"Sin and Grace and Chimpanzees" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday July 21, 2024

Note:  Every summer, we gather weekly for Church Family Movie Nights; and this year we are linking our Sunday morning worship to the movie we watched the previous Tuesday. This week’s reflection is tied to the movie Rise of the Planet of the Apes. You can read a summary of this movie by clicking here, or watch the trailer by clicking here.

Also – I split both the scripture reading and reflection into two halves, so that is how I have laid it out here.


First Scripture Reading:  Romans 7:15-20

I don’t know about you, but the Apostle Paul’s words here in the 7th Chapter of Romans really resonate with me at times.  Paul is being almost brutally self-aware and honest here.  He writes that he wants to do what is good, but even so he finds himself not doing the good, but doing what is wrong instead.  He writes, “The desire to do good is inside of me, but I can’t do it. I don’t do the good that I want to do, but I do the evil that I don’t want to do.”

 

I suspect that if I took a poll (don’t worry – I’m not going to!), asking do you want to do good or do evil in the world – I suspect that all of us would put our hands up saying that we want to do good instead of evil.  It’s who we are.

 

But if I were to take a second poll (and again, don’t worry, I’m not going to!) asking if you were always able to perfectly do good 100% of the time, I rather suspect that not many hands would go up.  (And if you are someone who is able to do perfect good 100% of the time, I want to talk with you and learn your secret!)

 

I can only speak on my own behalf here, but I know that I mess up sometimes, both in little ways that have few consequences, and in bigger ways that carry more significant consequences.

 

And so, like Paul, I suspect that most, if not all of us, live in that same tension of wanting to do good, yet sometimes falling short or missing the mark.

 

When I was planning out movies for this summer, you might be surprised to learn that Rise of the Planet of the Apes was the first movie that jumped into my head.  I think that it is a deeply theological movie, as it wrestles with this same tension that Paul is writing about here.

 

Most of the characters in the movie want to do good.  (Though it is a movie, so we have to have villains, and there are some characters in it who seem to want to do evil for the sake of evil.) But if we look at the heroes of the movie, the main characters, they are good people who want to do good, yet they keep messing up every step of the way.

 

The movie begins with a pharmaceutical company researching a cure for Alzheimer’s disease.  The individuals have mixed motivations – the company owner seems to be in it for the money that the company will be able to make, but the lead researcher – the main human character in the film – has more personal reasons as his father is suffering from dementia and he wants to find a cure.  He wants to do good in the world by curing a life-altering disease.  And because of his love for his father, when safety concerns are raised about the drug and testing is halted, he steals some from the lab and conducts a single-human-subject experiment on his father, setting into action a chain of events that will eventually lead to the destruction of human civilization.  He wants to do good, but ends up doing evil.

 

And then there is his research assistant.  When concerns are raised about the safety of the drug being tested, the assistant is ordered to euthanize all of the chimpanzees who have been dosed with it. The assistant does so, until he discovers a newborn chimp and he can’t bring himself to do it.  The lead researcher – the main human character in the story – repeats the order, and his assistant tells him that he has caused too much death that day, and the researcher will have to do the deed himself.  The researcher can’t do it, and brings the infant chimpanzee home, initially as a pet, but when he discovers extraordinary intelligence in the baby chimp, now named Caesar, he raises Caesar as a son.

 

Which is well and good until Caesar starts questioning whether he is family or a pet. Until Caesar learns about what is going on at the drug company. Until Caesar is confiscated as a dangerous animal and locked up in a so-called sanctuary. Until Caesar figures out how to enhance the intelligence of all of the other primates incarcerated there. You get where I’m going. When he made the decision to raise an infant chimpanzee as his son, he thought that he was doing a good thing, but a chain of evil ensued.

 

And the apes aren’t free from sin either in this movie – they too are caught up in systems and cycles of violence and oppression, and the only way to escape being oppressed is by becoming the oppressor.

 

Fortunately this movie is “just” science fiction, but I do think that it illustrates what Paul is writing about in Romans 7. We can never know all of the consequences of the decisions that we make, and so often the decisions that we make lead to negative consequences. And so often we are trapped in systems – like the chimps in the movie – where we are doing wrong, and we know we are doing wrong, but we aren’t able to escape them. Think of how humanity is trapped in systems that depend on fossil fuels that are destroying our planet. Think of how any human-made economic system causes suffering to some for the benefit of others. Think of how it is almost impossible to ensure that all of the things that we buy haven’t been produced through the exploitation of people. These are systems that we can’t escape.

 

As Paul writes, I keep on doing the evil that I know that I shouldn’t be doing.

 

But the good news is that God doesn’t stop at Romans 7. I’m going to invite ______ to come forward and read part of Romans 8 for us.

 

Second Scripture Reading:  Romans 8:9-11

 

We are trapped in systems that I name as sin, but the good news is that God is always pulling us out of these systems.  God desires good and not evil in the world; and so God is working in each and every one of us by the Holy Spirit, transforming us gradually into who we were created to be – as people who bear the image of Christ.

 

The work is ongoing, even though we might wish it to have been completed yesterday.  We might wish that the world had been perfected and these systems of sin eliminated yesterday.  But we trust that by the Holy Spirit, the work is underway.  The same God who raised Jesus from the dead is working in us, working to liberate us from all of these systems that ensnare us.

 

And all that we can do is allow the Holy Spirit to work in us – to allow ourselves to be transformed – to say “yes” to God.  We can become co-conspirators with God when we subvert human-created economic systems and put food in Ida’s Cupboard where it is available to hungry people with no conditions attached; or when we pull weeds and plant seeds in the Harvest Garden for the same purpose.  We can become co-conspirators with God when we figure out ways to be on this earth with a smaller footprint, lessening our negative impact on Creation.  We can become co-conspirators with God when we listen – when we truly listen – to where we are being called to next.  We become co-conspirators with God every time we increase the amount of love in the world.

 

We may feel trapped by the sin in the world, but by the Holy Spirit, God is reaching into this world and pulling us out of the messes that we make, and loving us into wholeness.

 

Getting back to the movie… this side of the coin isn’t a big part of the film – it focuses more on the chain of events that leads to disaster – but there is one beautiful moment of grace near the end where I see systems of sin being broken.  After the apes have rebelled and left human civilization behind to create their own civilization, the main human character goes after them, looking to bring his son, the chimpanzee named Caeser home with him.  They meet in the forest, and the human invites Caeser to come home.  Caesar leans in, and says in the human’s ear, “Caeser is home.” The human embraces him, and lets him be.  He doesn’t try to do anything; he doesn’t try to fix anything; he acknowledges the autonomy in the other, and they are reconciled at the moment of their parting.  A tiny moment of grace that hints to us that the systems of sin that ensnare us can be broken.

 

And so when you feel like Paul in Romans 7, like nothing that you do can make the world a better place, like you are trapped in these systems and cycles that we name as sin; remember that the story doesn’t end there.  Remember that Romans 8 follows Romans 7.  Remember that you are God’s beloved child, and that by the Holy Spirit, God is helping you to break free and to be wholly and completely who you were created to be.

 

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

 

 

Image:  “grace”

by glasseyes view on flickr

Used with Permission