SIN & GRACE...A HALF-STEP FROM HELL
July 26, 1998
Rev. Eugene Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
John 8:1-11
In his book, Hard Living People and Mainstream Christians, Tex Sample quotes one hard living, hard-drinking man who says, "Look there ain't but two places for us. You either live in hell or you live a half step away. " Now his life, on the edge of alcohol and drug addiction with a marginal dead end job, may not be our life, and yet...I think we have all experienced that half-step from hell feeling; those times when, in the words of Sample, we feel like "life is too expensive for the money and too demanding for the energy;" times when in the words of country singer, Tracy Lawrence, "seems like every time I make my mark, somebody paints the wall."
Country music knows well the feeling of being a half step from hell, of being down so far it looks like there is no way up. So I want to begin this morning with a half step from hell song from Kris Kristofferson - "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down." "I fumbled through my closet for my clothes and found my cleanest dirty shirt...and there's nothin' short of dyin', half as lonesome as the sound, on the sleepin' city sidewalks, Sunday morning' comin' down." You can imagine that a minister might be fond of this song.
While it may not be our experience, I think we know what the music is talking about; those times when the burdens of our lives seem more than we can bear, when we are haunted by what Kristofferson calls "the disappearin' dreams of yesterday." My friend Frederick Buechner writes about a true experience: "My wife and I were buying groceries one day and I was on one side of the store and she was on the other, and over a shelf of breakfast cereal and cake mix I said, 'Don't forget the cream,' and she said, 'All right, but don't forget you're trying to lose weight,' and I said, 'Oh well, you only live once.'
"The store was nearly empty so that the woman at the checkout counter had no trouble hearing us. It was a hot, muggy afternoon, and she had been working hard all day, and looked flushed and hectic there behind her cash register...and when I said, "Oh well, you only live once,' she broke in to the conversation and said, 'Don't you think once is enough?'
Buechner continues, "It was a mild jest and I laughed mildly, but it was also very much not a jest because I had a feeling that what by some rare chance I had happened to hear was a human being saying something like this: 'People come and people go, most of them strangers. I'm sick of them, and I'm such of myself too. One day's very much like another...I'll live my life out to the last, and I expect to have good days as well as bad. But when the end comes, I won't complain. One life will do me very nicely." "Sunday mornin', comin' down."
Willie Nelson sings another one of these songs, these struggling songs, these burden songs, "The Pilgrim: Chapter 33." It has some great lines so I want to share that one with you too. (play song) The words to this song are so true to life: "All he ever gets is older and around...takin' every wrong direction on his lonely way back home."
Again, you don't have to be fan of country music to hear some of the truth behind these words. Like the man in the song, like the woman behind the grocery counter, we all know those moments when we suspect we are taking every wrong direction on our own lonely way back home. When we don't even know how to get back home. When we feel, in the words of John Denver, "Lost and alone on some forgotten highway."
Turning to our text, we find someone who is lost, in over her head. Surrounded by a hostile crowd of men, she is sinking beneath the weight of their self-righteous hatred. She has no way out, no where to turn. She knows what it means to go in every wrong direction when who should appear but Jesus himself. He calms the storm of intolerance and hatred. Reminds the men that their lives are not exactly sinless and pure. Perhaps the woman in our story is not the only one in need of a savior. And then he confronts her with her own wrongdoing. He's not afraid to tell her that she has sinned. There is an element of honesty in this text - a reminder of in AA when everyone is told to make a fearless moral inventory of his or her own lives. That is what Jesus kind of does with this woman and then he forgives her and sends her on her way, restored, renewed, saved.
Remember that picture a few years ago in the Press Democrat ? It was during the last El Nino. It was of that young woman who was caught in Manzanitas Creek. That photo won a Pulitzer Prize I believe. Lizann and I talked about that and at the time we wondered if that photo might not be a bad metaphor for the Gospel. That young woman was literally in over her head, doing the best she could, but by herself, the best was not good enough. She was in grave danger of drowning. She needed intervention from the outside. She was not going to be able to save herself. She literally needed a savior. And, fortunately, one arrived in the person of a heroic firefighter. He fought against the current, at great risk to himself. Basically, he was willing to sacrifice himself for her. He pulled her out and gave her back her life. "Love lifted me."
Here we have a large clue as to where or to whom we might turn in those moments when we feel we are taking every wrong direction and may never get home; those moments when we feel we are indeed just a half step from hell. For the hard fact is that often we cannot save ourselves. The Gospel knows this; the music knows this. I think of an old song by Larry Gatlin and the Gatlin brothers - "Help Me." "Lord help me walk another mile, one more mile. I'm tried of walking all alone."
There is a lot of God talk in country music. Hank Williams drank himself to death by the age of 29. He was a hard living man. And yet, 15% of his songs had religious themes. One commentator suggested that Williams could never quite decide if he wanted Saturday night or Sunday morning. Again and again in the music we hear this yearning for God, for salvation, for a savior. It was said of one singer - "He carried a Bible in a Crown Royal bag."
And the yearning of the music gives expression to our yearning. I think back to that girl struggling against a hostile world. "Lord I just can't make it on my own." The good news of our text is that we do not have to. This is what, at its heart, the Christian faith has declared for centuries. There is One who knows more about us than we know about ourselves, whose love we cannot outdistance, and whose acceptance we cannot earn. Think again about his encounter with the woman in our text, or in other encounters throughout the Gospel. Where lay Christ's transforming - his saving - power? Confused men, bewildered women, sometimes the very dregs of humanity, all alike felt compelled to say about him: "This man knows us exactly as we are; yet he sees something worthwhile in us; he does not treat us like the refuse of life. He seems to think we do not need to be prisoners of our past, but we can be better than we've been. And lives were changed and lives are changed still. The yearning and the hope.
Kris Kristofferson expresses it well in his song, "Why me?" (plays song) Friends there is much we have to struggle for and with in this life, but the one thing we do not have to struggle to earn or gain is the love of God in Christ. Out of my own life, out of my own heart and experience, I say to you that this love is there already, accepting us, buoying us up, giving us hope throughout all of life and its many storms.
Katy Mattea has a song, "Standing Knee Deep in the River and Dying of Thirst." When you hear it, it may sound like she's talking about friendship and so she is, but she is also talking about more. We are all standing knee deep in the river of boundless love and grace. There is just no need for us to be thirsty. Let's just play her song for a closing prayer.