PROPER 6-C, June 13, 2004

My younger sister's favorite television program is The Young and the Restless. She watches the soap religiously every day, usually on videotape replay. She works during the day and can only watch it after work. Actually, it might be sacrilegious to say that she watches a television show, a trashy soap opera at that, religiously. There is not very much that is religious about soap operas, unless we consider sin a religious subject.

If that is the case, then all soap operas are religious because they are all filled with sin. There is greed; there is jealously; there is envy in abundance. But we do not have to turn on the television to hear about sin and selfishness. All we have to do is come to church and listen to the morning’s readings, at least the ones appointed for today.

In the Old Testament reading we hear the story of King Ahab, his wife, Jezebel, and the innocent victim of their greed, Naboth. As the story goes, Naboth owns a piece of land. It is a family inheritance and so is very sacred to him. But Ahab, the King, wants that land because it is close to the land he owns. Heis even willing to pay Naboth for the land. But because it is so sacred, Naboth refuses to sell it, even to the king, as he has every right to do.

Enter Jezebel. Without even knowing the rest of the story, it is not difficult for us to imagine what would happen next. All we have to hear is the name "Jezebel." My dictionary defines "Jezebel", and I quote, as a "shameless or immoral woman." And she is. She is a control-freak, one who does her very best to corrupt her husband, who is not a very likeable person in the first place. He is basically a spoiled, selfish person who whines when he cannot get his way.

Ahab does not need Naboth’s land. He simply wants it. And as Jezebel tells him, he has every right to that land. After all, he is the king, and whatever the king wants, the king gets no matter who gets stepped on or stepped over in the process. And if it takes lying and even an unjustified murder to get what you want, Ahab and Jezebel are not loath to do whatever it might take. And so they do. A soap opera story 3000 years old.

When Elijah gets wind of what has happened, he gets angry and confronts Ahab with his treachery and then informs him that such a dastardly deed will not go unpunished. And as the rest of this soap opera plays out, we discover that Ahab gets his due in due time.

In the Gospel we have another soap opera: a woman of the night appears at a dinner Jesus is attending. It is a very proper dinner served by a very proper Pharisee to very proper people. Simon would no more have a prostitute in his home than he would be inhospitable to his invited guests. But as Luke tells the story, he is both. The prostitute somehow gets into the dinner party and Simon fails to fulfill the minimum of common courtesy, which is to have one of his servants wash Jesus' feet. When Simon gets angry about the woman's presence, Jesus gets angry with Simon. The woman may have been discourteous to Simon by crashing his party, but Simon was discourteous to Jesus by neglecting simple etiquette.

It is easy, I suspect for us, to sit in judgment of Ahab and Jezebel and Simon, just as we sit in judgement of the characters on soap operas, if we watch them; just as we sit in judgment of the Scott Petersons or Kobe Bryants of today. It is human nature. Sin attracts us like flies to honey. That's why people watch soap operas and why the tabloids and the gossip magazines like People are so popular. The juicier the tale, the more likely we are to pay attention.

No one of us is immune. Some of us simply protest too much. We don't have time for gossip, we say. How can anyone waste time watching soap operas, we say. But in the secret recesses of our hearts and beings we are no different. We are simply less obvious. My sister deliberately watches her soap. I just take a casual look at the headlines on the tabloids as I check out at the grocery store. What's the difference?

The point of the readings, it seems to me, and one that I believe we overlook, is that sin should make us angry, just as it made Elijah and Jesus angry -- all sin, and not just the sin that affects us personally. The problem we have, I think, is that sin does not seem to matter until it does become personal. And the way we know it becomes personal is that we become angry. For example, supposing Scott Peterson or Kobe Bryant are guilty: I wonder how many of us are truly angry with them. The families of their victims surely will be. The rest of us tend to be curious, but idle and passive bystanders to the events. We weren't hurt and so we aren't angry.

Sin seems to get our attention only when it makes us angry -- someone else's sin toward us, that is. And we know we have sinned against another, when we get that person's attention and he gets angry with us. Elijah and Jesus were angry because someone had sinned. Simon was angry, too.

The difference between Simon and Elijah, the difference between Simon and Jesus, was that Simon was angry because he felt someone had personally hurt him -- namely the sinful woman who had crashed his wonderful party. Elijah and Jesus were angry simply because they saw someone doing something that was wrong. They were not personally hurt by the sins, but they took the sins personally.

How often do we take the sins of someone else personally? Did we take the suicide bombings in Iraq personally? Did we take Lacy Peterson’s murder personally? Did we take the genocide in Bosnia or Rwanda personally? Do we even take the crimes we read about every day in the paper personally? I doubt it. And we don't take them personally enough to get angry. Oh, we may shake our heads and wonder what is going on with this world, this country, this city. But we do not get angry enough to personally confront the sinner as Elijah and Jesus did. It might make that person angry and we might get hurt.

What happens, then, is that we tend to view the sins of the world much as we view a soap opera, much as we view the Peterson trial. It's all very interesting and not very personal. And we are certainly not going to get involved. Say what you will about those who protest abortions: at least they are getting personally involved. I make no judgment about their actions, their tactics or even the morality of abortion. My only point is that they see what they consider sin happening to someone else, namely unborn babies, and they are angry enough to protest. That may be more than I can say for myself.

The point of today's readings is very simple. Sin will never be eliminated from this world until we become angry enough to do something about it. And we will not become angry enough to do something about it until it becomes personal. The murders that take place daily in our cities; the tragedies in Iraq and the Gaza Strip; the petty crimes that occur right here in Cedar Rapids – all of that and more will continue as long as those sins, those crimes, those tragedies remain impersonal; as long as they remain sins committed against someone else.

And to get even more personal, as long as no one of us cares enough to help put a stop to the stupidity of sin that affects others, we can't expect others to care enough to help us when we are the victims of someone else's stupidity and selfishness.

There is no simple solution, of course. What there is is taking all sin as personal, knowing that each and every sin will eventually have a personal affect on each of us. Elijah knew that Ahab’s selfishness and greed would eventually affect all the people of his kingdom, including him. And it did. And that is one of the reasons why he was angry. Jesus loved everyone personally. And when they hurt, he hurt. When someone hurt someone he loved, he took it personally. And he got angry.

There is a line in the movie Broadcast News that says it all. A news reporter opens a window and shouts "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more." Until you and I become mad as hell, angry enough that we won't take the sin of others and our own sins any more, life will remain very much like it is, like a soap opera, and nothing much will change. Today's readings challenge all of us to begin to take our faith and the responsibilities of our faith very, very seriously. The world is depending on us.