What to tell St. Peter

(this was lost for a time in my computer woes over Christmas and was supposed to be my article for February/Lenten Reflection)

For Christmas, my daughter got a Barbie Doll marketed under the name ‘My Scene.’ Because she is 7 and an avid reader, Francis attempted to read this label herself. It took a few turns of conversation to figure out why she was talking about her ‘sins.’ We had a good laugh over the mistake and I asked her to stop calling her dolls sins. When she didn’t, I got one of those questions difficult questions; “Mom, what is a sin?”

Many more learned people than I have spent a lot of time and energy coming up with more complicated ideas of sin and redemption, but I have found that all that effort is lost on a seven year old girl who is very committed to the people around her but not very interested in what some dead people said. So, right or wrong, this is what I told her.

Sins are when you hurt God’s feelings. We have had a lot of discussions relating to hurt feelings, and they generally revolve around thinking of yourself first and not caring about the needs of other people.

This just seemed like a nice introduction to what has been sitting on my mind lately. I have been thinking about evangelism and reading a book about a “new” way to evangelize by being people’s friend first and telling them about God second. There is something that rings true about this at the same time it rings false. After all, it would be a sin to stand next to your befriended neighbor at the Pearly Gates and have to tell them (and St. Peter) that you never even told them you were a Christian, let alone made it seem so appealing that they wanted to know more about it.

We need to consider how we as a congregation meet these people at our own front door. Do we show them our love of Jesus? Do we show them that Christ loves us? If we can do that, we don’t need to tell them that Christ loves them, they will know. Being saved isn’t what makes Christianity so appealing; it is what makes it possible. Before we can save anyone, we need to show them the wonder of a community where everyone makes good faith efforts to forgive each other and when they want to know how that is possible, then you can tell them about the grace of the resurrection. One of the most beautiful ideas in the Episcopal faith is that we invite people to share our worship first, then they can see the wonder of salvation.