Communal Purification

Lev 4:13-21

The community has sinned.

So what can a community do to sin? I thought that sin was personal – that’s why I need a personal savior?

A communal act is different than an individual act. The democracy killed Socrates. That was a communal act. Not merely the sin of one person. And in hindsight it is the shame of ancient Athens.

The authentic community is a community outside the notion of sovereign political state. How then sin?

A Catholic German killing a Catholic Frenchman on a field in Flanders – and we all think we’re doing God’s will. It wasn’t the first. It wasn’t the last.

A stain on the community. A shame. A sin.

Have mercy on us and on the whole world.

“For I am a man of unclean lips amongst a people of unclean lips.” Isa 6:5