Disease, the word conjures powerful images. When I hear disease, I see images of elderly, crippled humans. I see images of browning-yellowing leaves, and smell rancorous death. There is a disease frothing to the surface of our society. It is cynicism and doubt. By itself, cynicism is an unpleasant vice. When it is directed towards something good and true, it becomes a biological weapon. It does not strike like a bullet or a train or even a bullet train. It festers. It multiplies, until its host can no longer keep the truth. The truth is, sin is real. It is as real as darkness, or coldness, or emptiness, and the world would rather you don't believe it.
Tonight, somewhere, a child is dying of starvation, a swollen belly full of emptiness, fragile ribs taught against the skin, and bowed bones. This child is everything beautiful and good in us. At some point in the recent past, two living cells met. In the red glow of the mother's womb, this child grew. Tiny lumps pushed out into tiny fingers, fingers which would have one day held another person's hand in marriage. Fingers which would have caressed another in love, and saved a life. Black shining eyes emerged, eyes like her mothers. Eyes that would have drank in the loveliness of the Eastern Cape by moonlight. Instead, everything beautiful is being emptied out of this child. Everything marvelous and precious is turning into dust, soon to be trod underfoot. It is sin, and many cynical people would like you to know it is not.
A laugh, a glance, a casual word, what do you think it's a sin? Sin is antiquated. It is an idea, a theory, a control mechanism. It's a drug, an ancient relic pressed into pills and delivered through religion. It is sliced, snorted, and sipped, until you lose your reason. Let us be honest. Your simple lie has nothing to do with a dying child on another continent. Yes, my mind says, yes. This is true. It is reasonable. From the deepest part of me something whispers in return.
In the red glow of the human heart it whispers, no. God created us to be beautiful and strong and faithful, to care for one another and live. Our eyes were made to drink deeply of the beauty He created. We were not meant to die alone in cold apartments, or shuffle silently into poverty and death, alone and confused. We were meant to look into the sky and wonder with childlike innocence at the order of the universe. Each sin, no matter how small, hurts that dream, because sin is not a size. It is more like a stink, a cancer.
If what they say and what we tell ourselves about sin sounds familiar, it's because it is: I did not hammer the nails. I simply nodded, and they took him away. I did not strip his robe and beat the crown of thorns into his head. I simply kissed his cheek. I did nothing but come to the garden where he prayed.
The parish I attend has a well groomed garden. Incense can be smelled from the chapel, drifting over the wooden stations of the cross and pink roses . There, in a white painted wooden ark filled with kneeling families, we confess our sins. Male and female voices intertwined in chant above, and the priest gives us a message. He says a man has come, a man who was God. He infected us with beauty and order and salvation from sin. He said that he would not forget the little ones, and neither should we. He said he is truth, and sin is real, that he will bear your sins, and you should not listen to the world.
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