St JOHN’S, EAST BENTLEIGH
MONDAY SEPTEMBER 5th,
1988
(Monday of the 23rd
week in Ordinary Time)
It was with some ambivalence that I approached and prepared for the task of celebrating the Eucharist and preaching here amongst you today. It was in part, as Andrew Moore said to some of us last year, the knowledge that I was about to expose myself, to stand at least to some extent momentarily naked before my colleagues, no easy task.
And yet I can play no games: when I
preach I allow myself to become emotionally naked, no matter who my
congregation might be. To do less would be to sell my priesthood and the gospel
short. But also in my mind is the knowledge that we are a diverse group,
typically Anglican, with much on which we are bound to disagree, I hope in love,
beyond the boundaries of that on which we are gospel-bound to agree. On what
should I preach? On the realms in which we are bound to part company, or on
safe, but dare I say it, mundane essentials commonly held.
I therefore disciplined myself to preach on the lectionary
readings for today. I will of course in so doing reveal something of myself.
But far, far more important to me is the opportunity to explore with you my
sense of excitement and enthusiasm for the Lord who I love passionately, and
who we all are called to share with our diverse gifts and interpretations.
I am however working on the assumption that we are, as a group,
informed and theologically educated. I will amongst you explore ideas that I
might at this stage choose not to explore with the people whom I am called to
serve in this community of faith of St. John’s, East Bentleigh. But in the end
the essence of my thought will be the same. Only the terminology might differ.
But what do we do when we are confronted with one of Paul’s tirades
against some aspect or other of the life of one of the house churches to which
he wrote, a tirade against some practice of which he disapproves? Sometimes I
can stand united with Paul, proud to have him as my ally on some issue. At
other times I breathe a sigh of relief for his escape clause, “it is I that say
this, not the Lord.” At other times I wish he would shut up and go away.
On this occasion I am of course legally bound to agree with
Paul in his tirade against what he understands to be an incestuous practise in
the church at Corinth. The Tables of
Affinity and Kindred and the law of Australia are both in agreement with Paul: it is unacceptable for a man to
sleep with or to marry his stepmother. But I become concerned when I find Paul
throwing the Levitical lawbook at his people. Is this the same Paul who is
soon to write to his future hosts in Rome,
Now we
are rid of the Law, freed by death from our imprisonment, free to serve in the
new spiritual way, and not the old way of a written law.
(Romans
7:6)
Confronted by this case of incest at Corinth, (a
case, I might add, that Freud would understand to be inevitable, if not
acceptable), Paul is harsh beyond
all reason. The offender, he suggests,
is to be
handed over to Satan so that his sensual body may be destroyed and his spirit
saved on the day of the Lord.
(1
Corinthians 5:5)
Which one of us would dare to make such a provocative threat?
And indeed, what a fascinating Satanology Paul is here expressing. Has he here
been reading the Book of Job, in which Satan is seen to be the servant of Yahweh,
whose brief is to tempt the people of God?
The Satanology expressed by Paul at this point raises A
terribly important issue. Can we really quote chapter and verse at one another
or at our neighbours if the witness of scripture is less than consistent on
such an important issue as the person and place of the devil? Were the author of the Apocalypse of Saint John to
read this passage of Paul he would be horrified: how can the great beast Satan
who is to be destroyed, serve the purposes of God? Even Jesus, who commands
Satan “get behind me,” might be a little surprised to find Paul here expecting
Satan to serve the purposes of the Kingdom.
Is this so surprising? Paul often seems to be riddled
with inconsistencies. Countless statements of Paul have been used in partisan
polemics by warring factions within the church. The man who claims to be all
things to all people has been cited as the friend of vastly diverse
causes. At the heart of the inconsistency of Paul there appears to be this
basic dichotomy of law and grace, nomos and charis. To the
Corinthians he appears to be advocating adherence to the demands of the Levitical
law, yet elsewhere he appears to be quite dismissive of the Law. Scholars generally agree that Paul had at some earlier stage, before he found
cause to write this diatribe to the Corinthian church, been very liberal and
dismissive of the Law to the Corinthian converts.
So there is for us a danger here. We must not sling chapter
and verse at one another in our attempts to right the wrongs of our fellow
travellers, and the wrongs of the church in which we are called to serve the
world.
But what is going on? Why does Paul allow this apparent
inconsistency to creep into his thought? Is he a form of theological
schizophrenic? Or is there method here in his seeming madness? And by what are
we to rule our life, the rule of law or the rule of grace?
There can never be an either/or
on this issue. Our Lord made that, at least, abundantly clear. In our gospel
reading today we find him healing the right hand of a stranger, flaunting the
letter of the Law in the face of his casuistic enemies. Yet elsewhere he is to
tell those around him,
Not one
dot, not one little stroke, shall disappear from the Law until its purpose is
achieved.
(Matthew 5:17)
His healing of a withered hand on the Sabbath is in defiance
of the letter of the Law, yet presumably consistent with his belief in the
permanence of the Law. He is guiding us towards the realization that the Law –
any law – must be the servant, not the master of the gospel.
All this talk, then, of law and grace is a New Testament
dichotomy. But its implications should not be lost on us today. Our faith is
and must be full of uncertainties, or it is not faith at all. Are we saved? Or
are we being saved? By our absorption into Christ are we liberated from
constructive codes of ethics and morality, or are we called to adopt new, more
stringent codes? Salvation by faith, or salvation by works?
Luther, of course, brought about the Reformation and all its
resultant tragedy, on that wee dispute. By faith, or by works? Luther was right
to dispute the point with the Roman hierarchy, but the problem was that the
answer to the faith-works question is not an either/or, but rather a classic
Christian both/and. There cannot be faith without works. Nor, dare I say it,
can there be true works without faith.
So where is Paul in the midst of all this? Is he
inconsistent? Has he set up a false dichotomy between faith and works? I think
not – though if we constantly throw disembodied quotes at one another we will
inevitably give that impression.
At the heart of Paul’s thought there is what my
favourite Pauline scholar likes to call the “coherent centre,” a consistent and
unflinching theme. That theme is his belief that human beings and humanity can
experience, as he did, the risen Christ, the Lord who breaks into human history (and
human histories) and calls us to decide for or against the scandal of the cross.
And it is, Paul believes, that same Christ who is made manifest in the Holy
Spirit, who prepares us for our own judgement and our own resurrection at the
end of time.
Nothing Paul says is inconsistent with that basic theme,
that doctrinal centre. But his proclamation of that message differs according
to the needs of what I would have called in my advertising days his “target
audience.” In his tormented wrestlings with the church at Corinth he is
up against a libertine, antinomian church – the fruits no doubt of his earlier
attempts to preach freedom in Christ to that community. By grace, the
enthusiasts were saying, by grace we are saved, therefore let us do whatever we
like. I have seen that often in the contemporary church, the acceptance of God’s
offered salvation but not of the code of love therein entailed. But elsewhere,
in for example his equally passionate verbal wrestlings with the Church of Galatia,
we find him arguing the opposite: “the Law has nothing to do with faith”
(Galatians 3:12). But there he was up against the Judaizers, pharisaical, casuistic
Christians who demanded rigid adherence to the Law. There are many such as
these in our church today.
Where, though, does all this leave us as servants of the gospel
today? Is there a coherent centre to the proclamation of our faith? Is it, As
for Paul, “Christ, and him crucified”? Can we apply that coherent centre to the
various contingencies we will encounter? Or will any gospel suffice?
What is the place of the Law for us as Christians?
The point that we
cannot afford to miss in our reading of Paul and indeed of our Lord is this:
the Law, any law, can be for Christians no more than the servant of the gospel.
Whether we believe that the advance of Good Friday and Easter Sunday are
efficacious only for those who respond existentially to the message that those
events are pro nobis, for us, or whether we believe as I do that the
Easter event is salvific for all people in all time, nevertheless the
proclamation of that event by our lives and our words must become for us the
whole reason for our existence. Anything else is secondary. And our use of law
must only be to serve that message.
By our adherent to legalisms which proclaim only a
dull and hypercritical Christ we are doing our Lord a disfavour. Similarly, if by our libertinism and recklessness we show disdain towards any sense of
restraint, then we proclaim only a god of disorder and disinterest. That god is
not mine.
I cry inwardly, sometimes even outwardly, when I hear the
damage our church has done and continues to do with its repeated cries, a la John Howard, for “good, old fashioned
morality.” Too often, I fear, our cries for such a code of law are no more than
a cry to feel safe in the conflict of a world entering a new and threatening
age, a world, “turning and turning in the widening gyre.” If we proclaim a
Christ of legalistic morality simply because we feel afraid in the face of
future uncertainty then we are not proclaiming the Christ who will and does
take us into the dangerous places.
We cannot afford to let the lure of the safe places lure us
from the danger of the gospel. Neither law nor lawlessness can be our code. We
as clergy are called to be signs of aspects of God’s love to the church and to
the world. Our dedication to that signature of love must lead us to unsafe
places, for God’s love, in the words of a much maligned and misunderstood him
is the love that “lays upon the altar the dearest end the best.”
There can be no reconciliation of the dichotomy that our New
Testament readings bring us today. There is no either/or when we come to speak
of law and grace, faith and works. There can only be a both/and. And it is our
responsibility as clergy, as icons in God’s church, to proclaim that both/and unflinchingly
by our lives and by our words, for as long as we serve Christ. That I believe is
what Paul means when he tells us,
I made
myself all things to all people in order that I might save some.
(1
Corinthians 9:22)
Yes indeed. Paul’s writings reflect that changeability. But
the core of the gospel for him never changes. In holding that coherent centre
together with changing expressions of gospel-life he may well have set a
blueprint for our vocations today.
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