Christ the King

In most of these Bulletin Blurbs, I try to “look on the bright side.”  (Some of  you may remember this is what my daughter disliked about me when she was a teenager.)  Today I will look on a more somber side as I reflect on sin.
 
When I was a child, sin meant doing something wrong.  As an adult, I understand sin to be a more complex concept.  According to St. Paul, sin can be seen as a power or dominion that gets a hold on us.  Sin is like addition—it enslaves me and can make me less than human in the Sc5riptural sense of that word.  As one Biblical scholar noted, this view of sin flips the tables—I am not so much a sinner because I do something wrong; I do something wrong because sin has its grips in me.
 
Each of these understandings of sin has merit.  I find the second understanding much more frightening.  If I am in control of myself, not committing a wrongful act is a matter of willpower.  If sin controls me, I am powerless—and that is scary as hell.
 
To return to the brighter side for a moment, there is good news (gospel):  there is a power greater than my self, than addiction, than sin—a power that can lead me to a freer, more fully human way of life.  The not-so-good news is that the path to that way of life is through death—the death of self, of ego, of my sense of being in control of life.  Scriptures tell us there is a Promised Land, a resurrected life, that exists once we leave behind the old way of life.  To return to that somber side, Scriptures also tell us that it is not always easy to follow that path.