A Sermon preached on 31st December 2017,
Christmas I, at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden
Isaiah 61:10-62:3;
Galatians 3:23-25; 4:4-7; John 1:1-18
If you have been
living in Germany for a while, you will know that today is not referred to as
New Year’s Eve, but just as “Silvester.” It is named after Pope Sylvester I
whose feast day it is today, although he had nothing to do with fireworks,
drinking sparkling wine, or eating fondue. It is his feast day today simply
because he died on 31st December, over 1,600 years ago in 335 AD.
We do not know
much about Sylvester, although he was Pope during an important and turbulent era
in the history of the Christian Church. The Council of Nicaea took place during
his pontificate: out of which developed what we call the Nicene Creed, and
which defines some of the basics of what we believe about God: Father, Son and
Holy Spirit. Constantine was the Roman emperor. So, this was the time when
Christianity changed from being, at best a tolerated sect, to becoming the
established religion of the Roman Empire! This was the beginning of what we
call Christendom, a society nominally built around Christian values. Others
have called it the beginning of the Babylonian captivity of the Church to the
State and the world.
It is perhaps
therefore not a coincidence that a few hundred years later, the doctrine of
papal supremacy and the forged
Donation of Constantine were backdated to this period. In the fictional account
the Emperor Constantine was cured of leprosy by the virtue of the baptismal
water administered by Sylvester and out of gratitude supposedly transferred
authority over Rome and the western part of the Roman Empire to the Pope. It sounds like an attempt to reverse the
dependency of the church on the state that dates from Sylvester’s pontificate.
In his letter to
the Galatians, Paul looks back to the time when “we were imprisoned and guarded
under the law,” (Gal. 3:23) until God releases us: “But when the fullness of
time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order
to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as
children.” (Gal. 4:4-5) In the prologue to his Gospel, John has a similar
description of this change of priorities: “The law indeed was given through
Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” (John 1:17)
The law that both
Paul and John are referring to here is not the law of the Roman Empire that Christianity
became part of, but the Mosaic law, that detailed and extensive system of laws
set in place to guide the conduct of the Jewish people: their worship, diet,
and rituals, but also issues of ownership, dealing with debt and disagreement,
and many other aspects of human relationships. Before Paul
put his faith in Christ, he says, he lived under the supervision of the law.
But after he put his faith in Christ, his life was lived under the supervision
of Christ and Christ’s Spirit.
Neither Paul nor
John are claiming that we can do whatever we want. That would be a very
dangerous freedom indeed, then many of our laws are put in place to protect us
from our greatest enemy, ourselves and our selfish desires. Instead we are
liberated from what holds us back from becoming God’s children and heirs. What
both are saying is that we must try and do what God wants, as individuals and
as a society.
Paul was quick to
defend himself against any accusations of lawlessness. He knew that we need
reliable rules to govern our interactions. In his mission he profited from the
rule of law, from a reliable infrastructure, and from his right as a citizen to
appeal to Rome when he felt he had been arrested unjustly. But he was also
willing to be arrested and punished if laws got in the way of his mission of
bringing the Good News of Jesus Christ to as many people as possible.
To be redeemed and
liberated from the law means that our acceptance by God is not dependent on us
obeying a set of rules about worship and ritual. I want you to come to church
every week, and I want you to come to this church every week, and I
truly believe that you will benefit from hearing the Word and even more from
receiving the Word in the bread and wine made holy at the Lord’s Table. But
your relationship with God does not depend on it. Your relationship with God
depends solely on you responding in faith to how God has already acted in Christ.
Both Paul and John
tell us that we have received adoption as God’s children, and that we are
called to act like God’s children, and that because we are children, “God has
sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts,” (Gal. 4:5) a spirit of grace and
truth that directs and guides us. Liberated from the law and guided by the
Spirit, we have both the freedom and the duty to act primarily as God’s
children in our interactions with one another, with the state, and with those
in power.
It is a good thing
that the State does not run the Church and that the Church does not run the
State. Wherever and whenever that has happened, it has not turned out well. Our
relationship with the State and with governments will always be both
constructive and critical. Our primary allegiance is to our Father, God,
not to any particular country or party.
To be critical
means to judge existing and new rules and laws by God’s standards: Are they
just? Are they equitable? Are they based on the principle of equality – that
all human beings are made in God’s image? Do they reflect God’s preferential
option for the poor, the powerless, and the stranger? If not, we need to work
to change them or to prevent a change happening. In exceptional circumstances
we may even need to disobey them. If I were living in Poland, Hungary, and more
recently in Austria, there are rules I would actively oppose, because they are
discriminatory and simply un-Christian. Even in Germany some churches break or
at least stretch the law to offer Kirchenasyl,
church asylum in exceptional cases: Protecting a refugee or a refugee family
threatened with deportation back to allow their case to be reexamined. And here
in Germany I am definitely very critical of the current regulations that prevent
a whole group of refugees, those who have temporary, subsidiary protection
because they fled a warzone, from being reunited with their families, without at
least taking the individual case into account. I continue to be astonished by
the hypocrisy of those who proclaim the value of the family one day, only to
deny this to a whole group of people another day. No government can be forced
to do what the church says anymore, but equally no government and no politician
has the right to stop us saying what we believe God wants for the world. We
cannot let darkness overcome the light of Christ.
To be constructive
means engaging with and working with those who govern and hold power.
Incarnation is about God coming into the world: “He was in the world, and the
world came into being through him.” (John 1:10), “And the Word became flesh and
lived among us.” (John 1:14) We cannot, as some Christians have argued,
separate ourselves and try and live in some sort of parallel society. God sent
God’s Son to bring light into this world and that very Son, our Lord and
Savior, calls on us to testify to that light. Good laws can prevent
discrimination and offer restitution for past wrongs. The best way of caring for
the poor, the powerless, and the stranger is through society. We need taxes to ensure
that wealth is more evenly distributed and to finance the provision of health,
education, and social services. In many countries, the Church is a provider of
some of these services.
Coming back to our
friend Sylvester, I think we can assume that his motivation for working with
the Roman Empire and with Constantine was positive. He hoped for a constructive
engagement with the Roman State. Christians were freed from persecution; the
Church was able to grow and reach more people. Christian ethical considerations
began to influence and change laws and practice, leading to greater respect for
the value of human life, for children, women, and slaves. For Pope Sylvester it
will have seemed as if the world had finally begun to know Christ and to accept
him.
That is what
God wants of us to. That through our testimony and our lives the world gets to know the
light that is Christ. That his light and life continue to transform the world. And
that we are all liberated from anything that prevents us loving God and our neighbor.
Amen.
