Dennis the Menace is kneeling by his bed,
saying his evening prayers as his mother looks on.
“And dear Lord,” he says, “if you can’t make me good,
can you at least fix it so that Mom don’t care?

If you can’t make me good . . .
What do we do about the problem of sin?
This is one of the eternal questions that face religious people.
Or to put it another way:
What does it take to make someone good?

Our scripture lessons from Mark and Hebrews this morning seem to have at least two different approaches to this question,
and I want to suggest that you can tell a lot about a person and his or her beliefs based upon how they approach and interpret these passages.

Mark’s passage, known as the “little apocalypse” is very popular with some religious people and groups,
because it is one of the only places in the gospels where Jesus uses dark and threatening language about the coming judgement at the end of time.
In particular the popular Left Behind series of books, which have outsold every other book series in the world, save for Harry Potter,
use as their background the apocalyptic writings we find in Daniel, Revelation and Mark 13.
And they use that background to literally “scare the hell” out of people.

In Mark 13 Jesus tells us:
When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed;
For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom;
there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines.
This is but the beginning of the birthpangs.
And then just a few verses later Jesus adds:
For in those days there will be such tribulation as has not been from the beginning of the creation that God created until now, and never will be.
And if the Lord had not cut short the days,
no human being would be saved.
“But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light,
and the stars will be falling from heaven,
and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.
And then they will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory.
And then he will send out the angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven. (Mark 13:19-27)

As the old spiritual says,
“My Lord, what a mornin’, when the stars begin to fall.”

Those who favor passages such as these love to play up the theme of judgment.
One of the older lessons that used to be read on this Sunday was from Daniel 12, which says:
“At that time Michael, the great prince, the protector of your people, shall arise.
There shall be a time of anguish,
such as has never occurred since nations first came into existence.
And if you read more of Daniel,
you see God pictured as the Ancient of Days,
who sits on a fiery throne and sits in judgment over all the earth.

And for many, Daniel, Revelation and Mark 13 provide the impetus for moral behavior.
In them they see that men and women are to made good by the threat of punishment and damnation at the hands of an angry God.
I’ve even seen bumper stickers on cars that make a tongue in cheek commentary on this idea:
“Jesus is coming soon,” one said, “and this time he’s really mad.”

And the truth is that one way to make people good,
or at least to make them tow the line,
is to threaten them with punishment,
and what better punishment is there than to become a crispy, though never dying, critter in the eternal flames of hell and the lake of fire .

Eternal damnation – now eternal is a long time.
An old Hindu tale illustrates the idea of eternal very well:
“There is a granite mountain so high that a raven can barely fly over it without touching it.
In its beak, the raven has a scarf.
Once every thousand years, it flies over the mountain,
and as it does this,
the very tips of the scarve’s fringes rub against the granite.
Again and again this happens,
once every thousand years,
And when the entire mountain has been ground into dust through the erosion of that one brief touch of a scarf,
well, all those trillions of years will still be but one moment in eternity.”

How’s that for beginning to understand how punishing judgment and Hell can be.
It’s pretty darn scary, isn’t it?
But this practice of using fear and judgment and punishment is a very popular and accepted way of making people good,
or at least of keeping them in line.

The way of fear, judgment and punishment is the way that many, if not most, homes, schools, and societies are run.
What do you do with a kid who does something wrong?
You punish him.
“That will teach you to lie to me,” we say.
And we ground them, take away their privileges, or maybe even swat their behinds.
In school there are detentions and suspensions and failing grades to hold over the head of a rebellious student.
And in the work world we see the same thing:
pay cuts, demotions, suspensions without pay, firings.
Nowhere, however, is his more evident than the growth in our nation’s prison industry.
Did you know that as of June 30, 2005, about 1 out of every 136 U.S. residents was incarcerated either in prison or jail
And over the last 25 years, the number of state prisons alone grew from 592 to over 1,000.
Back in 1923 there was a grand total of 61 state prisons in the entire country.

Punish the wrongdoer.
That is how you get people to be good.
Old Testament religion pretty much relied on the same theory.
The Ten Commandments, given on Mt. Sinai,
are presented as rules by which the Hebrew people are to live,
but even before Moses has gotten down off the mountain carrying the laws,
the people are sinning against God,
and so punishment promptly ensues -
for 40 years they are made to wander in the wilderness,
unable to find their way to the promised land.

And as the years and generations pass,
this same scenario repeats itself again and again.
The people break God’s law,
the prophets of God threaten punishment if they don’t repent.
And ultimately the armies of Assyria and Babylon invader the land and carry out the punishment until the whole of the Jewish nation is subjugated and/or in exile in a foreign land.

What is to be done about sin?
And what does it take to make people good?

Conventional wisdom,
and the wisdom of the Old Testament,
say that the threat of judgment and punishment is the way to get people to do what is right.
But the history of the Jewish people found in the Old Testament seems to say that this method doesn’t work very well at all.
Again and again they turn away from God,
and again and again judgment and punishment are meted out,
but through it all,
nothing seems to change.

And the reasons why this method doesn’t work well is obvious if you think about it.
For one thing, when obedience to God is based on the fear of God,
then what you get is a half-hearted kind of goodness.
You know, just enough to get by,
just enough to stay out of trouble.
No, the kind of goodness that God desires never comes because a person fears punishment.
Do you think that Mother Theresa did what she did because she was afraid of God?
And the same is true for others as well.
It’s pretty clear that the truly good and saintly people we know do what they do out of love for God and not because of a fear of God.

There is an old story from the middle ages about a woman who walked through the streets of the city carrying a bucket of water in one hand and a lit torch in the other.
When she was asked why she carried these two items,
she would simply reply that she was going to use the water to put out the fires of hell,
and the torch to burn up heaven.
That way, she added, people woul
d begin to be good not out of fear of hell or even the hope of heaven,
but out of love for God.

And that brings us to another problem with using punishment as a way to get people to be good.
When we see God as a threatening judge,
then our fear of God creates a distance between us and him.
Do you know what I mean?
We see this in everyday life.
We tend to stay away from the law givers and law enforcers as much as we can.
You know . . . “Oh there’s a cop. Slow down. You better watch yourself.
Keep an eye on him until we get past him.
Some of you may remember a comedian of the past who often used the catch phrase:
“Here comes de judge!”
And while it was a comedic line, and elicited laughter every time he said it,
the smiles and laughs also reflected the distance we place between ourselves and those whose roles are to enforce the law and punish the wrongdoer.
We even see it in the words of an old song which said:
“The pastor’s here, better hide the beer.”

And of course this is exactly the opposite of what God desires to happen between himself and his children.
God doesn’t want slaves who do what is right out of fear,
and he doesn’t want fear to keep us from him either,
No, God wants sons and daughters who do his will because they love him and want,
more than anything else, to serve him because of their love.

This is some of what Hebrews is trying to convey.
Now over the past several weeks we have been reading from this letter to the church,
and if you have been paying attention, (And I know you all have been paying attention)
you would know that the message of Hebrews is basically the same all through the book.
The writer keeps talking about Jesus as being a great High Priest who,
instead of sacrificing animals,
as the temple priests did in Judaism,
gave himself as a once and for all sacrifice for the sins of the entire human race.
And for the writer of Hebrews,
this is how people become good -
they become good through the sacrificial death of Jesus,
who takes away our sin,
and the sins of the whole world,
and by his self-giving death,
frees us to live as God intends for us to live.

So what is to be done about sin?
And what does it take to make people good?
Our reading this morning answers these questions in this way:
“when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, “he sat down at the right hand of God,”
For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.
And then he adds:
“This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord:
I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds,”
and “I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.”

How does God act to make his children good?
God takes our sin upon himself in the death of his only son,
and when people accept this self-giving Christ as Savior,
grateful love for God writes his laws upon their hearts and minds.

Is there a way to put this more simply?
I believe there is.
As I studied and researched for my message this morning,
I ran across an old quote my mentor in ministry, the Rev. Bill McElwee, once used.
The quote is simply this:
“Salvation is not try, but trust; no do, but done.

Salvation does not come through our attempts to avoid the judgment of a righteous and holy God,
rather it comes when we trust in the love of the crucified God.
Salvation is not a result of what we do, or try to do,
it is a result of what God has done for us on the cross.

“Salvation is not try, but trust; no do, but done.

I sure that many of you remember watching at least one version of the film “The Miracle Worker.”
This movie has been made and remade several times,
and it is primarily the story of Ann Sullivan,
a dedicated teacher who worked with the blind and deaf child named Helen Keller.
Over the early years of her life, Helen had become a wild, self-centered and selfish animal,
who lashed out against anyone who tried to help, discipline, or teach her.
No one has shown any ability to work with her until Ann Sullivan came into the picture.
Her selfless devotion and many sacrifices were the key to her trying to break through to Helen,
so that this young woman might learn to communicate and have a meaningful life in the world.

The climatic moment of every version of The Miracle Worker comes when Ann holds Helen’s hands under running water for the umpteenth time while spelling the word “water” in her palm time and again.
Suddenly, Helen’s face lights up with understanding,
and she begins to make contact, real contact, for the first time with the world around her.
Many years later, after Helen Keller had become a famous lecturer and author,
she would dedicate her books with the following words:
“To Ann Sullivan, whose love is the story of my life.”

This is how people,
this is how you and I, become good.
This is how sin is overcome, once and for all,
and how goodness and righteousness are established.
Self-giving, sacrificial love,
which calls forth from us a loving response –
That is what it takes to be good, my friends.

I am here today to witness to this Jesus Christ and his sacrifice,
for his love is the story of my life.
And I invite you to accept his forgiving and redeeming love for yourself,
and then to let that love, in all its goodness,
flow from you into the world and the people around you.
I invite you, through Christ and his love, to a life worth living.
A good life, a holy life, a life of love.