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All Saints
6/11/2022

Ephesians 1:11-19
Psalm 149
Luke 6:20-31

In a sentence:
The one crisis (judgement) in faith is the cross of Christ, by which God judges all human judgement to make straight our way to him

To speak of “All Saints” is to speak of an identity – of knowing who we are or, at least, who the saints are! But this is more than a label. Who we are has to do with where we are, who we are with, and what we do. Identity has to do with a situation, a condition. What, then, is the human situation and the condition of the saints?

In the last week, the little owner of the sweetest singing voice in our house was heard to chime the following chorus,

“you’ve got to get yourself together,
you’ve got stuck in a moment,
and now you can’t get out it” (U2, “Stuck in a moment”).

(Mine is not the sweetest singing voice in the house!).

“Stuck in a moment”. This week the lexicologists at the Collins Dictionary announced their word of the year: permacrisis. I hadn’t heard that word until I read the announcement. Yet I knew straightaway what it meant – “an extended period of instability and insecurity – and I felt how appropriate a choice it was. The crises to which permacrisis points are, of course, very close to us all. Any one of the pandemic, Ukraine, #MeToo, inflation, floods, and heat waves would be crisis enough on top of the usual crises of family, work, and health. But laid one over the other, things are feeling fever-pitched. We might hope it’s a passing phase, except that I was struck by a comment in something else I read during the week, which remarked upon “the complex of modernity in which life knows itself to be at the mercy of a continuum of crisis” (Peter Sloterdijk). While that also seems to characterise today’s experience well, it was written 40 years ago. If the commentator is correct, the problem is not the world in the early 2020s but a deeply rooted cultural experience: being stuck in a milieu that we “can’t get out of”.

In all of this, the crisis of permacrisis is an instability to which we must constantly respond – “perma” wars and rumours of wars. The world is continually upset as things refuse to stay where we put them, and we want desperately to put them back again if we can.

What does faith say here? The Bible knows crisis, yet it differs from the crises we know. Our word “crisis” comes, letter-for-letter, from a Greek word which, in the New Testament, is typically translated as “judgement”:

And this is the judgment [crisis], that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil (John 3.19)

The Father judges [crisis-es] no one but has given all judgment [crisis] to the Son (John 5.22)

The people of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment [crisis]with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the proclamation of Jonah, and see, something greater than Jonah is here! (Luke 11.32)

This is evidence of the righteous judgment [crisis] of God, and is intended to make you worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are also suffering (2 Thessalonians 1.5)

That is, a biblical “crisis” is not accidental but something intended, something God brings. The crises taking place around us are occasional – natural disasters or things we have done to each other that cause the world to go to smash. Biblical crises are deliberate interpretations of natural and historical conditions and crises; it is God who is smashing stuff. By themselves, natural and historical crises are things to be “coped with” and managed – occasions for getting ourselves together. Biblical crises reveal: “this is the crisis, this is the judgement, this is the setting right”. We don’t “cope with” crises like this; we live with them as a given condition.

Such a crisis is folded into our Gospel reading today – Luke 6.20-31. Blessed are the poor, the hungry, those who weep, and those reviled for Jesus’ sake. Woe to the rich, the full, the comfortable, and the well-reputed. This crisis-inducing judgement upsets the world, for now, we might wonder anxiously, Am we among the blessed or the cursed? The crisis is not, “How can we hold it all together?” but “When it all finally falls apart, where will we be found?” Luke, of course, is too simplistic here, in the way of the old prophets. God doesn’t do nuance, and so we can’t let ourselves off the hook too easily. To come to church and hear such a text is to have yet another extra crisis to “cope with” if we are to make ourselves safe, now from God.

This reveals the depth of the human situation, what we are really stuck in – not just our engrossing crises but the requirement for constant decision and assertion of ourselves in the face of the world, of other people and of God. This is our permacrisis: we are required to be the sufferers, the judges and the setters-right of ourselves in the world.

In our reading from Ephesians this morning, we heard of another crisis, much less explicit but real nonetheless. Here the crisis (the judgement) is, “I, God, know who you are…You are mine.” You – the saints of God – are “destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will” (1.11). This, in a wholly (and holy) new way, is the permacrisis of the gospel, the permanent judgement of the gospel. There is only one judgement, one moment of decision – that moment in which all judgements are collapsed into Jesus, and we are collapsed into him with them. This judgement is given that we might “hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory” (1.12). The “praise of this glory” is not an orientation out of this crisis-plagued world, for the glory of Jesus is the cross, which God makes the crisis of crises, the judgement of judgement. In the cross, the rich one is made poor so that the poor might be made rich through judged judgement. Luke, with his inversion of the status of the rich and the poor, says to us that we don’t know ourselves: we judge each other wrongly, anxiously, exclusively and violently: crisis leading to crisis, judgement to judgement.

Against this, the gospel is that there is one judgement which matters – the judgement of all judgement which makes human life once more a gift and no longer an anxious work of self-justification. While we are so accustomed to self-knowledge and self-determination through self-judgement, we have in God a new witness to who we are. If, distracted by the crises, we forget God, God does not forget us. In the crisis of crises is found the life of the people of God. This is the moment we want to get stuck in: the permacrisis which is the gift of life, and which sets all other crises in perspective.

This is the crisis which would make saints of us and not just of us, but of the whole world.

To be such saints as this is to live as though all deathly judgement is behind us, and before us is only life.

Let us, then, live as saints: bearers of crisis-dissolving grace from God to each other and the world. And then we might see that the moment we are stuck in is nothing less than the coming of God’s kingdom.

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Pentecost 21
30/10/2022

Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4
Psalm 119:137-144
2 Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12
Luke 19:1-10

Sermon preached by Rev. Em. Prof. Robert Gribben

This story must be one of the most vivid, and memorable stories in the Gospels.  Children love it and remember it, Sunday School plays used to be made of it and we could all happily believe it is just a tale, a diversion from the serious stuff in the Gospel. The reality is that it is a meticulously formed story in Luke’s carefully constructed two-volume proclamation of God’s plan for humankind in Jesus.

So I thought we’d examine the text in a bible study this morning and perhaps discover more than we did when we were young. The verses are all set out in your service sheet.

The trouble with lectionaries is that they chop a biblical book into small chunks, and place them alongside three others which may well also have the gospel we need to hear for the day. We regularly lose our place in the stories. So let’s begin by stepping back and seeing where today’s chunk fits.

Today’s story has its beginning back as far as chapter 9, when, after the transfiguration, Jesus sets his face to go to Jerusalem. Jericho is the last stop on that line, 20 km to go. But Luke has been theologically leading his readers on this journey too. At the end of the last chapter (18), he gives us (v.31-) the third prediction of Jesus’s passion, three sounding gongs in his narrative about what will happen in Jerusalem, and how it will be the fulfilment of prophecy regarding Jesus.

Jesus is not just walking by himself; he is part of a great crowd ‘going up’ to the Holy City for the Passover festival.  As they approached Jericho, he meets a blind beggar who calls out to ‘Jesus, Son of David’ and when asked what he wants he says, ‘I want my sight back’ and he receives it, instantly. And all present praise God for it.

So, let’s now follow the text in my favourite translation, from the Revised English Bible, which replaced the NEB in 1989.

1 Entering Jericho Jesus made his way through the city.

2 There was a man there named Zacchaeus; he was superintendent of taxes and very rich.

All we need to know about Zacchaeus in one line! Older translations say he was a ‘Chief Tax Collector’, the only such one mentioned in the NT. He is in charge of other tax collectors (‘superintendent’) and will have added to his income from them. In short, he belonged to the most despised section of Jewish society.

3 He was eager to see what Jesus looked like; but, being a little man, he could not see him for the crowd.

‘See’ in the sense of wanting to observe this man, not to consult him.  But there is one more fact: Zacchaeus was ‘of small stature’ [helikia mikros] and couldn’t see for all the regular-sized folk in front.

4 So he ran on ahead and climbed a sycamore tree in order to see him, for he was to pass that way.

Sycamore trees are good for climbing: they have a sturdy trunk and spreading branches, but they also have abundant foliage. Peter’s graphic looks right!

5 When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said, ‘Zacchaeus, be quick and come down, for I must stay at your house today.’

Leafy or not, Jesus spied him, almost as if he expected to see him. Jesus already knew his name. Notice that Jesus says he ‘must’ stay with him – not just for a meal, but for a B&B on the journey to Jerusalem too. There is a sense that the Abba God compels him to stay.

The crowd would have spotted him. He will have been conspicuously well-dressed, and the sight of him shimmying up a tree invited sniggers. He may have hoped to ‘see’ Jesus, slither down and vanish unseen. Not likely.

6 He climbed down as quickly as he could and welcomed him gladly.

Both verses 5 and 6 speak of ‘hurry’, ’quickly’, which is intended to highlight the urgency of Jesus’ summons and of Zacchaeus’s obedience. (We might remember the haste of another rich man in robes, running to greet his prodigal son. That too was undignified and unexpected.) Zacchaeus’ welcome of Jesus hardly suggests reluctance.

7 At this there was a general murmur of disapproval. ‘He has gone in to be a guest of a sinner,’ they said.

Suddenly the mood changes and the fickle crowd turns on Jesus and this is not the only time we hear this criticism. Jesus (in Luke) is often in the company of ‘tax collectors and sinners.’  It is part of Jesus’ divine mandate to sit with sinners.  Such actions belong in the kingdom which is breaking in.

8 But Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, ‘Here and now, sir, I give half my possessions to charity; and if I have defrauded anyone, I will repay him four times over.’

However successfully he descended from the tree, Zacchaeus doesn’t care. He ‘stood there’, calm and composed before his critics. And his first words are what the NT calls ‘fruits worthy of repentance’ – though there is no other sign of his penitence. He is, from that moment, giving half of all his goods to the poor and a four-fold restoration to those he has defrauded. Now, the degrees of compensation are laid down in Jewish law (it’s all there in Leviticus 6: 1-5): Zacchaeus’ offer exceeds the legal requirement. He chooses to relinquish his very profession and embraces a considerable drop in economic status. By contrast, in the previous chapter (Lk 18: 22-24), we have just heard of a rich young ruler who sadly turned away from the kingdom because of his great wealth.

9 Jesus said to him, ‘Today salvation has come to this house – for this man too is a son of Abraham.

It would be possible to describe Luke’s Gospel as dedicated to showing the restoration of all the children of Abraham to their rightful relationships. Abraham’s children have been scattered, exiled, lost in biblical history; in Luke they are being gathered in once again, not least women and children – and even Gentiles. Compassion marks Luke’s Gospel.

Included are include the blind beggar (19:35f), the tax collector (!) praying alongside the Pharisee (18:8f) and earlier, the crippled woman in the synagogue who is healed on the sabbath day, who is called ‘a daughter of Abraham’ (13:10f). Zacchaeus has demonstrated that he has come home.

Two notes to end on.

Jesus says ‘salvation has come to this house’ and it’s worth remembering that Zacchaeus’ ‘house’ now includes all those who have suffered by him, but also his family and his slaves. Zacchaeus continues to be their guardian and benefactor, in a very different spirit – as kin under the God of Abraham, through Jesus.

And ‘salvation’ may begin here with one man’s conversion, but it has personal, domestic, social and economic dimensions. The biblical word can be translated as ‘made well’ or ‘healed’. The whole of life is embraced by Jesus’ ministry, and all who follow him have a foretaste of the coming reign of God.

The meeting of this little man with the very Word of God incarnate is not a diverting tale in a larger story: it is the larger story.

10 The Son of Man has come to seek and to save what is lost.’

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Pentecost 20
23/10/2022

Joel 2:23-27
Psalm 65
Luke 18:9-14

In a sentence:
Humility overcomes hard righteousness to bring
reconciliation for all

The obvious lesson from our Gospel reading this morning is, Don’t be the Pharisee: “for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.” This presumes, of course, that we all want to be exalted, at least a little bit!

This reading works even for those not really sold on the whole God thing. We value humility and have little time for self-righteous posturing. Not taking ourselves too seriously is appreciated by others, and so is a helpful rule of engagement as we move through daily life. Here endeth the lesson, then – at least the obvious, moral lesson – and a good one to learn.

But let us look to see what might be less obvious here. While the two figures in Jesus’ little story are poles apart in terms of moral judgement, they have in common that each stands at his pole alone. I don’t know whether this is intentional in the original telling of the story, but I’m going to make quite a bit of it in what follows! The Pharisee is a self-made man. It is “standing by himself” that he declares his judgement on himself and the other. He needs no other, because this is the meaning of self-righteousness: righteousness by virtue of what I am or have done, perhaps against great odds, with reference only to the truth I perceive and not to others and their truths. The unexpected and usually unobserved effect of self-righteousness is that such a person ultimately stands alone in the world they have created, which does not require and so finally does not admit others. The heaven of the self-righteous has a population of just one. My presumption to be able to perceive the unrighteousness of all others excludes them. Judging and rejecting others has no end and, finally, I am alone.

The experience of the tax collector is the aloneness of being rejected. We don’t know why he considers himself unworthy before God but we can take him at his word that he is, for whatever reason, morally (or otherwise) unworthy. If the Pharisee is a self-made man, this tax collector is a self-unmade one. This is the moral reading of their different experiences.

But the important point is not the difference of their moral achievements but the similarity of the effect of those achievements: both men stand alone. Both have isolated themselves. This sameness makes possible a new perception of their difference. No longer is this difference in taheir moral performance; it is in their perception of their being alone. For the Pharisee, aloneness is a virtue to be celebrated, for which he even thanks God. Or, more precisely, the Pharisee doesn’t see the aloneness but only his isolating righteousness. The Pharisee doesn’t know his condition. And so he also mistakes the condition of the tax collector. The Pharisee sees the other’s sin but not the other’s aloneness. The Pharisee, then, doesn’t see how he and the tax collector are the same.

While the Pharisee celebrates his righteousness and the alone‑ing it brings, for the tax collector, aloneness is a devastating affliction he desperately wants to escape. Recognising his problem, he seeks relief by the only means available – the appeal for mercy. And so the one whom the Pharisee’s moral, alienating righteousness holds in contempt now finds true, reconciling righteousness.

Hoping that this much has made sense, now for something less sensible. All this makes possible what is, on most grounds, an untenable assertion but one we must nonetheless make. If the tax collector is alienated by hard righteousness and is restored to life by God before the one who rejected him, then the tax collector is Jesus himself. It was the righteousness of the Pharisees, priests and scribes which cast Jesus out – which “alone‑d him” – in crucifixion. Easter Saturday becomes the prayer for mercy – a strangely unvoiced prayer of the dead – and the resurrection becomes God’s healing insistence on life not only for himself but for those who rejected him in Jesus. The tax collector’s prayer is not for himself only.

Notice how far we are here from the mere morality of arrogance and humility as personal attributes we might or might not possess and which we eulogise or lament in others. Humility is now nothing like a meek mildness but the opposite of the hard righteousness which divides and alienates us from each other and even from ourselves. Humility becomes the possibility of connection, reconciliation, and so of the creation of something which wasn’t there before. The truly humble do not slip quietly into the background. The truly humble are the means by which the world is made whole again. The tax collector’s prayer is not for himself only.

This is, perhaps, an appealing exaltation of the humble. But there is some bad news here. Such justification as the tax collector received that day in the Temple didn’t change much. Things will be the same tomorrow as they are today. The Pharisee isn’t likely to have changed, nor most of the rest of us who are like him to varying degrees. Ours is a world of harsh alienating righteousness, increasingly pressing towards cynical contempt and contemptuous cynicism. This is not the rejection of righteousness but a relentless demand for it – a demand in and all around us.

In the face of this, prayer for reconciliation, and work toward it, are a struggle, something of which we see in the demeanour of the tax collector and in the crucifixion. There is nothing easy about a sinner’s prayer for mercy. Humility which is merely a mood or way of negotiating difficult circumstances cannot survive the “cost” of mercy. The humility which creates is difficult work. Without the conviction that things can be made out of nothing – the conviction that God will raise the dead – humility is something better seen in other people, a convenient pathology which makes our lives easier (if not theirs).

The humility of the tax collector, however – the humility of Jesus himself – recognises poverty and trusts that God can do something about it. Death and nothingness – the ultimate humiliations – are not barriers to life. And the humility which seeks mercy from God also seeks mercy in the world. To be humble in this way is not to be weak but to desire the smashing of the cold fetters of hard righteousness. This is not easy in a world like this one, in which the alienating righteousness of the Pharisee in Jesus’ story is part of what drives our society and its politics.

Cynicism and contempt are the fruit of an excluding righteousness, the application of some moral or political code against which the enemy measures up only very poorly. This contempt, however, is not a moral flaw in those who look about with contempt but a misreading of justice and righteousness, usually on all sides. Against this, Jesus summons us to what he calls elsewhere the righteousness which exceeds that of the Pharisee (Matthew 5.20). The righteousness of the Pharisee leads to a myriad of heavens with population one, from which we can hurl contemptuous abuse at others in their lonely heavens. But the righteousness of God is towards a single heaven bursting at the seams with Pharisees and tax collectors, Russian presidents (and American ones), rapacious colonists and displaced indigenes, billionaire entrepreneurs and gullible consumers, cynical politicians, sarcastic shock jocks, smug baby boomers, sanctimonious gossips and even Uniting Church ministers.  There they – we – all shall be, in a heaven pressed down and flowing over for the wantonness of unrighteous grace, of unrighteous mercy, of unrighteous forgiveness and of unrighteous reconciliation. With graced abandon, the unjust justice of God exceeds that weaponised righteousness with which we cut and divide so deeply.

Let us, then, not cheapen humility by mistaking it for niceness, and the call to humility as a nudge in the direction of not taking ourselves too seriously. Humility, at least that of Jesus the tax collector, testifies to God’s refusal of any final alienation and so to the power of God to reconcile.

Blessed are the humble – blessed are the peace-makers. They will be called the children of God because, like God’s first Son, their way of mercy and reconciliation grants a glimpse of what heaven looks like.

Humble yourselves, then, that God might exalt the whole world.

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Pentecost 19
16/10/2022

Jeremiah 31:27-34
Psalm 121
Luke 18:1-8

In a sentence:
Prayer requires a vision for peace for the whole

Conventional wisdom has it that when the going gets tough…there’s always Netflix. Of course, that’s not quite how the saying goes, but could it speak a truth about our infatuation with binge-watching inexhaustible streaming services? While storytelling and story consumption are deeply embedded within us, this is not enough to account for the explosion of streaming subscriptions and our consumption rate of films and TV series. No small part of this must be the escape the screen offers. There is much from which we want to escape, of which the headlines and TV news reports are sufficient evidence, whatever else might be happening in our personal lives. But video streaming is scarcely the only means of escape. Grey nomads across the county are getting away from it all in droves, extending indefinitely the escape the rest of us hang out for in this land of the long weekend. Gamers disappear into parallel universes for hours or days on end. We can escape into exercise and the body beautiful, or self-consoling overeating, or radical political and religious causes which provide meaning and refuge within the chaos. Or we can simply avoid the daily news for the stress it induces and not venture out too much.

The point here is not to criticise the much-needed holiday, the relaxing weekend immersed in a favourite TV series or setting different priorities from those of our parents’ generation – whichever generation that was! The point is to express the suspicion that, perhaps for most in the modern world, life is lived in the mode of distraction from life. If this is true, it is because of a perceived inadequacy of the story we are presently living, or even the unliveability of that story. A few brave souls – or perhaps deluded ones – don’t experience themselves in this contradicted way. But many of us have become more adept at losing ourselves in stories rather than featuring in them.

My interest this morning is not Netflix or purveyors of other streaming services and means of comforting distraction. Rather, I’m interested in prayer as it features in today’s Gospel reading. What we think prayer might be is controlled by our response to the story we think we are living, because prayer has to do with changing our stories. If video streaming or early retirement or upgrading a spouse or drinking ourselves into oblivion is about leaving behind our present uncomfortable story, then this will affect our sense for prayer. In particular, if escape is our mode of coping, we’ve already decided that prayer cannot help us with our uncomfortable existence. Those escape artists who still pray do so as escapees. The escape is a disconnection from the whole, so that the escapee’s prayer is now not about the whole but about the individual. My inner, personal spirituality and communion with God become my escape. I’m spiritual-but-not-religious because religion is worldly, and the world is what I’m leaving behind. Prayer turns inward because that is the only place I find myself to be safe. Prayer beyond this is pointless for those who have lost hope that there is a story of the world other than that of grim newsfeeds with their wars and rumours of wars, and in which “everyone is angry about everything all the time”. At best, prayer might help my inner story by re-storying me apart from the wider world. Such prayer is now not for the world with its roar of cascading, contradictory stories but against that world.

At the end of today’s reading, Jesus asks, “…when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”. That is, at the final setting right of all things, will there be anyone left who is praying for that setting right? Clearly, there may still be prayer, in the sense of those inward-looking prayers in the hearts of the escapees. But the faith and its praying sought by Jesus is not this. It is the faith suggested by the widow’s persistence in his parable. If her constant harassing of the lazy judge is what prayer is to be like, such prayer bears no marks of escapism. She lives her uncomfortable story as she seeks to see it changed. Her effort is not towards escape but transformation. As one of the tough, she gets going in action which models the kind of prayer which wants to change the world’s story. This kind of prayer – and action – denies the world’s brokenness from within that world. It is, then, prayer not against the world, justifying my flight, but prayer for it, necessitating my staying. This prayer does not abandon ship but can only be prayed from onboard.

This is the very ministry of Jesus. He is pushed out of the world onto the cross by us in a kind of reverse escapism; the world-as-a-whole can’t flee but it can fling just the one Jesus away. Yet, true to his deeply world-centred existence, Jesus will not be suppressed or escaped. And so he prays even from that cross – literally from on‑board, both within the world and cast out of it: “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what to do”; they don’t know how to pray. Such prayer seeks community even out of alienating rejection. Prayer like this expresses a vision of the reconciliation of the whole world. This world so deeply divided by cynicism, contempt and fear needs a faith which will do this work of prayer – a work that can only be done from within the brokenness and not from outside.

And so this is the kind of prayer, work and life to which we are called. This is the taking up of our own cross after Jesus, with prayer that leans into the world and not away from it. It prays for the coming of God’s peaceable kingdom; that earth become heaven; for bread, grace and safety. Outside the world which is not yet its true self, but within it and sharing in its brokenness, we pray and work for the forgiveness, reconciliation and wholeness which will make all things – even us – new.

In such prayer and the active struggle for life it expressed, let us be unceasing.

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Pentecost 18
9/10/2022

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7
Psalm 66
Luke 17:11-19

In a sentence:
Life begins with thanksgiving

“Say ‘ta’ ” is one of the first things we teach our children: it’s nice to say thank you. And it is! As a polite social noise, saying thank you paves the way for easy exchange, even when the gratitude might not be particularly deep.

Saying thanks is central to our Gospel text this morning. But what does the thanksgiving “do”? The structure of the story might be read to suggest that the thanksgiving is the basis of the healing: “you are made well because you have given thanks”. This is not unlike what our children learn: saying “ta” increases the likelihood of getting more stuff! Yet this doesn’t match the story. Had the grateful Samaritan not returned to Jesus, Jesus might have said of all ten who cried out for healing, “Your faith made you well”, for all were healed simply at the asking. So gratitude doesn’t get us stuff, at least so far as God is concerned. But what, then, is the purpose of thanksgiving? To get deeper into this, we need to look a little into the problem of gift-giving.

Over the last few months, a number of us have been reading and discussing a book by Miroslav Volf on giving and forgiving (Free of Charge). We have seen how difficult it is to give a gift. It is easy, of course, to present someone with something, but this is rarely true gift-giving. Perhaps we give because it’s expected of us (it’s her birthday, and that’s what you do), or because someone has given us something and we feel obligated to return the favour (thereby fulfilling local righteousness). Perhaps we give to ingratiate ourselves and to receive some favour in return now or later, or perhaps we’re just clearing out our cupboards, and “giving” away our junk is a useful twofer. Real or perceived, these mixed motivations make it hard to know that our gift is truly free of compulsion and self-interest – in totality about the recipient and not about the giver herself. Our gifts tend to have value to us, the givers, and we look to see this value realised. Strangely, but probably correctly, Volf goes so far as to speculate that the only way a giver could be confident that her gift is truly free of ulterior motives is if she intends to forget having given it, and so to have no further expectation from it precisely because it is forgotten. The true gift is forgotten by the giver.

This invites a strange thought: if the gracious God gives perfectly – freely and without self-interest – we could say that God “forgets” having given. The word “forget” means – literally and concretely – to “un-grasp” something, to let it go. Forgetting releases the thing said or done. This means that, having healed the ten in the story, the gift cannot be manipulated against the recipients because God has no further interest here, which is the meaning of “forgetting”. This forgetting is not a divine “senior moment”. To say that God forgets is to say a positive thing negatively: unlike like our own gift-giving, what God gives is a true gift. We might note here that the Bible has long maintained that, in forgiving, God forgets our sin [e.g. Isaiah 43.25, Jeremiah 31.34 and Hebrews 8.12]. If we believe that God forgets the sin, we must believe that God forgets the forgiving.

This is more than just a little odd, in at least two ways. First, what could it mean that God forgets and, second, what now is thanksgiving?

First, then, how can the all-knowing God forget? In fact, the notion of an all-knowing God is itself a negative idea and no better than the notion of a forgetful God. To say that God knows all things is simply to say that God’s knowing is not like ours; if our knowledge is limited, we then say that God’s knows everything. God’s ways are not our ways. And so, if it’s the case that we prefer not to forget having given gifts because the giving might still benefit us, we are free to say that God’s giving is so different from ours that God does forget. Of course, this is a rhetorical trick, but all speech about the gods is rhetorical trickery. We are just more familiar with some Godtalk and so imagine it to be more sensible than novel trickery like a God who must forget if we are to be both healed and free. God appears as much between the words as in them. If we speak a truth about God, any strangeness in what we say has to do with what we are also denying. “God forgets” means that God’s giving is unlike our giving. And so we affirm that God forgets the gift.

What then of the second question, about thanksgiving? What could thanksgiving be if God forgets having given, and so seems to release us from the responsibility of saying “ta”? The answer is as strange as the suggestion that God might have forgotten in the first place. We give thanks in order to remind God that he has given. To give thanks is to name God as Giver, and in this naming we bring God as giver to God’s own mind, and to our own. This thanksgiving is not polite noise; it goes to the heart of our relationship to God as a relationship of giving and receiving. God forgets the gift but we must not, because it is our re‑minding God and ourselves that the creature-creator relationship is renewed.

When Jesus commends the Samaritan’s faith, then, he speaks not of the wish which cries out just in case Jesus might be able to do something to help. And faith is certainly not our ability to distort our minds to accommodate creeds which don’t yet make sense to us. Our passage suggests, rather, that our minds are already distorted – or, at least, nine minds out of ten are. “Your faith has made you well” is not about the total remission of the illness but the entry into remembrancing the gift of life as a gift. Faith sees the gift.

This is worth saying because of how rare it is. In today’s reading, the frequency is one in ten. Last week’s Gospel reading (from Sunday 26C) was even more pessimistic. After discussing how we know the truth about ourselves and God, the text concluded, “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead” (Luke 16.19-31). This is a radical scepticism about the power of a miracle to change human hearts: despite the miracle, we will still get the gift wrong. Transferring this to today’s text, the scepticism becomes, “neither will they be convinced if I cure ten sufferers of their debilitating illness.” Convinced of what? Convinced not of God’s power to heal but that this God is the one and only source of all life. Life is knowing where life is to be found. The shock of the story is that while ten survive, only one lives.

The urging in our reading today is not towards believing in healing miracles but towards believing that we could live a “eucharistic” existence, to borrow from the Greek for thankfulness. This is to experience life as grace‑d givenness. It is to become that miracle which is the creature who finds life again at its source in God, even in the midst of the chaos around us. For if, indeed, we live in a world in which nine out of ten forget to say thanks for the gift of life, it is surely a chaotic world.

Let us, then, give thanks with no mere “saying ta” but in such a way as to re‑mind ourselves by re‑minding God, for our old minds will not get us to where we need to go.