The Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee



Proper 4, Year A, 2008, June 1, 2008, St. James the Less Church Madison (morning)

“There is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:22-23).

There’s a great scene in the 1967 movie, Cool Hand Luke, where the Paul Newman character has escaped from prison and then been recaptured. The guards are punishing him, trying to “get his mind right”, so they get him to dig and then fill up again a hole just big enough to bury a man in. Luke is a prisoner on the chain gang, so it’s believable that the guards might actually shoot him and bury him right there. After he’s exhausted from digging, they tell him the hole’s in the wrong place. “Yes, boss”, he says, and fills up the hole and digs another one. By the end of this ordeal he’s crying and begging for mercy, lying in the bottom of the grave. Nothing he does is good enough. The experience breaks him.

The Apostle Paul tells us today about sin, about our common human failure and the way in which we fall short of the glory of God. Human beings aren’t perfect, and the ability to “fess up” to our inadequacy is a sign that we are in touch with reality. Most people understand that if you think you are perfect, then there is something wrong with you. But generally speaking, we don’t want to dwell on human failure, on human sin, and for obvious reasons.

Paul the Apostle is dwelling on it, however, and for a purpose. Keeping the Law is impossible, because of the human condition; no set of rules, even God-given ones, that we are able to keep will make us worthy to stand before God. But we are not like “Cool Hand Luke”, worn down by an oppressive force, set impossible tasks to grind us down and defeat us. Luke is broken by his experience, and not just faking it; he tells a friend later in the movie that he really was reduced to nothing. But human beings are never reduced to “nothing”; and the purpose of the Apostle’s words is not to render us inert. Paul is not a prison guard, and neither is God.

The point is something else. We are unable to free ourselves from the human condition, from human sinfulness, but God is able to do it. The playing field is level for us, and no one has the advantage (we’re all sinners); but only so that the advantage can be God’s, and righteousness his own free gift. Righteousness means “right relationship” with God, and so it is up to God to heal the breach that exists between us and him. We don’t have the power to declare “all is well”, but God has that power.

If we go back to the movie, where we started, we might place Jesus himself in that dark hole that humankind has dug. The guard is not God, but the Enemy, our ancient foe the devil. We have well and truly dug our own pit, our own grave, but Jesus Christ has offered himself to make things right again. We are all imprisoned, slaves to sin as Paul calls us elsewhere; but Jesus has become the atoning sacrifice. If we were bound by chains that we fashioned ourselves, Jesus Christ has struck them off and given us our freedom. By offering himself in love for his friends, he has made us one with God: the “atonement” or “at-one-ment” that brings right relationship with God. Only love, willing to sacrifice, can bring things back into balance. The Good News is that God has paid the price, and fetched us out of our graves and given us back our lives.

Freedom and a new life are God’s gifts to us. None of us can free ourselves from the human condition, but God can through grace. The Eucharist we celebrate today is the reminder of the new life that has been given to us. We were prisoners once, but now we’ve been freed. It’s the gift of God, for the People of God.

The Rt. Rev’d John Bauerschmidt, Bishop of Tennessee

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