Forgiveness, lent 3

Forgiveness

Readings: 1 Cor 1.18-25, John 2.13-22

“the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” 2 Cor 3.6

Religion has always been the enemy of Christianity. Sometimes I answer the question ‘are you religious?’ by ‘No, I’m a Christian’.

Now I know that such assertions as this are really playful ways of making a point, for Christianity is of course a religion. The word is almost certainly derived from religare – to bind. Religion is binding yourself to your God. I suspect St Paul, however, might have argued it’s meaning is returning to bondage!

And this is the point. There has always been a tendency in religions in general, and Christianity in particular to move from the freedom of the Spirit, with all its grown up responsibilities, to the slavery of the letter, with its infantile dependency on dogma and rules.

And it would be nice to say that religion is responsible for wars and crusades, for inquisitions and apartheid, for divisions in Northern Ireland and genocide in Serbia. But that would be an over-simplification.

Nonetheless, at a basic level, Our Lord’s cleansing of the temple, whip in hand, was a rant against religion; against the deadening effects of the letter of the law; against the cultural appropriation of faith in the living God, for commercial purposes.

St Paul may have had the etymology of religion in mind when he wrote to the Galatians: “For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” (5.1,2)

Perhaps religion, this binding and stifling straightjacket on life, has been nowhere more successful than in identifying itself in the human mind with guilt. I only need to sit on the tube in my dog-collar, and I’m aware that half the carriage immediately feel guilty.

Why did the thief last week leave the beautiful leather holdall he had stolen from Frank in Hammersmith, outside of my vicarage door? Guilt! (He had of course removed from it anything of value, and it was only an overlooked business card that allowed me to track it down to Frank.) (Reminds me of the letter received by the Tax Inspector:“I feel so guilty, I can’t sleep; so here is £1000 of tax I owe you. If I still can’t sleep, I’ll send you the other £1000…”)

So what is at the heart of Christianity, or ‘pure religion’ as the Apostle James calls it, that distinguishes it from the bondage of false religion?

“the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life”

The ministry of the Holy Spirit enables a work of grace in our hearts that draws us on to love God and others.

By the 16th Century, at a time when cloying religion was getting the upper hand in Christiandom, the Reformation and the Counter-reformation rediscovered this great liberating truth.

‘Sin boldly!’, Martin Luther once wrote to his friend Philipp Melanchthon. This sprang from Luther’s overwhelming conviction that we are saved by grace, and that the message of the cross of Christ is, as Paul writes in v18 of today’s epistle, the power of God to those of us who are being saved.

Of course Luther was not advocating deliberate sin, but he was reminding Melanchthon, who erred on the side of legalism, the letter, that living life is a messy business and we need not be so terrified of putting a foot wrong, that we never put a foot forward!

This is the outrage of grace. No wonder it was a stumbling block (the Greek word is ‘scandal’) to the law-driven Jews of the first century. They would not trust God unless they saw signs. As they say to Jesus, whip still in hand, standing in the chaos he had brought to the Temple court:

“What miraculous sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?” (John 2.18)

Or as Paul puts it in the epistle: “Jews demand miraculous signs.” (1 Cor 1.22)

This is walking by sight and not by faith; the very opposite of what Paul commended to the Corinthians in his second letter (2 Cor 5.7). Although we should pray to see evidence of God at work among us, we must not cross over the line and become those who only believe when we see God at work.

Paul also points out in the epistle that the message of the cross is foolishness to the Greeks and Gentiles. Not that Paul is being anti-intellectual here. This is the man who wrote the letter to the Romans!

He is pointing out another scandal of the Gospel, that it cannot be grasped by intellectual rigour alone.

You remember that verse in Luke’s Gospel:

“Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, ‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.” (Luke 10.21)

The ‘wisdom’ that these worldly-wise Greeks and Gentiles desired, is probably the equivalent of today’s New Age pick ‘n mix; consumer religion, where you have a little bit of Christianity, a smidge of Sofi mysticism, a comforting hint of re-incarnation and an ethical shot of New Labour – and write on the form ‘Church of England’!

In the first century it was the ancient gnosticism: the speculative knowledge passed on sometimes through arcane ritual and sometimes just to those ‘wise’ enough to receive spiritual revelations and secrets. It’s instant religion. We heard lots about it through the Da Vinci Code and will no doubt hear more now the Gnostic Gospel of Judas is about to be published.

In contrast, the way of the cross is simply accepting the grace of God through the passion of Christ. It is of course at times painful and costly, as it was for Christ, involving a life of self-giving. But it is the self-giving that springs from love, and which results in deep inner peace and joy.

This is never very popular. Just as there were gnostic Jews in Corinth, there are always ‘quick fix’ Christians around, who want the gain without the pain. The super-apostles who were arriving in Corinth as Paul wrote, argued that Paul was weak and ineffectual. They preached the way of success and triumph. Paul gloried in following Christ in the way of suffering and hardship, weakness and dependency on God. (See 2 Corinthians 11.19ff)

Jesus’s anger against the temple-traders, leading to such uncharacteristic physical violence from our Lord, is another attack on easy religion: a religion that is all about doing the right things, rather than loving God with heart and soul and mind, and our neighbour as our self.

The disciplines of lent are supposed to help us in our struggle against ‘the world, the flesh and the devil’ (today’s post-communion prayer). But we should not finish lent feeling pleased with ourselves and with what we have achieved – we’ve lost a few pounds and been to some improving studies. That would be religion.

The result of a good and holy lent will be a greater love for God and a deeper desire to serve others. Or in the words of the epistle, knowing ‘Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God’ better.(v24) This is Christianity.

“the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” 2 Cor 3.6

Glory, Postmodernity & Transfiguration

Glory, Postmodernity & Transfiguration

“Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory” Luke 9.32

It’s a funny word ‘glory’. We use it a lot in church. Especially on this last Sunday before Lent. You’ll see it in the collect, the canticles, the anthem the hymns...

As a boy, my theological development was greatly hindered because I had an Aunty Glory, and thought that all references were to her.

When I spoke at her funeral a few years ago, I discovered she was named glory because my grandmother had given birth to 7 boys and when the midwife said ‘it’s a girl!’ The response came back - ‘glory be!’ And so she was.

Isaac Newton, the great 17th century scientist and friend of Christopher Wren who designed this building, was fascinated by the word ‘glory’, especially in the stories about Moses. He taught himself Hebrew and Greek so he could better understand the Scriptures.

The word for glory in Hebrew, ‘kabod’, means heaviness or weight, and Newton became convinced that Moses had hidden the inverse square law of gravitational attraction in the text of the Pentateuch - the first 5 books of the Bible.

He had hidden it so that common people would not discover it and abuse the knowledge.

This prisca sapientia, ancient wisdom, was there for the true theological scholar to discover - God would reveal it to him. So Newton spent years sifting through the Hebrew text with various mathematical cyphers. Newton needed to get out more…

The Old Testament in fact develops the idea, not from the inverse square law of gravitational attraction, but from the idea of ‘an eminent man’ who had heavy possessions; heavy bags of money; heavy responsibilities - and even many heavy wives. A heavy man displayed gravitas.

When the Old Testament was translated into Greek between the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC, (the Septuagint) the word ‘doxa’ was used to translate ‘glory’. It comes from the root word meaning ‘to think’ or ‘to seem’ and in classical Greek meant:

reputation (what others think of us) and;
opinion (what we ourselves think).

And this is obviously to do with fame, honour and praise.

There’s one more little element left in this etymological tale. In Scripture, whenever God displayed his crushing heaviness of being, his glory, there was light - lightening, or blinding light, or a shining cloud, or a pillar of fire, or the burning bush of our Old Testament lesson - the Unbearable Lightness of Being. Or in the New Testament it is the rumbling, thunderous voice of God from heaven revealing Christ, the Light of the World – ‘the radiance of God’s glory’.

Years later, when Moses was doubting whether God had ever actually called him to service, we read these words in the book of Exodus:

Then Moses said, "Now show me your glory." And the LORD said, "I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence. But, you cannot see my face, for no-one may see me and live." (Ex 33.18-23)

Moses is told that God’s glory is unbearable, and all God would show was the shadow of his glory - his goodness - his moral perfection and beauty.

So the glory of God is full of light. He dwells in unapproachable light. Christ, the King of Glory, is the effulgence - the shining radiance - of God’s glory. And in that light of Christ we see ultimate moral beauty.

And this is seen in the Transfiguration
• They saw Moses the lawgiver and Christ as the fulfilment of the Law.
• They saw Elijah the chief of prophets and Christ as the One to whom all the prophets pointed.
• They heard the voice of Almighty God, reiterating Christ’s Baptismal affirmation that this was his beloved Son and that they should listen to him.
• And they saw the Shekinah cloud, a theophany of the God of glory, and the reflection of that glory in the face of their teacher, Jesus the Messiah.

And they saw all this because they stayed awake, despite the lateness, after a long day and a climb up the hill.

There’s a little Jewish joke here as well - a sort of pun. Blink and you miss it.

We saw that the Hebrew word for ‘glory’ was the word for weight, heaviness. Here the disciples are weighed down with sleep, Luke tells us, but they remained awake and so were weighed down with glory.

One of my fellow students at theological college was good at everything. And he knew it. So nobody liked him very much. There was much schadenfreude when he was rusticated for a term for driving a mini car through the front doors of the college - I think substances were also involved.

Someone pinned a large notice above his door with the single word in Hebrew: Ichabod - the glory has departed.

It was the name given to Eli’s grandson Ichabod, who was born just after a particularly crushing defeat by the Philistines who also stole the Ark of the Covenant which represented the glory of God.

[In fact it’s a rather tragic story that the Jewish writer turns into a little joke at the end.
“And it came to pass, when the messenger made mention of the ark of God, that Eli fell from off the seat backward by the side of the gate, and his neck brake, and he died: for he was an old man, and heavy.” (I Sam 4)

So the grandson, born at the same time is called Ichabod, the glory has departed - the Ark of the Covenant has been carried off. But it could mean, the heavy one has departed - the fat man has died.]

Ichabod might be a suitable epitaph for the last 20 years: postmodernity as we are coming to call this period of history.

There’s much spiritual interest but little spiritual depth or weight. Believe but don’t belong. (70% of people claim to be Church of England – they believe, but they don’t belong to our congregations in any meaningful sense.)

Postmodernity describes, not so much a movement, as a mood in contemporary society. It is image with attitude; inner emptiness covered up by all the good things money can buy. Tesco ergo sum - I shop, therefore I am. Retail therapy doesn’t give meaning, but it makes me feel better!

The loneliness and ennui is eased by friendships and music, sex, alcohol and other drugs; and lots of idle humour. Veni, vidi, velcro - I came, I saw, I stuck around. Try and think of an advert that doesn’t use humour.

And one of the characteristics of postmodernity, is that it denies transcendence. So there is little focus to all that spirituality around, and indeed often a denial that there is any objective ‘other’ - the transcendent God of Glory. Spirituality is seen as something purely internal, subjective and personal.

Because of this absent substantiator in postmodern society; an absence of the One who gives weight to human existence, there is a lack of solidness in society, of glory, of weight.

We are in danger of becoming all surface and image.
Let’s go back to our Gospel – the transfiguration of Jesus.

As Jesus goes down the mountain with the disciples, he speaks to them of his impending suffering and of his resurrection. And he has already told them, although they do not understand, that his Passion will be the greatest display of God’s glory.

We celebrate this Mass to the Glory of God. As we bring the gifts of the world at the offertory - our bread and wine and money - so we celebrate God’s glory in all he has given to us.

And as we lift up our Lord’s broken body, so we celebrate his victory over death and the glorious hope he has given us.

It is hard to celebrate the glory of God when we are suffering, in body mind or spirit; or watching those whom we love suffer. Yet as we look at the suffering of God in Christ, and remember that we will share in his resurrection glory, then even suffering and death become part of the path to glory.

The Westminster Catechism reminds us that “The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him for ever.”

Secular drowsiness, the stupor and busyness of 21st century life, must not rob us of seeing God’s glory and delighting in his creation.

And here at the mass, as Christ is again transfigured in this bread and wine; here is weight and depth in an increasingly light and shallow culture. Let us be awake to the presence of the Glory of God.

“Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory” Luke 9.32