Hope springs eternal, or so the saying goes. And few things are as hoped for as our sins being not so bad. We hope beyond hope in our heart of hearts that, really, it wasn’t all that wrong… That nobody really got that hurt, or if they did it was their own fault, or maybe for a greater good, or that anyone who would challenge us on our actions is just being judgmental and butting their nose in where it doesn’t belong. They just don’t understand, after all, and it’s none of their, or God’s, business anyways. Perhaps we might even get some inkling of the wrongness of what we have done, but we hope and look for what good may have come out of it.

Last weekend, we saw a Herculean exercise in this selfish and self-justifying kind of hope. August 6th, 2005, was the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. An estimated 80,000 people were murdered that day, with another 60,000 dying horribly in the following weeks due to injuries and radiation. This does not include the subsequent generations poisoned genetically by the atomic fallout. Three days after the bombing of Hiroshima, Nagasaki was hit – almost on a whim, since the primary target for the second bomb was too cloudy to strike – resulting in another 80,000 casualties.

With the exception of a few pieces here and there, and a documentary on CBC, it would have been very easy for someone to completely miss this anniversary. Some things, it seems, should never be forgotten, while others – in this new age of anti-terrorism bunker busting nuclear weapons and redevelopment of atomic arsenals – it seems should never be remembered. With those commentators who bothered to say anything at all, hope sprang mightily: the atomic bombings forced Japan to surrender, they saved the lives of Allied troops and even more Japanese civilians from a land invasion, the targets were military-industrial sites, it was revenge for Pearl Harbor, if they didn’t drop the bombs then Russia would have invaded, the Japanese brought it one themselves after we warned them… Anything, anything at all necessary to cover the gravity of the act and convince ourselves that it was anything other than what it was: a disgusting, monsterous crime against humanity, in which a whole society was threatened with genocide… A threat made good by the heartless murder of over 220,000 innocent civilians, targeted exactly because they were civilians. As a frame of reference, that is almost 74 9/11’s, constituting the only time in history that atomic weapons were actually used… Twice… On civilians… Not to point any fingers.

Ah such hope, that really we’re not such bad people, and that our evil acts are justified, even necessary, and that necessity absolving us of the guilt of the crime. Or howabout this example, and you just know I had to have an opinion on it: in Ontario, two straight men have decided to get married under the new equal rights legislation, cynically hoping to manipulate it to acquire government benefits. Naturally they are being applauded by many fine, upstanding defenders of marriage who salivate with the hope that this will reveal gay marriage as a farce. The two men themselves have stated that they are justified because now “anybody can get married”. Never mind that they are the ones debasing and defiling the whole idea of marriage by making such nefarious and… capitalist… use of what dedicated, loving couples have been fighting for decades to get. In the marriage debate, the advice of Jesus to “take the log from out thine own eye” seems particularly relevant. Oh, but they hope they’re not doing unconscionable. They certainly have enough excuses.

Hope… It is certainly a natural inclination to see the good that comes out of bad. It does help to convince us that there is indeed a loving God who cares for humanity and who guides our development. Good did ultimately come of Joseph’s brothers selling him into slavery. There Joseph endured as a slave, and a prisoner, in order that he could become the head of Pharaoh’s household and governor of Egypt. In his position of power, and with the visions God gave him, he was able to store up food for a seven year span of famine that swept over the Middle East. Eventually, this foresight would preserve the house of Israel as well as that of Egypt, and none of it would have been possible if Joseph’s brothers didn’t sell him into slavery.

Well that’s good then! Er… Not really… See, it’s still wrong to sell people into slavery, let alone family members. It doesn’t become any less wrong just because some good came of it, even if it was a monumental good. Before we can even consider the grace of the good, we must come to grips with the depth of the wrong.

Elsewhere in his letter to the Christians in Rome, Paul asks “should we continue to sin so that grace may abound”, since there is plentiful grace to cover for a multitude of transgressions. “No!” he declares. Grace does not abound so that we may throw it back in the face of God as a distraction from our own violations of Him, each other and Creation. God does not offer us the good news of forgiveness and reconciliation so that we can feel a little bit better about the sins that we commit everyday… Those everyday, normal inhumanities to our fellow humans, as small as an indecent word to as great as an act of genocide. Forgiveness and reconciliation exist in part to sting our conscience, to make us aware of our own wrongs and our all too natural inclination to do wrong given the opportunity. Being forgiven and reconciled makes us aware of for what it is we are being forgiven, and the way of a life reconciled to God, others, and Creation.

When we marvel at the grace and mercy of God, it should not be for our own hopes and ambitions, our own stingy self-justifications so that we can go on being rats but feeling a little better about it. We shouldn’t laugh and joke about the disobedience with which we are imprisoned, to use Paul’s words. It isn’t a laughing matter. The Hiroshimas and Nagasakis of history aren’t laughing matters. Nor are the mockeries of meaningful, deep, committed relationships between people. Genocides and starvations, slaveries and exploitations, sex trades and sweatshops, pollution, violence at home and abroad, cruelty and malice, greed and vanity, -isms and –phobias and hatred… None of these are funny, none of these are okay. The horrors of these are not mitigated by our excuses… All the excuses in the world won’t change the suffering actually experienced by other people.

When we marvel at God, it is because His grace and mercy and Love can overcome all this. We marvel and fall so deeply in Love with Her because She can transform our disobedience to life and unwillingness to Love into the means of grace. God doesn’t tell us “that’s okay, you’re really not that bad… I understand…” God tells us “you are forgiven, forgiven to overflowing, forgiven more than you deserve and more than you require, because I am the Love which forgives extravagantly, and because you are forgiven you shall abide in my Love and it shall overflow through you.”

Not only through us as individuals, but also through us as a group. God’s Love was so overflowing that it not only delivered the Messiah to the Chosen People, but also delivered the Messiah into their hands so that through His death, all may be saved. Some have, perversely, suggested that capital punishment is a good thing because if it weren’t for capital punishment, Jesus never would have been killed for our sins. Make no mistake, the murder of Jesus was grave. Excuse the pun. The very fact that we, as humanity, would kill someone like Jesus – who taught us a Love for eachother so deep that it challenged the established order and threatened our self-justifying excuses – is evidence enough that we are a humanity in need of saving. It is not a good thing that we killed Jesus. But killed Jesus we did, and God’s Love poured out through that spilled blood and Baptized us, making us one with Him in death so that we could be one with Him in resurrection. The gravity of the evil is excelled only by the extravagance of God’s Love.

We marvel, and we hope, in the Love of God that excels all things, even the monsterous deeds we can commit against one another. In the words of Mediaeval mystic Julian of Norwich, “I should contemplate His glorious atonement, for this atoning is more pleasing to the blessed Divinity and more honorable for our salvation, without comparison, than ever Adam’s sin was harmful.” God’s Love is greater than any evil, any atomic bomb, any cruelty or strife, any greed or hatred. Again, as God revealed to Julian, though sin seems so powerful, “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

And so the Love of God moved, drawing everyone into itself. It went beyond the Chosen People, the “in-crowd”, the house of Israel… This reconciliation in Love was made available to all, be they Jew or Gentile, Canaanite or Hebrew, Japanese or American, English or French, white or black, man or woman, gay or straight. And as it moves, as it pours like fragrant oil to overflowing, it unites us as kindred in reconciliation and obedience to life and Love.

Amen.