Sermon. 3 July 2022. Trinity 3 (Year
C)
Isaiah 66.10-14
Luke 10.1-11; 16-20
Today’s Gospel is a success story. A twofold
success story. The apostles - and there are at least 70 of them here – the apostles,
exceptionally, get things right. And the apostles experience miracles
through their own actions. The Gospel is proclaimed and embraced. People are
healed, and freed from what possessed them, what held them back. Given this
success, it makes perfect sense that the Gospel is wed to some beautiful words
of prophetic hope from the very end of the Book of Isaiah: “You
shall see, and your heart shall rejoice; your bodies [atzemotekhem][1]
shall flourish like the grass; and it shall be known that the hand of the LORD
is with his servants…”
But today’s Gospel is not only a
success story. What we may miss is that Jesus envisages that the apostles will
meet with mixed responses. Sometimes they will be embraced.
Sometimes they will be rebuffed. Jesus says: “But whenever you enter
a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say: ‘Even
the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against
you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.'”
And, in case you were wondering what
is in the verses that are missed out today – look again at the verse
numbers – we skip from verse 11 to verse 16 – well, in those missing verses are
“woes”. “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida!” and Capernaum too
– because you did not welcome Jesus or the apostles. So we miss Jesus saying that failure
is not only a theoretical possibility. Failure has actually happened.
So we may as well say it: while the
headline theme today is success, healing, obvious and visible blessing,
a secondary theme is the presence, the reality of conflict. Conflict is
part of the life of those living after the pattern of Jesus. They/we/you will
face, at least at times, conflict and rejection.
What is a follower of Jesus called to
do, when they meet someone who approaches them as an “enemy”? This we know. We
all know this. We are called to love our enemies [Matt 5.44; Luke 6.27].
But the danger is that we may think this means we have to like our
enemies. We have to be kind and warm to our enemies. We have to have fluffy thoughts
about them, and seek to help them in the ways they ask for help.
And today we have evidence that that
is wrong. It is not like that. We do not have to feel warm and cosy about those
who oppose us. Sometimes we have to look them in the eye. and say: “You have
rejected what I came to bring, and so now I am walking away. I am walking away
from you.”
I am walking away from you. Doesn’t
sound very Christian? Then we need to expand our imagination about what constitutes
Christian behaviour. For this is, after all, a command from our Lord and
Saviour. He gives us the gift of a symbolic act to go with the walking
away. You are to brush the dust from your feet and say (I’ll give an
over-literal translation): “The dust that has clung from your city into
our feet we shake off, to you.” (There isn’t actually a word for
“protest” in the Greek, but it clearly means something like that. It isn’t a pleasant
thing to have dust shaken off “to you”.)
I say again: there is nothing
un-Christian about this. Walking away is not the first Christian response, in
the face of conflict. Walking away, we may hope and think, is to be a rare
action. But it can be done. It can be the right thing to do. It is a version of
what counsellors and other wise mentors tell us, tell us often: that we benefit
when boundaries are clear. Where there is conflict, it can be your duty
to set clear boundaries. To say: Thus far and no further. To say: No.
One thing I want to say is that you
can take this command literally. If you need to walk away from someone
or a situation, make real this symbolism. Enact it. Brush the dust off
yourself. It can be a great marker of the necessary, the healing separation.
Far better than smiling sweetly and harbouring hidden resentment. Far better
than doing what the counsellors also say: letting your enemy live rent free
in your head. Brush the dust.
Do I want to give examples of
where we, as a Church, locally and nationally, need to be drawing clear
boundaries, and brushing the dust off our feet?
I think I do not. There are and will
be occasions when this is utterly necessary. (Be clear!) But that discussion is
for another place. Here and now, what I most want to do is recommend the virtue
of what the monastic tradition calls… apátheia.
Apátheia. Am I commending apathy? No,
absolutely not, at least not as the word is usually understood. The virtuous
practice of apátheia means a right kind of detachment. You can be
angry, and you can feel hurt. Both of these are part of life. But do not let
the anger and the hurt possess you, become you, take over. Do not make it
inevitable that you act out of anger or hurt. Keep some distance from them,
even as you feel them. Have at your deepest core the peace of equanimity. Apátheia
is that sort of thing!
And if I say that this virtue is not
one that is valued in our society – at least, not in the way we debate
things – then I am making an understatement. Our political debates run on
anger. They run on name-calling. They run on saying: “’I’ll
ignore your question because - look over here – the other lot are worse!”
Time and time and time again. Running on anger. My sense, drawing in no small
part on today’s Gospel, is that we will not come together to tackle any of the
momentous crises we as a society and nation are facing, until we move away from
our public, often ritualised venting of anger and hate, as if they were a
real discussion, as if they were real deliberation, real exploration of
resolutions. They are not. Our debates are substitutes for discussions.
So I sing the praise of apathy if
understood as apátheia,
and I commend the practice, when the
time is right (which may be rare),
of walking away and brushing the dust
from your feet.
All these can be Christian things to
do.
Amen.
[1] In Biblical Hebrew, one does not “have” a body.
Rather, one “is” a body. This is so obvious, that in fact there is no Biblical
Hebrew word for a living body. The Hebrew here is literally “your bones”. Bones
also take on the meaning of “your very self”, “your essence”.
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