Iustus quidem tu es - late again

When faced with a passage like “if you walk in my ways and obey my statutes and commands as David your father did, I will give you a long life”, and similar passages, I am afraid the only thing I can do is struggle; I can’t produce tidy answers, only pointers and suggestions. All I can do is take you with me on my struggle and hope that somehow, something will make sense to you...and to me. If you have no problems with it, please do feel free to stop listening now.

That sentence put me in mind of Psalm 1, with its unequivocal statement of “just deserts in this life”: Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked: he is like a tree planted by streams of water, that yields its fruit in its season; and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. The wicked are not so but are like chaff which the wind drives away.

It’s great poetry, and very stirring; and in certain frames of mind it is very consoling; there are times when we all need to hear this. We are trying so hard, and everything is going wrong – but Things Will Change.
However, there is other, equally great poetry, which says things that are, in general, closer to our experience; Gerard Manley Hopkins puts it this way:

TThou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend
With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just.
Why do sinners' ways prosper? and why must
Disappointment all I endeavour end?

Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend,
How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost
Defeat, thwart me? Oh, the sots and thralls of lust
Do in spare hours more thrive than I that spend,
Sir, life upon thy cause.

Equally great, and in part equally inspired, since the first two lines are lifted bodily from the twelfth chapter of Jeremiah.

So what are we to do with sections of the Bible, such as that psalm, and this reading in which God tells Solomon that if he is righteous and godly he will receive earthly blessings? When our own experience tells us that things just aren’t like that?

There are two easy answers. One is to look at such passages, and others, in the Bible, say “This is all rubbish” and discard the whole thing, and probably Christianity, and all religion, into the bargain. To shut your eyes to the word of God in the Bible.
The other is to say “Well, it’s the Bible so it must be true; if you are suffering you must in fact be a sinner”. To shut your eyes to the word of God in real life.
Neither option is acceptable; indeed, these two options are the same option, the unacceptable option of refusing to look with both eyes, refusing to see the word of God wherever it is; refusing to think and search and take risks.

We do have to remember that the Bible is not a book but a collection of books; and that while undoubtedly, as Paul said, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness”, it has to be used correctly.

At times, when we are learning something, it is useful to go back to an earlier stage. But at a certain point we have to decide that the previous lessons are learned, and move on. And that is the case with the lesson that God is here teaching us through Solomon. It’s a twofold lesson: that God cares about us; and that he wants us to act rightly and according to his spirit.

The way to teach a child to “be good” is to reward good behaviour and punish bad behaviour and to reinforce that with threats and promises. I’d be concerned if an adult needed that treatment; but if it is never given, then there’s a fair chance that the person may never acquire the concept of good and bad.

Perhaps that straightforward correspondence between righteousness and prosperity is how things really were when God first starting bringing up his children. We don’t know. But quite clearly it is not so now and there is no profit in expecting it to be so, or claiming it is.

I think one problem is that for most of us over a certain age (and most of us here just now ARE over that certain age!) Christianity is the background to our lives; we received a basic formation in Christianity, in Bible stories, and in the “general respectable behaviour” expected of good Christian folk.

The result is that to some extent we take it as read that we know about God, about Christianity, And we don’t realise that in that, as in everything else, we need to grow up. We need to stop wondering why, or complaining that, God doesn’t treat us like children any more. You wouldn’t try to teach a three-year-old fuzzy logic; and God didn’t try to teach the newly-monotheistic Israel the concept of doing good for the love of God and his kingdom. The Christianity appropriate to a child is not sufficient to build an adult life or understanding of God on; just as the first rigid rules about grammar and spelling are not sufficient to understand poetry. Both are necessary; both have to be grasped and then superseded. We must continue to move on and to grow, even if it is frightening. Paul put it this way: “when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” His understanding of God and how to serve him did not gain him earthly prosperity, nor did he expect it to. It led him to persecution, imprisonment and a violent death.

And his comment on that was “what has happened to me has really served to advance the Gospel…I hoe that now as always Christ will be honoured in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain”. He does not understand how, or need to feel safe. He has the courage to float without constantly feeling for the sea-bed below him. It seems to me that that is a grown-up response, from a grown-up man.

We are growing, as Paul says elsewhere, into the stature of Christ, but we are not quite grown. And while there’s no doubt that some things are obviously good for us and some obviously bad, we do not always know the difference – but God does. If we ask for bread to eat, we won’t get a stone; but if, because we are still half-grown, we do ask for a stone, we may find that we are given bread all the same, and may not realise until much later why we did not get what we asked for. When St James says that if we don’t get what we ask for it is because we don’t pray as we should, he does not mean that we haven’t been subservient enough, not used the correct formulas, or missed out a semi-colon in the Collect. He means that we haven’t grasped that God is bigger than the things we have asked for.

Ultimately, it all boils down to trust – and doesn’t it always? Trust that God’s gift, and the joy it brings, is always greater than we can imagine or ask for. The psalmist got it right when he said “Thou hast put more joy into my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound”. What God promised Solomon is no longer enough; what he gives us now is himself.

And that is not always immediately satisfying, or even immediately obvious. Some of us may wait a lifetime.

I’ll let Hopkins have the last word, as he had the first; as he turns away from his own troubles and complaints, and towards the beauty of God’s creation, and realises that the only answer – always – is to turn back to God, and pray, and wait, for his gift of his Spirit. I think this is a prayer that many of us could make our own.
See, banks and brakes
Now leavèd how thick! lacèd they are again
With fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakes
Them; birds build -- but not I build; no, but strain,
Time's eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes.
Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.

May He send to all of us the rain that will make us grow in Christ. Amen.