Christ Church

“Brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant”

The readings for the Ninth Sunday after Trinity are the least favourite for preachers, it seems, particularly the Gospel, and, perhaps, the least favourite of readings, too, for you. And yet, these readings from 1^st Corinthians and Luke 16 belong precisely to the pattern of themes of the Trinity Season with its emphasis upon the relation between the theoretical and the practical, between our thinking and our doing, wonderfully captured in the Collect. They provide us with a necessary challenge and as Paul suggests it has to do with our ignorance.

Ignorant of what? Ignorant of what belongs to the nature of our identity in Christ. But, we are, I am afraid, only too ignorant. And because of our ignorance, we are easily “overthrown in the wilderness” of our lives, both individually and corporately. The good news is that even the things of our ignorance can be used to bring us to understanding, to the understanding of the good and to the doing of all “such things as be rightful”, as the Collect puts it.

In the witness of the Scriptures, we have the stories of the ignorance of our humanity written out for us to read just so that we will not be ignorant. “These things”, Paul tells us in First Corinthians, a people remarkable for their willful ignorance, “were our examples”. What things? The things belonging to our identity in the body of Christ which we ignore and deny. But in making such things known to us, we may learn “not to lust after evil things, as they also lusted” and to avoid idolatry. He has in mind the stories of Israel’s wandering in the wilderness; in particular, the stories of disbelief and complaint on the part of Israel towards Moses and more significantly, towards God.

Paul is doing two things here. First, he is saying that these formative stories of the people of Israel are things from which we can learn. They are “our examples”. Secondly, he is saying something even more significant. He is saying that we are in these stories. The Old Testament stories, he is saying, actually belong to the story of our life in Christ. One of the forms of our ignorance is that we do not or cannot think this but it is a profoundly Christian point-of-view. Paul sees in the wilderness journeys of the ancient people of Israel something which anticipates and participates in the definitive journey of human redemption signaled and accomplished in the passion of Christ.

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“You have received a spirit of sonship, in which we cry aloud, Abba, Father”

“All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well”, Dame Julian of Norwich, the famous mystic and theologian said in the 14^th century. Hardly a time one might think of as being well and good. It was a time when northern Europe was convulsed by plagues and death was rampant and regnant. Is her famous saying simply a kind of desperate optimism? Or is it based upon a deeper understanding of the world and our humanity in relation to God?

I think it is the latter. It is a profound insight into the idea of Divine Providence which always sees the goodness of God at work in everything. It belongs to the radical idea of God himself. Perhaps, therein lies our modern dilemma. We have lost the confidence in thinking God and his ruling providence. We are too much enamoured of our own desires and fantasies in the projections of our will and power upon the world and upon ourselves. Therein lies the way to misery because we have forgotten God and find ourselves in what Amin Maalouf rightly calls a “disordered world”.

This morning’s readings help us to think about Divine Providence in challenging ways. The passage from Paul’s letter to the Romans locates our Christian identity in Christ’s sonship and makes it clear that our being “children of God” requires the idea of suffering with God, suffering with Christ. Somehow even suffering becomes something good and not just an evil. We are the “children of God” who are the “heirs of God and fellow-heirs with Christ”, Paul says, “if so be that we suffer with him” for only so can it be “that we may also be glorified with him”. Powerful words that counter the prevailing assumptions about suffering and death in our world and day. They are words, too, that are based upon the idea of God and God’s Providence as being the real truth of human experience.

But how can we think this? Only because of the witness of the Scriptures to the story of Jesus Christ. Notice that what Paul is saying goes beyond the simple oppositions of flesh and spirit. Led by the Spirit of God, the Spirit of the Father and the Son, we learn about our essential sonship precisely through what happens in the world of human experience. We are not in flight from the world and the flesh as if it were something evil. That would be a kind of Gnosticism. No. What changes is how we see ourselves in the world. We are, Paul is saying, to know ourselves in Christ and he in us. That changes how we experience the world and ourselves. It makes it possible to live in a principled way in a fallen and dismal world and even in a fallible church where councils have and may err, particularly when the forms of our spiritual understanding and identity are forgotten or compromised.

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“I have compassion on the multitude”

Compassion. It is a rich and wonderful word and one which is frequently bandied about in the therapeutic culture of our world and day. What does it mean? Literally, it is about suffering with others or at least being able to identify with the sufferings of others. The word is used a number of times in the Gospels where it takes on a much more radical meaning than its use in our contemporary culture. In the Gospels the word is used entirely with respect to human redemption. As such it extends beyond any worldly sense of sentimental kindness. It speaks to the radical healing and restoration of our wounded and broken humanity. It is really about “the quality of mercy which is not strained”, as Portia puts it in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. In other words, it is not limited or constrained by the finite world of our everyday experiences, our experience of suffering and pain. No. This mercy seasons or perfects human justice and human care. How? Because compassion in the Christian perspective cannot be understood apart from the passion of Christ.

Compassion belongs to the idea of redemptive suffering. What is that about? Simply this. God and God alone can bring good out of evil, out of our evil. That, too, by the way, is why Jesus can command us to love our enemies as we heard last week. Compassion belongs to the radical goodness of God which is greater than all and every evil. To let that idea take a hold of our minds and souls changes us and allows us to face the hard and harsh realities of a world of suffering, both our own and that of others.

Christ is said to “have compassion” or says himself that “I have compassion” a number of times in the Gospels, sometimes in relation to the healing of infirmities or illnesses, sometimes in relation to the raising of the dead, as in the story of the widow of Nain where Christ’s compassion upon seeing her leads to the restoration of her only son, and sometimes in relation to our humanity collectively speaking as in the stories of the feeding of the multitudes in the wilderness. Yet, most importantly, the word is used to establish an ethic of compassion for us in the powerful parable of the Good Samaritan.

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