We Are the Reason--September 17, 2025

We Are the Reason--September 17, 2025

"The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance: that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the foremost. But for that very reason I received mercy, so that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display the utmost patience as an example to those who would come to believe in him for eternal life. (1 Timothy 1:15-16)

I'm not usually one to glean deep theological insights from pop divas, but every so often the Spirit speaks through the Top 40 hit list. Today, hearing again these words from 1 Timothy that many would have heard in worship this past Sunday, it's happening again.

It wasn't that long ago that it seemed like every playlist, radio station, and department store background music speaker was playing the song "Antihero" by Taylor Swift, so even someone like me (who is perpetually reminded by my kids how old both I and my taste in music seem) was hearing the repeated words of the chorus:  "It's me--hi.  I'm the problem, it's me."  I remember the first time I paid attention to those words and thinking just how countercultural her sentiment is.  We are so quick to blame others, point fingers, and turn those people over there into scapegoats that it is almost shocking to hear someone flip the script and start with saying, "I'm part of the problem."  Acknowledging that we are complicit and entangled in the brokenness of the world around us, as hard as it is to do, has a way of changing our perspective and reframing the way we see other people in the world--who are also, honestly, part of the problem, too.  It has a way of humanizing the folks we are quickest to be frustrated with, as well as humbling ourselves to keep us from imagining we are perfect peaches.

These verses from the letter we call First Timothy do the same thing--just without the synth drums and catchy hooks of a pop song.  The apostle speaking here first quotes a saying that had already emerged as a catch phrase in the early church: "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners."  Just imagine: we are hearing a slogan so ancient that even the books of the New Testament themselves are quoting it like a well-known refrain!  And it really is a powerful claim--that the coming of Christ was not for the purpose of zapping the mess-ups, kicking out the undesirables, or damning the doers of iniquity.  It wasn't even to reward the well-behaved or bestow trophies and gold-stars on the holy.  The earliest Christian notion was that Jesus had come to rescue, to restore, and to redeem--to save sinners.  Like Robert Farrar Capon once put it, "Jesus came to raise the dead.  He did not come to teach the teachable; he did not come to improve the improvable; he did not come to reform the reformable. None of those things works."  Jesus' mission was and is rescuing us who are trapped in our own empty-handed deadness.

Ant that "us" is important.  It is a reminder that the category of "sinners" is not a set of people somewhere else, bounded by different neighborhoods, across state lines, or registered with the "other" political party.  It's us.  Hi.  We're the problem--it's us. We don't have permission to say that Jesus had to come because THOSE pathetic slobs OVER THERE were the problem, but rather we have to confess that we are among those slobs. We're the reason for Jesus' coming--the category of sinners includes us, as well as the whole human family.   There's nobody else we can pin the blame on or make into our scapegoats.

Even more powerful is hearing that admission coming from the perspective of Paul the apostle, since the verse here in First Timothy continues, with "to save sinners--of whom I am the foremost."  It's not that Paul is being melodramatic, but the memory that this same one we remember as the great missionary apostle and first theologian of the church got his start with blood on his hands trying to kill Christians and stamp out the early church.  Paul came to see in hindsight that it was the epitome of wickedness--making him "the foremost of sinners"--to have formerly resorted to violence against the Christian movement just because he disagreed with them.  An older, wiser Paul had come to understand that it was entirely wrong-headed to want to use the tools of coercion and intimidation to try to enforce his view of righteousness--the same way it is wrong-headed and dangerous to try and enforce it in our own day along the lines of "Christian nationalism".  Indeed, he realized that the One he had formerly vilified as a cursed blasphemer was actually the Messiah of God.  Paul eventually realized--and rebuilt his entirely theology around--the fact that he was one of those "sinners" that the Christ had come for, maybe at the top of the list.  Paul realized that his only hope was a God who was less interested in zapping wrongdoers than in rescuing us from ourselves and our own worst impulses.  And from there, he became an advocate for the Christian community always to reach out beyond itself to the folks beyond its own membership so that God's saving love could touch everyone.  Paul became committed to reaching out to the folks on the margins--not just the diamonds-in-the-rough or the smudged faces with hearts of gold underneath, but the hard-hearted, mean-spirited, wrong-headed, and stiff-necked jerks, too--because he had been one of those folks on the margins, too, and grace found him.  That changed everything for Paul.

It changes everything for us, too.  When we realize, like the apostle, that we were (and are) among that group called "sinners" who are usually selfish, frequently cruel, often driven by fear, and perpetually getting ourselves deeper in trouble, it gives us a certain humbled grace toward everybody else, even when they are at their worst, too. When we recognize that we were estranged outsiders on the margins whom Christ sought and brought back home, we can't help but be turned outward to offer that same extravagant love to the folks who get labeled "lost" or "least" or "last." Once we realize that Jesus came for sinners like us, we will recover empathy for everybody else who shares that designation with us... which is the whole lot of humanity.  Once we can confess, along with Taylor Swift and the Apostle Paul, "It's me--hi.  I'm the problem. It's me," we lose forever the right (which was an illusion all along) to decree that somebody is too far gone, too lost, or too much of a sinner for us to reach out to.  That bad news, which makes the Gospel's good news intelligible, prevents us from ever saying, "We just can't make it work with THOSE PEOPLE, because they are so wicked, so terrible, and so rotten that God has given up on them."  Seeing that we are the reason Jesus came to save sinners (in other words, seeing that we are sinners ourselves) will give us all the more reason to seek out the people we would have otherwise dismissed as unreachable, unlovable, or unworthy.

So today, hear both truths: you and I are among that universal label for humanity of "sinners." And because we are in that category, we had better act with the same grace toward others that we trust Jesus has shown to us. Our belonging and theirs are one and the same, just as truly as they and we alike are part of the problem.  How will it change the way we treat people, give second chances to people, and see the humanity of people, before we get the chance to climb up on a perch of holier-than-thou condemnation?  And how will it provoke us to speak up for other fellow sinners when someone else comes along and tries to dismiss them as beyond the reach of God's love? 

A great deal is put into new focus when we can tell the truth about ourselves--both our entanglement in sin and our belovedness in Christ.

Lord Jesus, help us to tell the truth about ourselves, so that we can also hear your gospel good news spoken to us.