Eating Sin

Last Friday I did what I normally do when Jennifer is out of town. I camped out at the AMC movie theatre at Grapevine Mills Mall and had a night of movies. I watched the Messengers, which was good although uneven in some respects, and the Good Shepherd, which was intriquing with a nice twist, but it didn't really know how to end. Sandwiched in between these two films was the latest offering from Fox Faith, a movie called The Last Sin-Eater. The movie was about a Celtic community living in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains (ah, home!) who carry their traditions with them from the old country. One of the most valued traditions is that of the Sin-Eater, who comes at your funeral and eats off of your dead body, symbolically swallowing your sin so that you may enter Heaven. The crux of the film is about a young girl who can not wait until death for someone to take her sins away, but needs relief from them while still alive. Of course, she learns about Jesus, the last real sin-eater, who took all of our sins upon himself in his death. This isn't intended to be a movie review or recommendation, but there are worse things to watch in the theaters today. Of course, there are also better things to watch as well.

What interested me was the clear dichotomy the movie showed. In essence, the movie said, "Jesus good; Sin-Eater bad." I'm not so sure that it is as clear cut as all of that. Now let me be clear here: I'm all about the "Jesus good" part. No one is arguing this. More than that, putting your faith in some random person to eat food off of you so that you can get in to heaven is the epitome of goofiness. But, I see a couple of symbolic lessons in the sin-eater story that we can learn from:

1. We must die before we can be forgiven- The heart of the protagonists dilemmia in the movie is that she doesn't want to die before her sins are forgiven. But the Bible says that we must die to ourselves and our sinful life before we can be born again. Now, it is certainly true that Jesus died for our sins while we were still lost, but for that sacrifice and this forgiveness to mean anything to us today, we must die to the world.
   


2. We eat one another's sin- Most of you know that I am teaching a class on confession. This is about as good a definition of confession as I've seen. We eat one another's sin. You confess to me, and I take that sin upon myself. If all I do when I receive confession is nod my head and act sympathetic, but then leave you to your struggles, what good is it? Instead, when we receive confession, we take that struggle up with one another so much so that if you fall into that sin again, it is I who have failed.
   
   Okay, enough preaching. I love you, guys.