Sermon preached on September 15 at the Church of the Ascension, Munich
Exodus 32:7-14, Psalm 51:1-11, 1 Timothy 1:12-17, Luke 15:1-10
One of the papers I had
to write for my course in systematic theology at seminary was titled
‘Explaining the Faith’ and in it I had to describe, over at least 10 pages (I
wrote more), my own position on doctrinal topics such as the evidence for faith
and for God, on the place and meaning of revelation, on the attributes of God, on
the Trinity, the nature of Incarnation, and the role of the Church….. Now don’t
worry, I’m not about to read it to you now. But I was reminded of this paper,
and especially of what I wrote about the attributes of God, by this week’s
readings. One reason is because the last verse from the extract from the letter
to Timothy contains a list of some of the classical attributes, God is “the
King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God.” (1 Timothy 1:17) This, by
the way, is the inspiration for that beautiful hymn (#423) “Immortal,
invisible, God only wise” that we opened the service with. The other reason is
that the story from Exodus seems to raise questions or doubts about another
important traditional attribute of God, the idea that God is unchangeable, or impassible
to use the technical term. This has two aspects: that God’s very nature,
character or being does not change and also that God cannot be influenced or
manipulated by creation or God’s creatures. Change, whether from within or
without, is not considered compatible with the idea of God’s perfection: a
perfect being cannot be improved on.
But why do we even
attempt to describe God and God’s attributes? Why do we want to know just who
or what God is? There are theologians who think this is a waste of time,
for example the great Swiss theologian Karl Barth wrote that “God is not only
unprovable and unsearchable, but also inconceivable.” (Barth 1949,
38)
And of course anything we describe about God can only be, at best, an
approximation. However, this has not stopped us from trying! One reason is simply curiosity, the human need
to understand. The other is a little more profound. We need to know that our
own and the documented experience of God, in Scripture, is reliable, that there
is no hidden side to God, and no question about God’s truthfulness and
faithfulness in God’s interaction with humanity.
That’s what makes the
passage from Exodus a little troubling and also what worried Moses. God is really
angry. God disowns the people, calling them “Your people whom you brought up
out of the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 32:7)And God seems willing to destroy the
Israelites, despite God’s earlier promise to “deliver them from the Egyptians,
and to bring them … to a land flowing with milk and honey.” (Exodus 3:8) Punishing
the Israelites would be a breach of this promise and, as Moses points out, also
of the older promises God had made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob or Israel as God
had renamed him, to multiply their descendants and to give them the ‘promised’
land. This God seems fickle or untrustworthy, even though Moses gets the Lord
to relent and to change “his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring
on his people.” (32:14)
So is this angry and
seemingly capricious God the same as the one described in today’s Gospel, who
rejoices more over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous persons? Yes, it is the same God for God’s essential
nature has not and will not change. What has changed however are not God, or
God’s mind, but our perception and knowledge of God.
I think that the Exodus
story tells us less about God, and more about human expectations of God; of how
people thought God must act. The Israelites had not disobeyed any old
commandment or law, of which there are total of 613 in the Torah, the first
five books of the Bible. They weren’t just having a party with food that was
not kosher or had been sacrificing in the wrong way. No, they were disobeying
the very first and most important of God’s commandments: “You shall have no
other gods before me!” (Exodus 20:2) They had made themselves a god of gold
to go before them on the journey to the promised land that they wanted to
continue now, without waiting for God and God’s messenger, Moses. They
had created a god that would serve them. Surely this was an unforgiveable and
inexcusable sin and so something special must have happened to prevent their
destruction, God would not have let them survive without Moses’ intervention. I
believe God would have done. For it is God’s own Son who was sent to remind us
of God’s limitless mercy, just as we heard in the parables in today’s reading
from Luke.
The Pharisees we meet
in Luke’s Gospel were clearly still working with a different perception of God.
They seem certain that some behavior is simply unforgiveable, working as a tax
collector for one, which I suspect some people still think today! We know that
tax collectors were despised both because they served those who oppressed
Israel, King Herod and the Romans, and because they often took even more money
than the rulers required, to line their own pockets. As for the other sinners we are not told
what their sin was, but we can assume that in some way these were people who were
not keeping to the Law and were therefore not religious and not pure enough for
the Pharisees to mix with. So how can Jesus, a rabbi, a teacher of the Law,
welcome and share the table with these and other sinners, they ask. That’s
impossible. That’s a step too far.
Similarly in the Letter
to Timothy we read how the former Pharisee, Paul, is also surprised and amazed
that he, the foremost or chief sinner, a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of
violence, had been welcomed by Jesus and had received mercy directly from him. Before
his conversion, he too had assumed that there were limits to God’s mercy.
God’s Son became human
and was sent to change this very perception and to reveal God’s true nature,
not that God had not tried many times before! Both in the parables Jesus told,
like todays, and through his life and death we are given a very different
picture of God. Jesus’ life and teaching show how God’s mercy breaks through
our human expectations of how God should act. They show a God who cares
passionately for every human being, and always has done. They show a God who
cares for those who are lost or who think they are lost, as much as for those
who already know God. They show a God whose mercy and capacity for forgiveness
knows no bounds. They show a God who rejoices whenever someone turns away
from sin and back to God, when they repent. They show a God whose
reaction to being rejected is not punishment, but a patient longing for us to
return and an open invitation to do so. These are God’s true attributes.
What does this mean for
us, apart of course from the assurance and reassurance about what we can expect
from God? Our role in God’s project is to bring Jesus’ Good News of who God is
and what God does to everyone we can, especially to those who think they are
beyond forgiveness. There are still plenty of wrong perceptions and
expectations around.
Nor should we leave
forgiveness entirely to God. We cannot just preach a forgiveness that knows no
bounds; we must also try and model it: both in the societies we live in and in
our own lives. For example, neither capital punishment, nor life imprisonment
without any possibility of parole fulfill this condition. As the European Court
of Human Rights recently stated in a strangely theologically justified ruling
against the UK: imprisonment without any prospect of release or review means
that the person imprisoned “can never atone for his offence: whatever the
prisoner does in prison, however exceptional his progress towards
rehabilitation, his punishment remains fixed and unreviewable.”[1]
On a personal level: If
we are honest, I think most of us will have to admit that we have felt that
someone who has hurt us very badly is also beyond forgiveness: I’ve certainly
done it! And if we cannot forgive, are we then still one of the ninety-nine righteous
persons who need no repentance? Probably not! Forgiveness does not mean forgetting
or denying a wrong. And while we want and we hope for repentance, that cannot
be a condition for us offering forgiveness. We won’t know whether the
other is ready and willing, until we try, until we take the first step just as
Jesus did when he welcomed sinners and ate with them.
I promise that if we
share in dispensing God’s love and forgiveness, then we can also share in God’s
joy. According to Jesus, heaven throws a party every time someone sees the
light and turns to follow God’s way. Let’s join the party!
Amen
Barth, Karl. Dogmatics in Outline. New York:
Philosophical Library, 1949.
[1] http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/07/10/2282321/top-european-human-rights-court-deems-life-in-prison-without-parole-inhuman-and-degrading/
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