SERMON PREACHED AT St MARY’S, NORTH
OAMARU
TWENTY SEVENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
(October 2nd) 2022
READINGS:
Lamentation 1: 1-6
Psalm 137
2 Timothy 1: 1-14
Luke 17: 5-10
As Luke approaches the
end of Jesus’ resolute journey to Jerusalem and inevitable execution, he knits
together a pot pourri of parables and other Jesus sayings whose
connexion is not always clear to us 2000 years later. Between last week, when Anne
was here, and this week, we skip some telling sentences that may just have some
words of warning to our present world. Let’s dwell with them for a moment.
The missing sentences
are about causing others to sin, and about forgiveness. Perhaps they're considered too hot to handle in the cosy world in which the lectionary was
drawn up for 2022. But times have changed to such an extent that it is even
harder to pretend that ours is a cruisy and cosy existence. For since February when
President Putin put into action his demonic brain explosion we have found it
even harder than before to live with our heads in the sand. That said, when we
hear tell of Putin’s sending still more able bodied men to face and inflict
terror and destruction in the east of Ukraine It may be worth remembering the
Jesus saying that we were supposed to admit, a troubling saying that tells us
that where we have caused sin, caused people to sin, judgement awaits around
unexpected corners.
And in our cosy corner
of the world it is easy to consider that this has no application to us. We are
neither being sent nor sending others to a military frontline to inflict and
experience devastation. But it is worth pausing for a moment. Not for the first,
nor for the last time in our lifetimes we are hearing of the atrocities that we
call war crimes. The perpetrators of such evil must not be allowed to escape
judgement, human or of course we dare to believe, divine.
The Nuremberg trials
taught us that simple compliance with evil is no excuse for upping the ante and
carrying out evil orders. God alone knows how we would respond if we were
inflamed by racial and nationalistic hatreds, but that's not the issue. The
issue is that any who have perpetrated evil must face judgement, human or divine,
human and divine. Wars since Nuremberg have taught us again and again the
humans are capable of perpetrating atrocities beyond belief, and there can
and must be no excuse for such sub-animal behaviour. But greater still is the
judgement that rests on the shoulders of those whose ego and nationalistic
pride sends others to carry out their dirty work. Racial hatred and jealousies are
no excuse for perpetrating evil. But even since Nuremberg there has been
reminder after reminder of the evil that can dwell in human souls. War crimes
committed by Germans, Japanese, and perhaps we thought that was the end of the
list, but since then by Rwandans, Serbians, and let us not forget British and
American military, and now Russian soldiers and mercenaries, these reinforce
the message that all human beings are capable of evil given the chance and the
motivation. No claim that the devil made me do it, or my senior officers made
me do it, or circumstances made it inevitable, will ever be an excuse in the
eyes of divine or even credible human courts.
So much then for the
Jesus sayings that were to be omitted this week. Perhaps it is some comfort
that the primary perpetrators of evil, the likes of Pol Phot, Slobodan Milošević,
Radovan Karadžić and now Vladimir Putin, face a judge more stern even than
those of war tribunals, but the thought is for now small comfort to the widowed,
the injured, or the dead of Ukraine.
Yet these are big
pictures beyond our comprehension, and far away from us. The Jesus sayings in
this section of Luke shift focus from judgement to forgiveness – the latter an
inconceivably difficult concept in the face of such atrocity – and on to faith and
duty. In the light of current international events these themes may after all
be close to being too hot to handle. We are not qualified to speak of
forgiveness and we may well be misconstrued if we speak of duty in a time of
all too real military engagement (not we should add that there has never been in
our lives a time without military engagement).
So where do these
reflections leave us? We are on the whole unlikely to face the cataclysms being
faced in Eastern Europe. This is one of those times when not individual
passages but the whole sweep of scripture must be the key to facing God’s
future. As it happens our reading from Lamentations reminds us that desolation
and despair can all too readily fall on those who consider themselves to be the
chosen of God, and may even be considered to be a tool of God’s wrath. To say
this is to speak en masse, to speak collectively. God is not punishing the
individuals on whom Putin’s obscene missiles fall any more than God is punishing
the Hector’s dolphins swimming in their last desperate circles off the coasts
of our country. In the beginning of the book we call Romans Paul makes it clear
that God can hand us over to the implications of our existence and like the
Three Musketeers we can find ourselves all for one and one for all. All have
sinned, and to a large extent all wallow in the outcomes of human sin.
So where is there good
news for us? I guess I wouldn't be in this job if I didn't believe it was
there. The writers of scripture offer us no “beam me up Scotty” escape routes
from the results of human sin. The witness of scripture however whispers
something else. It whispers of the healing, redeeming hand of God as revealed
in Christ, as made known by the Spirit reaching out to us. It whispers to us
that the despair and desolation beamed into our homes by news services every day
is not the final word. It whispers to us the news that the steadfast love of
the Lord, as the author of Lamentation put it later in his poem, never ceases.
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