There is a great deal of discussion at present about homelessness and begging. That is partly due to the large number of refugees – or asylum seekers, or economic migrants, or whatever you care to call them (I would suggest “people”) who have come to the UK believing it to be a “soft touch” - is the UK a soft touch? I would love to think so – and find themselves at best in government hostels waiting for their application to be processed and at worst on the streets, begging. It is also partly due to nerves about the Olympics and the Commonwealth Games. A certain amount of controversy has arisen, as, to my surprise, many are claiming that people choose to be homeless and live on the streets and do very well out of those who give sleeping bags, soup and money. It is true that some do choose to live rough, though few of those are of sufficiently sound mind to be said to “choose” anything (I do know that a few are, but very few, and I suspect they are easily recognisable. I am clear in my own mind that they should be allowed, and been helped, to live in the manner they have chosen) but most of those on the streets, or in car-parks, or under the hedgerows, have come there by a route not of their own choosing. Some have become homeless at the end of a relationship; some young people have been forced to leave home; some have been thrown out of a shared home or rented accommodation due to injustice or lack of funds; some have found themselves destitute through a habit of substance abuse which they never expected to bring them to that point. It can, in one way or another, happen to anyone. On two occasions in my life I would have been homeless had it not been for generous friends.
We have heard the opinions and feelings of many about beggars and the homeless and they vary from the unreservedly supportive to the unreservedly damning. Sometimes the statements of the latter group are prefaced by “As a Christian” (always a danger-sign). Well, I’m a Christian too; a bad one undoubtedly, but if I do not always live according to the Gospel I do know what it says, and I am afraid this is one of the points on which Jesus was unequivocal and very, very clear; following in that the teaching of the Law and Prophets sent by Himself in the Old Dispensation. There is nothing about the deserving or undeserving poor in the Gospels, or, so far as I remember, in any of the Bible. There is of course the delightful portrait of the sluggard, nut nothing is said about the way in which he is to be treated. As to the New Testament, Dives the Rich Man may have been a bad lot and Lazarus a saintly man; but equally Dives may have been a merry old soul with one fatal flaw, and Lazarus his ex-employee who had been justly given the sack for being a lazy and impertinent so-and-so. Being a lazy and impertinent so-and-so may disqualify you for employment with Dives (or anyone else) but it does not disqualify you for being taken up into the bosom of Abraham or for being a sacrament of Christ (“whatever you did to the least of these, you did to Me”) and thereby a sacrament of the One who sent him.
The point is quite simply that Lazarus was poor. Not deserving, just poor. That alone gave him a title to be helped. The point is that Lazarus was Dives’ brother, just as surely as those five brothers by blood whom Dives desired so ardently to save. In the Old Dispensation, while God was slowly and painstakingly educating humankind, he began with a single compact group, as easier to teach uniformly than a large unwieldy world. One’s brother, therefore, for the time being, was just any member of the Children of Israel. But now, since the world has shrunk to a sizable village that no longer applies. The word “globalisation” is much bandied about and people do not even seem entirely sure what it means. I will tell you what globalisation means, and it does not belong to the twenty-first century specifically but to the first; the world became a global village on the day that Our Lord Jesus Christ died for all and destroyed the walls of separation. From that moment every person on earth becomes the brother of every other person on earth. Not just neighbours, but brothers. I do not mean merely by blood or by common fatherhood; that was always tre, since we are all children of God and of Adam. I mean a brother with a special title to my care, to whom I owe in strict justice the treatment I owe to the members of my family. And again whatever one does to the least of these, one does it to God. The first commandment is to love God with all your heart, with all your strength and with all your mind; if the second commandment is “like it” that is because it is the same commandment. To love God is impossible if you do not love your neighbour; or, better, the fact that you do not love your neighbour makes it clear that you do not love God. Jesus presented as evidence for the restored relationship of love between the "woman who was a sinner" and God the fact that she was performing a service of love for him as a man.
Search the scriptures, and you will not find any support of any but the most radically generous treatment of these people, deserving or not. If a person is in need, you help them; you lend, if there is any likelihood of the loan being repaid and if the person wants to repay it – and most people do. There’s not much point in taking a pledge, since it must be returned if they have need of it, whether the loan has been repaid or not. If there is no likelihood of repayment, then you must give: feed the hungry, clothe the naked, welcome the homeless – yes, even into your own house. I am afraid that if you give money to a beggar, it is his affair what he does with it; by giving you have fulfilled the unambiguous command of God. You may, of course, choose to buy the person something instead; that’s up to you. But you are, in any case, not to look for gratitude. You are serving God, not man; and what you are giving is far less than what you owe.
Does that mean that we must always give, even to the limit of what we possess, that we must never enquire into the character of the beggar, never note that the baby in the gipsy’s arms bears a singular resemblance to the baby in the previous gipsy’s arms? I am afraid it does. God does not deal in what ifs; God is not Gordon Brown: human prudence does not figure in his list of virtues.
I am aware of the dangers of the cry “Back to the Gospel!”. But I do think it is occasionally worth flicking through its pages to see what Jesus really said, and rearranging our lives and our priorities accordingly, even if it means flying in the face of tradition. Today I have focussed on one question whose Gospel answer is uncomfortably, and maybe surprisingly, clear and uncompromising, but there are many others. For example there is not a shadow of support for the doctrine of a just war; there is nowhere a recommendation to live and ascetic life. But there is insistence on unconditional charity; the necessity of prayer; the importance of right belief as well as of right action; the necessity of baptism and of the eucharist. The list could go on, but the list that strikes me of what is, and what is not, in the Gospel will not be the list that strikes you or the list that will be most profitable to you. As we move slowly towards the beginning of a new Church year, the exercise of making one’s own list might be a good foundation for some New Year resolutions which might bring our lives more into conformity with the Gospel. As Kierkegaard said, you won’t understand it all – and you won’t even notice it all. But you will have plenty to do – for the rest of your life – in your attempt to fulfil those things in which you can hear God clearly saying to you as an individual: “Go, and do thou likewise”.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Sunday, October 19, 2008
This evening's sermon
It's easier to jump straight into cold water than to slide in inch by inch. So here goes.
Sermon 19 October 2008: Prov 4:1-18, 1 John 3:16-4:6
“All you need is love, love, love…Love is all you need”
Doesn’t that date me! & I can’t say I think much of the rest of the lyrics. But that phrase, trite as it sounds, is quite simply true.
A religion, a faith, based on love? Unbelievable. Based on obedience, fair enough. Based on wisdom, oh yes. But love?
The funny thing is that you do need wisdom, & you do need obedience. But scour the religions, the philosophies & the ideologies, & they won’t tell you that above all you need love. To live The Good Life, to build the perfect world, to create permanent revolution, to keep the ten commandments…just do the right things. Tick the boxes, & Bob’s your uncle. But how about love?
The two readings we’ve just heard, placed next to each other, are quite remarkable. I wish we had time for you all to read them for yourselves now, before I go on. I’d love you to read them afterwards. Because, even more clearly than is usually the case, the New Testament reading interprets the Old. The reading from Proverbs is about wisdom – about Wisdom with a capital W, Wisdom the person; & the reading from John’s epistle reminds us what Wisdom with a capital W actually taught us when she became incarnate – when he became incarnate – & lived among us. Forgive the gender-bending. But it does us no harm to note that while Jesus was of course a man when incarnate (well, as a human being he had to be one or the other) in his nature as Child of God, he...she....is neither. He is the Power of God; she is the Wisdom of God. & the Holy Spirit is the Love of God & is the Spirit of Jesus. So when Wisdom was made flesh & dwelt among us, love was her meaning & love was her command. Proverbs’ “Get Wisdom” has been interpreted & clarified by the Gospel’s “Get Love”.
Love then, love & grace, which is simply the way God’s unconditional love manifests itself towards us imperfect & sinful human beings. So is that what we see when we look at Christians? Here’s another sentence from that reading from St John: “This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming, & even now is already in the world.”
I find that a chilling sentence. Not because John says that the antichrist is in the world, as I think that is very likely. Satan has been “roaming through the earth & going back & forth in it” since the time of Job & long before. & of course there was that small matter of a piece of fruit in a garden at the beginning of time.
No, I find it a chilling sentence because of the use that has been made of it, & of sentences like it, throughout Christian history. I have many times been a member of groups described by someone as the antichrist – I’ve been a Roman Catholic, I’ve been a Socialist, I’ve been on several Gay Pride marches, I’ve been in the audience when Bishop Gene Robinson was here in conversation with John Armes...in fact, in the opinion of some of those who met in Jerusalem before the Lambeth Conference, I suspect that the whole of the Scottish Episcopal Church has pretty strong links with the antichrist.
Philip Yancey, in his wonderful book “What’s so amazing about grace?” says “I think back to the comment of the despairing prostitute that originally prompted me to write this book: ‘Church! Why would I ever go there? I was already feeling terrible about myself. They’d just make me feel worse!’ & I think back to the life of Jesus, who attracted as if by reverse magnetism the most unsavoury of characters, the moral outcasts. He came for the sinners, not the righteous. & when he was arrested, it was not the notorious sinners of Palestine, but the moralists, who called for his death.” Yancey also quotes Bill Clinton, that famous flawed Southern Baptist, thus: “I have been in politics long enough to expect criticism & hostility. But I was unprepared for the hatred I got from Christians. Why do Christians hate so much?”
A far cry from the comment, quoted by Tertullian in his Apology, “See how these Christians love one another!”
As Kierkegaard so often said, try as you will to wriggle out of the difficulties of Christianity, again & again you are brought up against the clear, plain, unequivocal words of Jesus. When pinned down & asked for a straight answer by a canon lawyer he replied without hesitation: “The greatest commandment? To love God; & (which is the same thing) to love every other human being” (because that’s what the word “neighbour” means).
Loving God & loving neighbour is the very same thing. Actually the very same commandment. The very same action. & that, in my opinion, is the antidote to this awful tendency to see the antichrist everywhere. That person you see before you has the very human nature taken by the Son of God. Your approach to them is – IS, not just “indicates” – your approach to God. If you see Christ everywhere, you won’t see the antichrist. & I think we can safely leave the antichrist to God. The real struggle is not with people. The real struggle is against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. & we cannot cope with this; only God can. So perhaps it would be a better idea for us humans to let God deal with that, & concentrate on the one thing he has told us to do, which is to love.
God is love. That’s another of those phrases we are so used to that we don’t realise how astonishing they are. Thomas Aquinas in his learned way said that we can’t define God; we can’t know “what” he is, only “that” he is. Can’t we though! We can, & there it is in the epistle of the Beloved Disciple. God-IS-love. So if we do want to know the spirit of antichrist, to recognise it & avoid it, this spirit of antichrist, which only God is powerful enough to conquer, it is, surely, the spirit of unlove, or, as Philip Yancey would have it, ungrace.
God is love. God is not an abstract noun – we have turned solid, personal words like love & wisdom into abstract nouns because we are such a faint reflection of the reality that is God. In my opinion the only purpose of our life in Christ is to turn us into created reflections of his uncreated love.
I’ll finish with a quotation from an Eastern Orthodox author. Asked for whom we should, or should not, pray, he sweeps aside what he calls “Western ideologising” & answers thus:
Love in Christ is lived experientially, as a charismatic state. In this state, the Divine Comforter gives to man a compassionate heart, with the immediate result that he is now dominated by a boundless love for all of created nature. This charismatic love in Christ is most certainly not a sentimental love, that is, love within the limits of createdness; rather, it is the uncreated energy of God, which enters into our heart, making it merciful, in the likeness of God. Insofar as our Lord is all-merciful, so our hearts become all-merciful, by the action of Grace,
Just as our all-merciful Lord Himself does not hesitate to pour out His Grace—& this lovingly—even on the evil spirits & on those who reject Him, so also he who loves in Christ pours out his prayer lovingly, unconstrainedly, & naturally on all, being unable to restrain the abundance of life, giving what he has been given.
& so let us pray: Christ my God, set my heart on fire with love in You, that in its flame I may love You with all my heart, with all my mind, & with all my soul & with all my strength, & my neighbour as myself, so that by keeping Your commandments I may glorify You the Giver of every good & perfect gift. Amen.
Sermon 19 October 2008: Prov 4:1-18, 1 John 3:16-4:6
“All you need is love, love, love…Love is all you need”
Doesn’t that date me! & I can’t say I think much of the rest of the lyrics. But that phrase, trite as it sounds, is quite simply true.
A religion, a faith, based on love? Unbelievable. Based on obedience, fair enough. Based on wisdom, oh yes. But love?
The funny thing is that you do need wisdom, & you do need obedience. But scour the religions, the philosophies & the ideologies, & they won’t tell you that above all you need love. To live The Good Life, to build the perfect world, to create permanent revolution, to keep the ten commandments…just do the right things. Tick the boxes, & Bob’s your uncle. But how about love?
The two readings we’ve just heard, placed next to each other, are quite remarkable. I wish we had time for you all to read them for yourselves now, before I go on. I’d love you to read them afterwards. Because, even more clearly than is usually the case, the New Testament reading interprets the Old. The reading from Proverbs is about wisdom – about Wisdom with a capital W, Wisdom the person; & the reading from John’s epistle reminds us what Wisdom with a capital W actually taught us when she became incarnate – when he became incarnate – & lived among us. Forgive the gender-bending. But it does us no harm to note that while Jesus was of course a man when incarnate (well, as a human being he had to be one or the other) in his nature as Child of God, he...she....is neither. He is the Power of God; she is the Wisdom of God. & the Holy Spirit is the Love of God & is the Spirit of Jesus. So when Wisdom was made flesh & dwelt among us, love was her meaning & love was her command. Proverbs’ “Get Wisdom” has been interpreted & clarified by the Gospel’s “Get Love”.
Love then, love & grace, which is simply the way God’s unconditional love manifests itself towards us imperfect & sinful human beings. So is that what we see when we look at Christians? Here’s another sentence from that reading from St John: “This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming, & even now is already in the world.”
I find that a chilling sentence. Not because John says that the antichrist is in the world, as I think that is very likely. Satan has been “roaming through the earth & going back & forth in it” since the time of Job & long before. & of course there was that small matter of a piece of fruit in a garden at the beginning of time.
No, I find it a chilling sentence because of the use that has been made of it, & of sentences like it, throughout Christian history. I have many times been a member of groups described by someone as the antichrist – I’ve been a Roman Catholic, I’ve been a Socialist, I’ve been on several Gay Pride marches, I’ve been in the audience when Bishop Gene Robinson was here in conversation with John Armes...in fact, in the opinion of some of those who met in Jerusalem before the Lambeth Conference, I suspect that the whole of the Scottish Episcopal Church has pretty strong links with the antichrist.
Philip Yancey, in his wonderful book “What’s so amazing about grace?” says “I think back to the comment of the despairing prostitute that originally prompted me to write this book: ‘Church! Why would I ever go there? I was already feeling terrible about myself. They’d just make me feel worse!’ & I think back to the life of Jesus, who attracted as if by reverse magnetism the most unsavoury of characters, the moral outcasts. He came for the sinners, not the righteous. & when he was arrested, it was not the notorious sinners of Palestine, but the moralists, who called for his death.” Yancey also quotes Bill Clinton, that famous flawed Southern Baptist, thus: “I have been in politics long enough to expect criticism & hostility. But I was unprepared for the hatred I got from Christians. Why do Christians hate so much?”
A far cry from the comment, quoted by Tertullian in his Apology, “See how these Christians love one another!”
As Kierkegaard so often said, try as you will to wriggle out of the difficulties of Christianity, again & again you are brought up against the clear, plain, unequivocal words of Jesus. When pinned down & asked for a straight answer by a canon lawyer he replied without hesitation: “The greatest commandment? To love God; & (which is the same thing) to love every other human being” (because that’s what the word “neighbour” means).
Loving God & loving neighbour is the very same thing. Actually the very same commandment. The very same action. & that, in my opinion, is the antidote to this awful tendency to see the antichrist everywhere. That person you see before you has the very human nature taken by the Son of God. Your approach to them is – IS, not just “indicates” – your approach to God. If you see Christ everywhere, you won’t see the antichrist. & I think we can safely leave the antichrist to God. The real struggle is not with people. The real struggle is against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. & we cannot cope with this; only God can. So perhaps it would be a better idea for us humans to let God deal with that, & concentrate on the one thing he has told us to do, which is to love.
God is love. That’s another of those phrases we are so used to that we don’t realise how astonishing they are. Thomas Aquinas in his learned way said that we can’t define God; we can’t know “what” he is, only “that” he is. Can’t we though! We can, & there it is in the epistle of the Beloved Disciple. God-IS-love. So if we do want to know the spirit of antichrist, to recognise it & avoid it, this spirit of antichrist, which only God is powerful enough to conquer, it is, surely, the spirit of unlove, or, as Philip Yancey would have it, ungrace.
God is love. God is not an abstract noun – we have turned solid, personal words like love & wisdom into abstract nouns because we are such a faint reflection of the reality that is God. In my opinion the only purpose of our life in Christ is to turn us into created reflections of his uncreated love.
I’ll finish with a quotation from an Eastern Orthodox author. Asked for whom we should, or should not, pray, he sweeps aside what he calls “Western ideologising” & answers thus:
Love in Christ is lived experientially, as a charismatic state. In this state, the Divine Comforter gives to man a compassionate heart, with the immediate result that he is now dominated by a boundless love for all of created nature. This charismatic love in Christ is most certainly not a sentimental love, that is, love within the limits of createdness; rather, it is the uncreated energy of God, which enters into our heart, making it merciful, in the likeness of God. Insofar as our Lord is all-merciful, so our hearts become all-merciful, by the action of Grace,
Just as our all-merciful Lord Himself does not hesitate to pour out His Grace—& this lovingly—even on the evil spirits & on those who reject Him, so also he who loves in Christ pours out his prayer lovingly, unconstrainedly, & naturally on all, being unable to restrain the abundance of life, giving what he has been given.
& so let us pray: Christ my God, set my heart on fire with love in You, that in its flame I may love You with all my heart, with all my mind, & with all my soul & with all my strength, & my neighbour as myself, so that by keeping Your commandments I may glorify You the Giver of every good & perfect gift. Amen.
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