Dead Dogs & Assurance

Dead Dogs and Assurance

Luke 16.19-31 (Dives & Lazarus), Trinty 17

"What is your servant, that you should look upon a dead dog such as I?" 2 Samuel 9.8

I am reminded of the agnostic, insomniac, dyslexic, who lay awake at night thinking: “Is there a Dog?”

Another question that has worried Christians down through the centuries has been: “Am I a Christian?”

The doctrine of predestination was an unsuccessful attempt to try and give reassurance to the doubting soul, and we have looked at this together in a past sermon.

We saw that if you pursue this doctrine with too much rigour, you end up with a capricious and almost vicious god, and a view of life that is fatalistic. (You remember the Calvinist who fell down stairs and said, “Thank goodness that’s over with!”)

And of course the question is simply transferred to “Am I among the elect?” I knew a number of strict Calvinists in my younger days who were plagued throughout their lives by terrible doubts that, after a life of godly devotion, they might after all, not be among the elect.

Tomorrow the Bishop installs the new Dean in St Paul’s Cathedral, Bishop Graham Knowles. One of his predecessors, John Donne, who became Dean in 1621, was greatly influenced by this strand in Calvinism. You see it in some of his poems as he pleads with God for assurance.

Do you remember the last verse of ‘A Hymn to God the Father’?

I have a sin of fear, that when I've spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
But swear by Thyself that at my death Thy Son
Shall shine as He shines now and heretofore:
And having done that, Thou hast done;
I fear no more.

Others have taken a different route to assure themselves of their eternal salvation. They have placed an almost magical emphasis on the sacrament of Holy Baptism. As long as the water has been applied and the words said, then you’re ‘in’. No more worries.

Scripture, however, deals with this question of assurance in a very different and much simpler way: showing kindness and love to others is a sign and a confirmation that we have responded well to the love of God shown to us.

And this is the burden of today’s Gospel.

First let’s remind ourselves of the background to our text. It is taken from the OT reading that is suggested to accompany this Gospel reading in the Book of Common Prayer, where it is set for the first Sunday after Trinity.

Mephibosheth was a rather sad figure. His grandfather King Saul had killed himself after a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Philistines. His father, David’s beloved best friend, Jonathan, had also been killed in the battle. And so had Jonathan’s two brothers, Mephibosheth’s uncles.

But he had a forceful and protective nanny. She knew what would happen to young heirs to the throne when the royal dynasty of Saul was giving way to the dynasty of king David.

She took up the 5 year-old boy and fled. In her haste, she fell and somehow the boy’s ankles or feet were broken. He became lame. (2 Sam 4.4)

She had misjudged David, who rarely acted as other ancient near eastern rulers did nearly three thousand years ago.

Some years later, when he discovered the young man was still alive, King David welcomed him into his household and made provision for him for the rest of his life.

Now some would say this was just a shrewd move by David - keep any possible rival to the throne where you can see him!

But this is a cynical view of a passionate man who valued friendships and tried to do what was right in the eyes of the Lord.

The NT records that God says of David, “This is a man after my own heart”. (Acts 13.22)

Mephibosheth’s response is grovelling, even by ancient near eastern standards: "What is your servant, that you should look upon a dead dog such as I?"

Perhaps he was simply trying to reassure David that he posed no threat?

Whatever, history remembers Mephibosheth for these words, and these words alone, that have come down to us over the millennia: "What is your servant, that you should look upon a dead dog such as I?"

We will return to Mephibosheth later.

The parable of Dives and Lazarus is more specific in addressing the issue of assurance that we are Christians. And of course dogs have a walk-on part in that story as well: the graphic image of dogs licking the sores of Lazarus.

Incidentally, this is the only parable where proper names are given, but this is probably to do with their meaning: Dives means ‘rich’; and Lazarus, or Eleazar, means ‘God is my help’.

It’s such a gruesome parable to the modern ear, that we can get too easily sidetracked into a discussion about the afterlife – torment and fire. But that is not the point of the story and certainly, as in other parables, the details may not be pushed to form a credible theology of the life hereafter.

However, neither is the parable primarily about the rich and the poor, although it fits in with other teaching of Jesus about this.

It is about unbelief and hardheartedness, and because of this, it is also about personal re-assurance concerning our own faith.

Dives exhibits four ‘symptoms’ of the disease of unbelief; although these should not be mistaken for the disease itself. As Archbishop Trench of Dublin remarked about the symptoms: “the seat of the disease is within; these are but the running sores that witness the plague.”

The marks of unbelief seen in this parable are:

the pursuit of wealth for its own sake
pride - the costly purple and fine linen of dignitaries
callousness - he just ignored Lazarus
and spiritual hardness of heart – not even someone returning from the dead could raise the spiritually dead.

So the parable seeks to emphasise that our spiritual state is reflected by our inner attitude and outward actions.

The constant refrain of the prophets, of the epistles and of Our Lord himself is that our hearts must be right. Christianity is a heart religion.

The epistle of John, which accompanies this Gospel in the Book of Common Prayer, puts it very bluntly: “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar!” John is concerned with how Christians can be assured that they are in fact children of God, and not deceiving themselves like Dives and his brothers.

And as in our Lord’s parable, the answer is simple. Loving actions as we respond to the love of God, should confirm and convince us in a way, that even someone returning from the dead, would be unable to do.

The five brothers whom Dives wants to warn, would not so much as ask the question ‘Am I a child of God?’ They had the arrogant confidence of the proud and self-satisfied: ‘We are the children of Abraham!’

What is the opposite of faith? Is it doubt? No! It is certainty.

Assurance of salvation is not certainty. It is rather a reasonable and proper confidence in the Gospel.

Intellectually we should be convinced, as we shall say at the altar in a few minutes, that Christ has done all that is necessary to make us one with God; accepted in the Beloved.

But although Scripture encourages us to be assured that we are saved by grace alone, it nonetheless wishes constantly to unsettle us from too arrogant an assertion of that saving grace, lest any man should boast. (Eph 2.8f)

This is where sometimes we find some of our brothers and sisters in Christ a little too sure of a little too much. There should be a godly reticence about our claim to be Christians – to be followers of Christ.

To go back to where we started, the question should be, not so much, ‘am I a Christian’ as, ‘am I living a Christian life?’

And the answer is always to look at the ways in which God is enabling you to love others, with kindness and good deeds.

Of course there will always be failures and inadequacy, and it is a healthy spiritual sign that we are aware of these. There will always be room for improvement. But we must not be too hard on ourselves, for if our love for God results in a practical love for others, then we should not fear as Dives did.

For Mephibosheth there was a degree of astonishment at the King’s love lavished on him, a crippled man, fallen from greatness. Yet there was proper confidence because of all that he had seen of the King’s love and loyalty.

No less for us, as we stand in humility before our great King, with confidence in his love, lavished upon us in this feast, we can say with the wonder, and indeed assurance, of Mephibosheth:

"What is your servant, that you should look upon a dead dog such as I?" 2 Samuel 9.8

War against Terror

The War against Terror

“But the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, "Where are you?"” Genesis 3.9

This is one of those Sundays when the readings are fairly straightforward and can be summed up, more or less, in two sentences. ’Let’s not fool ourselves and think that we were clever enough or good enough to have found God. He finds us, and he has a party in heaven when we finally realise he has!’

So that clears the way for me to spend the remaining 10 minutes talking about the War on Terror.

I was at a dinner on Thursday with Shami Chakrabarti, the Director of Liberty, the civil liberties organisation. She was answering questions on a broad range of subjects, and as you might expect, was fairly provocative.

She spoke particularly about the dangers of putting western society in a permanent state of emergency – a permanent war footing. During the Second World War, (this weekend marks the 67th anniversary of the Battle of Britain) there were emergency powers and the restriction of some civil liberties, but when the war was over, the powers were removed and freedoms restored.

‘But when will this War end’, she asked, ‘and what might be done in its name and so become virtually permanent emergency powers?’

I don’t wish to get involved in the political issues here, but I want us for a few moments to look at part of the Biblical analysis of our predicament.

Back to our text from Genesis: “But the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, "Where are you?"”

It reminds me of a week I spent with other trainee chaplains in a large psychiatric hospital when they still existed in the mid 70s. The Chaplain was explaining to us the dangers of asking rhetorical questions in sermons. He said he had once started a sermon in the hospital chapel by posing the question ‘why are we all here?’ – a man at the back shouted ‘because we’re not all there!’

God’s question must be rhetorical, or otherwise the incident paints a strange picture: the almighty, the omnipotent, the omniscient Creator of all things, playing hide-and-seek in the Garden.

“Where are you Adam?”

“Coming ready or not!”

And Adam is not ready. He is naked, and ashamed, and confused, and angry with Eve and with himself. And he has become afraid of the God who is Love. He has believed the Lie

“Where are you Adam?”

This is not a question about location. It is a metaphysical question.

Adam is lost. And so the war against terror begins.

“Where are you Adam?”

I am plotting mayhem and revenge; the slaying of Abel; the atrocities of humanity before the flood; the wickedness of the cities before the scattering from Babel;

I am plotting nationalism and weapons of destruction; infanticide and torture; oppression and racism; inquisitions and discrimination; religious hatred and world wars; holocausts and ethnic cleansing; acts of terror and global injustice.

The third chapter of Genesis is an ancient aetiology of human evil: an attempt to explain why the world is as it is.

Since the dawn of civilisation, humans have wrestled with the terror that is within, and how it expresses itself without.

Humans have experienced great goodness - the simple pleasures of walking with the Lord God in the garden in the cool of the day.

And they have witnessed great evil - the exercise of godlike powers to humiliate and destroy those who are ‘other’.

I think the Archbishop was right this week to point out the insidiousness of reality TV which promulgates a culture of humiliation and mockery.

And so in this war against terror we are sometimes in danger of assuming that ‘the other’ against whom we fight, is somehow inherently different from us.

But we are all earthlings and tainted with Adam’s sin. We are all children of Eve and under our mother’s curse.

Solzhenitsyn, who certainly had his share of suffering at the hands of evil men and women, was wise enough to write:

“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” (Quoted in Mayne, Learning to Dance, DLT 2001, p166)

War can only ever be enjoined with a sense of humility, and with a recognition that those whom we attack are not all evil and we are not all good.

The little boy is standing up in the back seat of the car and his father keeps telling him to sit down.

At last the father stops the car and forcibly sits the boy down. As they continue the journey, the sulking boy in the back shouts: “I may be sitting down on the outside, but I’m standing up on the inside!”

From childhood we experience the ‘divided self’, that in this story of Adam and Eve, is the result of their disobedience.

For Adam and Eve in the garden, the duality within immediately skewed three dominant areas of their life, and all our lives: sexuality, spirituality and society.

They were ashamed of their nakedness, and sexual companionship becomes an arena for struggle and not for pleasure and deepening intimacy; spiritually, they become afraid of God who only wishes the best for them; and as society, they turn on each other in blame and recrimination.

Genesis only hints at an answer to this war within. From Eve there is to come one who will strike the serpent’s heel. (Gen 3.15)

But the NT interprets the work of Jesus, the son of Eve, as the unifying factor in our lives, that may not end the war here and now, but that is able to give us sustained conquest over our dark side, and ultimate victory.

Our patron, Paul, further develops the solution to this civil war within us - the backcloth of so much human history, literature and art; the backcloth of our own experience of the messiness of life.

He points to the ministry of the Holy Spirit, who helps us to be what we are in Christ; to grow into Christian maturity; to have that attitude towards others that was in Christ Jesus, as he tells the Philippians.

Paul lists the fruit of this Spirit of Christ in his letter to the Galatians. It is the ‘God side’ of our inner duality, the original image of God still present in every human.

These characteristics relate to God, Others and Self.

God - love, joy, peace - these should be the characteristics of our Christian life.

Others - patience, kindness, generosity - these are to be the marks of our Christian society.

Self - faithfulness, gentleness, self-control these are the way to tame the unruly heart.

To be led by the Spirit is to follow our desire for holiness: to pursue the good and the beautiful – but not just for its own sake. The Christian distinctive is in our motivation for the pursuit of beauty. Is it to worship the creature - or to worship the Creator, who is blessed forever?

And lest this should all sound like some long mediaeval struggle for impossible purity, our Lord uses a more vibrant and life-affirming metaphor – the Spirit as the breath in our lungs, the wind in our sails: it is like sailing - finding the wind - and the exhilaration of running before it.

All human beings are capable of this, and we must never forget that whatever else we justify in the war against terror, redemption is always possible, and there is rejoicing in heaven when the lost are found, not destroyed.

God’s challenge to us, as it was in the garden, is to live with him, following Christ and the way to life; or, to hide with Adam and rebel and follow the destructive inner path to death.

“But the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, "Where are you?"” Genesis 3.9

Angels Unawares & Pride

Angels Unawares & Pride

13th Sunday after Trinity
Ecclus 10.12-18 Heb 13.1-8, 15-16; Lk 14.1, 7-14

“Be not forgetful to show hospitality to strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” (Heb.13.2)

I remember how shocked I was when first I stayed with a vicar friend and his large family. I went into the bathroom to freshen up before preaching and he shouted up the stairs as I was going in - “Use any of the toothbrushes”.

Well, I suppose I had eaten other people’s apple cores, shared cutlery in college when I couldn’t be bothered to go and get another spoon, why not use someone else’s toothbrush? Well, a lot of reasons actually...

From his point of view, it was just being hospitable. Personally, I keep all those toothbrushes we get on transatlantic flights for guests. It makes me feel mildly better about my carbon footprint.

My guestroom is in constant use. It’s the laundry that gets me down most. I always smell the bed before visitors arrive to see whether I need to change the sheets - I find a squirt of aftershave gives the impression of recent laundering.

And visitors are like the number 74 buses: they always arrive in packs and never when you want one.

A lonely evening when you’ve finished the Times crossword and there is nothing but snooker on TV and such a mound of work in the office that it gives you vertigo just looking at it; and there isn’t a caller in sight.

But wait till you’re in a ‘work’ mood; or watching the Eurovision Song Contest with a group of friends and a bottle of Ribena, and the doorbell doesn’t stop. The definition of hospitality flashes through your mind: the art of making people feel at home when you wish they were!

Another problem is that I always seem to arrange for multiple guests to arrive when I am in Nottingham or some other far-flung corner of the Empire. This can be an advantage as the guests often entertain each other, make the beds, clean the flat, do the washing up, and have a meal ready for you when you get home.

But there have been times when a punk friend, with more piercings than a colander, turns up at the same time as a professor from an American Bible College; or a sensitive, vegetarian, teetotaller has to let in your semi-drunk nephew who has bought a Bucket of Kentucky Fried with him. There's blood on the doormat when you arrive home and the prospect of a long and difficult evening.

Hospitality is a sort of antidote to pride, which is why the two themes run together in our readings today. Jesus upbraids his host by pointing out that table fellowship is a place for self-giving, not self-exaltation.

And he reminds the guests themselves that humility should be their guiding principle and not pride.

It is a difficult path to follow with sincerity. We all know how false humility grates. Like the Regius Professor who chose not to join in the Vice-Chancellor’s procession; and when asked by a proctor why he was sitting in a pew at the back replied: “Just a little ostentatious humility.”

Self-centredness and its outward display, pride, are the constant enemies of personal growth and maturity, but the angels are there to provoke us and to protect us from ourselves. “Be not forgetful to show hospitality to strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” (Heb.13.2)

Or as Peter puts it in his epistle: “Use hospitality one to another, without grudging.” (1 Pet 4.7)

In the context of the first century church, this was a very practical and necessary aspect of applied Christian love. Wayside inns were notorious throughout the Roman world and we are not talking Cotswold bed-&-breakfast here. Indeed it was incumbent on both Jews and Greeks to entertain strangers.

Zeus Xenios (Zeus patron of strangers) supposedly masqueraded as a wayfarer and then gave special blessings to those who entertained him – this was probably in the writer’s mind when he penned the verse. (The Greeks, by the way, listed humility amongst the vices!)

For the Jewish Christians to whom this letter was addressed, they would recall Abraham and the angels he entertained at the oaks of Mamre (remember Rubleyev’s famous icon); or Tobit or Gideon or Minoah.

But of course it’s a tricky thing, entertaining strangers, both now as it was then. So there were those who pretended to be Christians in order to receive free board and lodging. It was such a common practice that Lucian wrote a droll satire about it in The Death of Proteus Peregrinus.

The Didache was a first century Christian teaching manual and it gave some down to earth guidelines on offering hospitality: “Let every apostle who comes to you be received as the Lord, but he must not stay more than one day, or two if it is absolutely necessary; if he stays three days he is a false prophet.”

This was also why our Lord told his disciples when they went on their preaching tours, to receive hospitality at the first house that offered it; not to move around the town when they found a house with a better cellar and a Jacuzzi.

Well how do we fulfil this injunction to offer hospitality, apart from the obvious way of never letting a priest pay for a drink?

In church on a Sunday it is straightforward but often neglected - we always have visitors and although the way to the church hall is an easy trip (at least on the way there), it is sometimes a daunting journey into the unknown and mildly threatening for a stranger.
And that’s true just in going to the back to pick up a glass – especially if they are on their own. Let’s not leave others to do it. And let’s not be afraid of saying welcome to someone who it turns out has been coming for longer than you have.

We must always strive to include others, even when they may not be those with whom we would choose to be stranded on a desert island.

Hospitality is a great gift. Hospitality to strangers is a greater gift, but one that tempers our pride and self-absorption.

So in our homes or wherever we entertain, we should not spend all our time with just our comfortable coterie. If we are fortunate enough to have the conviviality of friends, we must sometimes broaden our horizons to welcome, if not the stranger, then at least the relatively unknown. I find that although they are sometimes a burden, guests greatly enrich my own life and often the lives of their improbable fellow guests.

Our Lord himself shows us hospitality whenever we meet around this Table. Despite our unworthiness he deems us happy who are called to this supper. As we follow his example, his angels wait to surprise and bless us, and to take us further along the path of genuine humility.

“Be not forgetful to show hospitality to strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” (Heb 13.2)