by CCW | 2 July 2023 10:00
We shall return to this chapter from St. Luke’s Gospel later on with the passage which immediately precedes this morning’s gospel about “lov[ing] your enemies” (Trinity 6). Here we have the further articulation of the reciprocity of grace that is to be at work in us which belongs to the pageant of sanctification. It is about our life in Christ, about our abiding, quite literally, in the doctrine of Christ. What that means belongs to our attention to the reading of the Scriptures as they shape our lives in grace.
That means reminding ourselves of the interplay between the various texts of the Scriptures. To be sure, we have these marvellous and, of course, challenging readings each Sunday at Mass but they do not stand simply by themselves. They need to be seen as complemented by other Scripture readings that are also set before us both in the Sunday Office lectionary and the Daily Office lectionary. In a way this points us to the two great questions that we will hear at the midpoint of the Trinity season and which belong to the Christian ethic of compassion in the story of the Good Samaritan, namely, “what is written in the law? How readest thou?”
I was reminded of this by the readings in the Daily Office from Proverbs and from the Letters of John this week that speak to the nature of our abiding in the love of God, something which has already been highlighted in the readings for the first two Sundays after Trinity. Proverbs is, I think, a bit more than simply a loose collection of wise sayings or maxims; it provides a way of thinking things through and of the reciprocity and exchange of ideas that are meant to be lived out in our lives. In that sense, it belongs to our reading in the Trinity season because of its emphasis on sanctification, on our abiding in the Trinity through the words of Scripture which are understood in their unity as the words of Christ. As Cranmer puts it, “he that keepeth the words of Christ is promised the love and favour of God and that he shall be the dwelling-place or temple of the Blessed Trinity”.
In 2 John (9,10), we read that “he who abides in the doctrine [of Christ] has both the Father and the Son.” Doctrine is the teaching, διδακη. In Proverbs 9, “Wisdom”, we are told, “has built her house” and there is the intriguing and at first puzzling contrast between the invitation of the wise woman and the foolish woman. They begin with the exact same words: “whoever is simple, let him turn in here!” But there is all the difference in what that turning in leads to and means.
The wise and the foolish women each bid us “eat bread” but it seems to be very different kinds of bread. “Eat of my bread,” the wise woman says, “and drink of the wine I have mixed.” “Stolen water is sweet,” the foolish woman says, “and bread eaten in secret is pleasant,” implying, I think, something simply for oneself and for one’s self-interest. What is the real difference, then? “Leave simpleness, and live” the wise woman says, “and walk in the way of insight.” But about the invitation of the foolish woman, Proverbs says that those who enter in and drink and eat “do not know that the dead are there” – the shades or shadows – “and that her guests are in the depths of Sheol.” Wisdom is life, folly is death. The one invites us to “leave simpleness”; the other leaves us in our simpleness.
Now this challenges us. Don’t we want a simpler life as opposed to the endless complexities and confusions of our modern lives? Isn’t religion about getting back to the simple things? Yes and no because life in Christ is at once simple and yet not so simple. It requires our constant attention to what is set before us in the liturgy and the Scriptures. What is simple and one in Christ is not so in us. We need to grow in wisdom which is about the way of insight, “the way of understanding” (KJV).
At best, we are usually only half-right about things; at worst, completely mistaken while yet insistent in our opinions and judgements. Marilynne Robinson wisely comments, “to recognize our bias toward error should teach us modesty and reflection, and to forgive it should help us avoid the inhumanity of thinking we ourselves are not as fallible as those who, in any instance, seem most at fault. Science can give us knowledge, but it cannot give us wisdom. Nor can religion, until it puts aside nonsense and distraction and becomes itself again”.
This brings us to our readings this morning. Somehow in the midst of “the sufferings of this present time” – time not as merely χρονος, as chronology – but as καιρος, kairos, the critical moment – we are to be expectantly waiting and looking upon what God is making known to us, knowing already that “the creation itself shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God”. Note that redemption has a cosmic quality to it. It concerns us in relation to the whole order of creation and belongs to “our full adoption as sons, even the redemption of our body.” It is not a flight from the world but a way of living in the world. The phrase “adoption as sons” is really one word that means our being taken as sons, our being known as the children of God. This does not negate our natural derivations and experiences as sons and daughters of fathers and mothers but shows us a fuller and greater identity and life in God. Something greater is revealed to us not in flight from this present world but in and through it.
The gospel illustrates this teaching. The passage is part of Jesus’s ‘sermon on the plain’ in Luke’s Gospel. It highlights the reciprocity of grace in our lives. Mercy for mercy as the Beatitudes put it. “Be ye merciful as your father is merciful.” It places an important and necessary check upon our tendencies towards judgmentalism and the condemnation of others before illustrating so very clearly the problems that stand in our way, simply ourselves in our hypocrisy. “Can the blind lead the blind?”, Jesus asks. That is to be in the house of the foolish woman: blind, unknowing and foolish. “Shall they not both fall into the ditch?”, an image of separation and death and of the dangers of misleading not only ourselves but others.
The parable or idea of “the blind leading the blind” is not unique to Christianity. Siddhartha Gautama uses the same image to criticize Hinduism and the tradition of the gurus in the Buddhist tradition. Yet here it is most powerfully and vividly set before us in its application to us about our hypocrisy which is precisely what cuts us off from that reciprocity of grace to which we are called. The contrast between the mote and the beam is brilliant; the mote is a mere speck of dust, the minor faults of others which we are quick to condemn while being completely unaware of the six-by-six beams in our own eye; in other words, the far greater faults of ourselves that belong to our foolishness. To be made aware of hypocrisy and its dangers is the good news that belongs to our pilgrimage “through things temporal,” the things that belong to the confusions and follies of our world and our souls, in the hope of our attending to “the things eternal” revealed in our midst. It means our attention to the words of Christ in the Scriptures seeking its wisdom for us in our lives.
And is this not the wisdom, too, of the commemoration of St. Peter and St. Paul? There is a necessary and essential connection between Word, Christ and Church and in its local instantiation as parish. “Thou hast the words of eternal life,” Peter confesses. “Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning,” for doctrine or teaching, Paul teaches, a wisdom that is found in our reading together the Scriptures in Common Prayer.
That is the mercy which is to live in us, “seeing not onely how each verse doth shine/ but all the constellations of the storie”. John tells us that “though [he] has much to write to [us], [he] would rather not use paper and ink.” He “hope[s] to come and see you and talk with you face to face.” This is the wonder and purpose of being gathered together by Word and Sacrament in the liturgy; face to face. And for what end? As he says, “so that our joy may be complete” (2 John 12). This is the mercy of grace and forgiveness, the mercy of wisdom.
Fr. David Curry
Trinity 4, 2023
(In the Octave of St. Peter & St. Paul)
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