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02.10.08

First Sunday in Lent

THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT

GENESIS 2:15-17, 3:1-7; ROMANS 5:12-19

• Who’s to Blame?
• Frivolous Lawsuits
• In 1992, a woman ordered a cup of coffee at the drive-thru from McDonald’s
• Sitting in the passenger seat of her nephew’s car, which was pulled over so she could add sugar to the coffee, the woman spilled the hot coffee all over her lap while trying to remove the lid
• She sought $20,000 in damages for the third-degree burns she suffered, claiming McDonald’s was at fault since they didn’t warn her the coffee was hot
• McDonald’s refused to settle out of court, and the woman was ultimately awarded $200,000 in compensatory damages and $2.7 million in punitive damages
• Since then, McDonald’s coffee cups are plastered with a warning label—“Caution! Hot!”—in several different languages
• Now, McDonald’s employees will be happy to add the cream and sugar for you
• A New Hampshire teenager was out on the court playing basketball
• He drives hard to go for a dunk, and as he flies through the air, he caught two of his teeth on the basketball net
• He sued the manufacturer of the net, claiming they should pay for his dental work
• They settled out of court for $50,000
• Frivolous lawsuits such as these are part of a growing and disturbing trend
• People are suing companies these days for everything from defective toilet seats to hard-to-open pickle jars, and the cost of doing business is skyrocketing
• Bob Dorigo-Jones, president of an organization called Michigan Lawsuit Abuse Watch, reports that the Girl Scouts of the metro Detroit area now have to sell 36,000 boxes of cookies just to pay for insurance in case they are sued
• The result of this is that companies are now placing common-sense and sometimes ridiculous warning labels on many of their products
• A manufacturer of baby strollers has added this label to their products: “Remove child before folding”
• A flushable toilet brush warns, “Do not use for personal hygiene”
• A household iron warns users “Never iron clothes while they are being worn”
• A dishwasher carries this warning: “Do not allow children to play in the dishwasher”
• A box of birthday candles reads, “Do not use soft wax as ear plugs or for any other function that involves insertion into a body cavity”
• Finding a Scapegoat
• Who’s really at fault here?
• Can we blame the manufacturer for the stupid things many of us do?
• Two things that are apparent in our culture is our lack of common sense and our refusal to take responsibility for our actions
• We don’t use our God-given intelligence, and we seek to blame someone else, something else, or the circumstances when we do something stupid or hurtful or wrong
• A marriage ends in divorce and we lay the blame on our spouse rather than admitting that we are part of the problem
• We face financial distress and we blame a downturn in the market, the state of the economy, the easy availability of credit, rather than accepting responsibility for poor planning and impulsive spending
• It’s always someone else’s fault
• We’re never to blame for the stupid and hurtful things we do
• We blame other people, we blame things, we blame circumstances, but we never blame ourselves
• We even go so far as to blame the devil for tempting us and to blame God for allowing us to be put in a dangerous situation, but we almost never take responsibility for our own actions
• My sermon title this morning isn’t an original title
• I borrowed it from comedian Flip Wilson
• “The devil made me do it” was popularized in the 70s by Flip through his popular character Geraldine
• For anything she did wrong, her immediate response was “The devil made me do it!”
• Of course, Geraldine wasn’t the first person ever to blame the devil for her actions, trying to absolve herself of responsibility
• The first person to do that was Eve
• When God discovered that the first man and woman had broken God’s only command to them by eating the forbidden fruit, the game of blaming someone else rather than accepting responsibility for our actions began, and we’ve been playing the game ever since
• When questioned by God if they had eaten fruit from the forbidden tree, Adam’s immediate response was to blame Eve and to blame God—“The woman you put here with me gave me some of the fruit and I ate it.” (v. 12)
• And when God questioned Eve about her actions, her answer was “The serpent deceived m, and I ate.” (vs. 13)
• In other words, “The devil made me do it”
• Freewill, Original Sin, and Consequences
• Freewill
• Our Scriptures this morning raise a number of issues for us
• They raise the issue of freewill—are we free to make choices or has God preprogrammed us to act in certain ways?
• They raise the issue of original sin—do we inherit the propensity to sin from our original earthly parents?
• And they raise the issue of consequences—are we able to act independently, or do the choices we make influence more than just ourselves?
• If we believe that every detail of our life is planned for us well in advance and whatever we do or don’t do has no influence on the outcome, then perhaps we’re justified in blaming other people, or circumstances, the devil, or even God for the stupid things we do
• After all, if everything is planned to the nth degree, then we don’t have any control over what we do or what happens to us
• And if we don’t have at least some control, then we are not responsible and we can’t be held accountable for our actions
• If that’s truly the way life is ordered, then life is nothing more than a cruel joke and the God who gave us life is not a God of love and grace, but one who is a malicious prankster
• This is not the God we worship and serve
• The God we worship and serve does not preprogram our lives and manipulate the circumstances of our living
• The God we worship and serve is a God of love and grace who creates human life out of love
• The God who gives us life is the God who loves, who created us in God’s image, and who gave us the ability to think and reason and to make choices
• We are free to choose whether to believe in God or not believe
• We are free to know the difference between right and wrong and to choose between them
• Sometimes we choose what’s right and sometimes we choose what’s wrong
• If there was no such thing as free will, then there would be no need for God’s love and grace because there would be no sin
• We could not be held accountable for our actions if we only acted in a predetermined way
• The God who gives us life created us to be free—free to love God and do God’s will in our lives or free to reject God and do whatever pleases us
• The choice is up to us
• Original Sin
• The concept of “original sin” has been around for a long time
• This belief says, in essence, that we are sinners because we are human
• Since we are descendants of Adam and Eve and they were guilty of sin, their “original sin” has been passed on to us
• This is what Paul is saying in the opening verse of our text from Romans—v. 12
• The argument goes like this: the consequence of sin is death; we all die; therefore we all are sinners
• While we consider it extremely unfair that we continue to reap the consequences of an act of rebellion committed generation upon generation ago, the rationale for the doctrine is sound
• Contrary to the popular notion that sin is passed on through the act of procreation, making the act of sexual intercourse an evil act—even in the contest of marriage—William Barclay argues that sex has nothing to do with it
• He explains what Paul says in Romans by using the Hebrew concept of solidarity
• We are guilty of original sin because of the solidarity of the human race
• Adam sinned because he broke a direct commandment of God, and because he sinned he died, although he was meant to be immortal
• Now, the law wasn’t given until the time of Moses, and without law to define what sin is, there can be no sin
• Yet, everyone from Adam to Moses still died, and they died because of Adam’s sin—their involvement in Adam’s sin caused their death
• Because of this idea of the complete solidarity of humanity, all of us literally sinned in Adam, and because the consequence of sin is death, death reigns over us all
• The Consequences of Our Choices
• This moves us naturally to the third issue raised by these passages—can we act independently, or do the choices we make influence more than just ourselves?
• The obvious answer is that we can’t act independently
• Every choice we make has consequences that affect, not only ourselves, but everyone and everything around us
• The choices we make, whether good or bad, set in place a chain reaction
• Whether we call it “the ripple effect” or “the butterfly effect” or some other effect, what we do or don’t do influences the lives of others and shifts the balance of nature
• The choices we make influence poverty, homelessness and injustice
• The choices we make influence global warming and may or may not bring about the extinction of another life form
• The choices we make influence the quality of relationships we have with each other and with God
• All of life is intricately interconnected
• Therefore, we must consider the consequences of every choice we make and be ready to be held accountable for what results
• The Mercy of God
• We’ve all made some pretty lousy choices in our life, and we have no one to blame but ourselves
• Whatever choice we make, we must be willing to live with whatever results because the choices we make influence everything around us
• And yet there is hope—sin can be forgiven—new life is always possible
• God’s grace given to us through Jesus Christ is greater than all our sins
• “Just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all,” Paul says to the Romans
• To the Corinthians, Paul stated it more simply: “For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.” (1 Corinthians 15:22)
• Jesus also faced temptation and he overcame it
• Jesus had difficult choices to make, and he always chose what was right
• The faithfulness of Jesus Christ has a greater and more profound influence on God’s creation than the sinful acts of all of humankind
• Through him, the power of sin is broken and the order of life is restored
• Life is made whole once again
• The choices we make are important
• We are responsible for our own actions
• We can’t avoid sin or its consequences
• But God loves us and God forgives
• “My grace is sufficient for you,” Jesus says, “for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:9)
• Thanks be to God for God’s wondrous gift of grace!