Communal Repentance and My Sin
- Livinginbetweenall-Terry
- 4 days ago
- 9 min read
...for Christ's sake, move beyond sin consciousness
“As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
Two interwoven ideas prompted the disciples question. These 1st century peoples were convinced that sin, especially against a community—and its related communal shame resulted in physical disease. Beyond were the unseen spirits, demons or gods who were inter-active with humans for their own purposes. Each were in some measure correct when interpreted sociologically and mostly wrong when applied psychologically.
In two thousand years it would appear we've not made much progress, at least in the American experience. We are so divided and caught up in our underlying assumptions about what constitues good or evil we all too oftern fail to see beyond our tribal gatherings or listen to an individual person. We—a nation founded on the worth of the individual person—have a difficult time seeing one another as persons; left or right.
At this writing in Minneapolis Minnesota we are witnessing the same video's capturing the death of two of our citizens at the hands of Federal authorities be perceived and described in two radically different ways. The real question is who's lying, our eyes or our political leaders left and right? Self-defense or murder?
Within the church our heartfelt prayers ascend to the same God with very different sentiments afoot. We want justice. For whom?
The demonstrators, or;
The Ice officers, or;
The undocumented migrant who finds themselves swept up in the all to prevelant name calling, looking over their shoulders, from side to side for a judgemental glance, or a developing raid at the factory or market place, or;
The children, teens, adults caught up in sex trafficing, rape, murder in the thousands and at the hands of organized crime fed by cartels?
Increasingly our prayers rise from within our suburban churches as appeals for social changes in mass or conversly as deeply personal sins disconnected from our neighbor. Whether we are praying for just social outcomes or deeply felt personal struggles, we are often hiding from or neglecting the very real center of our common human need; to love God first as no other and live out God's love of our neighbors in community. It is, to say, a negative cry for God's help replaces the positive pursuit of loving as God loves.
We cling to our political, social tribes because our attachment as individuals and as a faith community to the wealth and blessings of our American experience and the addictions and diseases that attend, is significantly greater than our attachment to the heart of the Trinity of God. In short, we live for our version of the American dream—however good and just it may be—far more than we live in love of Jesus and his immense love of our neighbors; right and left, rich or poor, citizen or migrant or refugee.
On the political right the ideal of the 'real person' is rightly affirmed. America is a land of liberty where historically each citizen (provided, they were not women, persons of color, or unemployed) were seen as persons, each responsible for building their own future. In its ideal form it is very much like the spirit in which Jesus responded to his disciples question. “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him" (John 9: 3).
Jesus seperated from this one person an underlying theological assumption that sickness is the result of human sin and quite radically suggested that his condition allowed for the rise of a healed, fully restored human. Hence, "after saying this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes. “Go,” he told him, “wash in the Pool of Siloam” (this word means “Sent”). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing” (John 9: 6,7).
Jesus was not disputing the historically honored and communal assumptions common to almost all tribal communities, that dis-comfort in body is often rooted in a 'who' rather than a 'what' and is often communal—the result of the impact of shame or wounds in one person being captured by the whole community. Weather the fruit of the unseen spirits lurking in the darkness of one's enemies or the result of addictive patterns, environmental toxins or abandonment of fathers or mothers, human misery follows. Jesus understood that such causations were all too present. I don't know if Jesus (Son of man) carried around in his brain the bio-chemical understanding of cellular sickness that would later be discovered and fleshed out by Rudolf Virchow1, Louis Pasteur2, and Robert Koch3, among others. What I do know is that Jesus theory of this one persons need was directly related to God's will being done in the earth as it is in heaven.
In this scene Jesus is pointing to a deeper truth. All human deprivation is pregnant with possibilities of our Communal God's restorative Presence with and for every person ever born.
More to the point it is as if he said, in twenty first century terms,"Why are you asking a question relevant to the sociology of this human, before knowing, seeing him as a person, created; in whom God's beauty and restorative charm lives?" As if too emphasize the underlying need for human dignity Jesus notes that his condition was from birth and turned to the man with a salve made of his own spit and and sent him to the Pool of Siloam. Knowing the gentleman's story4 and responding to his underlying need was his motif. In short, Jesus saw the Person and responded to the disease instead of seeing the disease and defining the person.
To the extent that modernity's philosophy of individual responsibility ignobles each and every person as "created in the image of the Divine" and is inclusive of all humans (left, right and center, straight or gay, black or red, or white) and is psychologically and spiritually helpful, God is fully present.
One can argue meaningfully that the American experiment in the shared dignity of all and the equal protection of each will, overtime, remove even the depth of our common original sin against Native Americans and African American slaves. We are indeed a unique experiment in self-governance. Still, the imposed and "legal" inequality before the law in voting, housing and education were largely tolerated in our experience up until the early 1950's, when meaningfully addressed at great cost by Dr. Martin Luther King and the Black churches of the Nation. Only in the early 1970's were the horrific policies of taking native children from their tribes and families and placing them in urban residential schools where these children were stripped of their cultural norms, language, rituals and stories and embued with "Christian" and European stories—imposed, by power. Individualism, in these institutions was nothing more than "killing the Indian to save the child." 5
So, why did such injustice happen in a country founded on 'just ideals' and whose purpose is the 'perfecting of the ideal in reality'? We could uncover historical, cultural, political, wealth accumlative reasons in the creation of systemic, culturally supported racism. Along side the many social, contextual reasons are the very human, individual behaviors or silences that created, contributed to and allowed such a schism to emerge in the heart of our national life, taking such a costly civil war to even begin to unwrap. These social and personal multiple causations form a fabric of inter-locking strands that over-time have been identified and many removed or ameleorated.
Yet these 'what' answers—from sociology, history, politics and psychology— just given, while true, does not do justice to the underlying 'who' inside our narrative. The 'who' is the very Trinity of God who sustains this universe, our world, in the very real hope that we (all) will be "liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God." Even more radically the Apostle Paul suggests that "the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be" set free to become who we know we are called to be. "For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed" ( Romans 8: 21, 20, 19 NIV).
The heart of the Christian gospel is that before we are anything we are spiritual persons. Our communal and personal narratives cannot be defined in terms of materialism or bio-chemistry, or historical influences, or economics, or psychology, or sociology alone. These are valuable perspectives to be sure and critical to a better understanding of both the greatness and brokenness of a nation who holds that the Creator made all men (and women) equal. Let us always remember these are analytical ways of evaluating the social health of our country at different points in time.
These tools should not used in place of the apriori relations of the Divine and human inter-active reality—more real than the universe itself. We humans are living dependent upon Three Persons of the One Love who created us and everything there is. We are creaturely, yet becoming daughters and sons of the earth, made from the dust of the stars, yet beings of spirit that will in time, transcend a thousand million universes, as we are found in Christ.
This is not to suggest that God creates, initiates any of the mild to horrific struggles we bear as a result of our own sin and that of our very connected tribes. It is to say that becoming fully alive as Persons of eternity, like our Creator, is at root a deeply inter-personal, communal reality. That is why Jesus's redefinition of sin is profoundly personal, beyond law and directly connected to the law maker. On the night of his betrayal he assures his disciples that when The Holy Spirit comes—whom Jesus will send—"he will prove the world to be in the wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: about sin, because people do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; and about judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned. In other words sin is refusing Jesus his Space in us, our community, history, psychology, sociology. Righteousness is communicated to us from the Heavens, from The Father himself and judgment is turned on its head. The Satan is at last judged, not us.
We, who are Americans, living inside this incredible, though deeply divided and sinful nation, are called to be a people who cancel's no one, right or left. We are to find and have God's heart in all things, starting with our neighbors—those who are just up the street wether from Georgia or Ghanna, wether Christian or Muslim, wether living out God's good purposes or deeply confused. We are, like our neighbors, persons who are impoverished in spirit, mourn deeply, need to feel comfortable in our own skin instead of arrogantly afraid. We are called to be at peace with our enemies, seeking peace and justice in all places. Such is our task as we become more fully human.
In her sermon on Sunday, January 14, 2026, Pastor Terri 6 communicated the very center of our need in repentance; to put aside our many fears as those who believe we must fight to keep ahold of our place at the top of the food chain, the American Empire. We are invited to instead seek to walk in the earth aware; looking into the face of everyone as a person, not an enemy or " " or whatever social, political, religious, sexual term we may choose. In doing this we will be in a space to listen to Jesus, his Father, The Spirit and our neighbor.
Blessings! Terry
1 Rudolf Virchow (1821-1902): Known as the "founder of cellular pathology," he argued in the 1850s that omnis cellula e cellula (all cells arise from cells) and that diseases are caused by alterations in cellular structure and function.
2 Louis Pasteur (1822-1895): A French chemist who proved that microorganisms (germs) cause fermentation and contagious diseases.
3 Robert Koch (1843-1910): A German physician who developed Koch’s postulates to prove that specific microscopic organisms cause specific diseases, forming the basis of germ theory.
4 His Story Listening to one's story is the first requisite demand of love. Allowing our neighbor to tell their story is the way of Christ, and of The Father and Spirit, as set forth by Jesus in Matthew 5: 1-13: God is ever present in the poverty of finances and spirit, in all who reverence others, don't demand self-attention, freely lend, cancels debts, extends mercy, hungers for 'the good' in all, seeks peace in every relation, and willing to suffer to see these ends come about.
5 Native Residential Schools From 1819 to 1969 there were 408 Schools for Native American Children. These schools were ostensibly created for purposes of 'religious education' by vaious church missional programs and ran up into the 1970s. It became the formal policy of the U.S. Dept of Indian Affairs to support, finance, make administrative room for their use and expansion for the explicit purpose of assimilation into the American culture or as described by one of the early leaders of the department, to "kill the indian and save the man". Many Native American children were taken from their trabal communities and families by force, their hair cut, required to speak only English and prohibited from the practive of tribal rituals. Abusive behaviors beyond these are widely reported.
Two sources of additional information:
6 Pastor Terri's Message at The Church Next Door, Renton WA
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