Taking Sin Away: 2nd Sunday OT

Just to clear something up right off the bat, the following is a list of sins that, if you’ve committed them, you shouldn’t be here:

[end of list]

There are, of course, no entries on that list. That’s the sort of thing that gets said a lot, the sort of thing everyone should know. But for many of those most wounded, most haunted by sins of the past, it can be difficult to believe. In my experience, in pastoral counseling and in the confessional, there is no sin of which this is more true than abortion.

If you’ve had an abortion, or cooperated with one, or paid for one, or driven somebody to get one, or failed to speak up when someone was considering one, or pressured someone to get one… I won’t stand here and tell you it’s not a big deal because you know better. You know better than anyone. And that isn’t my job anyway. My job is to preach the forgiveness of sins. All of them.

Abortion is the biggest lie Satan has going in our part of the world. It’s a lie directed at people who are at their most vulnerable, their most frightened, at the most desperate moments of their lives. It’s a lie that has cost fifty-six million lives in our country, and shattered many more. And to those who have fallen for this lie, Satan has another lie to whisper over and over, whispering in your ear for months and years and decades, “you’re a special kind of sinner… all that church talk about forgiveness and healing and mercy, they don’t mean you… if people knew, they’d despise you.” When the truth is that you’re exactly the same kind of sinner that I am and everyone else here is. And all the talk about forgiveness and healing and mercy is especially for you, because you’ve been hurt as deeply or more than anyone. And though it’s tricky to speak for others, I’d happily bet everything I have that if you stood up right now and shouted your confession, the people sitting around you would not despise you or judge you or look down on you at all. I’d bet it all that they’d want most of all to give you a very tight hug. 

The 41st anniversary of Roe vs. Wade is Wednesday. Please pray on Wednesday, and please fast or do some penance, for our nation and for all who carry the wounds of this sin that rests on all of our shoulders. I mean it about praying for our nation. There really does come a time when the cup of God’s wrath is full. And there are sicknesses that a civilization cannot survive. Child sacrifice is one of them.

People will observe this anniversary in different ways. People will shout and debate and weep, and several hundred thousand will march in Washington, in the cumulatively largest and longest running peaceful demonstration I know of on earth. What should the world hear from the Church?

There are lots of ways to answer that, but the most important one just happens, by coincidence or by providence, to appear in today’s Gospel. “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.”

We’re supposed to be about Good News, remember. Pope Francis is such a good teacher and example on this! He once said he saw the Church as a field hospital after battle. And isn’t that exactly what we see in Christ’s life? Overlooking sin, no. Excusing evil, never. But his energy and the entirety of his life given to compassion, to binding up the wounded, to reconciling those estranged. Jesus didn’t look upon sinners and feel disgust and want to condemn them. He felt pity and wanted to heal them.

And this is the Good News that the Church, this field hospital, brings to the walking wounded. The Lamb of God takes away the sins of the world. He makes them gone. He makes them be no more.

Part of that Good News is very practical and specific as well. We can’t just talk about a pie-in-the-sky Good News while ignoring the reality around us. We’ve got to bring practical Good News to every terrified mother who stares at her feet as she hurriedly shuffles into Planned Parenthood to be told that she’s just got a little clump of cells in there and it’s no big deal, who stifles her conscience that probably knows better. Or at least fears she would know better if she really thought it through, so she shuts off her brain in a desperate act of emotional self-defense. Who’s been utterly failed by the child’s father, by her neighbors, by her nation, and by you and me… because we are every one of us responsible for this culture. That mother who has never been more vulnerable and scared in her life… we’ve got good news for her: we can do better than this. You deserve better than this. And that’s something we can’t just say with words. We have to actually help her.

I had a conversation not long ago that began with “I’ve never been so scared in my life” and ended with “Thank you, Father… you’ve given me hope.” It took two things. It took some concrete financial help, and I want you to remember that when you put whatever you give in the collection basket today, because that was you. You did that. And it took a little compassion and companionship.


It isn’t so hard to save a life. It isn’t so hard to bandage the wounded heart. We are not two communities of the innocent and the guilty. We are one community of the forgiven. And we have good news even in the midst of this insanely blood-soaked battlefield: we can do better than this. Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.

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