Two Sides of God's Truth
Epiphany, 6 January, 2008
Robert Whalley, Senior Chaplain, RMIT University
They say there are those people who put everything into two piles, and there are those people who don't. I do. I tend to make lists, pros and cons, right reasons and wrong ones, yea's and nay's. In the 1980s I remember talking to a spiritual director who said, "you seem to feel ambivalent a lot": I replied, "Well, that could be good or bad!". But there are certainly two piles in the themes and readings for this Sunday, both in the service for baptism and in today's Scripture: life and death, light and dark, two kings in the Gospel, even two readings from the Hebrew scripture. So now listen to parts of the first Old Testament lesson, the triumphant announcement we heard from Isaiah 60:1-9:
"Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you... Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn... they all gather together, they come to you; sons and daughters; camels, gold and frankincense, flocks, rams, ships of silver and gold with them, for the name of the Lord your God, and for the Holy One of Israel, because he has glorified you".
This is an important lesson because it speaks of the great vision of ultimate unity and victory: God's will will be done, God's goodness overcoming all evil, vanquishing defeat and death, leading us all to larger life where Christ will be all in all. This is the great eschatological vision, that sight of the last things, of the things that last, the final kingdom, power and glory, goal of our desire and longing, where nothing in Christ is lost, but all will be found in the heart of God's love. That is our hope writ large!
But there is a second message from the Hebrew Scripture hidden in the midst of the Gospel of Matthew (Coming from the prophet Micah). It's quoted within the conversation between Herod and his chief priests and scribes, "And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel." And this shepherd leader is a different model, packs a different punch, stands for a different style (think of those sheep-herders protecting their flocks in the night in Luke's Gospel). This also moves us a few chapters forward in Matthew, towards the word of God we hear in the Beatitudes... another Gospel under the Gospel.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
And that is a picture of God writ small, the blessed image of God found in people living, working and suffering for the kingdom as they can, (and whether they're winners or losers, pure or persecuted, meek, merry, mild or mourning makes no difference). That's a different style of God here and one that makes people like King Herod very scared. Because that model of holiness shows that the purpose and passion of God can be found, and carried forward, by people who might be very small, somewhat unimportant, un-prominent, in fact like most of us who are here today, like Mary, like the infant in the manger, or like the young man, Thomas, who is to be baptised this morning. This gospel holds the good news that the actions of small humble everyday people can and will make a world of difference in the end. That, by the grace of God, anyone can try to change the world for the better, and in doing so, be blessed, be a blessing, be a gift of God.
Now even though we've all learned that small can be beautiful, we might just tend, on one level, to prefer big, the surety of that final victory to the blessed assurance that God prepares a table in the midst of our enemies, in the times of trial, when we're coming to a test. But if we're building a larger relationship with God we need to learn to stretch in both directions. And that can be difficult sometimes.
I was once told that in religion a lot of people start out to be Godly and end up being sort of Lordly instead. It is a cheap joke, a forced distinction; not unlike the difference between Religion and Spirituality. But it still might be wise to build another two piles.
Maybe Lordliness is "putting on" religion: a persona or face for facing the world, centering on the accessories and the architecture of holiness, where Godliness, on the other hand, builds the building in order to move in, to live there, to come face to face with God in the middle of everywhere. We all balance there some of the time, between Lordly and Godly, but the more radical difference is seen in the breach between word and deed. It's so easy to talk a better game than we live, Lordly looks good! So we need to be understanding and forgiving when we see that in others or in ourselves: there is nothing new about it, there was the same disparity in Jerusalem when Micah is writing, same when Herod is the ruler, and the people are scattered like lost sheep and the heart of the nation is lost.
But then Jesus shows up just in time as an infant, as a youth, as an adult, and says "I am the good Shepherd," God's word writ small in the middle of humanity, and he lives this out in many, sometimes rather small and not always successful ways: strengthening the weak, healing the sick and the lame, searching for the lost and those who have strayed, calling them home by name, pouring himself out as living water for the thirsty and bread and wine for the hungry, fleshing out how God loves us and feeds us, and where God meets us.
And finally being put to death by the state, Jesus becomes one with those who are written off as officially expendable. So that there will be nowhere, and no one, where this Godly shepherding love might not be known.
Again, it's not because the first reading, the big happy ending, majesty of God winning, Isaiah's pie in the sky, is wrong or false, but that it's less than enough. We need to balance it with the truth of God writ small, the humble shepherd and his friends solid with all the poor, needy mass of humanity, and see both visions as part of the wholeness and holiness of God, in which we are called to take our part. We need God to meet us in a world that is this specific so that we can meet God in a world that's that comprehensive.
Rowan Williams wrote this recently:
The Christian Church began as a reconstructed version of the notion of God's people — a community called by God to make God known to the world in and through the forms of law-governed common life — the 'law' being, in the Christian case, the model of action and suffering revealed in Jesus Christ. It claimed to make real a pattern of common life lived in the fullest possible accord with the nature and will of God — a life in which each member's flourishing depended closely and strictly on the flourishing of every other and in which every specific gift or advantage had to be understood as a gift offered to the common life.
This is how the imagery of the Body of Christ works in St Paul's letters. There is no Christian identity in the New Testament that is not grounded in this pattern; this is what the believer is initiated into by baptism. And this is a common life which exists quite independently of any conventional political security. Because it depends on the call and empowering of Christ's Spirit.
And that's why we're celebrating a baptism today, the spirit in the midst of all this, stretching out in the baptism and the Eucharist following, moving from darkness to a new light, from chaos to cosmos, from old conclusions to new beginning, from false heroic isolation to true human community as we join to confess Christ crucified, proclaim his resurrection, look for his coming in glory. Because we believe that the very biggest truth is found in very small places, all by the Grace of God. And that is very good news.
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