As we’ve already seen in the past week or so, one of the ways Desert spirituality differs most from that common today is in how it relates to the idea of sin. Whereas our culture, still hungover from a centuries-long obsession with sinfulness and hell-fire, treats the idea of sin with a lot of disdain and suspicion, the Desert Fathers had no such qualms. While our way has the advantage of rightly highlighting the love and grace of God, their way has the advantage of preventing sin — which is inescapable — from entering the Shadow, that murky part of the soul or psyche that we cannot see.
In this way, the Desert Fathers were more in line with the New Testament, which likewise never shies away from talking about sin. We see this vividly in today’s Epistle reading:
And you were dead in your transgressions and the sins in which you once walked in accordance with the age of this world, in accordance with the ruler of the authority of the air, of the spirit that even now is at work in the children of faithlessness, in which we too all once stewed in the cravings of our flesh, following the appetites of the flesh and our rationalizations — we too were by nature children of wrath just like the rest of them. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which God has loved us, brought us, who were dead in in our transgressions, back to life with Christ — you have been saved by grace — and raised us up with him and and sat us down with him in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus, so that, in the ages to come, God might demonstrate the all-surpassing wealth of his grace in his kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this is not from you, but is God’s gift; not from what we have done, so that no one might boast. For we are his creations, crafted in Christ Jesus for good works for which God has prepared us, so that we might walk in them. (Ephesians 2.1-10)
The way this passage starts is pretty jarring in how it talks about sinfulness. But, as I noted a couple years ago in my big series on Ephesians, this feels worse in English than it does in the original Greek by virtue of the different ways the languages like to organize ideas. This whole paragraph is largely one single sentence in Greek, and stripped of all its subordinate clauses, that sentence reads, “And God also brought you back to life with [Christ].” So again, the focus of what is begin said here is not our ‘wretchedness’ but God’s love and grace for us. It just isn’t afraid to talk about why we need grace, which boils down here to three main reasons: 1. We are caught in ‘the way the world works’ that makes it impossible to make choices that do no harm to anyone; 2. There are malevolent forces that traffic in distortion and ‘alternative truths’ (whether we think these are personal forces or social ones (i.e., social contagions), all we have to do is read a comment section online to see their twisted logic at work); and 3. ‘The flesh’, that typically Greek way of talking about the ways we let our natural appetites get the better of us, confusing need and want.
So, despite the jarring language used here, and the ways it foregrounds sin, this is far from a fire-and-brimstone mentality. It’s saying that between the world’s systems, the ideas and ‘big feelings’ swirling around society, and the ways we get tripped up by our appetites, there’s no way we can live that does not in some way break faith with God, others, creation, and ourselves. Rather than deny this or shrug this off, the best approach is to acknowledge it and accept it.
And this is the spirit of the text from the Deseret Fathers that I’d like to look at today, from the popular, but by today’s standards inappropriately-named St. John the Dwarf. Thinking about the universal human tendency towards self-justification, he said:
‘We have put the light burden on one side, that is to say, self-censure, and we have loaded ourselves with a heavy one, that is to say, self-justification.’ (Abba John the Dwarf 21)
This saying calls back to a teaching of Jesus who said:
‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’ (Matthew 11.28-30)
Here, Abba John is saying that, contrary to what we might think, in the end it is accepting our sinfulness and bringing it out into the light of day that is the lighter burden, as compared to self-justification. He’s essentially tying together this teaching of Jesus with Jesus’s call to “Repent! For the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!” As much as we may think otherwise, self-justification is actually a heavy burden. Think how much time we spend convincing ourselves we’re in the right or unproblematic, when we could stop all that just by being honest. Repentance is never about taking on a burden of guilt or shame, but about casting off those burdens.
Honesty, with ourselves as much as with others, is best policy, and the best path to a lightly-burdened heart. There is still a burden, to be sure, since we are left with the responsibility to make things right as much as we can. But compared to the heavy weight of secrecy, covering tracks, self-deception, and making excuses, it’s very light indeed.
Lord, grant me eyes to see myself clearly. that I may repent take on your light burden. Amen.
Matthew Root 