by CCW | 10 February 2019 15:00
Epiphany season ends this year on a note of reflective judgment. Epiphany season is about the making known of God and of what God wants for us. That alone is an astounding matter. It centers on the idea of revelation, that there are things God wants us to know and which are revealed to us; such is redemption. It says so much about the truth and the dignity of our humanity, on the one hand, and says so much, too, about the truth and the mystery of God, the God who makes himself known to us so that his life can live and move in us, on the other hand. This is an astounding wonder.
The idea of God’s revelation of himself and his will for us also means that something about ourselves is revealed to us. We are in these stories individually and institutionally, as it were. Something about the dynamic and nature of human institutions and human personality is revealed in the witness of the Scriptures. We are made aware of something beyond ourselves, a principle of absolute goodness and truth to which we are held accountable and without which we have no freedom and no real dignity. That we close our ears to this is our folly and our wickedness; such is judgment itself.
Judgment. We are uncomfortable about the idea of judgment and well we should be. In our day, judgment is about being arbitrarily judged by others without any recourse to the question, “upon what basis”? What are the principles that inform our moral, social and political discourse?
We live in a world of wheat and tares. Tares is a Middle English word for weeds used by Wycliffe and then Tyndale in their English translations of the Bible. It is not always easy to know which is which or even which are we. That is why we are given sage advice by Paul in the Epistle for today about “forbearing one another, and “forgiving one another” and above all, to “put on charity which is,” he says, “the bond of perfectness,” and by Jesus in the Gospel parable to let both wheat and tares grow together until the harvest. It is about leaving the judgement to God. It requires of us a certain toleration.
“Whatsoever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus,” Paul says. That suggests a check upon our judgments of ourselves and upon one another. In a world where we are constantly being told what to say and what to eat, what to do and what to think on the basis of mere assertion and arbitrary authority, it is good to be reminded of God’s judgment rather than ours. It is to be returned to the Lord who has made himself and his will for us known. There is a kind of intellectual and principled accountability.
That is exactly what Epiphany has been all about if we are willing and ready to hear that Word and let it live in us, “let[ting] the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom,” as Paul puts it.
We have as a Church and culture despaired of God’s Word, preferring instead to be conformed to the world and its ways, desperate as an institution to have the world’s attention and its approbation only to find ourselves the target of its scorn and hate. And yet, this is surely part of God’s judgment in the realization that we have not always spoken the truth in love and that we have frequently (if not always) been mistaken and untrue in our encounters and dealings with one another. A triumphalist Church wagging its finger at the world in its woes and distresses is not a very pretty picture nor is it true to Christ. Whether it is the Church or the UN, it is all a kind of moralizing self-righteousness. We are often selective in our judgments, using the faults of others to promote agendas of our own. We forget what, as Amin Maalouf suggests, is the greatest of all the great sayings: “let him who is without sin cast the first stone”.
The measure of a church is not about its popularity in the eyes of the world. The mission is not simply about this or that issue of advocacy, for such things are really our contemporary confusions and uncertainties about what it means to be human. The challenge is something greater. It is about reclaiming a thoughtful and theological understanding of who we are in the sight of God. That requires our willingness to hear the very things to which we have closed our ears.
Truth lies in a kind of accountability to a principle, in this case, the principle of God and the revelation of his word and will. At issue is not merely the avoidance of judgment but making right judgment, of acting out of what we have been taught and learned.
That there are questions and uncertainties about matters of religion is not new. It belongs the limits of our knowing in part because of our sinfulness but also because of the finite nature of human knowing. We are constantly being challenged to grow into a larger understanding. It isn’t possible without the recognition on our part of our ignorance and folly. We have stopped our ears to the word of God. The problem is not that we do not hear but that we refuse to hear.
Isaiah, in the lesson appointed for Morning Prayer today, calls attention to our failings. “Our sins testify against us; for our transgressions are with us, and we know our iniquities,” he says. In other words, there is an awareness in us about “transgressing and denying the Lord,” about “turning away from following our God.” There is the awareness, too, that this results in the forms of injustice and deceit in our world, “speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart lying words.” Note that this confession is about our words and deeds in which “justice is turned back” and “truth is lacking.” We are reminded of our shortcomings but only so as to be awakened to God’s truth and justice as the true and only measure for our lives.
We find ourselves in a world of wheat and tares. What matters most is our attention to Word and Sacrament whereby we participate in the mystery of God in Christ. That is to “Let the word of Christ dwell in [us] richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.” This is our joy, our joy in constantly being turned back to Christ. Such is the wonder of Christ in us; “singing with grace in [our] hearts to God.” This is our vocation individually and collectively as a parish. May we “lean only upon the hope of thy heavenly grace,” as the Collect puts it, and so “may evermore be defended by thy mighty power.” For that is to “let the word of Christ dwell in [us] richly in all wisdom.”
Fr. David Curry
Epiphany V, 2019
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