A sermon on John 9. Image: Christ Healing the Blind Man, Sebastiano Ricci.

Talking about sin is important, being able to - as a community - name and resist those forces, actions, and attitudes that alienate individuals and communities from the love of God, which obscure our standing before God (either over-elevating or denigrating people) is a proper work of the church. But that is a far cry from what is happening here (and what happens too often in our churches). What is happening here is that “sin”, as a label, is wielded like a sledgehammer to determine who is in and who is out, who deserves blame and who acclaim, who is heard and who is silenced, who are loved and who are spurned - this use of sin and blame resembles far more the divisive activity of the enemy than the works of God which seek to make and keep human life human.