is the willingness to let the self be destroyed rather than the other cease to be."  H. Richard Niebuhr

Legalism is the original sin

"Legalism is the attempt to be more God than God." Stanley Hauerwas, commenting on the lectionary reading of Gen 3:1-7 when Eve added to God's command, "...and you must not touch it..." (Gen 3:3). [Legalism is the original sin]

"Our first sin is our assumption that we know what sin is." Hauerwas quoting Barth. "Barth's language is an ontological impossibility."

If you think that it is because of sin that we are pretty shitty people, you got it wrong. Sin is not "I've done something I'm ashamed of." Sin really is the refusal of God. Sin is the naming of alienation from God. It's very hard to remember that. We prefer sin to be just another name for being a bad person.