are we there yet?

 

SERMON PREACHED AT St MARY’S, NORTH OAMARU

and St Alban’s, Kurow

THIRTIETH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (October 23^rd) 2022

 

 

 READINGS:

 

Joel 2: 23-32

Psalm 65

2 Timothy 4: 6-8, 16-18

Luke 18: 9-14

 

 

As we scamper through the readings it would be negligent not to mention and grasp the wonderful hope-filled prophesy of Joel, who almost swims against the tide of the prophets. He dares to whisper the hope of a God who will love again, affirm again, set right again the recalcitrant people God had called to be his own.

In a world that is churning out an awful lot of darkness that might resemble the wrath of a grumpy God, handing humankind over to its own rather misguided devices, it’s encouraging to hear Joel’s words of hope. In Dante’s portrayal of Hell the words “abandon hope all ye who enter here” are emblazoned above the entrance. Joel reminds us that ours is a gospel of hope, not just in the cruisy times that we have enjoyed for much of our lives but in the heart-pulling times that have also always been a part of the human story.

Am I the only person who sometimes feels like giving up? 

Or, as Maria McKee put it, “God help me, am I the only one who ever felt this way?” And the answer is “no,” I'm not the only one.

And “yes,” God helps. 

I want to park Joel’s words of hope for a while, though. Because in the Jesus story we have what appears at first sight to be a clear contrast given to us by Luke, as Jesus observes and reflects on a spiritually arrogant Pharisee and a broken, guilt-ridden but penitent tax collector. It is a contrast between a religious hypocrite, perhaps, and a penitent sinner. In our minds we might picture the sequel to this vignette. Jesus welcomes the penitent to the fellowship of faith, while the Pharisee saunters away, ever so pleased with himself.

Where are we in this story? We have to be careful. Unless we wrongly believe the scriptures to have been dictated from on high into a Word document, perfect in every syllable, then we have a problem here. The Pharisees get bad press in the four gospel stories, but they were written some time after the events they depict. History suggests that the Pharisees were not all bad. Not even mostly bad. By the time the gospels were written Jews and Christians were trapped in mutual distrust – we might think of the distrust clergy are held in by much of society today, a distrust that grows deeper with every chilling revelation that emanates from Royal Commissions and their equivalent around the world.

Don’t get me wrong. Awful atrocities have been perpetrated by those in positions of power in Christian communities. So too have works of grace and love. We must remember that, just as there are Christians who hold the hands of the dying and whisper words of comfort in every age, so too the Pharisees were on the whole compassionate, God-serving believers. If you want to look for the bad guys of Jesus’ decade you might want to look at the Sadducees. They were the ones riding Harley Davidsons and flying Bombadiers or Gulfstreams in the name of corrupt, life-sapping religion.

It is particularly important that we remember this, because our Christian history has, with tragic implications, tended to write a false equation when we have said simply “Jews were and are corrupt,” and “aren’t we Christians good?” We forget the Jewishness of Jesus at great peril. We forget our own histories of distorted faith at great peril. Yet to say that, too, is not to invite slippage into the error of those Christians who believe the State of Israel can do no wrong,. We do not stand with those who danced on the graves of justice, moving at least on paper their embassies to Jerusalem. Such figures flew in the face of decency by trampling down the delicate sensitivities of all who find holiness in that troubled spot on earth, and did so to please a self-righteous religious right.

No political state should be confused with the people of God. Not Israel, not the USA, not Syria, not Burkina Faso. God disregards the lines we draw on maps. God regards the Image of God, bestowed on humans in creation, and marred each time we perpetrate hatred and injustice. 

And, fierce Anglican though I am, God disregards the subtle differences in the way we worship or the ways we protect the structures of our faith-based institutions. God, loathe though I am to admit it, is neither Israeli nor Anglican. God looks for integrity, high or low, left or right.

It is tempting to read this Jesus-scene and to judge and condemn the Pharisee. I am reminded again and again, and will be until I die, of the ecclesiastical gatekeeper who in a previous parish told a newcomer that they had come to the wrong place. Was it the colour of her skin, her tattoos, her youth, that made him decide she was not welcome? Did that gate-keeper later pray “thank God we do not let those people in here”?

Yet this Jesus-scene throws a still fiercer issue at me: are there times I do precisely that? Do we by our traditions turn away the too young, the too uneducated, the too non-European from our fellowship?

Am I the broken tax-collector or the Pharisee?

At best I suspect the answer is both. And surely our life-task is to ensure that all that is holier-than-thou, all that leads us to look down on others, is stripped from us, and that we become safe people who know our own need for divine grace, and simultaneously see the hand of God on the lives of all around us.

Perhaps it’s a long bow, but was that was what the prophet Joel was looking towards, too. To a time when his people would be a people of welcome and embrace, of justice and love, whose sign above the door written in actions not words, was “experience hope (and love, and welcome …) all ye who enter here.” Are we there yet?