Sin is the imperfection in our lives

Accepting our less-than-perfect selves is one of these big hurdles that need to be faced in life, just like letting a favorite cup or cracked dish go.

A friend told me recently about how sad it was to break an old chipped cup that her grandmother had given her.

She described it as haing a lovely oriental design; eventually the design faded and one side of the cup had a crack and several chips on it. She turned the “bad side” to the wall in the china closet, so that the flaws would be less visible.

She loved the cup. She began to realize that the cup, like her life, was reflected in the old cup. It was like me, she said, as I’ve got some definite character marks from life, too. Then, the other day she dropped it, and it broke into many pieces and had to be thrown away.

Flaws and inadequacies come with the territory of being human. We and our cups and bowls; we have our imperfections, bumps, scratches, cracks and chips and we are not perfect. Accepting our less-thanperfect selves is one of these big hurdles that need to be faced in life, just like letting a favorite cup or cracked dish go.

Sin is the crack in all our lives and is the imperfection, bump, scratch and chip that must be confronted and faced each day. Our first reading is familiar to all, but is cut off before the consequences that befell Eve, Adam, and humanity for their disobedience.

Only the serpent is punished in this reading. The serpent plays the role of Satan as a cunning, deceptive and tricky little monster to get Eve to disobey God. Satan makes a return appearance in the Gospel. The scribes accused Jesus of being possessed by Satan because he healed people and drove out demons on the Sabbath.

St. Mark was writing to convince people that Jesus was the Son of God and Jesus is the center of all the drama in Mark’s Gospel. Mark shows how cracked and imperfect the scribes and all the attackers of Jesus were as Jesus asks just one question to put them all into their place, “How can Satan drive out Satan?”

Jesus reveals the Holy Spirit as the true power behind all His life, work and ministry. This is the clean spirit driving out the unclean spirits. We too have been blessed with the Holy Spirit in us, and this means we too have to power to defeat temptation, cracks, bumps and scratches caused by sin and Satan and drive them out.

Yes, we are all cracked and chipped but we can follow our spiritual path and sometimes our closest companions and not those of our own family or old friends.

Like Jesus, our expectations and our culture are family and tribe-centered but we must as Christians expand the definition of family and see it includes all people.

We need to place all our cracks and imperfections in the hands of Jesus and know that the One who raised Jesus will raise us up also with Jesus and place us forever in His presence and never throw us away or out.