Order of precedence – 29 September 2017

What do you think? A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’  He answered, ‘I will not’; but later he changed his mind and went.  The father went to the second and said the same; and he answered, ‘I go, sir’; but he did not go.  Which of the two did the will of his father?  They said: The first.  Jesus said to them: Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you. (Matthew 21:28-31)

I find that at least slightly enigmatic?  Do you?  Jesus seems to be saying that everyone winds up in the kingdom of God eventually.  It’s just that the tax collectors and the prostitutes get there earlier and easier than the overly righteous, those whom Robert Burns called the unco’ guid,[1] who are delayed because they don’t do what they claim to do, or perhaps because their egos are in the way.  The tax collectors and the prostitutes make only modest claims about righteousness, but they fulfil the law in deeper ways.  Is that right, and is that what it means?  Or does he mean that vain self-righteousness is actually worse than anything the tax collectors and prostitutes are up to…?

At any rate it does have echoes of last week’s parable, in which the owner of the vineyard pays the same to those who had worked only one hour, as to those who had worked all day.  When they complained, the proprietor asks, Are you envious because I am generous?[2] 

“Generous” is the key to it…  The usual biblical word is Grace – in Greek the lovely word χαρις – in the Hebrew scriptures it is chesed, grace – along with love, the closest language gets to the nature of God.  Archbishop Desmond Tutu, in a sermon in California, put it inimitably:

This family (God’s kingdom) has no outsiders. Everyone is an insider. When Jesus said, "I, if I am lifted up, will draw..." Did he say, "I will draw some"? "I will draw some, and tough luck for the others"? He said, "I, if I be lifted up, will draw all." All! All! All! – Black, white, yellow; rich, poor; clever, not so clever; beautiful, not so beautiful. All! All! It is radical. All are to be held in this incredible embrace. Gay, lesbian, so-called "straight;" all! All! All are to be held in the incredible embrace of the love that won’t let us go.

In our prayer we are present in that generosity, that grace.  It is altogether too much, too impossible, too inequitable, for the church at times to stomach, let alone we ourselves in our times of guilt and failure, or our times of anger with others.  But our place in the queue as it were, in the order of precedence of God’s kingdom, depends upon none of that.  It depends on grace, generosity and love.

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[1] Robert Burns: Address to the Unco Guid or the Rigidly Righteous.

[2] Matthew 20:15.  The Greek for generous is agathos (αγαθος) which usually means simply “good”.  This generous, gracious goodness, overturning human assumptions about worth and deserving, is simply what God is like.

God’s welcome – 17 September 2017

Some believe in eating anything, while the weak eat only vegetables.  Those who eat must not despise those who abstain, and those who abstain must not pass judgement on those who eat; for God has welcomed them. (Romans 14:2-3)

Paul is writing to the church at Rome.  He has not yet visited Rome, he hasn’t met these people, but he has heard that divisions have developed among them – between conservatives who want rules to prevail, and others for whom the rules may be unnecessary or even a hindrance to real faith.  Of course the problem may be between Jewish and Gentile Christian believers, but in Rome I would think it was rather more complex than that.  Some in the Roman church feel free to eat anything they like, while others want to prohibit meat.[1]  Interestingly, Paul refers to the abstainers as “weak in faith”[2].  Undue reliance on rules and prohibitions, he thinks, is actually a weakness, something we can grow out of.  He had a furious argument with the Galatian church about the same issue – in Galatia it concerned circumcision or uncircumcision.[3]  Back in Rome it was also about the keeping of holy days… whether that was compulsory or not. 

Paul’s passion about this issue is that the divisions and disputes simply miss the point.  God has welcomed them, he writes – that is the point.  God has welcomed the ones you think are out of order.  Would they be, more likely, in the 21^st century, the couple living in a same-sex relationship?  God has welcomed them.  The divorced person…?  The person with a criminal record…?  The psychiatric survivor…?  God has welcomed them.  In some places… the woman minister or bishop…?  God welcomed her.  In hearts of mature faith these disputes are settled.  Informed both by the Bible and by the Spirit of Christ, we don’t have time or energy for them anymore.

In contemplative life and the prayer of inner silence and stillness there are no discriminations between people because our own status and importance and ego have ceased to be the agenda.  Moreover, creating space for God inevitably means space also for our writhing, hurting world.  The Spirit of Jesus, as we are consenting to God, opens us gently into the widest hospitality to difference and need.  Most of all, we are surrendering our fears.  This has suddenly become more pointed in apocalyptic times.  We may fear for others and what may happen to them, but love casts out fear for our own possessions and survival.  We acquire an inner freedom, and an instinctive regard for truth.  Jesus was notorious among the respectable classes precisely because his inner freedom and truth, the grace he received in prayer, took him as a practising Jew across the boundaries of Jew and Gentile, slave and free, male and female, good and bad, black and white.  And that is what hospitality means in faith – welcoming whom God welcomes.

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[1] They refused possibly because the meat supply came mainly from animals sacrificed in Roman pagan rituals.

[2] Even if they are not weak in haemoglobin.  Also see Acts 11:1-18.

[3] Galatians 5:1-7… but indeed the whole epistle.

First do no wrong – 8 September 2017

Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet”; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, “Love your neighbour as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbour; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law. (Romans 13:8-10)

That is the Epistle for next Sunday.  I turned to it in hope, having been defeated by the Gospel lesson in Matthew 18 – which I cannot think is authentic words of Jesus.  The many commentaries available online similarly struggle with that passage.  Once upon a time I would have sweated over it until I had wrung something more or less intelligible from it… but not any more.  Part of grown-up faith is a keener sense of what seems right… and what does not.  So St Paul came as a relief.  Our only debt to each other, he says, is the debt of love – love is the fulfilling of the law, the commandments.  Love does no wrong to a neighbour.  

I have just read what is called a graphic novel trilogy… three volumes, all under the title “March”[1].  They tell the story of the United States civil rights movement from the 1950s, through towards the Obama presidency.  It is done brilliantly in graphic comic book format, but very much for adult understanding.  These books tell of the early lunch counter sit-ins, the Freedom Riders, the reactions of many white people who turned to violence to preserve their segregated way of life.  The principal author is John Lewis, a black leader now a US congressman, who was in the movement from the beginning.  He tells of the interminable and brutal struggle simply to get black people registered to vote, the terrible retaliations and injustices, corrupt courts, and hatred.  From the beginning – and this is the point this morning -- most of the civil rights movements adopted a strict discipline of non-violence.  So… they went to hospital, they went to gaol, but they did not retaliate.  Love does no wrong to a neighbour.  Non-violence was personally very costly, and some of them died, or were permanently injured.  Their determination to be non-violent was often severely tested. 

We work out our discipleship, our personal response to Jesus, in individually different ways.  No two Christians are the same, or necessarily agree with each other, or experience the same things.  But our differences are not the problem – it is simply the way God has ordered creation.  In mature discipleship we learn always to be suspicious of uniformity and conformity.  But what we have in common through all the differences, in company with Jesus, is the priority of love – rescuing that word, if we can, from the repellent sentimentality the secular culture reduces it to.  Love requires truth and it requires courage.  It does no wrong to another.  Part of love therefore is that we have made peace with ourselves, and this we seek in the prayer of silence, stillness, simplicity – as Jesus said, Go into your room and shut the door… 

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[1] MARCH Books 1, 2 and 3 – John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, Nate Powell (Top Shelf Productions, 2013, 2015, 2016)

The light burden – 1 September 2017

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.  For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. [Matthew 16:24-25]

This is from the Gospel lesson for next Sunday.  You will find the same passage in all three synoptic gospels.  About the only significant difference is in Luke, where Jesus says we are to take up our cross daily… as though he means each morning, anew. 

I cannot think that in a grown-up spiritual journey we are to understand our “cross” as turning us into any of life’s victims.  We have all met the people who daily, visibly and audibly carry their cross, wearing it like an identity badge of honour.  An old song I cannot track down has someone, on being asked how they are today, replying, “Quite well, thank you, for the state I’m in.”  Most people, we suppose, have hardships of one kind or another… or have had, or will have… and often those loads can indeed be heavy to unbearable.  St Paul says we are to bear the loads of others and so fulfil the law of Christ.[1]

When Jesus speaks of the cross in this context, he is acknowledging just that -- that life is no trivial matter, often an arduous journey, for every person.  Whoever we are, we encounter burdens of hope and disappointment, or it may be fear and insecurity… burdens of parenthood, or of living alone… burdens of grief and memory… burdens of illness and incapacity.  Luke perhaps was the one who saw that simply getting up in the morning is to reassume sometimes heavy loads of responsibility or weariness, or worse.  Simply being human and alive, and with a sober estimate of our own limited capacities as well as of the loads others are bearing, is what Jesus calls the cross.

And he sees this burden transformed by the gifts of faith and love.  My yoke is easy, said Jesus, my burden is light.[2]  He was bitterly critical of the legalists in religion, the scribes and pharisees, precisely because… they tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others.[3]  We carry our cross daily, as pilgrims, livers of life, in company with Jesus, and sustained by the disciplines we personally find meaningful, such as the prayer of silence and stillness. 

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[1] Galatians 6:2.

[2] Matthew 11:30.

[3] Matthew 23:4; Luke 11:46.