Christ the King (Matthew 25:31-46)

Matthew 25:31-46 is a tough passage of scripture. It is one of those passages that haunts us, as someone said to me recently (quoting Brueggeman I think). For those of us who have tried the black and white interpretation of this passage we know more is required than the easy judgement that the text on its own suggests. Integration into a christology that includes the condemned as well as the blessed would be a good start! The black and white interpretation condemns as surely and superficially as any fundamentalist theology is prone to do, and on as slim criteria as well. What is also needed is a deconstruction of the text that allows it to speak its message of transformation and hope.  Happily, I was provided with just such a deconstruction over the week-end in preparation for our celebration of Christ the King. The deconstruction came in the unusual form of the African Bible Study, a method ob bible study that assumes no expert knowledge, but simply trusts that the text of Scripture is alive with meaning for each of us now. Here are a few of the points that irrupted out of the process:

• Judgement proceeds on the basis of not only what each has done but also on what was not done.
• Both groups, sheep and goat, are as surprised as each other that Jesus was present to them in their lives in the unlikely disguise of the hungry, thirsty, etc.
• Sheep and goats in the time of Jesus were virtually indistinguishable to a casual observer. Just as the criterion of judgement was a surprise, so too final membership was a surprise because salvation cannot be anticipated this side of God's judgement.
• The passage called each of us to greater vigilance and action on behalf of the needy and poor.

No one felt the need to condemn themselves or pronounce their salvation in the strict terms of the parable. Likewise no one resiled from the simple judgement that God asks more of us. All the responses looked to God for mercy, for themselves and for the poor.

Not a bad result.

Hypocrisy

If hypocrisy is defined as simply not living up to the ideals one preaches to others, then hypocrisy is not a bad thing. At least it means that I have ideals, even if I fail them.  No wonder the church is open to easy criticism on this account: we do actually believe in something which isn't all that easy to live. However, better this than believing in nothing at all and having no moral compass.

 The question is whether I am aware of my failure to live up to the ideals of the gospel and the ways in which I twist the demands of God to suit myself and exclude or oppress others. If we are aware of the gap between our own lives and the ideals of the gospel, and I let this knowledge seep into how I live and talk to others, this doesn't really deserve the accusation of hypocrisy. We just call it sin, and calls from us repentance and humility.

In today's Gospel reading from Matthew (22:15-22) Jesus accuses the Pharisees of hypocrisy. I thin we would just call it duplicity. The Pharisees pretend sincerity when all along they intend to try and trap Jesus. Jesus sees through them and cleverly slips through the trap while also embarrassing them. (They bring him a coin with a graven pagan image on it.) Although that they are acting in a way that their own faith would prohibit, and do so willingly and without any sense of caution, suggests hypocrisy.

In Matt 23 Jesus again accuses the Pharisees of hypocrisy, and this time we get some explicit content to the accusation. Although in the first few verses of Matt 23 it sounds like Jesus is equating hypocrisy with saying one thing but doing another (23:3-4), Jesus has more in mind. The rest of the chapter is an extended criticism of the hypocrisy of the Pharisees citing example after example. Jesus' criticisms revolve around superficiality, pride or self-congratulation,  and ignorance of the true demands of God (23:13-28), an ignorance (whether from a genuine blind-spot or willfully committed) that prevents others from responding to God.  And, even more sinister, all this can lead to the scapegoating of the those who point out the hypocrisy. (23:29-39; see also 22:33-46)

How do we prevent ourselves from being hypocrites? This is especially important given that we all fail to live up to the gospel and have blind-spots that prevent us from seeing the extent of our failure. A couple of things can help us in this regard.

1. Repentance for both the failures we are aware of and those we remain unaware of. This last is important because it encourages us to remain vigilant for these hidden sins. And repentance leads to humility. (Matt 23:8-12)

2. Remain in living contact with the gospel to allow it to do its inner and outer work on us. Regular, living contact with the gospel is essential. And I think this contact should be both personal (e.g. reading and reflection) as well as public exposure through the community of faith.  In the church I hear the gospel preached and see it lived, as well as meeting examples of failure to live it. All of this might help me learn something about myself and help me break out of my own small circles of self-deception and hypocrisy.

3. Judge as we would wish to be judged. (Matt 7:1-5) Repentance and humility while we are in regular contact with the gospel of grace will help us to judge as we are judged: mercifully, and with caution.  This is perhaps the best way to respond to those who like to make generalizations about 'the church' or 'Christians' or 'churchgoers' or 'priests' and label 'them' as hypocrites. It is tempting to join them in their hypocrisy by pointing out their hypocrisy in making the generalization. Better to judge as we are, and wish to be, judged.

Conversion, Mercy and The Unforgiving Servant

 A popular misconception of conversion and the Christian life, both within the ranks of the church and beyond, is equating conversion with an apparent change from an extreme of self-degradation or violence to a new life opposite to the old. When I was a teenager this was a standard Christian presentation in the public high school I attended. The presenter would tell us about their former life of meaningless violence and drug taking contrasted with the change that came through faith. The heart of Christian conversion was presented in the story. Conversion is a radical change that breaks our former self to bring alive a new person. We are called to glory, and there is no room at the inn for the current distortion of our humanity. We need remaking.

It is tempting for the voice of faith to use a Damascus Road type
example in talking about conversion because of its dramatic quality. It makes a good story. Moreover, the person who has had an overwhelming conversion experience from a former life of dramatic darkness often wishes to share their experience while it is alive and vivid, and before it is taken up into their continuing journey of life-long, and at times patient, change. The drama of their own conversion translates into an urgency for all listeners to hear the gospel. It can be very powerful, despite the obvious ways in which it can be used to manipulate the vulnerable. However, this kind of focus on black-to-white conversion can unwittingly inoculate the listener against faith and conversion. 'But I am not like that!' is the refrain. I felt this as a teenager. There is a little of the Pharisee in Jesus' parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector in this attitude. But more importantly, while this kind of black-to-white conversion story does reflect the heart of conversion (i.e. a radical remaking) it does not reflect where and how most of the work of conversion is undertaken.  The heart of the Christian life is conversion, but the location of the dying and rising of conversion is in the living of it over a long period of time, taking in many changes, dead-ends as well as joys and victories. Conversion is a patient action of a patient God. The focus on an overnight change misses the learning and conversion that must take place for all of us regardless of whether we have a Damascus Road experience. Conversion into a Christian life includes the loss of innocence that comes after the first flush of repentance and conversion, and includes the transformation of the self-righteousness that can follow a major conversion experience. That is, the problem for some who focus on their own or the general need for an overnight conversion is the reticence to grasp fully the need to give up the sense of righteousness that follows it before it becomes an entrenched self-righteousness. It is too easy for the converted  to end up persecutors.

The rejoinder I have heard is the story of St Paul's conversion. He changed from black to white virtually overnight. And it was this that remained the heart of his faith and proclamation for the rest of his life. Certainly, his conversion was central and unforgettable. However, he went to 'Arabia' (Sinai or Syria?) and then went and joined a church for three years after his conversion. There was more to do than just fall off his horse! And if I am reading him correctly, the focus in his theological and pastoral use of his Damascus Road experience is the mercy of God shown to him (as well as the independence of his Christophany from the Jerusalem leadership).

James Alison says that a better way of thinking of conversion is not to focus on the change from black to white, but on the experience and effects of receiving mercy . The converted are merciful. Here is what he says:

By a story of conversion I don't mean one of those accounts of how I was bound by this or that vice, had an overpowering experience, and have now managed to leave it all behind me - though such changes are by no means to be belittled when they happen. However, they are incidents, and not stories. Someone can give up doing something held a vice only to turn into a persecutor of those who lack his same moral fibre. That is not a Christian conversion. The authentic convert always writes a story of his or her discovery of mercy, which means that they learn to create mercy, and not despite, for others. This rule of grammar we find set out in the parable of the servant who was let off all he owed by the King his creditor, but who didn't forgive the tiny debt his colleague had with him. (James Alison)

The Door You Carry With You

I followed up the door sermon with the kids. This time I took them beyond the idea of Jesus as the door into God's house/room by carrying the door with me. So when I went through the door (just a couple of louvre doors I had lying around) I took one of them with me. I made two points:

1. Doors normally stay in place, you leave them behind until you want to exit. With Jesus, I said, you never leave him behind and he isn't the way out.

2. This means that wherever you are, you can enter God's room through Jesus the door.

Do You Really Want God? (Quote)

From Inward/Outward

"Do you really want to live your lives, every moment of your lives in God's Presence? Do you long for God, crave God? Do you sing and dance within yourselves, as you glory in God's love? Have you set yourselves to be God's, and only God's, walking every moment in holy obedience? I know I am talking like an old-time evangelist. But I can't help that, nor dare I restrain myself and get prim and conventional. We have too long been prim and restrained.

 "The fires of the love of God, of our love toward God and God's love toward us, are very hot."Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul and mind and strength." Do we really do it? Is love steadfastly directed toward God, in our minds, all day long? Do we live in the steady peace of God, a peace down at the very depths of our souls, where all strain is gone and God is already victor over the world, already victor over our weaknesses?

 "This life, this abiding, enduring peace that never fails, this serene power and unhurried conquest--inward conquest over ourselves, outward conquest over the world--is meant to be ours. It is life that is freed from strain and anxiety and hurry, for something of the Cosmic Patience of God becomes ours." (Thomas Kelly, A Testament of Devotion)

Presence and the Near-Life Experience

The wisdom of the great spiritual writers is that we human beings are too often not present to our own lives. We are in the past or the future, or too tired or distracted, angry or in denial about reality.  I said to the St John's students recently that if they disbelieve me they should try to see how many seconds they can be present to their lives before some thought, feeling or other distraction intrudes. I said if they lasted 7 seconds they would be doing well.

The older we get the harder it becomes to switch from living outside our lives to living in them. We become calcified in our distractedness and the habit of living elsewhere than right now. A near-death experience can shake us up. Sometimes people 'find' God after a near-death experience. It is my experience that the near-death experience shakes us up not only because we could have died, but because we gain a new sense of the beauty, meaning and sheer goodness of  every moment of life. And although this new sense might only be temporary (because to live in the present and break old habits takes spiritual discipline) it remains evidence, I think, of the truth in the original insight itself, we are not present to our own life. And it is not just near-death experiences that lead people to grasp the sheer gift of life, but the process of dying itself. Sometimes people acquire a sense of the goodness and giftedness of life, their own waste of the gift, and can even move into receiving the gift of real livingness in a moment, as they move to death. (Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilych" is a fictional account of just such a movement.)

There is also a parallel here with the complaint that God is absent in our lives. "I prayed but it didn't make any difference, and I didn't feel God's presence ... I don't think God exists."  Is there perhaps a parallel here with our absence from life? We think that life is dull and boring, or that it will begin when ... or that my life would be great if only such and such hadn't happened...  But what if, as Ron Rolheiser says, the fault of absence, both in terms of our lives and in our sense of God's presence in our lives, is on our side? It is easy to live as though God does not exist just as it is easy to live unaware of the life waiting to be lived!

See also Leunig's cartoon entitled " a Near-Death Experience (see picture above).

Trinity Sermon About Doors

Tony Kelly, in his book, Touching on the Infinite, quotes from a poem by Tomas Transtromer:

"Each man (sic) is a half-open door leading to a room for everyone."

So for a kid's talk I used a couple of old louvre doors from a cupboard. I had a couple of  kids be the hinges so  could open and shut the doors. I had the kids knock, I opened and hey, look, there is the congregation. And the other way around so I opened to the altar. The point was to say people are like doors. Whenever we meet someoneit is sort of like opening a door because there are a lot of people behind them in a big room, including parents, friends, church, school, and others. And Jesus is like that; open him up and hey, look, (using traditional language) there is the Father! (A future kid's talk could push this a bit further with the doors. Jesus is the door to the Father, but unlike doors leading into a room, we take Jesus the door with us. We can't ever discard the door. It will be so strange they will get the point, as will the adults listening. )

The door imagery was a good one to use to talk about the Trinity with the congregation. People seemed to get it. I contrasted the understanding of our humanity as a door with the individualistic 'self-made man'. The human being of the latter is self-contained, leads nowhere, and relationships are either occasionally needed, recreational but never constitutive. (cf. the Arian view that God was not eternally Father with an individualism of sorts at the root of God.)  The door image leads nicely into what it might mean to be a church of a communion rather than a single congregation, and as disciples we are doors to ... well, Jesus, God, church.