The snake doesn't have to have all the lines

1975-04-27·Sermon·Exodus 4:10-20

The Snake Doesn't Have to Have All the Lines John M. Buchanan
Exodus 4:10-20 Broad Street Presbyterian Church
April 27, 1975 Columbus, Ohio

Text: "The man said, "The Woman you gave me for a companion, she gave
me fruit from the tree..." ...The woman said, "The serpent tricked

Genesis 3: 12-15 NEB,

MG awe

Fifty thousand American lives have been rose | 15g billion dollars

spent and the most urgent problem last week was how to get the semaining

Americans out before the people for whom that sacrifice ostensibly was
Gl — .

_—

made turned on them. \ ut what can FE do about ier setter, it seems, not
a

to think about it for too long.
—_——re

The rivers and lakes are filthy, the aix poluted, wild life poisoned,

the Atomic Energy Commission is trying to convince me that it can bury

radio-active waste that will remain lethaly active for a thougand years.

What can I do about it?

My state grants to a Mother and her children who have no means of
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support exactly half the amount of assistance she needs in order to subsist.
Lr amiel 7 i |

Patients in mental hospitals must be drugged in order to control them

because of ome Srowding: [an official recommended last week that no new
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admissions be made. \ What can I do about it?
og, |

Surely I'm not responsible for all chat. \ surely my personal accounta-
a smiall Ps eee
—

bility does not include foreign policy, environmental protection and state
revenue altocations.\ we have experts for that sort of thing.\ Besides,
CTS —
what dees that have to de with God and the coszet?\ 1 don't need to come
a Leeentiindl ent Sere

to Church to hear about all that: | I can read the newspapers.
bain ga ii iatatel =e oe
Avao\ Lovely prophetic sermns om “kL Soc ta\ Gospe\ othe bean wot series (>
———ap I am not being coy | I am not parodying you.\1 am confessing that

that is how I feel.| The statements are my own \ I hope they reflect an
re ies
reavt® is pate, HOA people Rew Br Ary (Wes sero, intewds -ot lasst— eo be
Aceh * =

anxiety you have felt as veut.\ Our personal sphere of influence is
be | Te ‘Et

Limited: \ we Live in a highly complex culture: \ we simply cannot bear
been] ee] ee

the burdens of the world. \we come to Church, at least in part, to be
Fc ‘eer

ceninecd
that everything going on around us is not the sum total of

Seme mere Khan olen, bot ahh eT ous are Were 6 par
reality-t_ le rvewerded Mat God ip in His Keauew, is spite
—vae *xerritele “elntags whan Waggen pr wt er ha,

We began two weeks ago by asking {"What-
=e
ever Happened to sin }and discovered that individual responsibility has

disappeared as gin became crime and then the syn

ptom of secial iilness.

t week we thought about sin as egotism - personally and corporately,
am ainaaineed

SY This week I invite you to think about a very ancient concept of sin which
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has not received the attention it deserves. \ ane T would begin by Lifting
Ca LE, —

up one of the primal old Testament stories: the cail of Moses.

I can generate a great deal of sympathy for spss. nie had been

going weil with him for a chanse.\ A short time before, as an adopted

i i i ' ‘
member of Egyptian royalty, he had killed one of Phanbh s.men ina rig hteous

rage and had barely eScaped from Egypt with his uite.\ But now he ¥ he was
—h aT

content = living with his wife in Midian, tending the flocks of Jethro, hi

wan
new facher-in-taw. \ wis sphere of influence and responsibjlity had been

drastically reduced and he was quite comfortable \ But then Moses had that

disturbine experience with a burning bush and now God was orderin him to

ing ¢xP 1 8. . g

return to Egypt - where he was wanted for murder - and there, of ali things,
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Tr was = preposterous proposal:
to organize the people of Israel for an escape \He wanted no part of it:

he didgit want to be a revolutionary Ane had a taste of trouble and com-
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pared with that harrowing experience the life of a sheep herder was really

vat .
rather pleasant \ He didn't want to be anything other than he was.| And
in the fourth chapter of Exodus we find him back-pedalling as fast as he
aoe P ad hate &
could, trying desperately to avoid the heavy responsibility which was
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ares \The clasei¢
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& Me ope
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Grd \Sin 1s BP

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Fravs\
- "Surely, Lord,
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beckoning. bon my Lord, send, I pray, some other —
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you have an expert for this, someone who knows how to do ic.n| But the_only

help Moses got was Aarop, who would do the talking. \ ana down he went into
are =a

Egypt, pushed by God into becoming something more than he was, more than

he wanted to be, Moses the shepherd on his way to becoming Moses the
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Savior and Liberator of his people.

£ woses, I would submit, is a prototype of humanity:
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| in his reluctant
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reacvow sede
taapeeae to larger responsibility an accurate description of us as we
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vilization PO
desperately try to avoid confronting the problems of our ci zation

| Crenkee ¥
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power - man is aivs

& “[ruskeshie a
over the rest of creation. \ The first thing Eve does is to allowaesezpent ee
ee

arewkivs.
to talk her into eating an appie.\
as [=a

—
inmmersioocsriselt Fhe story of man begins in Genesis: } Adam and Eve_in the
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Garden of Eden, given dominion - responsibility, accountability,
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The first thing Adam does is to allow
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Eve to talk him into following suit.\
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web Ce
@za, Adam says("she did 1e"s\aye sage, rete serpent tricked me". That is
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When God confronts them with their
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to say, in the opening chapter of the human drama, the snake has all the
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ines ;\ Humanity is pictured in terms of abdication of responsibility,
aes eae

\ Certainly pride or egotism
is at the heart of the human condition.\ But just as certainly that analysis
is incomplete until it deals with this clear Biblical motif ;\nanely that

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man consistantly refuses to be as big as God created him.
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I ventured one time to discuss the Presbyterian form of worship with
ens
a group of Senior Highs \aster discussing the basic parts of the service
= Sema

they became quite specific and aired some rather typical youthful complaints
aS ——

about music, and formality and rigidity and Language . \ One young man focused
sharply:\mhae got him, he said, was IP ae that kept popping up in the
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prayer of confession,
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\i agreed that it was less than
hima

cu comes hy archos.

precise and that if sounded eimwesinnee and antiquated \ I have, sin since

that time, changed mee nind.\ 1 have, out of my own Life experience,

it _ YW Tt .
concluded that “"slothfulness in good" needs confessing rather regularly:

that while a typical Presbyterian may not steal, murder or cheat and
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therefore feel untouched by the traditional definitions of sin, there
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is plenty of room under the umbrella of slothfulness for almost al aAG
Daal PTR TS AHASEROr | ‘we certaish .! One
of us.\ We don't want to be responsible’ for what happened in South wee wl
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East Asia, or for an A.D.C, family or for the conditions in Stgte mental

7
hospitals \ We prefer tending

Our own sheep: \ we don't wan (gQea Gaudi

sponsible for something as awesome as “dominion over creation." | That

Wp Our amex =e a ReneS Se anew fied

is our sin.
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Sloth, in the ancient church, used to be regarded as one of the seven
wn) net bce ‘eee
deadky sins \ That is, the early Church theologians saw it as one of the
“squy¢e" conditions behind a lat of wreng behavior. \ me ancients understood
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that pride and sloth go hand in hand to create man'g predicament .

Harvey Cox defines sloth, which comes from a Greek word meaning
wa beatae a nee al

"not caring’, as (rine determined or lackadaisical refusal to live up
ew a Ce

to one's essential humanity .\ Tt is the Sorpid unwillingness to revel
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in the delights or to share in the responsibilities of being fully

human \ Te means to decline a full share of ...life. lone: s Killing
‘Scape EERO

the Church p 111-112}

Karl Menninger weices |. _there is a sin of not doing, of_not
etree anand

knowing, of not finding out what one must do - in short, of not caping...'! |
qEreeeseErrne

(Whatever Became of Sin? p 148)

In the last century the brilliant Dane, Soren Kierkegaard taught

that the only real sin is\rebe despairing refusal _to be oneselt."\ And

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owe

sheep °

Bo That was Germany, Nazism
TE

Rollo May in his best seller Love and Will, urges modern men to stop
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conforming to the images and expectations superimposed by others and to

become - to decide to be - to will and intend life, rather than with-
extort unamemeisinenl oem eed

drawing to the anesthesia of television and simply letting life happen, #5 t
pment cement Ce Crt > atus ‘

wat is not difficult to observe the infectious evil that results
from s198h)\ In Hannah Arendt's biography of Adolf Richmann, the subject
comes across as an altogether ordinary zan:| a man capable of moygepgus
evil simply by doing his job, | followin orders land not asking questions,
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. ; 1 .
ot here certainly:\ that wouldn't happen in
rivtle ak AWaovadless comparisms bee tut.)

this country.

In 1967 that thesis was tested at Yale University.| A cross section
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of 2,000 makes from Bridgeport, Connecicut participated in the test.
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Divided into groups of learners and teachers, a learner was strapped
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into a chair which was wired for electric current. \ pening a wall in an
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adjoining room teachers were seated at a tabte | An inter-com allowed
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sound to be heard in both rooms. \ me teachers were instructed to aski « \et it
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questions and then administer electric shocks to the learners by pressing
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a button for each wrong answer, \ te teachers were told that each shock would
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increase in velocity.| There was no shock, of course, but into the inter-
errr om ee a caal
com were fed recordingsof screams of pain\ The object was to discover at
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what point individuals would refuse to obey instructions in a rather
aE al sR

authoritarian atmosphere out of gonscience or coupagsion.\\ the result?

62% of those tested went all the way, administering all the current they
ECE ements: SS Fil ad

could. \\ the researcher concluded,|"With numbing regularity good people

were seen to knuckle under the demands of authority and perform agtijons
enn
that were callous and severe.\ Men who in everyday life are responsible
Lata a ‘eapciathibierercenbiace ae

and decent were seduced by the trappings of authority. \ The results are...

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disturbing. (Thomas Harris, I'm 0.K, - You're 0.K., P 249-250)

In theological terms 62% were guilty of the sin of sloth \ They
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allowed the snake all the Lines : |someone else - in this case the symbols

of authority and scientific neutrality determined who they would be.
rE. bane ia ea]

© be cepa Sut In personal terms sloth is essentially a denial of seltsfe refusal ®
var
baleen" to be authentically and unapolégetically one's own person Part of that
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é
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derives, I believe, from the fact that popular theology is more Greek

than xebrew.| We have been taught, rather consistantly, that to be fu
bd

human is to be a sinner: \ that the normal needs, desires and appetites
— a] , " [er
, dem © acs
of our humanity are something to be dewaamad and that the goal of religiosity
ep.

is to deliver us from our own honanity.\ That is very greek.| And the
a _

af we are wile) result ry a frame of reference that regards self-assertion as fundamentally
g yA oT
we ear vq veo | And so we let others dictate who we will be - not always because
et T ne be] bY ewe a ~
en r .
yale *” ‘ an e& we lack courage - but because we think it is better that way. Oirere ia ~
ow ov — honest o_o 7

aay anit, ee a very fine Line betweenfhumility and abdication of our humanity t,
Yb padtnadet 2 A, nor cmt __

“OS
The late Dag Hanmarskjold had a deep sensg of that enigma. |r 1953

ee
he wrote {scent in faith, nobody is humble. lone mask of weakness or of

And except in faith, nobody is proud | The vanity displayed in all
ceric reer

its varieties by the spiritually immature is not pride To be, in faith

a,
. . . tr ‘
both humble and proud: | enae is, to live..." |(Markings p, 92)

On an intimate level I an guilty of the sin of sloth when, for instance,
seein Rania.

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another person's anger and meaness causes me to be angry and mean, For that
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moment I have abdicated and have become something I did not intend. \ arenie
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Bunker illustrates the sin of sloth, in plain eloquence, as he opens a

beer, sits in his favorite chair and asks,\"that!s the matter with revenge?
bi

It's a perfect way of getting even."

But the real danger of sloth, and the reason why it should be of
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major concern te men of good will, i i
j g will, is that it subtly supports that

twentieth century innovation called "group-thint."| As our civilization ,
eceteernreEETe | .
has become more complex the number of groups within that civilization
Be. Pte

has multiplied immensely.\ Some of those groups have become go large

that they dwarf entire nations in past history.\ In those groups indi-

; fend Yn
vidualstget lost.| Indeed, in order to function, the group has to generate
a bai ae]

some kind of @onsensus, some method whereby individuals are absorbed
omni opeteloricies Jr aise indus —

in the whole; individual] hopes, dreams, wisdom, morals, conscience,
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On the one hand, "group-think" attempts to draw every individual into
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the decision making process and appears to be very demoevatic and there-
sar Nga pst han cpamacmaac

particu-

; tint * ee
fore good.\ But in the process of drawing everybody in individual |

larities must be left out.\ An editorial in the Chicago Daily News observed
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that\"A business that defined right and wrong in terms that would satisify

| ee
a well-developed contemporary conscience could not survive, "fad went on

to sympathize with the conscientious executive who \"is almost surely a

troubled man."|(Menninger, op.cite p 117} \ songuere, somehow the individual
eqquerceomanl ee oe

t as d-| somehow, and it will never be easy, the individual must
must take tan me 3 Sy
reassert his individuahity - his personhood ~ and be all that hewis and
can be. | Somehow, in our complex civilization the individual must save us
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from ourselves.
secon

In the book to which I have referred many times in this series,
nr, [sem eel
Dr. Menninger writes: | "Tf a group of people can be made to share the
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responsibility for what would be a sin if an individual did it, the
—— inner Ain,

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load of guilt rapidly Lifts from the shoulders of all concerned" (op.cite
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p 95} "My proposal is for the revival or reassertion_of personal res-
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ponsibility in all human acts, good and bad." f(op.cite, p 178)
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In the final atakembs, apart from a semtemeemec of strong individuality,

we are in deep trouble indeed \ Apart from individual willingness to bear
— ee

responsibility we will continue to limp into an ominous future.\ But given
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that rebirth, there is hope :\hope that we can be better pgople and the
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world a better, kindlier place for our children.
one enn —_—,, en aan

The Biblical image of man, beginning with the story of Adam and Eve,
bitin saat a SELLER

portrays humanity in terms of great potential, assigned a lofty position
ee |

as co-creator with God, given dominion over the entire woxta The first
iar aes re Cl , iisemnimel

Adam sold out.\ The snake had all the tines. \ but God did not give up

on his creation. \ Rather, there is a new man, a second Adam.}In Jesus
bi aia se tule

Christ we have seen man as God intended him to be:| fuse, responsible,
-_— Dd] el ad

caring fully humaa.
eon Cf <lmumxae

eecvi itn
The Gos spel of Jesus Christ is a call, not to sumeliey, not to
de prec ‘
sel f-cagpieeaegtt, ot to self effacement » Rather the Gospel is based
Rene anand eres
on God's love for man;\God's patient Love that wants us_teo become all
a ea in all sere
sic2ze
that we can become, [we respond to that Gospel when we sebhegp responsi -

bility for our own lives;|when we follow our Lord into ever widening
———" tcecrere

spheres of accountability: | wren we summon the courage to be responsible
Te anal

for the world over which God gives us dominion. \m Jesus Christ we are
al al

called to adult accountability for the world ‘\ ve are called ~ each of us -

to stretch and grow and become everything we were created to begone | In
ree. aE a aad

Christ God calis us ~ each of us - to become fully and joyfully human,

St. Paul, with his sometimes brooding sense of sin and evil, never-

theless said it plainly -
be aad

‘he venewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new nature,

—

created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness."

es tif

e) aude a ails es, Te eiills — xe ®

Wes

Regardless of how threatening the future looks to us at the moment,

the only way out is anead..\ we can cringe and wring our hands at what's
rr

to become af us.) Or we can walk into the future, affirming it, siezing
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it, relying on the confidence our God has in AY Because the simple truth
<n, SE EE

of the matter is that the snake doesn't have to have all the lines. Amen,

Father, our status quo is comfortable, and it is not easy to become
more than we are. Give us a new sense of our worth and our potential.
And walk with us as we learn to be the people you intended us to be:

through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

okew teml we

area ke & 1% Ss

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