SERMON 20 June 2004 (3rd Sunday after Pentecost)

 Readings:     1 Kings 19: 1-4, 8-15a    Psalm 42    Galatians 3: 10-14, 23-29    Luke 8: 26-39

 In the name of God, who speaks in the silence. Amen.

 One of the profound truths of human existence is that we are all different. For all our common humanity, for all our genetic similarity, we approach life in many different ways. There are times when this is more obvious to us than others.

As children we learn that some of us are good at some things, some are better at others. We discover we have different values from some of the people around us and that people from other cultures may have a completely alien view of what is important in life. In the depths of discord with our partners we can discover great gulfs between approaches. It can range from the trivial - how you do the washing up – to the deeply significant: how to allocate financial resources, how to raise children.

 These differences can lead to interpretations that are at radical variance to each other. One of the most illuminating literary experiences of my life was reading Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet. This series of four novels is set during the 1940s. The first three volumes describe, from different viewpoints, a series of events in Alexandria before World War II; the fourth carries the story forward into the war years. In these novels, the same events are interpreted quite differently. I cannot remember how old I was when I read the Quartet, but I do remember the force of realising just how the same set of events could be seen utterly differently by several people and, indeed, reinterpreted by the same person, later in life.

 A similar watershed in understanding occurred years later when I filled in a profiling questionnaire in a counselling course. There were something like 16 possible combinations of characteristics. These were a simple description of how you tended to approach particular situations – the extent to which you followed your heart or your head, whether you were a details person or a big picture person, whether you were gregarious or solitary. And so it went on, with detailed descriptions of the different behaviours that differing combinations of characteristics tended to produce. Once again I was confronted with the reality of human difference and some of the implications of those differences in the way in which we relate to the world.

 Such differences also surface quite rapidly in discussions about faith. At one level, it is all quite simple. ‘Believe in God, believe also in me’, said Jesus. But what does this mean?

 There is a tension throughout the scriptures between the life of faith expressed in terms of belief and the life of faith expressed in action. In truth, the two belong hand in hand. Having faith means being faithful. What can it mean to say ‘I have faith in God, I believe in Jesus’ if there is no evidence of that faith in what we do? And why would we want to live in a godly way if there is no belief in God underpinning our actions?

 We are always at risk of emphasising one at the expense of the other. And this is where our human differences show up very clearly. Those who like ordered, structured and certain universes are likely to put in place sets of rules to help them live the life of faith. The complex legal system set up by the Jews was one such system. Its intention was to honour God, and to give concrete expression to faith. By following the Law, the Jews could feel secure and know that they were living as God wanted them to live. What does it mean to live a godly life? For the Jews it meant following the Law.

But this was dangerous ground, and ultimately, for many, the Law lost its rightful place as a servant of faith and relationship to God became subservient to the letter of the Law. As Jesus himself pointed out, it is easy to follow the Law quite literally and tithe everything in our households, even down to the smallest amounts of herbs in our cupboards, but we can easily lose sight of the heart of faith – love, mercy and compassion. This tendency is not restricted to the Jews of Jesus’ time. There is no end to the people who will tell you the rules you need to follow to be a faithful Christian.

 At the other end of the spectrum, we can believe implicitly in Jesus and in his redemptive action in the world as the Son of God and do absolutely zip. This is much more likely to be the tendency of those who are contemplative, more introspective people. But how strong is such faith in the long run if it is not nurtured and built on by faith-driven deeds? We have probably all come across people who have had an experience of conversion, perhaps at something like a Billy Graham Crusade, but for whom it has all gradually petered out into nothing because it did not lead t any change in how they lived.

 We talk about faith as a noun – we have it (or not). Like Barnabas, of whom I spoke last week, we might be ‘full of faith’. But I believe that faith is better thought of as a verb – like love, which grows as we love, so faith grows as we ‘faith’ – as we live in faith, act in faith, and share our faith, nurturing ourselves and each other.

 When we fall in love, we want to spend all the time we possibly can with the person we love, we want to come to know every part of their being and we do that by being with them, talking with them, talking to their family and friends about them, looking at old photos. We immerse ourselves in the other person. We want to spend time with them, do things for them. Our journey of faith is, in its very essence, a journey of love with God as its object. I am almost embarrassed to be back, yet again, at love. But it is the heart of it all – it is the fabric of eternity, the very essence of existence.

 And for all its frailties and eccentricities, it is the Christian community which provides the place where we can intentionally explore and practise faith. It is the church which keeps alive the story of Jesus, the accounts of God’s relationship with humanity over thousands of years. It is in church that you find a whole community of people who are on the same journey as you – discovering more and more about what it means to know and to love God. There are people here who have been worshipping God since before I was born. And there are people here who, in their mother’s arms, are just starting to hear the good news, the wonderful story of God’s love for us.

 This is why I am sceptical about those who say that they are Christians but don’t go to church. From whom can they learn more about what it is to be people of faith? Within church life we are challenged both by other people’s goodness and by their … not so goodness. Their godliness calls us to examine our own behaviour, the not-so-godly parts call us to respond in a loving way. Living in community both challenges us with its difficulty and nurtures us with its richness and diversity.

 That said, it’s been a hard week to be an Anglican. The whole nation has watched as the Diocese of Adelaide has come to grips with its failure to respond appropriately in the past to cases of child abuse. It is not a defence to say that the church is not the only human institution which has been blind to this kind of activity within it, nor is it a defence to say that child abuse is endemic in our society and that to demonise the churches and the education system is to distract us from what is happening behind the front doors of a significant proportion of Australian homes.

 The fact is that the church, which preaches love, has had a huge blind spot, just as it had when it supported slavery. Part of the church’s journey of faith has been to hear the voice of the oppressed and marginalised in this area of child abuse and to learn to deal with it in a way which more clearly reflects the love of God. Martin Luther argued that the church should always be in a process of reform. Learning, repentance, reform à such is the dynamic of the journey of faith.

 It sounds severe, put like that, and sometimes it is, when we realise that we have been way out of step. Most of the time it is a gentle process of growth and correction. Just as we might encourage a plant to grow in a particular direction, so God encourages us to draw ever nearer to ultimate truth, ultimate love. 

 Sarah Macneil