For the wages of sin is...

 This Sunday's reading is from Romans 6:12-23. I hope Paul's words have special meaning to listeners who partook in the numerous "Pride" events of the past month. 

"Therefore, do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. No longer present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

 What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that you, having once been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted, and that you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification.

When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. So what advantage did you then get from the things of which you now are ashamed? The end of those things is death. But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Oh dear. How will revisionist priests handle this one. I suspect most will let it go unmentioned in their sermons. Perhaps some will, as one priest I knew, attack it head on and say (I quote), "I am so sick and tired of the Southern obsession with sin." 

One has to deal with the problem of sin if one is to be a Christian because it is written all over the Bible. The way that revisionists have dealt with it is be re-imagining just what constitutes a sin. Homosexual acts become a blessing, Pride becomes a parade, adultery becomes polyamory, and stealing becomes okay if it is a church building.

That's how the Episcopal organization earned the wages of sin, as evidenced by its rapid decline in membership, average Sunday attendance, and baptisms.

All I have to say is Paul was and is still right, and thank God it's July.