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Pentecost 17
6/10/2019

1 Timothy 1:12-17
Psalm 143
Luke 17:1-10

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In a sentence:
True life is hidden from us until God reveals how we have gotten life wrong

In one of our reflections on Hosea I suggested that most of us are lousy sinners: when it comes to sinning, we don’t do it very well.

Next to this, we’ve heard today that Paul (or, at least, the writer of this letter) is not susceptible to this charge, being the ‘foremost’ among sinners.

Yet, when Paul lists his faults, they are not especially impressive. Blasphemy, persecution and violence are certainly bad enough but in quantity and quality it would not be difficult to name a person or two who far exceeded Paul in these or other things; perhaps some such high achievers are sitting here among us today.

Paul holds these to be so heinous because they had to do with his active persecution of the church. More particularly, in the account of his conversion we have in Acts, a voice is heard out of blinding light: Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? (as distinct from ‘my church’; Acts 9.4). The voice identifies itself as the crucified and risen Jesus, the true object of Paul’s rage.

What makes Paul the foremost among sinners is not, then, ‘moral’ failings we might read into his behaviour. He does not violate this or that rule when he should have known better; he has stood against the crucified Lord.

In the account we have in 1 Timothy, Paul holds that it was ‘in ignorance’ that he did all this. The thing which matters for understanding sin and grace in proper relation, however, is that he did not know at that point what he did not know. His rage against the church was righteous so far as he and his supporters could see. He rejected – for good reason – the notion that the crucified Jesus, with the emphasis on ‘crucified’, could be the Christ. The least sympathetic critics, with Paul, read the crucifixion as proof that Jesus was a heretic.

And so the ‘ignorance’ of Paul’s actions is one of the key moments in our short passage today. The passion with which that unknowing was defended and forced upon others reveals something quite contrary to the assumption of our information- and knowledge-based culture today: the assumption that we can be confident that we are right about our rightness. It is at his pious best that Paul fails, without knowing it.

What shifted Paul from persecutor of Jesus to his champion was not reflection on the logic of belief, unbelief or heresy, or reason versus unreason; ignorance will not out.

What shifted Paul was being stopped in his tracks, confronted with a vision of God not only different but deeper and richer than he had known till then. It was only this which revealed his miscalculation of God and his lack of understanding of the breadth of God’s love and extent of God’s power.

Coming to terms with the new vision was not straightforward. It was a long time between Paul’s conversion and his beginning on missionary work. But the effect of that reflection was that he came to see how his ignorance had cast his saviour as his enemy. When we find ourselves in that situation, it is only that saviour who can save us, despite ourselves. We cannot find our way to him because, to us, he is only our enemy and everything he does would seem to be to hurt us. This is the pathos of those who, because there is no hell, necessarily find themselves in heaven but are miserable nevertheless: it is a torment to be in the presence a God we imagine to be a threat to us.

To be in heaven and to know it as heaven is to have received a new vision of ourselves and God and the world, and to have begun to live it.

This is what the writer of the letter calls, in his final remarks to Timothy, entering into real life: ‘…take hold of the life that really is life’ (6.19).

We gather here each week precisely to be reminded of, and – God-willing – to be drawn a little more deeply into, the life which really is life. This will not always begin as a beatific vision of God and the angels, and ourselves in their midst. It will sometimes hurt. In the story of his conversion in Acts, Saul is struck blind. That his eyes no longer worked is less important than that he was reduced from clear-mindedness to being not able to see, to understanding nothing. The blind Saul is a dead Saul, shut as it were, in a tomb and waiting for the stone to be rolled away again, that a new light might flood back in. In this way, only the believer can properly sin, and so properly be forgiven, because only the believer remembers the stone being rolled away.

We each need to be buried in the same kind of way, in order to come to see how we have misjudged, over-reacted, denied what is true or affirmed what is false. And we need to see also how that new sight is both judgement and grace. Each of these two matters although, if the crucified Jesus is Lord, the judgement is something we look back on from the perspective of grace.

In our first reflection on this letter I suggested that the basic condition for which we are created is ‘timotheic’: we are all ‘Timothies’ created for the honouring of and being honoured by God (the ‘Tim-’ meaning ‘honour’ [time] and the ‘-thy’ meaning God [theos]). This is the substance of heaven.

If we are all created to be ‘Timothy’ in that sense and yet fail to be so, we are, then, also all Paul as he describes himself today: either ignorant of the life which really is life and needing to hear of it, or now looking back in wonder at what we once thought to be true.

To grow into this estimation of our unworthiness and yet great worth is also, with Paul, each to become ‘the foremost among sinners.’ A new and more penetrating light now illuminates our world.

When this happens, it becomes possible that we might be saviours ourselves, of a kind: people who reveal and deal with the captivities of others not by accusation but by words and actions of illuminating grace which bring the light of our great worth to God and, by the way, reveal the judgement of sin, already yesterday’s news.

Such a life of righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness (1 Timothy 6.11) is the life of Jesus himself, by which we have been saved, and which we are now called to live.

Let us, then, so live that others might also live.

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Pentecost 16
29/9/2019

Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15
Psalm 91
1 Timothy 6:16-19
Luke 16:19-31

Sermon preached by Matt Julius

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God, may my words be loving and true; and may those who listen discern what is not. Amen.

“For I know how many are your transgressions,
and how great are your sins —
you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe,
and push aside the needy in the gate.

Hate evil and love good,
and establish justice in the gate …” (Amos 5.12, 15a)

These prophetic words from the book of Amos ring out in response to today’s Gospel reading. Lazarus has been laid down outside the gate of the rich man.

Lazarus has been laid down. Perhaps he has been laying there for a long time. Long enough, at least, for the rich man to learn his name, as we see later in the reading. Or perhaps we are to understand that Lazarus was himself unable to choose where he lay, someone else lay him outside the gate. Lazarus has been pushed aside.

Whatever the case Lazarus has been laid down, he is there, covered in sores, hungry, longing. Outside the gate. He receives no justice in the gate.

“For I know how many are your transgressions,
and how great are your sins —” (Amos 5.12a)

Before this parable about the rich man and Lazarus Jesus told the story of a dishonest manager. A manager who squandered the wealth of his master, another rich man. When the manager’s transgressions became known the rich man asked for an account of his management. Sensing his imminent firing the manager used the last moments of his employment to forgive some of the debts owed to his master. We are not told if, in the end, the dishonest manager was in fact fired. We are told only that his master, the rich man, commended his dishonesty as shrewdness.

This is a confusing story — which is probably why a lot of sermons last focused on the lectionary reading from 1 Timothy. But this story is important background for today’s Gospel reading, because it sets up the confrontation between Jesus and the Pharisees. It is within this confrontational context that Jesus tells the story of the rich man and Lazarus.

The Pharisees found the first story as confusing as we do, it seems. In response they ridiculed Jesus, not knowing how to make sense of his teaching — as we often don’t. And so Jesus makes cryptic statements about the law and the prophets: they were in effect until John the Baptiser came, since then the Kingdom of God is proclaimed. And many try to enter the Kingdom of God by force.

This is not to suggest that the law and the prophets are to be done away with. For Jesus says that it would easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one letter of the law to be dropped.

We are supposed to understand the story of the rich man and Lazarus as some sort of explanation and rebuke to the Pharisees. And, perhaps — I might add — an explanation and rebuke to us.

“you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe,
and push aside the needy in the gate.” (Amos 5.12b)

The Pharisees, we are told, were lovers of money. And so Jesus tells a story of a rich man.

Not merely rich, but richer than rich.

Not dressed in the white that showed he did not need to work in the field, and could afford staff to do his laundry. But a rich man dressed in purple, which showed he could send away to foreign lands for dyes or exotic fabrics with which to dress.

Not a rich man who put on a grand and special banquet. But a rich man whose banquets had become mundane, so often were they held — daily. Mimicking the lavish style of Kings and Emperors.

If the Pharisees love money, then let them hear the story of this rich man.

And, given their affinity for the law, let them hear of a poor and unclean man. Covered in sores, and laid outside the gate. Even dogs would come and lick his sores.

And this man’s name was Lazarus, or in Hebrew ‘Eleizer,’ meaning — in a feat of irony — “God has helped.” The point, of course, is that no one helps, and Lazarus dies.

This rich man also dies.

The story seems to be about the eternal fate of these two people: the rich man and Lazarus.

The rich man, who the Pharisees are wont to praise, is of course the villain. Uncharitable, lacking in generosity and hospitality. He dies and goes to the bad place, tormented by fire.

The poor man, Lazarus, is of course the one to whom we should attend. He dies and goes to the good place, to be with Abraham — the great father of Israel.

In their eternal resting places their fates are reversed. The rich man is punished for his failure to live out the virtues taught by the law and the prophets. While God, through Abraham, vindicates the poor man Lazarus, and makes everything okay. At last “God has helped.”

And when the rich man seeks in this afterlife the mercy he himself failed to show on earth, he is told: “no.” His fate has been set and sealed. His choice made. The gate that kept Lazarus outside of the rich man’s property, and away from any experience of mercy, has become a great chasm in the place of the dead, and so makes it impossible for the rich man to receive mercy. Perhaps this is the final justice of God.

“Hate evil and love good,
and establish justice in the gate …” (Amos 5.15a)

We might be able to see in this story a simple moral lesson, and a warning. Echoing the prophetic cry of Amos: take care of those in need, do good. Do not be like the rich man. Because the judgement of God is coming, and in the afterlife all will be set and sealed: justice will be done inside the gate of God’s Kingdom in heaven. No one can enter by force, or by petition, but only by living now the virtues taught by the law and the prophets.

Go then, and do likewise.

I want to suggest, however, that the way Luke recollects this story points us beyond simple moral lessons.

The story of the rich man and Lazarus in the hands of Luke’s masterful retelling does not give us a simple moral lesson, but proclaims who we are as God’s people, as the body of Christ.

Lazarus is the only character named in any of parables told by Jesus. His name means, ironically, “God has helped.” But his name has another heritage: Lazarus, or Eleizer was the name of the heir of Abraham, before the birth of Isaac.

Lazarus recalls not simply a poor man outside a gate, but those who seemed to be left outside of God’s promises through Abraham for the whole world. Lazarus is a sign for all of us that God’s redemptive plan for the world have not forgotten anyone. God’s redemptive plan for the world includes those who seemed to be left outside of God’s saving work through Abraham and ancient Israel. Not because the promise to Abraham has been replaced, but because this new Kingdom of God, here and now, brings to a crescendo the teachings of the law and the prophets.

Before telling the story of the rich man and Lazarus Jesus says it would be easier for heaven and earth to pass away, than for one letter of the law to be dropped.

The story ends with the statement: “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.”

With this Jesus is making clear that his resurrection is not a passing away of the world, and is not a passing away of the law, but is a fulfilment of the law, and brings the reign of God once and for all into this world.

As readers we already understand that this story is recollected by communities founded on the assumption that someone has risen from the dead: Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified Messiah. And in this rising from the dead God has displayed the salvific plan for the whole world. Establishing the Kingdom of God.

This is the point of the ironic twist at the end of the story. Even if someone rises from the dead they will not believe. We read this and proclaim that someone has risen from the dead and so the Kingdom of God has not been established in an afterlife, in a looming resurrection, but has taken root in the very midst of creation.

Hear then these words from the Apostle Paul:
‘Do not say in your heart, “Who will ascend into heaven?” (That is, to bring Christ down.)

Or, “Who will descend into the abyss?” (That is, to bring Christ up from the dead.)

“The word is near you,
on your lips and in your heart.” (Rom. 10.6-8)

This is the proclamation that the story of the rich man and Lazarus points to. The reversal of who is rich and who is poor, who is inside of the gate experiencing justice and who is left outside, has been completed in the death and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah.

Before we learn the moral lesson to help those in need, we must first recognise that we ourselves have been brought into a new relationship with God and the world. We must first see that we do not enter the Kingdom of God by force, but are freely and graciously welcomed in.

We are Lazarus. The ones who seemed to be left outside of the promise of Abraham.

We are Lazarus. The ones left outside the gate, victims of injustice.

We are Lazarus. Longing to be fed like the prodigal who seeks to return to the loving Father, and a banquet of welcome.

We are Lazarus. The ones who cannot enter the Kingdom of God by force, but are welcomed in by the freely given, overwhelming love and grace of God.

Before we declare what we must do, we proclaim who we are in light of the risen Christ. We are Lazarus: those who “God has helped.”

For all the unloving words that have been spoken to us, we proclaim that God is love and loves us.

For all the wounds that do not heal because they continue to be reopened, we proclaim that the crucified Messiah transfigured a scarred body into glory.

For all the exclusion, we proclaim that we rest in the welcome embrace of the Spirit.

And we are called to be this reality, in this community, here and now: a witness to the expanding reach of God’s love, glory, and welcome home. We are the body of the one who has risen from the dead.

From this proclamation. This foundation of hope. Not what we do, but what God has done in Christ.

From here we overcome the chasm that stops mercy flowing out and redeeming those who have lost their way.

From here, we find rest in the overwhelming love and grace of God. That does not guilt us into goodness, but loves us into new life.

From here we begin to open the gate and welcome others in: to make sure justice is done. Because true justice is found on the cross of the risen crucified one.

“We shall be judged, but with Christ. And there lies our salvation.” — Karl Barth

Amen.

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Pentecost 15
22/9/2019

1 Timothy 1:1-7, 18-19a
Psalm 16
Luke 16:1-9

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In a sentence:
Scripture speaks of God’s honouring of us, and calls us to the honouring of God

‘Fake news’ has been no small part of the news over the last few years.

Whatever else can be said about it (not least that it is scarcely a new phenomenon), the most insidious form of fake news is that which we might have reason to believe is correct. It might not likely be believed that the candidate for election is a child-sacrificing Satanist, but be quite believable that he is philanderer or has manipulated some public process for personal gain. Believability is an important element of ‘useful’ or effective fake news. It has to be a report not only that we might want to believe but that we can believe.

We begin our reading of 1 Timothy today by considering the strong majority conclusion in critical scholarship that the letter was not written by Paul, and dates from perhaps as much as a century after Paul’s death (with a similar conclusion with respect to 2 Timothy and Titus). The reasons for this conclusion include the language in the letter, and the emphases and the context to which it seems to be written, all of which differ considerably from those in other letters of Paul.

Our point here this morning is not to test the theory – we’ll take it for granted. More important is to ask what it might mean for the reading of the letter and of the Scriptures as a whole. In particular, the question of authority presses forward – the authority first of the letter itself and then of a Bible which contains such fake news. For if it is fake, it may be untruth of that more dangerous type: close enough to what is possible that we might believe it to be true. There was a Timothy, and there was a Paul – a very, very important Paul. What that Paul might have said to that Timothy, then, is itself very, very important. It would seem to matter, then, whether or not Paul wrote this letter.

Indeed, this is a significant historical question, in the sense that historians are right to do the kinds of things historians do to establish as closely as possible what is the case about historical records.

Whether or not Paul wrote the letter, however, is not a very important theological question. For we must also take seriously the way in which the Scriptures are used in the Churches – or, at least, ought to be used. We noted, for example, that the prophet Hosea was not writing to us but to eighth century Israelites. We believe there to be continuities between ourselves and them but we also know that there are great differences. And so we ‘translate’ and ‘interpret’ in order that we might hear God speak to us in our own ‘here and now’. If it is Hosea we use, it is not quite Hosea we hear.

In the same way, if Paul did write to Timothy, he was not writing to us, and so we seek to read between the lines to understand more how Paul’s exchange with Timothy might matter to us. This is part and parcel of our not being in the ‘thick of things’ so far as the texts of the Scriptures are concerned.

The rumoured ‘fakeness’ of such a letter as Paul’s to Timothy – its ‘pseudonymity’ – is not, then, merely a ‘literary’ conclusion, as if the matter rested only on analysing the language and context for comparison to that of other letters in Paul. Rather, pseudonymity borders on being a theological requirement of a biblical text. This is because every text ceases to be what Paul said to Timothy or the Galatians or the Corinthians, and becomes a text addressed to us – independent of the historical personage of Paul.

All Scripture is, theologically, pseudonymous in this sense: we read it ‘as if’ we were the ones addressed by the text, and ‘as if’ our reading of the text is the address to us of the real or purported author. There is, then, a sense in which – as forgeries – the pastoral letters of Paul perfect the Scriptural principle. They demonstrate precisely what is required of us as we hear and speak the gospel: they write new Scripture from the authority of the old.

To suggest that Paul might not have written the Timothy letters (among others) is, then, simply to observe that the Bible itself already contains precisely the engagement with gospel truth that we ourselves enter into each time we open it. We read Scripture to discover what God might be saying to us here and now, and we see that the Bible itself contains texts which are doing just that. The pastoral letters are traces of how the gospel was already being addressed to a time and context quite different from that of its original speakers – Paul – and hearers, Timothy.

But in this these letters are crucial because, in the end, it is the ‘from…to’ address of Scripture which matters: ‘From Paul, apostle of Christ Jesus by the command of God…to Timothy, loyal child in faith…’:

There is a hint about this in the name ‘Timothy’. While we are confident that Paul had an apprentice named Timothy, at this distance (that is, the distance between the man and his name appearing in the Scriptures), the very name ‘Timothy’ becomes more significant than the man himself. The name is a compound of two Greek words, the ‘Tim-’ meaning ‘honour’ (timé) and the ‘-thy’ meaning God (theos). Timothy is either ‘one who honours God’ or ‘one honoured by God’. (In the letter the name appears three times: at the very beginning (v.2), where Timothy is identified as the ‘to’ of the letter, at the end of the introductory section (1.18), and then at the very end of the letter (6.20) – ‘Guard, O Timothy, what has been entrusted to you’.)

It was an accident that the man Timothy had this name but it is useful for the purposes of reminding ourselves what the Bible is: it is a word about honour from God to the one addressed and about the honouring of God in return.

That two-way honouring has its content revealed in the opening chapter of the letter. First, there is God’s honouring in the gift: ‘Paul, sent by Christ Jesus, to Timothy, loyal child: grace…mercy…peace.’ The ‘to’ of Scripture always proposes this first, even in the wrath of the prophets. Grace, as mercy for peace, is the gospel regardless of the context.

And then, consequent upon the gift, is the exhortation, our honouring of God: rise, stand firm, ‘take hold of the eternal life to which you are called.’ This, too, is always present: the law by which the grace takes form. This is what the gift ‘looks like’.

Whether the ‘real’ Paul wrote this letter to the ‘real’ Timothy does not matter here. In the gift and in its consequence, we are all ‘Timothy’. We are honoured by God in grace, mercy and peace. And we are called to honour God: to take hold of eternal things in lives abounding in love which springs from purified hearts, cleared minds and sincere faith.

Let us, then, be ‘timothe-ic’. Let us live from God’s honouring of us, and live towards it in our honouring of each other, to God’s greater glory and our richer humanity. Amen.

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Pentecost 14
15/9/2019

Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28
Psalm 14
1 Timothy 1:12-17
Luke 15:1-10

Sermon preached by Andrew Gador-Whyte

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God loved the world in this way, that he sought us, his lost sheep, at the risk of losing everything else.

God loved the world in this way, that he turned up the whole house for the sake of a single coin, that he pursues what adds nothing to him so that he may share with us in his unreasonable joy.

God loved the world in this way – that in Jesus he called us his friends and neighbours so that our lives might become a feast over what only God recognised as infinitely valuable.

God loves – which is to say, God’s will is oriented freely towards the other, embracing what he has made in its own integrity. God searches relentlessly for us in our alienation from one another and from him. God seeks us out in our weakness, our brokenness. God desires to embrace each person, incorporating each back into the communion that has been lost.

God desires us freely. God reaches out to our broken humanity in mercy. The form of God’s mercy, revealed in Jesus, is solidarity. God’s solidarity with us is an invitation to us to respond. Our response of love that his solidarity makes possible is repentance.

In today’s reading from Luke’s gospel, Jesus tells two parables to those who object to his fellowship with sinners. God has arrived, and welcomes money launderers with his surprising joy. And for others whose sin is to judge swindlers who are coming to trust God, he welcomes them too to share in his joy. Let nothing stand in the way of God’s grace – neither our despair of God’s mercy for ourselves, nor our attempts to manage others’ relationship to God’s mercy.

Jesus’ familiarity with those alienated from God’s people is not a cheapening of God’s righteousness. Rather, it is to reveal the righteousness of God over and against the righteousness that we place in the way of our neighbour’s healing.

In eating with sinners, Jesus makes communion possible not by toleration, but rather by solidarity. Not by denying what has ruptured our relationships, but by inviting us to one table. There we recognise the unity that comes from another, that judges our ruptured state. There we recognise the unity that impels us into the distinctly unglamorous work of asking and giving forgiveness, perhaps of giving up the need to be right that so pervades our culture.

Repentance is opening ourselves to God’s healing judgement. It is allowing God to meet us where we are, in love. And it is the recognition of how much we have attempted to live independent of his love. Repentance is allowing ourselves to have our feet washed by Christ. It is coming to receive our neighbour’s imperfect service as pure gift.

The Church is a repentant community. Repentance is the pattern of life Christ has given us. Like a bell ordering the hours of our work and prayer together, repentance is to be what structures our life, a constant invitation. Living together in the Church is taking God on trust that his mercy is always at work restoring our relationships, turning our will towards him, through what is ordinary and mundane and real. Liturgically speaking, repentance looks a lot like simply turning up, simply sticking with the rhythm of the Word, simply opening your hands to the gift that transforms us.

Repentance is standing in the line to the table of our common need, receiving forgiveness on behalf of our neighbour and for our own dire need. It is a life of prayer that refuses to despair of the mercy of God.

In baptism we have been given to one another as a forgiven people. To be washed is to be immersed again in the reality of a broken world, but to know it afresh as the place that has become the place of our healing. To be sanctified is to be drawn under the waves together where one has gone before us, with us, on our behalf.

To say that we are a forgiven people it is not to claim that sin is behind us in the streets outside. It is to say that we are given to each other in the particular awareness of having been met by the risen Christ. When he greeted us in the garden, his risen presence made visible our complicity in our neighbour’s betrayal. And yet, even before his presence is judgement, it is, above all else, reconciliation. His risen life, revealed to us with the wounds we have dealt him, is above all an assurance of our incorporation with our neighbour into the resurrection life we share.

On the cross, Jesus himself has become the lost sheep and the lost coin. On the cross, we who were lost have been found by God. We who have been met by the risen Christ have come to recognise our implication in his betrayal and death. We have come to see that in Jesus, God has become the outcast, the accursed. God has identified with us in our alienation, in the brokenness of our relationships, in the failure of trust in which we are enmeshed. God has made his mercy known by sharing our life in Jesus, by eating with us, by solidarity.

Through fellowship with him, we have received the gift of a life lived in complete trust in God. The joy of growing into absolute dependence on God. The joy of becoming slaves to the love of Jesus Christ. The joy of recognising our neighbours and ourselves as forgiven sinners. The joy of connecting others with the love of God, the God who searches unrelentingly to restore people to life and communion.

Through fellowship with him, we have received that paradoxical joy of coming to see with clarity how our lives have been marked so comprehensively by fear, by evasion of responsibility to our neighbour, by avoidance of dependence on our neighbour. That paradoxical joy of repentance.

God loved the world in this way, that in Christ he searched in the wilderness, swept all the rooms of his house until he found us. He has searched us out, even to the point of meeting us at the depth of our weakness and alienation. However lost we are, we will be found in Jesus Christ. And he calls us his friends and neighbours, that our lives might become lives of joy for the lost whom he carries home. Amen.

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Pentecost 13
8/9/2019

Genesis 3:1-4
Psalm 43
James 3:3-10
Matthew 26:69-75

Sermon preached by Rev. Bruce Barber

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“I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of slavery, (therefore)….

“You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour”

Each of the previous four commandments tells us what we should do. Now, in this ninth commandment, we are confronted not so much by the duty of deeds as by that of our words – what we say of, to, and about one another. In this respect, it connects with the third commandment: “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.” If, there, God seeks to protect his own name from dishonour, this ninth commandment seeks to protect the good name of every person whose desire it is to receive such a gift.

The need for true words, therefore, requires that we reflect how often we take for granted the miracle of human speech – that ambiguous faculty which distinguishes us from the animal creation, which can only growl, bark, neigh, hiss, moo and twitter. To state the obvious, language is the basis of every human enterprise. We use it to persuade, to inform, to entertain, to encourage, to curse, to depress, to enlighten, to deceive.

We have a graphic description of the power of the tongue for good or evil in the letter of James. Like the writer of the letter, we do not have to search hard to see contemporary illustrations of the power of the tongue to injure. False witness against individuals in the institutions of business and governments; false witness against neighbouring countries; false witness in and against churches, synagogues, and mosques – the power of the tongue is incalculable, not least in changing standards of judgement.

Ours is indeed an age at the mercy of intellectual hostilities, so that it is increasingly difficult, even in complete innocence, not to serve the lie to a far greater degree than we imagine. However well we may have thought we have negotiated the other commandments, it is certain we will have well and truly come to grief with the words “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour“. Over and above the casting out of the blatant lie, consider the reach of the commandment when, as deliverer or receiver, we are implicated in the all too human desire to be first with a good, though doubtful, story, or to trade rumour with an air of innocent regret.

Here, as in so many other things, it remains true that if false witness is to be cast out, there is need for much more of that fundamental reorientation which Jesus called repentance. The call for truthfulness, and the consequent necessity for repentance, makes plain that in a world where truth is not the single object of human desire, Jesus was bound to be rejected – “bound” in both senses of the word. His cross reveals ultimate human treachery with regard to truth. Here the truth dies, victim of false witnesses, of the tongues of slanderers, light obscured by darkness, even at the very centre: “Peter began to curse and to swear ‘I know not the man’.”

The powers of darkness which rise up to extinguish the light of truth so close to home demonstrates the cowardice of the outright lie. Here false witness is obvious. But rarely do we find ourselves faced with such clarity of choice. Most often honouring truth confronts us with genuine ambiguity.

In this respect, we might all benefit from a better understanding of how the very notion of truth has been redefined in Jesus Christ. And it is this. When he speaks and acts, truth is as much alive as is life itself. However scandalous it may sound to those secure in legalistic definitions of truth, he makes the truthful word no longer a simple given. The ministry of Jesus, above all, is witness to this reorientation, which is to say that his word and deed always takes into account the particular one being addressed. Where he is, truth is literally “embodied”, no longer detached from immediate life. Now truth is made personal, liberated from being simply a general maxim of easy application – which is how the Pharisaic mind, then and now, understands what counts as truth.

Consider this by way of illustration.  Some-time in the 1930s, it is said of Dietrich Bonhoeffer that he was present with a friend at a political gathering sufficiently small enough for individuals to be recognised. When all present gave the Nazi salute, the friend resolutely stood with folded arms. Bonhoeffer hissed: “Put your hand up you fool; this isn’t worth dying for”. Only when we take account of the subsequent brutality of his death does the sophistication in knowing when an “apparent” initial bearing of false witness is trumped so decisively by the ultimate cost of “true” witness.

The dangers which are involved in this realisation of the truth as living – and they are considerable – must never persuade Christians to abandon it in favour of appeal to some formal definition, like Christian “principles”. Properly understood, there is no such thing as Christian “principles” at all. Transformative realities such as “Faith, Hope, Love, Grace, Mercy, Peace” – these are not “principles”. Although they are nouns, each is actually experienced as a verb. This means that each becomes in practice an explosive event, even a miraculous event, capable of overturning every established status quo.

This is what it means to speak of truth as living Truth. Notice how this positive understanding of freedom is actually the shape of the commandment. The apparent negative injunction is to “not bear false witness against the neighbour”. As we know, when two negatives are joined, we have a positive. So, joining together “not” and “false” becomes a positive imperative: “Speak truth”. This means that our speech will always need to be “truth in relationship”, and therefore must always be particular. This recognition means that the hardest tasks we have are assessing what truthfulness requires in particular situations. Doctors presumably have this problem in knowing what to tell terminally ill patients. Or again, suppose, hypothetically, that the playground bully taunts a fellow classmate in the hearing of others with the accusation, overheard from parents, that her father is an alcoholic. It is true, but the child denies it. Her answer must indeed be called a lie. And if she had more experience of life, she might have found a way around it. Yet her lie contains more truth, that is to say, is more in accord with reality than would have been the case if she had betrayed her father’s weakness in front of others. The family has its own secret, and is entitled to preserve it.

The fact is that “speaking truth” does not mean the disclosure of everything that exists. After all, were we to read on in the Genesis text, we hear of the serious consequences which follow our assumption that what we call good and evil are safely under our control. The “false witness” of the serpent certainly appears to be right: “You will not die” by this serious endeavour. Well perhaps not, but it all depends on what death means. But such is the nakedness now revealed that even the fig leaves we grasp from the tree are not enough camouflage. Instead, we hear how God himself makes clothes for both Adam (humanity) and Eve (life) (Genesis 3:21). In picturesque form – remembering that the two names in Hebrew mean humanity and life – this merciful gift announces that in a fallen world God is happy for many things in life to remain concealed. If it is too late to eradicate evil, the goodness of God at least makes provision that it be kept properly hidden.

Consequently, “bearing false witness” has considerably deeper implications when it takes on a proper human face offered to us in the gospel. It is, of course, possible to bear false witness by refusing to bring to the light of day things that ought to be exposed. Equally, it is possible to bear false witness by intentionally bringing to the light of day things which ought to remain hidden. The wisdom to know the difference is an illustration in practical terms of what it is to own Jesus Christ as Lord.

The gospel tells us how this freedom has been readily resisted from the very beginning, Jesus announces liberating truth to those who lived by the “false witness” of a religious tradition reduced to a formula; rejecting his offer, their only option was to “pick up stones to throw at him” (John 8:59).

Fortunate then are we if, in this as in all things, we allow the church’s confession of Jesus as the Living Word to so fashion the commandment. When this happens, truth will not only have been declared; it will actually have become a life giving promise – a promise that will set everyone free.

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Pentecost 9
11/8/2019

1 Kings 21:1-19
Psalm 13
Acts 4:32-37
Matthew 21:12-13

Sermon preached by Rev. Bruce Barber

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“I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of slavery, (therefore)….
You shall not steal

What can one say about stealing except to offer moralistic commonplaces?

Perhaps just this, and it is really the only thing that we need to hear: what is new about the commandment is that it understands: “You shall not steal” – an injunction as old as civilisation itself – now to be heard as a requirement of divine justice, not of worldly expediency. We seldom, even as Christians, get much beyond worldly expediency when moral questions are at stake. So, it is a good thing to be reminded that the commandment is about something much more significant than “stealing is wrong” or that “crime doesn’t pay”. At a much more profound level, exodus from Egyptian slavery is not to be the occasion for assisting the deprivation of others. This why “not stealing” is about the justice of God.

No better illustration of such condemnation is to be heard, and no crime is more condemned, than the famous parable of Naboth’s vineyard in which Queen Jezebel both murdered Naboth, and then confiscated his vineyard. In similar fashion, this Hebrew teaching on the implications of theft reached its later culmination when Jesus overturned the money changers’ tables. Frequently invoked by anti-pacifists, this story is somewhat more complicated than is often supposed. These tax collectors were respectable travelling temple officials responsible for raising a tax for the upkeep of the temple. The tax consisted of a half shekel to be paid in a particular currency, hence the need for moneychangers. The tax, which Jesus himself happily paid, was levied on all Jews over twenty. But now these officials had become secular opportunists, setting up shop in the Court of the Gentiles to which access was free. Not only were they inflating the going rate, they were effectively requiring an admission charge to the very temple presence of God. Stealing indeed!

As we have worked through the commandments, we have found ourselves confronted by a series of claims upon different aspects of the common life of the covenant people. We have seen that all the commandments aim at protecting God’s image, either in its association with God himself, or in relation to its reflection for a sustainable human life. Each has claimed our obedience, service and witness in the midst of family life, through the intimate relationships of sexuality and marriage, and now the warning of the temptation of theft, primarily in the realm of economics, but suggestively open to wider extension. A moment’s thought reveals that in a complex society stealing encompasses much more than the economic. Theft in various guises is, it seems, the perennial potential human condition. At the personal level, think of the experienced power of theft when expressed by innuendo, or worse, impugning of others their reputation, their professional competence, or their social desirability. Or consider how the scope of modern electronic technology has given rise to what we call the theft of “intellectual capital”.  Theft’s territory is legion, for it is many.

But clearly theft is most apparent in the realm of economics. “It’s the economy, stupid”, a sentence now made immortal by a President of the United States. As if illustrations from history are not replete enough, closer to home the last election confirmed that within the human heart there is a deep sense of aggrandisement, constantly on guard against personal diminution of wealth. As we well know, anxiety about possible loss invariably accompanies wealth, whether that wealth be static or increasing. In this respect, sociologists have taught us the phrase “upward mobility”. That clearly will have diverse connotations. When applied to middle class aspirations it will mean something quite different from its desired anticipation by the permanently constrained economic poor – whether at home or abroad.

The cliché, “nothing succeeds like success”, is grotesquely true with regard to money. It may be the case that while water left to itself always flows downwards, despite the political claim to the contrary, it seems that money always flows upwards to those who have it. The science of economics, and the practice of politics, may dispute the morality of this situation, but it appears to be an intractable problem.

It was against precisely this situation that the claim of this commandment had to be re-asserted time and again in the history of Israel. Prophet after prophet reminded the nation that the fact that such things should happen in the life of Israel contradicted everything required of the people of God. This eighth commandment, therefore, is primarily directed against the robbery of the poor by the rich. For modern society, it is, ironically, the other way around. Convention understands stealing to mean the robbery of the rich by the poor.

It is a sobering thought that while robbery is never condoned in the Bible, on page after page judgement is called down on the rich, who in far more subtle ways than house-breaking, take away the rights of the poor. An important present-day Old Testament scholar makes this summary comment of the then social mandate: “The poor are to receive their rights not as a form of charitable hand-out, but as a fundamental means of preserving the life of the nation and most important for its safety. It is more important than large battalions and powerful allies that the nation should allow its weak and helpless members to share in the freedom and justice given them by the hand of God.” This is said of a community which lived 3000 years ago. It could well be the social welfare policy of a political party today without changing one word, especially if it is heard as the charter to remedy the scandalous situation endured by asylum seekers. But all the more, now, spurred on by global instability, it is not merely a matter of economic distribution, but more insidiously, that of the possession or absence of natural resources, most specifically, soon to emerge, that of water. Climate change will ensure that water theft will prove to become a matter of justice without parallel, witness on our small local scene, the Murray/Darling basin fiasco.

But the most compelling reason why the concept of stealing is enlarged in the Bible is that the commandment is addressed to a people who have all equally shared in the redeeming love and purpose of God. Covenantal brothers and sisters have not been liberated from Egyptian bondage in order to lie starving and exposed.

Mindful that it is easy to preach a shortcut to Utopia through someone else’s property, how far is it possible in the midst of modern society to bring to bear the economic challenge we find encapsulated in this commandment? It is obvious that with our modern economic structures we cannot go back to the ideal pattern of earlier days, not least to the remarkable situation which saw the cancellation of all debts every fifty years.  But what of the Pentecostal experience?: “All that believed were together and had all things in common and sold their possessions and goods and parted them to all as each had need”. Far from being some form of primitive communism, here there is no compulsive law or theory behind this sharing of possessions and wealth. It is an affair of the heart, a generous outpouring in conformity to the outflowing redemptive generosity of that community by which the acquisitive tendency of the human heart has been strangely, suddenly, and decisively reversed, producing dramatic economic results.

Is this word describing a Christian community any longer a word capable of being addressed to the culture? It is surely a real, if not an entirely promising question, given society’s increasing and absurd demand that religion be merely a private matter. But were this to happen, there would be the beginning of a life lived in the power and light of this new order of things.

Today we really haven’t all that much choice in the matter. Global crises will ensure that we will need to learn as a matter of supreme urgency to obey this eighth commandment “You shall not steal”. Otherwise, we may conceivably arrive at that extreme condition in which the poor – whether they be near or far – having seen the commandment rejected by the affluent West, may find obedience to the seventh commandment: “You shall not kill” difficult to achieve. Who would have thought that there might be such an alarming connection between these two commandments?

But such is the realism, the urgency, and the warning attached to the command of the God of the covenantal promise: “I have brought you out of the land of slavery, therefore…. You shall not steal”.