Sometimes I will look back to the last time I prepared a sermon for this particular Sunday. The last time was the Sunday after 9/11, 2001.

The desolate words of the prophet Jeremiah in the appointed reading seemed to correspond well with the sense of desolation which swept through our hearts as that tragedy unfolded and we began to realize the kind of impact it would have on world events.

Then, as today we heard Jeremiah say,

"The whole land shall be desolate,
though I will not make an end of it.
Therefore the earth will mourn
and the heavens above turn black;
For I have made known my purpose;
I will not relent or change my mind." Jer. 4:27 & 28

Jeremiah is often called the prophet of gloom and doom because his language is full of such sinister imagery. However, in a deep sense, he was a prophet of hope because he never ceased to pronounce God's word of forgiveness in the midst of human failing. Jeremiah's word was to the nation Israel which he saw headed to destruction because of its disobedience. In other words Israel would get what it deserves when it is invaded and desimated by the Persian Empire.

In our time there does not seem to be any credible Jeremiah around telling us who is at fault for 9/11 nor how the world can extricate itself from the problem of violence. Canada, like many other nations, did not support the US lead war in Iraq as the right first step. All we know for sure is that the spiral of violence continues to destabilize nations and divert huge amounts of resources toward measures of defence and surveillance.

I am sometimes been tempted to think that religion, and especially Christianity, dwells far too much on human failure. We are told so often that the spiritual journey to God passes through the sinister valley of error, waywardness,and desparation that one might conclude that such suffering is a prerequisite for faith. In the bible, God is forever trying to call the Hebrew nation back to faithfulness and Jesus seems to find the more responsiveness among the vulnerable, dispossessed, and the sick than amongst the strong, the well, and the prosperous. In today`s gospel stories of the lost sheep and the lost coin we are told, "there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance." ( Luke 15:7)

Religions of every kind present themselves as the needed solution for humankind to extricate itself from self destruction. Without love of God and neighbour we are lost. The most often repeated biblical interpretation of the meaning of Jesus is that voiced in our second reading in which St Paul tells us that "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners." ( 1 Timothy 1:15)

Sin is deeper than being sick- and there are many who hurt others because they are sick in mind and spirit.

Sin is deeper than breaking the law- and there are many who commit crimes against their neighbours and the community.

Sin is bigger than my personal shortcomings, my ignorance, my refusal to face up my own destructive behaviour. It is a collective and cumulative endeavour involving whole communities and nations and reaching far down the generations causing injury sometimes hundreds of years later.

It is so pervasive and influential that no one can claim to be innocent.

Maybe that's why the scripture- the Hebrew bible- has many words for sin. And these words cover everything from the idea of missing the mark, through wilful disobedience, right up to evil which is intended to destroy others. Stories of sin in the bible are stories about the actions of individuals and nations. In English we have only "sin" to describe this vast range of human alienation.

There are many in the church today who lament the inability of the church to make words like "sin" and "salvation" connect powerfully the human experience. Many people are leary of the word sin because it is often used to describe someone else's agenda for how you should live. When sin is trivialized in this way and we discard it, we lose the ability to speak about the deepest problems of human experience.

Barbara Brown Taylor, in her book. Speaking of Sin,(Cowley Publications, 2000) attributes the loss of meaning of the classical words of Christian teaching to three trends: pluralism, postmodernism, and secularism.

These words are commonly used today to describe the cultural and spiritual environment in which we live. They are not in themselves necessarily bad even though they have undermined much of the meaning that people used to find in Christian teaching.

Pluralism, she describes as the spiritual globalization which has resulted from our vastly increased knowledge of and contact with other religious traditions than our own. Some people, who before accepted without much question the Christian religion, are now following other religious paths. Others feel so threatened by religious traditions that they reject them outright or conclude that there is no religious truth, its all just matter of speculation.

Postmodernism is a word used to say that Modernism is over. Modernism described the last 150 years, a period in which most people believed in the power of the state, or the educational institution, or the church, to bring out the best in us. Neither social systems, nor education, nor mass conversions have produced the results humanity had anticipated. Humanity proves to be very hard to perfect. At the beginning of the 20thcentury there was an optimism that war and poverty and oppression could be overcome. Now, at the beginning of the 21st century, with nuclear weapons and terrorism, we face even greater world-threatening issues and humanity seems to be more brutal than ever. "What is the world coming to?" we blurt out. This general disillusionment leads many to abandon the search for meaning altogether and to despair of the value of religious practice. It certainly means that there is less and less consensus in society as to what we should do.

And thirdly, Ms Taylor speaks of secularism. This is a trend so pervasive as to simply pass for normal everyday life. Basically it assumes that any conception of a life beyond this one is at best irrelevant and at worst misguided. Hence there isn't really any way of judging right behaviour beyond the accepted norms of the day. Nothing can be built upon absolutes. Words like sin and salvation, because their ultimate reference is to some unseen divine agent, are without authority, in fact, they are words which describe no reality.

As a person of faith, the environment I live in produced by these trends, is what I hear in the images of desolation for which Jeremiah is well-known. While the historical situation which he addressed is vastly different from our own, the fundamental human dilemma is not. We are perishing, or we feel we are perishing, and we don't know what to do about it. And that is precisely why God needed to speak through the prophet.

And that is surely the thrust of the gospel reading this morning. God's passion is to recover that deep and dark part of our humanity which is responsible for why we get lost. God's greatest joy is not in the 99 safe sheep, or the 9 coins which are not lost, but in finding the one lost sheep and the one lost coin. This is not because those who are safe are less important but because until the lost are found we are incomplete. There is no salvation until all 100 sheep and all 10 coins are recovered. Then we will be whole, then the human community, and with it the created order, will be saved. Sin and salvation do not apply simply to the individual like far too much Christian preaching would suggest. Sin and salvation are collective experiences maybe even more than they are personal ones.

I like to see these two simple stories as Jesus' equation for how much of each of us is lost- it would be between 1% and 10%. I like that equation because it clearly sends the message that we are not miserable worms. No, we are wonderful images of the very nature of God. However that 1-10% of each of us is capable of profoundly dark deeds.

The classical Christian word accompanying "sin" is "repentance." By this we mean turning one's whole being back to the light from which we have turned away. It means calling a spade a spade and seeing the darkness within for what it really is. Sin is something we do together, learn from one another and do to one another. The sin of one touches all and influences all. And the same can be said of salvation. They are collective experiences maybe even more than they are personal ones. And because this is so when evil occurs there are no innocent parties.

Similarly, the seamless robe of salvation is not something we can acquire by ourselves or by force, however gratifying that may feel in the short term.

It is good for us to remember as we start a new season together in worship, study, and action, the wonderful gift we have in one another. The church is at the heart of the Christian understanding of how humanity will survive. The church is a place and a dynamic which can help us to focus our wills, discipline our lives, share our resources, and encourage one another in the full knowledge that God will increase what we do with the blessings of presence, spirit, and power. However frail and inadequate this instrument we call the church may appear to be, we remain convinced that it is part God`s plan for implementing God`s reign of justice and love and that it is a place where each us can participate in this life giving endeavour.

So let us take heart in this and be about our work with courage, enthusiasm, and trust.