Article
- Date:
- Sunday 25th April 2021
Year B, The Fifth Sunday of Easter - Place:
- Holy Trinity, Cuckfield
- Service:
- Evensong
- Readings:
- Deuteronomy 4.25-40
Luke 7.1-35
"When you become complacent in the land," warns the Lord, you will turn to idols and go through the whole horrible cycle of greed, misery and desperation before restoration in mercy. Very likely, as human nature changes very little, and to the despair of historians, that cycle will repeat itself once a generation has reached middle age without experiencing the horror of the nadir of the previous cycle, just as today we grow complacent because hardly any of us can remember the horrors and deprivations of war. The author of Deuteronomy, from the terrible depth of the exile in Babylon, surely knew what he was talking about. Looking back, he could see the repetitive cycles as far as oral history went, and no doubt he anticipated a repeat performance when the Chosen People got home to Jerusalem. And so it turned out to be in spite of the rebirth of the consciousness of divine order.
There has been a tendency since the mid-19th Century rise of Christian liberalism to set Jesus up as something of a gentle brotherly counterweight to the YHWH authority figure, but this is seriously off target as our Reading from Luke shows with Jesus exercising in particular, concrete terms the authority which YHWH exercised in a more general way. The stories of the Centurion's servant, the restoration to life of the widow of Nain's son and the general message to the followers of John the Baptist all show the clear exercise of authority. There may be a sinewy theological tussle in the Gospels about the extent to which the authority of Jesus was dependent on The Father but the authority itself is beyond doubt.
The factors which most lead to complacency are the lack of external and internal pressure. In the case of the first, unlike YHWH's constant pressure through personal intervention in the life of his Chosen People and the incessant urgings of the Prophets, the authority of Jesus has been mediated by his Church whose influence over the followers of Jesus has steadily declined since the Reformation for reasons we will not go into today. As for internal pressure, we are not so conscious, as were the Chosen People, of our innate failure to comply with the will of God. Whereas the whole of Old Testament literature places the blame for catastrophe on the idolatry of the people, we have a much more dispersed sense of blame, if we have any sense of it at all. We do not, for example, think that it was some failure to obey God which caused the two 20th Century world wars. Quite understandably, we think that as individuals we are far too insignificant to make any difference in the sphere of public policy.
Nonetheless, living under God's authority means more than being a good parent, an honest worker, and a charity donor. We are responsible for our own culture, drawing lines, no matter how apparently faint, careful of our speech and actions and, after thought, ready if necessary, to hold to account the speech and action of others.
But submitting to authority is more than playing a game of ethical chess with the wicked world, it fundamentally involves doing as we are told. The objection to this is that the Bible is hopelessly equivocal in telling us what to do: it changes its advice over time; it contradicts itself; it upholds all sorts of evil; and even promotes such horrors as genocide. But that is really no excuse, only a certain kind of extremist makes general ethical claims for the Bible. On the other hand, in spite of its imperfections - many and varied - we must always be mindful of the Church's teaching as the critical factor in informing our consciences. We often say that the Church publishes shelves full of reports and then does nothing as if the Church is somehow quite separate from us with its own implementation mechanism. I thought of this last week when, with a heavy heart, I read the latest report on racism in the Church and the call for the appointment of a Racial Justice Officer, on top of the expenditure incurred already on a safeguarding system; but, I thought, in a very serious way, we get the hierarchy we deserve, for we do not behave as the different members, as Saint Paul would put it, of the Body of Christ. We behave more like spectators who attend clergy performances, and that's it.
In saying this, I am not likening us to the helpless citizens faced by massive public policy dilemmas, I am likening us to the people at the end of the Reading from Luke who grumble in the market place, never satisfied with what we are offered, but the point is, parodying JFK, that we are defined by what we give to our Church, not what we take from it; and although we are very good at the parochial, at the blessedly mundane, at the familiar and the practical, how often do we look at our wider obligation.
Earlier this week, watching Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale I was amused, as I always am, at the complaint about the behaviour of teenage boys, getting wenches with child and disobeying the ancientry but, I thought, it's remarkable how much the said ancientry spend their years pleasing themselves, quite divorced from the idea of higher obligations to a higher power. We are so sophisticated now that we all know the right answers to difficult questions, but this is something of an abstract exercise not dissimilar to participating in a quiz; and when it comes to ethics I daresay the Christian team in an ethics pub quiz would back themselves to beat the godless; but if the competition were a tug of war between the godly and the godless I am not so sure who would win.
This may all sound just a little bit flippant, but I have tried to match my tone to the nature of the problem: we are neither frightened by the threats of YHWH nor really very impressed by the miracles of Jesus performed to underline the authority of God in him. We have made light of our religion but the way to proceed is not to become heavier but just a little more serious.