There is a church in my denomination which has decided to try to be welcoming to gay members of the body of Christ. The rest of the denomination goes, "Amen, brother-- what an opportunity to bring the ministry of the Lord Jesus to those depraved souls! May they all, the lord willing, repent and be welcomed into the body of Christ as former sinners."
That isn't exactly what they had in mind. What this church had in mind was to welcome practicing gay Christians to their fellowship, to accept them as fellow sinners, and to share communion with them.
So, in other words, these particular sinners are still sinning. Unlike the rest of us sinners who sin no more. But we wouldn't say that, would we? Would you say that you don't sin anymore, now that you are a Christian? I wouldn't.
We don't commonly tell people that we don't sin. If we did, and if people believed us, then we would be comfortable reaching for the stones if we met someone who said, "I still sin." No, no-- we smile indulgently. We are all sinners.
If we all take a deep breath and count to three and speak the holy words, "I am a sinner", we can all smile knowingly to each other...
...and then, when we spot a homosexual, shriek, "now there is a sinner." And then welcome him or her into full communion.
So what on earth do we mean when we acknowledge that we are all "sinners"? I've been a member of a church for almost 50 years and I couldn't tell you. I don't think it means anything. I don't think we honestly believe that we are sinners. We believe that we are righteous and virtuous and morally pure. We're reaching for stones. We do it all the time. Nothing makes us feel more righteous and pure and holy than reaching for a stone.
If it doesn't mean anything, what do we think it means when we say it? Do we think about that time we looked at someone we were not married to and wished for a forceful embrace? That time we were rude or mean to a colleague? Maybe our fantasies about owning a Hummer and plowing a few Corollas under? Or the fact that we didn't give very much, last year, to help people less fortunate than ourselves?
The key difference between the sinner we acknowledge within our selves and the sinner we see in the homosexual is that we really seem to believe that our sins are over. Whatever it is we acknowledge having done wrongly, we seem to believe that we don't do it anymore.
That's also the peculiarity of sexual sins. When the preacher stands in front of a congregation and rails about the evil fornicators and homosexuals and adulterers out there-- we can safely assume that he doesn't mean one of us. We might be doing it, but it's something we keep secret anyway and can safely assume no one else knows about it.
That's why preachers would rather preach about those sins than about indifference or materialism or hard-heartedness.