Ticking the boxes
From Wellington Cathedral of St Paul
Tick the boxes 2 October 2011 The Revd Jenny Wilkens
- Psalm 19:7-14
- Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20
- Philippians 3:4-14
- Matthew 21:33-46
http://wellingtoncathedral.org.nz/index.php/Sermons
My drive to work has changed irrevocably - or at least for the next few weeks! My favourite harbour viewing point is now a barrage of campaign posters for the coming election. I was mildly amused to find one of them hadn't survived Friday night and had collapsed in a heap - not sure if it was the rugby supporters who'd lost their game, or the Wellington wind that put paid to that one! Nor am I sure which is worse - 6 weeks of rugby or the 4 weeks of the election campaign to follow! Regardless of that, we'll all have to get our heads around 'ticking the boxes' once again.
'Ticking the boxes' is what our readings today could seem to be all about. It is very easy as we hear the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20) read, to be running a mental checklist in our head and ticking off as we go, no, I haven't done that one, nor that one - ah, I must be ok… although the abrupt transition to the pyrotechnics of the theophany on Mt Sinai certainly pulls us up short about the reality of the God with whom we have to deal. Jesus too in his Sermon on the Mount did not pull any punches with his audience who could say well, I haven't murdered or committed adultery. He was very quick to come back with, But I say to you…God is just as concerned with what is going on for you at the level of your heart and your thoughts and your eyes and your mouth. (Matthew 5:21ff, 27ff)
And why? This is not just a matter of God getting pernickety about what we have done or not done. Rather it is a much deeper issue of what the commandments, the law, the Torah was for. We often gloss over the verse which prefaces the 10 commandments: 'I am the Lord your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery' (Ex 20:2) This is the crux of the covenant relationship that God has established with the people of Israel, acting as their Redeemer from slavery, and saying now, I am giving you this Torah, so you can live your life together as a redeemed community, and live in right relationship with your God and with each other. I think so often we get hung up on thinking of the Old Testament law, as laws to keep or not keep, rather than this fuller vision of the gift of the Torah as the gift of a way of living, a life-style, which befits that covenant relationship with God, and enables God's people to live well in community together.
That to me is a much more positive and life-giving vision of Torah. It is also realistic as God puts in place laws as a way of protecting the human community from dehumanising each other and exploiting God's creation. The Torah then in its best sense was a way of right response to God and neighbour, or as Jesus expressed it in his summary of the Law: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength, and love your neighbour as yourself (Mk 12:30-31).
The apostle Paul was well able to tick all the boxes as regards his keeping of the Torah, as we heard in his impressive CV reeled off to the Philippians: 'as to the law, a Pharisee…as to righteousness under the law, blameless' (Phil 3:5,6). But we have only to read Romans 7 to hear Paul groan at the deeper tension inside himself between ending up doing what he didn't want to be doing, and not doing what he did want to be doing (Rom 7:15ff). Two steps forward, three steps backwards. He was all too aware of the self-destructive tendencies in himself, and the ways we can be so destructive of relationships with others. Who can forget his cry of despair - 'Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?' - and then of triumph: 'Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!' (Rom 7:24-25)
This is the gift that Paul is celebrating here before the Philippians, and before which all else is loss, indeed rubbish. What is the gift? " a righteousness that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith" (Phil 3:9). This is what brings him into right relationship with God - and keeps him there in the power of the Spirit.
There's been a lot of talk in recent days about rugby being a religion in New Zealand, a surrogate religion in the place of declining Christian religion in this land. But what is important to Paul here is not that Christianity is a religion. No, rather Christianity to Paul is a person, Jesus, and his goal is to know Christ, to be found in him, to gain him, to trust him with his whole life, to share in his sufferings and his resurrection, to respond in love to the one who has first loved him, to follow his call to the life of the age to come. That is what it is all about for Paul, and he expresses it here with all the passion of a rugby player swearing commitment to his captain or coach!
I wonder if it makes you pause for thought, though, when, thoughts tumbling over each other, Paul not only declares he wants 'to know Christ and the power of his resurrection', but also 'the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death' (Phil 3:10) . That certainly doesn't trip off my tongue so easily! Especially when we've also heard today Jesus' poignant parable of the vineyard, where the son and heir is rejected and killed.
We know from Paul's epistles and Acts that he certainly did share in Christ's sufferings throughout his travels preaching the good news of Christ, but that was what kept Paul going, this Christ Jesus who had 'made me his own' (Phil 3:12). That's actually quite a weak translation we have there - the word is actually much stronger, more like Paul saying, Christ Jesus has seized me, taken me captive, overtaken me, grabbed me by the collar, shaken me, turned me round, and set me on a new path, following in his footsteps, a path which, whatever happens, leads to the resurrection from the dead (Phil 3:11).
That is why Paul can exquisitely hold together, in a wonderful Anglican compromise, what he must now do, with what Christ has done and is doing for him. It's very clearly set out for us in our Sentence for today, and if you think Jesus might have been an All Black, this Sentence certainly shows that Paul could have been an All Black too! 'Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on towards the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus' (Phil 3:13, 14). Paul's job is to not look back on the failures of the past, it is to lean into God's future, knowing that Christ has seized hold of his life, turned him Godwards and that God is calling him ever onwards into fullness of life in his presence, where Jesus waits to welcome him.
That is some future to look forward to, and it's a future that goes beyond the Rugby final of October 23rd, or the November 26th election, whatever the result! It's a future set out for us in the closing verse of our final hymn today ['The kingdom of God is justice and joy' (CP 591) by Bryn Rees]: 'God's kingdom is come, the gift and the goal, In Jesus begun, in heaven made whole; The heirs of the kingdom shall answer his call, And all things cry 'Glory!' to God all in all.'
