Sermons
7th October 2007 - Trinity 18
If you have ever had to negotiate complicated contracts you will know how the parties tend to view one another with suspicion. Each clause of a lengthy contract, be it for employment, or the sale of property or a company, is carefully scrutinised by lawyers checking to see that their client is not signing up to something disastrous, something which the other party might be able to use in a manipulative way at some stage in the future. All the forms of words is carefully examined in the search for hidden traps and dangers, and thus the overriding atmosphere can be one of distrust.
And we extend this contractual state of mind to many areas of our life. We enter into a contract (often unwritten) every time we purchase something, every time we eat in a restaurant, every time we go to hospital, every time we borrow money. And how quickly we know when the other party has broken that contract…we are increasingly not simply affronted when the food in the restaurant is poor, or the doctor fails to heal us, or the product does not do exactly what it says on the tin, we are not only disappointed, we sue! We take the tin back! We find ourselves to have ‘rights’. Consumer rights, patient’s rights, and at the top of the pile, inalienable ‘human rights’.
But we only have human rights because of the great number of human ‘wrongs’ that characterise our life, and there is a very grave danger in the adoption of the mindset of legal protectionism into our everyday lives, particularly with regard to religion.
So what sort of contract do we have with God, what have those signed up to the religious agreement let themselves in for? are they afforded much protection by the wording of the agreement, indeed, should they have spent a bit more time studying the small print, as the old adage has it: marry in haste, repent at leisure? Well, for the legally minded the situation is very grim. As outlined in our gospel reading today, there is no contract which is binding on the dominant party, and furthermore there is no activity, be it financial or moral or pietistic, that can ingratiate the lesser party with the greater, the gospel outlines our utter lack of rights in this relationship
When you have done all that you were ordered to do, say ‘we are worthless slaves; we have only done what we ought to have done’
These are terms which every lawyer would urge you reject. The lawyer would point out that the relationship appears terribly unequal, the weaker party is simply to be thankful for the opportunity to be a servant and there is no security of tenure for even this opportunity may be removed at any point without redress, and there are even those who doubt the existence of the one in whose favour the agreement is weighted. Surely no one but a madman would enter into such a relationship.
We would have to say there is truth in the lawyer’s arguments. The gospel reading is an uncompromising assertion that the relationship between creature and creator is one of utter dependence. It is an argument against any religious complacency that may be thinking in book-keeping terms of running up a credit balance with God, ten more Hail Marys, renewed commitment to the poor, abstinence from a besetting sin, surely these will stand us in good stead. We might even end up holier than thou. But the lawyer would be right, because there is nothing that we can do to put God in our debt, there is no action we can take to put God under an obligation to us. So, surely only a madman would enter into such a relationship.
So why on earth have we entered into this relationship with God? Because it is not a relationship of contract or law, but a relationship of love and of trust, and it is very much a two-way relationship.
Jesus tells this story we have heard today on his way to Jerusalem where he will be flung on the cross to be killed. Jesus, the eternal word of God, present with the Father and the Holy Spirit through and beyond all time allows himself to be dragged to his death by the creatures of his own creation. In this action, the offering of the Son to the Father for the sins of the world, we see that God not only comes to us fully human and fully divine in the process of incarnation, but that he himself enters into an everlasting covenant with his creatures. His obligation to us is self-imposed and it is imposed through love, ‘God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that all who believe in him may not perish but may have eternal life’. God has bound himself in covenant to his people through and beyond time, a covenant writ large in that journey to Jerusalem, that journey to the cross. And who on seeing this action and understanding what God means by it, who can remain indifferent, who can look away or neglect to enter into that relationship? Who on seeing this spectacle, the slaughtered Lamb of God pierced by our sins, who on seeing this sight and on understanding what God means by it could prevaricate, read the small print, check all the clauses? All you need to know before entering into this relationship is how much God loves you and on the cross God says he loves you this much.