My sons love bandaids! If they pinch their fingers or fall down and have even the slightest scratch, there is only one fix! A Bandaid is always needed to make the tears go away. I’ve seen them walk up with the smallest amount of red showing on their little cut fingers and say “Daddy fix it, I need a bandaid”. I’ve even found my youngest upstairs in the emergency kit applying his own bandaids after he slid too hard on the carpet.
Bandaids are the source of making things right in my house.
Last night I had the privilege to teach 40 eighth grade confirmation students aboutSin and Redemption. I’ve been joking for some time that I thought it particularly interesting that I was assigned the week on sin as if I’m an expert on the topic. I guess it was a role best suited for me! While we talked I asked the students to define the word/concept of sin. They couldn’t.
Now, I think that part of the reason they couldn’t define or understand sin was because they were ridiculously shy – they wouldn’t talk! But, when I pressed them to share with me an experience that happened to them or that they knew of where they had this feeling that “something wasn’t right” they shared willingly. I goaded them a little bit and told them that it was okay to be a racist or that as a man I was far superior to Andrea (our Middle school director). On both occasions they were mortified that I would even hint at such a thing. I told them that this awareness that something wasn’t right was a way to understand sin.
We defined sin in the class as anything that distorts or disrupts God’s best in God’s creation. So when I personally choose to impose my wishes or wants on another person, I’m really disrupting God’s best for both me and for the other person. We shared that this sin issue was something that was corporate as well as individual. We all could see areas in our culture, government, world, i.e. that are examples of a somethings “not right” that completely disrupts God’s best.
This past week, our country experienced a horrific event in Arizona. Someone decided that their best was better than anyone else’s. They hurt and killed people and violated God’s creation. I then watched as people began looking and searching for reasons and a place to find fault. Those on either side of the political divide were blaming each other and spewing this venom across the airways of our televisions. The fault finding was only doing one thing – it was ramping up even more frustration and anger and rage and ultimately distorting further God’s best.
The thing that hurt me most, and I believe hurt the heart of God the most, was that their were followers of Jesus who joined in on the blame and wicked words. Followers of Jesus who are called to be a living incarnation of Jesus were involved in mudslinging and “rabble rousing”. Talk about distorting God’s goodness!
I told my 8th graders last night that in the midst of all this sin and brokenness and willful distortion of God’s goodness, there is good news. See God refused to leave us broken and fallen. God invited us to a table and said “let’s reason this together, for I will make your sins, though they be as dark and stained as scarlet, white and pure as a fresh snow.” God, the one who was offended the most, is the one who has offered to make things right. I told the students that when God looked and saw this brokenness, God decided that something had to be done! God knew that we needed a bandaid that could cover the gouge in the beauty of creation.
God also knew that we couldn’t do it on our own and so the one that was offended offered us the way to be made whole again.
This is our story! This is why we have the best message of all time – God saw our brokenness, our own and our worlds “something not right”, and God entered the story to offer us wholeness and healing. When we incorporate that healing to our lives, we move beyond sides and fault finding to become agents of healing for others who are broken. We leave behind the ease of picking a side and move to offering a hand of healing. We move beyond flinging and finding blame to being one who offers restoration. We move beyond extending more brokenness to the place where we kneel down and confess that we need a much bigger bandaid!