about integrity, I hope

 

 

SERMON PREACHED AT St MARY’S, Nth OAMARU

and St Alban’s, Kurow

SIXTH ORDINARY SUNDAY (February 12^th) 2023

 

READINGS:

 

Sirach 15: 15-20

Psalm 119: 1-8

1 Corinthians 3: 1-9

Matthew 5: 21-37

 

 

Having told us, for those of us who recall from last week, that Jesus has addressed us as what Bruno Bettleheim might call “Good Enough Bearers of Christ,” we find this week that he is heightening the performance bar somewhat. Not one of the 613 commandments of Torah, the Jewish Law, is to be abolished, Jesus states. I haven’t read them recently, but I fear I have broken a good few, some publicly known, some in the deep recesses of my own heart.

So year by year as I find myself find addressing this passage for example, while I know myself to be known as having failed its harsh demands. For I am what is referred to in legal gobbledegook as “a divorced person.” In some legalistic minds I am worse, for I happen to be a divorced and remarried person (as I hope you realise, since Anne is floating around my house). Such a heinous crime would in the Diocese of Sydney, and no doubt some other legalistic and grace-free bodies prohibit me Christ-sized grace, at least insofar as I would no longer be permitted to be a priest. Perhaps such legalism is correct, for I’m not sure that we want those who have spectacularly fallen in one way or another to be our spiritual leaders. Or perhaps we live by a faith of grace, a faith that holds to a doctrine of redemption and second chances – or dare I say it, not though I am planning to exploit it, subsequent chances too.

I don't really want to make this about me, but I am also duty bound for the remainder of my preaching life, I guess, to acknowledge that some years ago I was forced to lawyer up in a legal spat, when unjust charges were brought against me. I was able at least to observe the letter of the law by permitting that case to be brought before a church tribunal, rather than before the secular judges that the New Testament writer Paul bars conservative Christians from approaching. Yet I must acknowledge that my lawyer was a somewhat sceptical lapsed Presbyterian, and I suspect I could do little to prevent him from thinking that at least some Anglican Christians were neandertals hell-bent on observing not the spirit but the letter of Christ’s teaching.

I confess too, as I did some years ago before my Queensland outback congregation, that I have occasionally – rarely of course – allowed my gaze to rest appreciatively upon a female form for more than the seven seconds that the somewhat legalistic if magnificent St Aquinas taught was the maximum duration of lingering permitted.

So … how do we read a passage that seems to have Jesus condemning the very fibre of most humanness? I assume my lingering glances at Anne Hathaway are somehow less mortal a sin then Vladimir Putin’s decision to slaughter thousands of Ukrainians and Russians, but it doesn’t seem that way. It seems to be that Jesus – or at least Matthew’s telling of the story of Jesus – is adamant that the 613 commandments of Torah stand unrevoked. Burn, Godfrey. 

Does this not pit Jesus against Paul, who is equally adamant that Grace, not Torah-observance is the gateway to God’s eternities?? Mind you, Paul and James already at loggerheads before Matthew began telling the Jesus story, which perhaps offers some comfort when I find myself, as I often do, in a fracas with my fellow clergy and others. Grace. 

And suddenly I find myself with a key to open this harsh Jesus vignette, this series of unattainable prohibitions and aspirations.

At least one key is Matthew’s dogmatic assertion that, while Jesus does not abolish the Torah, he does fulfil it. To some extent that casts the onus back on those of us who believe we have been baptised into the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Can I look this same Jesus squarely in the eye? Or do I plead as some rather dubious Christians, the likes of Jim and Tammy Bakker, that the devil made me do it, that I am forgiven, washed in the blood of the lamb, and therefore absolved of all sin and indeed all responsibility? 

I don't think so.

Sorry, Godfrey, because while I can play that game, that is not the game of immersion in the resurrecting and resurrection love of Jesus Christ. I cannot play games with God. I make mistakes. I sin. I set my bar lower than many. But I hope and pray I never pretend I am conning God. I hope and pray I have integrity even amongst my failings.

And isn’t that just it? Isn’t that the self Jesus called us to be, honest and open before him, despite our deepest faults.