Holy Inclusive, part III

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green

There is a sign above the gate. 

I AM THE WAY INTO THE DOLEFUL CITY,
I AM THE WAY INTO ETERNAL GRIEF,
I AM THE WAY TO A FORSAKEN RACE. 

JUSTICE IT WAS THAT MOVED MY GREAT CREATOR;
DIVINE OMNIPOTENCE CREATED ME,
AND HIGHEST WISDOM JOINED WITH PRIMAL LOVE. 

BEFORE ME NOTHING BUT ETERNAL THINGS
WERE MADE, AND I SHALL LAST ETERNALLY.
ABANDON EVERY HOPE, ALL YOU WHO ENTER. 

The vision in my head, when I hear these words, is of another gate, a real gate, above which is wrought in iron: ‘Work sets you free”. We have here between Dante’s gates of Hell, and the gates of NAZI concentration camps, most well known at Auschwitz, but equally Dachau, Gross Rosen, Flossenbürg, Theresienstadt and others, the gates of exclusion. From life, from humanity, from redemption.

Now we know it’s not work, but the truth that sets you free; and it’s only in the sense of the inmates rhyme, that ‘work makes you free through crematorium number three’, that there’s any freedom on offer here. But, against these iron gates, if we are to set our sights on the most comprehensive vision of inclusion, if we’re to open ourselves to the stranger, the physically, mentally, culturally, ethnically, spiritually different, we must believe in a wholly inclusive God.

But do we? I began these sermons a couple of weeks ago with a question: can we be, not just wholly inclusive, but holy and inclusive? The words above Dante’s gate suggest not.

I was created by the Might divine,
the highest Wisdom and the primal Love…
all hope abandon, ye that enter here! 

Primal love, it seems, can make a primal scream. Long enough to last eternity.

But we don’t believe it. I know you don’t believe it. Because if you did, if you took the concept of Hell seriously, you wouldn’t be here. You’d be out in the world in loud desperation trying to convince everyone of this fate that hangs over them. After all, who, passing by a car crash wouldn’t drop everything to help those unfortunates in mortal peril. And could you tell me that as you pass each day thousands who currently stand with an eternity of suffering, torture and exclusion before them, you have no words to speak to them; No urgency to press upon them the Gospel? No. You don’t believe in this hell, described by much of Christianity. I don’t see the fear, the urgency.

I’m taking two funerals this week. One is for a man whose stoicism and faith are exemplary. Who each week with fading vision and hearing, has spoken out prayers grafted in his heart over 90 years. He is now with the Church Triumphant and we will complete our rites as a witness for our sakes, not his. The other is for a film critic, whose life brushed past every star you can name. Strangely, he requested me to take his funeral. As far as I know he’d only been here once to see the silent film King of Kings we played last Easter. We chatted afterwards;  it may have just been Nicky’s playing, or perhaps the silent film, and curiously he came here because, although this man has the vastest collection of films – such that museums and studios come to him looking for rare pieces –  he had never seen this silent version of the Gospel. But I had not gripped him by the hand and called him to repentance. I don’t know his faith. But I believe and trust that he is safe with God.

And, consider, when we stand before Him on Judgement Day, the Day of Wrath, will He not look at us and say, “Why?”
“Why so few?”
“Could you not have done more for your brothers and sisters?”
Should we not feel shame as they walk through those iron gates, and we look on? Should we not walk with them?

 But we don’t believe it. Now it maybe you don’t believe it because it just seems so overwhelming. It makes life too serious to bear. But life is serious. When we’re sick we know how serious life is, and we all know someone unwell. Those people in war zones, on virus-strewn cruise ships, Those dealing with famine and drought, refugees, our homeless friends here on a Sunday night,  The many struggling day to day in poverty in Wandsworth, crucified by debt, reliant on food banks, children caring for adults; know that life is serious.

So I hope that you don’t believe it, because you know beyond all Scripture, all words and history, the imposing buildings, the ritual and the paintings; I hope you believe that God is love. That the firm ground of your faith is rooted in that simple equation. God is love.

The emperor Domitian famously decided to treat his servant for one day like a prince, showering him in the luxury only a Roman emperor could. The next day he crucified him. That is imperial power. That is a little bit what the Calvinist doctrine feels like to me, where some are destined to salvation, some to perdition. If Divine power is simply imperial power writ large I feel we’re all in trouble. But we know that God is love.

I don’t have time to take you through the arguments today. But to me it’s quite simple. What could one person do, in our short time, that could possibly merit an eternity of suffering?

But more. We know that God has created all things. There’s nothing not wholly created by God. Each of us fashioned in his image. He hateth nothing that he hath made. And then we might consider also the biological, psychological and sociological influences that have yes made us the person we are, but also shaped for better and for worse the way we love, and our knowledge of God. What freedom is within us that could merit an eternity of rejection?

But it’s not so. And it’s not simply that it’s not rational to believe that a God of love could create this iron gate. Within Scripture is the beginning of hope for all creation. There are of course verses about judgement, but consider these: Romans: ‘just as through one transgression came condemnation for all human beings, so also through one act of righteousness came a rectification of life for all human beings’ 1Corinthians: ‘just as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be given life’ Romans again: ‘God shut up everyone in obstinacy so that he might show mercy to everyone’ Titus: ‘For the grace of God has appeared, giving salvation to all humans’ John: ‘And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will drag everyone to me’ And again: ‘For I came not that I might judge the world, but that I might save the world’ 1John ‘And he is atonement for our sins, and not only for ours, but for the whole world’ And most famously: ‘For God sent his Son into the world not that he might condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.’

And here, the Greek for ‘world’ is kosmos, which might be better translated, ‘cosmos’: ‘Not that he might condemn the cosmos, but that the cosmos might be saved through him.’ Inclusion, you see, has a cosmic appetite.

I remember the first time I preached, 14 years ago, I was nervous not so much with the fear of men but with the fear of God. You never want to preach anything you’re uncertain of, still less to go against dominant strands in Christian teaching. The inclusivity of God, though, and the final inclusion of all creation, is so important to who I understand God to be, that I am convinced it is true. You may disagree, but I believe that the loss of even one soul would constitute a tragedy so great as to question the moral character of the entire universe.  The medieval concept of Hell is the strongest argument against Christianity.

Jesus Christ came to save sinners, and we know how far he’d go to recover the lost sheep. As far as Golgotha. ‘If I climb up into heaven, thou art there/ if I go down to hell, thou art there also.’

But this doesn’t mean that we need not worry. I am content to trust God for the redemption of creation.
I’m not sure we have the administrative capability in the office to take on that task yet. But what we should understand from the passages I quoted from Scripture is our shared common humanity. ‘Just as all die in Adam, so are all made alive in Christ.’ The Old Testament, as is often pointed out, is much less concerned with the individual before God than the nation before God. The New Testament is less a narrowing of this down to the individual as an opening up of the Gospel to all humanity.

Consider John Donne’s famous meditation:

The church is catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does, belongs to all.  When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that head which is my head too, and ingraffed into that body, whereof I am a member.  And when she buries a man, that action concerns me; all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated;  God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice;  but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again, for that library where every book shall lie open to one another; 

And then most famously:

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. 

if we acknowledge that our God is wholly inclusive, that any man or woman’s death diminishes us because we are involved in humanity, then this concerns us because for a church to exclude is to separate from God. And where we see exclusion in the church and in society we’re seeing the hell that our faith has told us has been overcome in the resurrection. When we pray ‘thy kingdom come’, we are praying for this exclusion to end.

Division, exclusion, is only part of our fallen world. But by identifying as an inclusive church, we are saying that as a church we will strive, whatever bishops may say, whatever actions taken by government and other institutions effect, we will strive and we will pray to overcome the barriers of exclusion. And whether its poverty, sexuality, gender identification, ethnicity, class, or anything else that might mark someone out as different, that they are welcome here.

If Jesus will leave the 99 to find the lost sheep, if he dines with tax collectors and harlots, the excluded, the dispossessed; then our mandate is clear. This broken bread we share is not for those already on the inside. Those who know they are saved. It is for everyone else. And that must be the basis of our mission and purpose. Because the church is the one institution that exists, first of all, for the people who don’t think they belong to it.

Pentecost 5: What must I do?

5th Sunday after Pentecost

Sermon by the Reverend Doctor Brutus Green

Readings: Deuteronomy 30:9-14, Colossians 1:1-14, Luke 10:25-37

What do I have to do to be a good person?

It’s the wrong question.

What must I do to inherit eternal life?

Again, you lawyers, the wrong question.

They are reasonable questions. Excellent lawyer questions. Am I good? Am I good enough? What should I be doing?

Today’s Gospel’s very familiar. Every child knows and instinctively understands it. A few times during show-and-tell when children are asked what can they do to be better, we hear “helping people when they fall over, or when they’re hurt.” Second usually to the washing up.

How well people take it in is another matter. There was a famous study done on seminarians in America.  A situation was set up where the students were gathered in a hall and given certain tasks.  They were then told to move to another building where they would give a short talk on the parable of the Good Samaritan. On the way a man had been placed slumped in an alleyway. According to the research, only 40% of the students stopped to help. When the students were told they must hurry to their next event, only 10% stopped.  One student even stepped over the prone man, on his way to give a talk on the Good Samaritan, so urgent did he feel was the need to share his insight on this important parable. But we shouldn’t judge. Should we?

The context here is important. Notice that it’s a lawyer who asks the question, to test Jesus. The question he asks, is what must I do to inherit eternal life? And his second question makes his concern even clearer “wanting to justify himself”, he asked, ‘who is my neighbour?’ The motivation of the man is concern over himself. He wants to be good. He wants to inherit eternal life. He wants to justify himself. What must I do?

If Jesus was straightforwardly answering the lawyer’s question you’d expect a different set up. You’d expect the man in the ditch to be the Samaritan. The Jews didn’t like Samaritans. They’d intermarried with the Assyrians, so weren’t fully Jewish;  and their religious practices varied from the Jews.  They had different Scripture and didn’t worship at the Temple in Jerusalem as all Jews did. They were something like the Mormons of their day. So if the guy in the ditch was the Samaritan that would give us the basic set up of: “Who’s your neighbour?” Even a Samaritan is your neighbour. Be nice.

But Jesus doesn’t do that. The Samaritan is the hero, not the neighbour. Now parables on one level, are simply illustrations. You might ask, what does forgiveness look like? I’ll tell you the Prodigal Son. Does God love even lowly old me? I’ll tell you the shepherd who left his flock to seek out the one that got away. But Jesus’ parables are more than this. They have a very specific aim. To cut through self-deception. Parables should make you uncomfortable. They want to change you; to convert you. And to do this they come through a story. Because only a story has the subtlety, the ambiguity, the openness to interpretation to challenge the hearer not just on facts, on laws, on thou should, thou should not; but to challenge your presumptions. They have to surprise. The Word is very near you. But it’s not what you expect.

So our dear lawyer, wants to be good. He wants to inherit eternal life. He wants to be a good Jew. He knows he must love God and his neighbour. He keeps the commandments so he figures he’s ticked the God box. Now he’s asking how far, how many people, do I need to love in order to tick that neighbour box. A reasonable, lawyerly approach.

Like a fairy tale we have three characters. Our first on the highway is the priest. He’s in a compromising situation. On the one hand, he has official duties, which he cannot perform for a week if he touches a dead body. Although there’s equally an argument from Jewish law that preservation of life is a first principle and that despite becoming unclean his first duty is to help the man. You might think this is an ideal opportunity to take a justifiable week off work, but I’m not totally clear on whether the Temple had a policy for “unclean-pay” while people were off duty. Anyway, there’s an argument with the priest that he has a legal responsibility to walk on by. Of course, the very clear and present threat of bandits might be enough to hasten his steps. The Levite as a layman is free from public responsibilities, but will still wish to avoid becoming unclean and ruining his holiday. He is, after all, also on his way to Jerusalem, where unlike the Samaritan Jews go to worship. But both these figures are clearly Jews, who know the Law, and you should expect them to consider this left-for-dead man, their neighbour.

Now enter the Samaritan. And we’re told ‘he was moved with pity’. Not ‘he asked himself what does it mean to be good or how might I inherit eternal life?’ ‘Not he asked himself, “Who is my neighbour - is this man my neighbour.” He was moved with pity.

And look how he responds. He knows to use oil and wine on wounds — that is he has some basic first aid understanding, and the means with which to clean the wounds. He’s not just “trying to help, looking useful or trying to be nice” He has the skill to make a difference.  And then he spends time with him, makes sure he’s recovering and pays what would be several hundred pounds for someone to look after him. So he has the means to deal with this. He’s not trying to do something for which he’s ill-equipped or untrained, that might, despite intentions, make matters worse. And he’s not bothered to stick around to seek the reward, the thanks, the praise. He’s not sacrificing his entire life and so giving himself the chance to tell everyone how good he is, at what cost, or limiting the impact of other good he can achieve. He doesn’t need to be needed. He has not then troubled himself with the question of whether he should do this? Who is his neighbour? What will he receive for his actions? He was moved with pity. He recognised the human need and responded immediately with no desire, except to help the person in need. 

*** 

Jesus has shifted the conversation. The lawyer has asked, ‘What must I do’ ‘how can I be justified?’ The Samaritan has simply connected with the injured man. He was moved with pity. He’s not done it for the Law, to be good, justified, to inherit eternal life. He is not acting for himself, out of concern for himself, but for the other person.

The lawyer has asked ‘who is my neighbour’ to ascertain the loop holes. Like the priest and the Levite he wishes to be justified but doesn’t want to take unnecessary risk; get his hands unnecessarily dirty. What must I do to inherit eternal life. He is thinking of his virtue, his salvation as something he can achieve.

Jesus has told a story about a man who is not a Jew; who doesn’t follow the same law; doesn’t worship in the temple; is not socially acceptable to these people. And in the context of ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life? How may I be saved?’ It is this Samaritan, this man of another religion, this outcast, who is the paradigm. The law, the temple fall before the fact that this man was moved with pity, and responded spontaneously to human need. Jesus is asked ‘who is the neighbour I must love?’ He responds by pointing out ‘you haven’t yet worked out how to love.’ Loving begins with the other person.

So what does this mean for us? Well, firstly, it’s a warning against thinking that we’ve got it all sewn up; that you or St Margaret’s has nailed down what it means to be good, to follow Christ, to inherit eternal life. The parables are there to surprise us; to cut through our self-deception; they are a mirror to the laziness of our moral compass.

Secondly, it’s a reminder that we don’t inherit eternal life by racking up a list of good works, by ticking off our church and charity checklist. Jesus teaches us to pray for grace, and in that to find the love that enables us to connect with other people. And so be ready to respond when we meet that need on the road.

So what must I do? Connect - see that your salvation is bound up with your brothers and sisters. Salvation is like love, it begins when two or three are gathered. Try not to rush. People who are rushing are moving too fast to see the people in the road. And be ready. Ready to offer the crucial help, to have the skills and resources needed when the moment arises. Ready to be moved with pity; to see in the people you meet on the road, that need and vulnerability that is waiting for love. Go and do likewise.