Jul 14th: We are Made for the Beloved, with Rev. Dr. Steven Koski.
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Rev. Dr. Steven Koski
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We are Made for the Beloved with Rev. Dr. Steven Koski. Series: Beguiled By Beauty A Spacious Christianity, First Presbyterian Church of Bend, Oregon. Scripture: Psalm 16.7-11.
Join us this Sunday as Rev. Dr. Steven Koski challenges the traditional doctrine of original sin, arguing that it has been used to justify negative self-talk and critical attitudes towards oneself and others. Can we have a more positive perspective rooted in original blessing, which could lead to a more loving and whole understanding of oneself and the world?
Transcript:
We are living at a time where we are witnessing the worst of humanity. These times demand the very best of our humanity, demand the fullness of our hearts. Yet the word I keep hearing is exhausted. So many are exhausted by all that is happening in the world. You know, a few years ago, I was exhausted. I was exhausted, but it wasn’t the kind of tired that required more sleep. I traveled to a Catholic retreat center for a 48 hour silent retreat. I scheduled a spiritual direction session at the beginning of the retreat, with one of the nuns hoping, you know, hoping to be given work to do spiritual practices, a method of prayer, service project, or to anything that would rejuvenate my tired soul and reinvigorate my passion for my work. My spiritual director was, she was tiny in stature, but had this giant presence, and I’m convinced she had superpowers. Just looking into my eyes, Sister Helen could see that I was working hard trying to convince God the world myself of my competence and worth. Sister Helen looked at me with the kindest eyes, absent of any judgment. And gently said, Stephen, I know you’ve come here to accomplish and achieve spiritual renewal. I want you to just be I want you to simply rest in the knowledge that God loves you totally apart from any work that you do or don’t do. She said, where you begin matters, rather than working hard to prove you are worthy of love. What if your starting point was resting in a deep sense of your own goodness. Sister Helen said, when the truth, when the truth that you are created in the image of God’s goodness, when that truth takes hold of you, when it soaks into your spirit when it seeps into the marrow of your bones, it is then that you can’t help but embody that goodness in the world with joy. Think about it for a moment. Imagine if we didn’t ask if we worked hard enough to deserve rest, and instead asked, Have we rested enough to do our most loving and meaningful work? Psalm 46 says, Be still and know that I am God, one translation of the original Hebrew of this verse is, quit trying so hard and rest in the love that is already yours. Michelangelo was commissioned by the Pope to paint the Sistine Chapel. In order to get to the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel they had to build this, this elaborate scaffolding, and Michelangelo would have to lay on his back for hours and paint. He’d often get tired and would fall asleep as he was painting. Legend has it that one day Michelangelo fell asleep and had a dream, and in his dream, God visits Michelangelo, and God looks upon everything he has painted and tells Michelangelo This is the most beautiful and breathtaking thing I have ever seen. Michelangelo says to God, I’m sorry I I’ve Dishonored you. Look there’s an imperfection. There’s a flaw. Look there and another. The whole ceiling is filled with with imperfections. God said to Michelangelo, what are you looking at? Michelangelo said, I’m looking at at this painting. It’s awful. It’s ruined. God said, Michelangelo, the problem, the problem is you’re looking through tired, critical and jaded eyes. If you were looking through my eyes, you’d see that it’s perfect and beautiful. Have you been to the Sistine Chapel? Or maybe you’ve Googled it? If you haven’t, I recommend it and done a virtual visit. So imagine standing underneath that ceiling and. Thinking to yourself, yeah, that Michelangelo really messed this up. I mean, just look at all those flaws. Of course, you wouldn’t say that if you stood underneath the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Sure it’s not perfect. There are flaws, but it would take your breath away. The reality is that most of us, if we’re honest, look upon our own lives in the same way as Michelangelo, we put on certain glasses, where, through the lens of those glasses, we only see imperfections. We see what’s missing. We see what’s wrong. We’re we’re constantly evaluating, criticizing, judging ourselves. You know, I’m guessing none of us woke up this morning, got a cup of coffee, walked into the bathroom, looked at ourselves in the mirror and thought, Yep, perfect. Anybody? I’m guessing you’re like me, and you looked in the mirror and groaned, noticing a few more gray hairs, a few more wrinkles. Did I gain weight? Where did those bags under my eyes come from? And then we walk into the world with those same glasses, looking through that same lens, judging, criticizing, condemning others in the same way we’re critical of ourselves. And what’s interesting is how we project that same critical lens onto God assuming God is as critical, judgmental, quick to be disappointed and unforgiving as we are. Anne Lamott said, the Bible says that we are made in God’s image, but you know that we have actually made God into our image when God judges and despises the same people that we do, where did we learn to put on the these glasses where we see through such a critical and and judgmental lens? Well, frankly, many of us have been taught a theology that begins with the assumption that we are sinful and flawed. From the very beginning, we’re born that way. It’s the concept of original sin. It’s the idea that we are fallen and born sinful. Now, the idea of Original Sin originated actually in the fourth century. You can’t find it in the Bible. It originated in the fourth century with saying St Augustine, and it continues to be a very powerful doctrine in the church today. Well, Pelagius was a contemporary of Augustine in the fourth century, and he vigorously resisted the doctrine of original sin. Pelagius said seeing people as inherently sinful misses the truth that we are all blessed, loved beyond our imaginations, loved with the love, as it says in Romans eight, from which we can never be separated, he proclaimed with God in the very first chapter of Genesis, that all of God’s creation is good. This is what theologians now call original blessing instead of original sin. Now the doctrine of original sin makes makes you and the world a problem to be fixed, rather than a gift worthy of love, original blessing, sees the world and yourself as simply having forgotten your essential goodness. You know it’s really important to examine the beliefs that that have been handed down to us and and actually decide whether or not they fit, whether those beliefs that have been handed down to us, do they actually help you to be a more loving person? Do they actually help you to be more whole concepts of God that shrink our spirits, that harden our hearts, that bind us in fear, that make us put on those glasses with the lens of judgment and condemnation, those concepts of God need to be abandoned. You know, I’m guessing. We all have a piece of furniture that was that was passed down to us, that that we were told is valuable and we should keep it. And at some point, we wake up and go, you know, I never really liked that piece of furniture. It doesn’t fit in the house anymore. Why have I moved it 50 different times? It’s time to let it go. We need to do the same with theological furniture, where we begin matters. What if we didn’t begin our story with brokenness and sin? What if we actually began where God begins in Genesis one with goodness. What if we begin with original goodness? How might that change our lens? It says in Genesis 127, so God created humankind in God’s own image, in the image of God, God created us. And just when we think God is going to declare humankind good, like God repeatedly declared the rest of creation good earlier in chapter one, it actually changes slightly. It says in verse 31 God looked upon all that God had made, including humankind made in God’s own image, and God declared it all very good, not just good anymore, but now very good. What if that was our lens to see ourselves to see the world, the lens of original goodness? I read something this past week by Native American poet Joy Harjo where she wrote, I’ve been wondering, I’ve been wondering where we would be as a western world today if the mission that came from Europe centuries ago didn’t come to conquer us, but came expecting to find light in us. What might have happened if they didn’t see us as savages and evil, but chose instead to see our essential goodness and shared humanity. Imagine how different the world would be if our lens recognize the inherent dignity and worth in everyone. Imagine if we saw the sacred in everyone until the sacred in them remembered. The doctrine of original sin teaches that what is deepest in us is opposed to God, rather than of God. It teaches we are essentially ignorant rather than bearers of light. I mean, Jesus said you are light for all the world. He didn’t say you could be, you should be, you might be, you ought to be. He said you are. The doctrine of original sin teaches that that we are essentially ugly, rather than rooted in divine beauty, that we are essentially selfish, rather than made in the image of divine love. We need to be rebaptized into the concept of original blessing and goodness when we are unable to see our own essential goodness, our shame turns into blame, judging, criticizing, condemning and declaring unholy and unworthy the lives of others and friends, God has looked upon your life from the very beginning and seen one thing, a blessing, a beloved child of God. I mean, not perfect, flawed, broken, but so beautiful and essentially and eternally, not just good, but very good. I really believe that if you start there, if you begin there, it changes everything. It changes the lens through which you look at life. It changes the. Your Life, it can change the world. The world, oh, boy, the world has need of us. The world has need of a theology now more than ever, a theology that affirms and calls forth the very best of our humanity, because we can’t afford to quit. We need to rest. We need to rest in the knowledge that we are loved and we are good, so very good, so that we might embody that goodness wherever we go. So this week, just take time each day to rest, receive the tender gaze of the Holy One who sees nothing but beauty goodness and dignity in you, your life then becomes the loving gaze this harsh and unforgiving world needs. May it be so you.
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