Sermon, Lent 2: Prepare to be Shocked

Sermon. St Michael and All Angels, Little Ilford

Lent 2 (Year C)

Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18
Philippians 3:17-4:1
Luke 13:31-35

Today's question is this: Which reading did you find most shocking? Which shocked you especially?

I am teasing of course. You don't look at all shocked, and I was not expecting you to. And (open secret...) clergy are not different species from laypeople. We all, I am sure, want to pay attention to the Bible readings, but sometimes in spite of our best intentions, we can all let the readings wash over us. In the Orthodox liturgy, whenever a Bible reading is announced, the response goes out, chanted: 'Let us attend!' For good reason. We need to be prompted to attend. And another open secret is that one role for the sermon may be to give us all a second chance to attend to the readings. I suggest that, today, when we do, there are things which we may well find shocking.

From the First Reading we have what I think we might truly call the 'magical' encounter between Gd and Abram: Gd 'brought him outside and said, "Look toward heaven and count the stars... So shall your descendants be." And Abram believed the LORD; and the LORD reckoned it to him as righteousness.' Those words have echoed down through all the centuries of Christian history. Abram/Abraham (same person) is our father in the faith, in pure faith. St Paul says that Abraham here is showing that faith, or trust in Gd, comes before particular rules, commandments and rituals (those of Moses). And that becomes the touchstone of a whole strand of Christianity – Protestantism, and especially liberal Protestantism.

Now, the idea that trust in Gd is more important than following rules is important, and true. If it ever were about making a choice, that is. But when we look at this story of Abram's trust in Gd in context, as in today's reading, we may be shocked to see the contrast doesn't work. Yes, Abram trusted in Gd, and Gd counted that to him as righteousness. But that does not mean Gd downplays the importance of ritual as itself a means of connecting with Gd.

On the contrary, Gd immediately commands... what? A ritual! And Abrham obeys. He takes a cow, a goat and a ram, cuts them in half, adding some birds for good measure. And he waits. This is shocking for us, because it seems a bizarre, even a silly ritual. We're not given any explanation as to why Gd commanded this, though the scholars of course have some theories. But my point is that if we think of Abram/Abraham as modelling naked faith, without dogma and ritual, we will be shocked, when we actually attend to the text.

And so to Paul and his Letter to the Philippians, the Second Reading. I don't think I'll be shocking anyone if I say that, in our days, and actually for a few generations now, Paul has had a bad press. People say he is confusing; he speaks in abstractions. He changes the faith that Jesus had in Gd into faith in Jesus in ways Jesus himself wouldn't recognise – that's another claim. And especially Paul is held to be a cold fish, for slavery and the empire and 'good order', against women, against gay people, even against sex – so they say.

That is quite a charge-sheet. We can't go into it in any detail now. But undoubtedly Paul is a complex character, and it's not going to be absolutely wholly wrong. But! But if these are our thoughts about Paul, we must surely today be shocked at how he writes as someone who is anything but a cold fish.

Hear again how he addresses the Philippians: '[M]y brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved.' I can tell you that's a good translation of the Greek; he really does see the Philippians as his beloved, his joy, his crown. And he desires or longs for them. Can't really imagine a buttoned-up, stern headmaster saying any of that. So let us take a moment to deal with the shocking news: St Paul is a warm, loving, emotional father-figure.

What is so shocking about today's gospel? It happens I am not thinking of Jesus's intimations that his journey to Jerusalem will result in the tragedy of his death. That is, frankly, unlikely to shock us, as we know the story, and here we are, deep in Lent. But notice what we can easily miss is the opening: 'At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, "Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.”' See? Here the Pharisees are out to help Jesus, to save him.

We are so very used to think of the Pharisees as the arch-enemies of Jesus, even colder-of-heart than Paul, and concerned with tedious details of the laws, rather than with kindness and human flourishing. Modern scholarship says that that is shockingly wrong. Rather, the reason why Jesus and the Pharisees so often seem to be in fierce arguments in the gospels is precisely because they are so close to each other.

Just like us. I mean: we might get into strong arguments with other Anglicans who think differently from us, but who are still Anglicans. Or at least with other Christians. We are less likely to get into such a foreceful oppositional mode with, say, Hindus, as we are not as-it-were 'invested' in Hinduism in the same way (most of us). In any event, here it clearly doesn't work to see the Pharisees as the enemies of Jesus. Shock and horror! They are his allies, his friends.

There is a common thread here, of course. In each case, if, when we come to the details, we find ourselves shocked, it is because we first had prejudices about the characters in question. And the prejudices also take a common (or common enough form):

• we are suspicious of rituals we don't understand, like Abram's admittedly unexplained one today, and so think they are incompatible with faith;
• we judge people, judge even saints like Paul, on the basis of a handful of statements, and so think we know their character, can mind-read their whole attitude to life;
• we divide the world up into our enemies and our friends, and so miss when people who are indeed different from us, like the Pharisees were different from Jesus, are actually trying to help us.

These prejudices, and others like them, are not peccadilloes; they are not trivial failings. They are serious sins which stop us seeing the image of Gd in other people. We deform them, and we are deformed.

Just as we should do all we can to attend to all our Bible readings, so – actually even more so – should we do all we can to attend to the image of Gd in all the people we meet, including those who are nothing like us, and, yes, including those we can't stand.

Am I then suggesting that we give up our prejudices for Lent? Another shock: the answer is a firm No! But this is why: if we give up our prejudices just for Lent, we'd be expected to take them up again at Easter. Which would be devastatingly wrong.

Abram/Abraham, St Paul, Jesus and the Pharisees would all agree that every human being is made in the image of Gd. Indeed, let me go further. I say: unless you are willing to trust in and discern the mystery of the image of Gd in the next person you meet, whoever they are, you do not actually believe in Gd. You might be drawn to ideas about Gd, which are fascinating, comforting and warming. But that is a different thing from faith in Gd. Unless you are willing to trust in and discern the mystery of the image of Gd in the next person you meet, whoever they are, you do not actually believe in Gd. I am sorry if that shocks you. But (one after-shock...) not really. Amen.