Sermons
15th July 2007 - Trinity 6
Yesterday there was a clown in this pulpit, a clown who is also a priest, a priest making a fool of himself in order to tell share the Christian vision, ‘So what’s new?’ I hear you say.
There is a long tradition of the Holy Fool, the jester who drops words of wisdom under the cover of lunacy. There is also a less happy tradition of priests and bishops being quoted as saying very foolish things, and we have recently had a very unnerving example of this in the reported words of the Bishop of Carlisle who seemed to suggest that the recent floods were an outworking of God’s judgement against a sinful nation, in particular against those sinful enough to find their love being expressed in relationship with another person of their own gender. Whether the Bishop was misquoted or not, the idea is quite clearly Biblical and, just as clearly, nonsense (we might for instance ask why the Almighty struck Hull, had he perhaps been aiming for Brighton and not quite hit the target? Could he not have pinpointed the flooding to particular hotspots of infamy?). Much more dangerously, the petulant God described in the quoted remarks seems to me quite inimical to the Christian vision; a vision which is shot through with the light of love, not the thunderbolt of condemnation.
Our Gospel reading today gives a very good corrective to the vision of the God of condemnation, but our Old Testament reading shows us exactly where such ideas come from.
In Deuteronomy we begin with what appears to be the authentic voice of divine compassion, ‘The LORD your God will make you abundantly prosperous in all your undertakings, in the fruit of your body, in the fruit of your livestock, and in the fruit of your soil. For the LORD will again take delight in prospering you, just as he delighted in prospering your ancestors’. This sounds like the Christian vision, a vision of a God constantly offering more to us, constantly seeking the ways in which he can assist us to flourish, to prosper, to respond with joy to the blessings of life. But for the Deuteronomical writers this gracious offer comes with strings attached, because God will only turn to us if we turn to him and obey the divinely sanctioned law. All these good things will come to us only ‘when [we] obey the LORD our God by observing his commandments and decrees that are written in this book of the law’. God’s promises are conditional on obedience, on good behaviour, and divine punishment, like Nemesis in the Greek drama, will find us out if we are wicked (which is what has happened in Hull and various parts of Yorkshire, we are to imagine). God in this vision is extremely choosy about those upon whom he will lavish his love.
Now turn to the gospel story, known as the story of the Good Samaritan, and turn to its vision of a love that is offered through risk-taking, through the pushing aside of religious prejudice, a vision of love that isn’t choosy but universal in operation.
This is not an anti-clerical story as such, though the priest and levite do not come out of it looking very fine. They are both on their way to carry out religious duties in the temple, duties that would have been occasional and moderately lucrative. Coming the other way down the Wadi Qilt, a deep twisting canyon with steep rocky sides and a blistering heat, a man has fallen into the hands of robbers who have left him half dead. Priest, and then Levite, on their way up to Jerusalem, see a ragged bundle of clothes by the wayside and assume it may conceal a corpse, and contact with a corpse would defile them and make their journey worthless both religiously and economically. Perhaps they might argue that they are taking God seriously by neglecting this potentially defiling example of human misfortune.
By contrast the Samaritan, from the tremendous mix of peoples North of Judea who were hated by the Jews (perhaps because they were so close geographically and religiously), this Samaritan man was already in some danger himself, and yet it is he who crosses the road to attend to the victim, bandaging his wounds, taking him to safety, making sure he would be cared for. ‘Which of these’, says Jesus ‘was a neighbour to the man’. The one whose vision of love was not stifled by religious or racial boundaries, the one who dared to pass through barriers of prejudice, the one who gives us a vision which we can claim is truly Christian.
And it is a vision both of God’s love for us and of our central duty as Christian people; our duty to mirror the love that God has for us in our dealings with other people. Jesus’ teachings about the love that God has for us still sound so fresh because they so powerfully recall us to our senses. The deep sense that God loves what he has created and that his love is not held back by barriers and prejudices made by ourselves. This vision is of a God who is willing to go out of his way to love us, a God who wishes to bind up our wounds to ensure our safety, to see us flourish.
Now what will you have as your Christian vision? Law or grace, healing or condemnation, Nemesis or providence? Yesterday we had a Holy Fool in church who let words of wisdom drop very gently through his story telling. Beware foolish words that come from those who should know very well that the boundaries of the Holy are not set by human minds, not even episcopal human minds.