Sin: A Review & A Preview
August 2, 2026
10th Sunday after Pentecost
MINISTER
Rev. David J. Wood
SCRIPTURE
Psalm 103: 8-14; I John 1: 8-9; John 8: 1-11
“Sin: A Review and A Preview”
by Rev. David J. Wood
10th Sunday After Pentecost, August 2, 2026
First Congregational Church of Camden
Scripture Readings: Psalm 103: 8-14; I John 1: 8-8; John 8: 1-11
You my recall the popular comic strip, Calvin and Hobbes. It centered on conversations between 6 year old Calvin and his stuffed tiger, Hobbes. In one of those stops, young Calvin asks Hobbes:
“Do you think babies are born sinful?
That they come into the world as sinners?”
Hobbes: “No, I think they’re just quick studies.”
Calvin: “Whenever you discuss certain things with animals, you get insulted.”
The world is not as its supposed to be…and we are not all that we are supposed to be…not a reality to be rejected or a reason to reject others, not a justification for shame or for shaming others, it is a truth to be recognized and confessed…as our reading from I John reminded us, our failure to recognize this truth about ourselves can set in motion mechanisms of self deception and projection that alienate us from ourselves, from one another and from God.
As the writer Frederick Buechner wrote…a quote I have shared with you before…
To confess your sins to God is not to tell God something God doesn’t already know. However, until you confess them, they are the abyss between you. When you confess them, they become the bridge.
To which I would add, onfession is also what builds bridges of communion and solidarity with each other as well.
Talk of sin in the context of the overwhelming grace and mercy of God should create the conditions not for our separation from the world and its woes…it should create the conditions for our identification and solidarity with the world. Which brings me to the PREVIEW part of my sermon:
I’ve decided to initiate a more explicit conversation about sin over the next several weeks…I’ve decided to take us on a preaching tour of the Seven Deadly Sins.
Pride
Greed
Lust
Anger
Envy
Gluttony
Sloth
Preaching on the Seven Deadly Sins puts me in good company. The first series was probable preached by in the 4the Century monk, St. Evagrius Ponticus…then in the 5th Century was the theologian, John Cassian; Pope Gregory in the 6th Century, and eventually picked up by Thomas Aquinas, Dante, Chaucer…on down to the 20th Century…where writers of stature, such John Updike, Mary Gordon, Gore Vidal, and Joyce Carol Oates make the 7 a topic of reflection.
These Seven Deadly Sins even show up in pop culture. One example: There was a theory afoot several years ago that the once popular TV Series, Gilligan’s island that the seven main characters were constructed to illustrate the seven deadly sins. I know I’m dating myself here. 3 seasons. 98 episodes. I think i saw all 98.
Pride—the Professor
Greed—Thurston Howell
Anger—Skipper
Sloth—Gillian
I’ll leave it to you to decide which of the remaining sins belong to which characters.
Sins to be named are not deadly because they are “moral” dins, but the source, fountain, host of other sins. They have a way of leeching into the groundwater of our lives…
I think it’s fair to say, that., over the centuries, These sins have not lost their appeal…Humankind never tires of innovation and inventiveness. In that sense, we humans are each “original” sinners. As Shakespeare put it in Henry IV, we “commit the oldest sins in the newest kind of ways.”
Over the coming weeks, We will probe how sin makes its presence known in our lives personally, individually.
But, no less, we will probe how these patterns become woven into the social, cultural fabric we live and move day in and day out…and how, as they do, they become increasingly invisible, more difficult to detect and resist…
And we will no less probe what it means to live as those who know the overwhelming grace and mercy of God…to know the truth that sets us free.
So much for the preview of what is to come.
Let me turn now to the second part of my sermon.
A REVIEW of Sin…and a brief one at that.
My friend Tom Long, a theologian and teacher of preachers at Princeton and Candler School of Theology, several years ago (1993) wrote an article on how, in his estimation, sin had experienced a “serious deflation in the working vocabulary of our culture.” He titled the article, “God be merciful to me, A Miscalculator”. In that piece, he acknowledges that many sins that have been committed under the banner of naming “sin’. “Sin” he admits, has been utilized to scapegoat, malign, condemn, nevertheless…he holds out that it is a theological concept worth “treasuring.”
And I quote
“If we squander it or lose it, we also lose the capacity to speak with accuracy and depth of our humanity.”
Immorality = too tame, too subject to shifting social codes.”
Estrangement and alienation—too small and focused on the individual
Evil—certainly relevant…but paints with a broad brush…”lacks personal bite”
Co-dependent or Psychopathic: all fine, but the scope is limited…they are more connected to personality type or psychological profile…
Coming back to the word, “sin,” Tom concludes,
“No other word gathers up a single stitch the intrapsychic, the interpersonal, the moral, the ecological, the social, the cosmological, and the theological character of brokenness of human life and of all creation. To be able to use the word sin is to be able to speak with honesty about who we are with and to each other.”
He concludes, “because it places us on common ground, it is the soil of compassion forgiveness, and hope.”
Let me repeat that last sentence…“Because it places us on common ground, it is the soil of compassion forgiveness, and hope.”
Which brings me to the story Ru read for us from the Gospel of John. Jesus is in the Temple and the Scribes and the Pharisees bring to him a woman who, they say, has been caught in the act of adultery.
The whole set up is designed to humiliate, shame, and to condemn.
“They made her stand before everyone.”
Of course, the first question is, “Where is the man?”
The use of the Law for “selective prosecution” is not new.
They demand that Jesus render a judgement.
It is a test of his law-abiding credentials.
So there’s Jesus, standing with, for, and by the unnamed woman.
It was not be the first time he stood with a sinner.
It certainly would not be the last.
The woman is silent.
The Law is being wielded mercilessly as a weapon against her.
We know this scene.
It has played out all to often in the life of the church.
Exploitation of shame and guilt.
Merciless condemnation in the name of upholding the demand of God’s righteousness.
We see a version of this scene being played out in our larger society these days…a weaponizing of the law…the use of the law to justify the terrorizing, even the killing of or neighbors.
Jesus has little patience for this use of the Law of his day.
I have no doubt where he would be standing today…
Jesus simply invites them to carry out their sentence, with one caveat:
“Let him who is without sin, cast the first stone.”
One by one they left.
Jesus turns to the woman.
It the first time she is addressed.
“Where are your accusers? Has no one condemned you?”
“No one.” she says. He has her proclaim her exoneration.
Then Jesus says, and I paraphrase:
“You are free to go…and free to begin again.”
Talk of sin, sins, and sinners, in the church is to establish our common ground…
It is to know that God, in Christ, has made common ground with us. and how that common ground creates the conditions to know a mercy and grace of God that frees us to begin again and again.
And that knowledge makes all the difference for how we make our way through this world where things are not as they should be—it is how we remember where and how we are being called to intervene on behalf of others…in the name of the One who has shown us the way the world was supposed to be.
We don’t come here to gather stones let alone to throw them. We come here to know our lives more truthfully, to recover our communion with God who, in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus—the mystery our faith—has intervened for us….not only for us, but for the whole world.
And that, my friends, is Amazing Grace! Amen.