Sermon for the Sixth Sunday after Trinity – evening
Sunday 23rd July 2017
1 Kings 2. 10-12; 3. 16-28
Acts 4. 1-22
Revd Preb Maureen Hobbs
Good judgement can – it seems – be an elusive thing. With the benefit of hindsight, Theresa May might not have called that election? Some prominent Brexiteers and Remainers might not have campaigned in the ways that they did. Those who took the decision to clad tower blocks in materials that have proved to be combustible, might have decided differently… who knows?
Making the right call may seem obvious in the clear light of hindsight, but is seldom so straightforward when one is caught up in the heat of the moment. Having to take an instant decision – one that might bring glory or ruin.
Our readings tonight give us clear evidence of good judgment being exercised with God’s approval. But it has to be said that God usually leaves us to our own devices when it comes to judgment. He steps back and seems to wait to see how we will decide, what choices we will make, even when those choices may be disastrous and cause us harm in the long term. But I suppose that is the price that God and we pay for free choice? God loves us and only wants what is best for us – but leaves us free to reject his love if we so choose – plunging ourselves into the hell that is separation from God and his purposes.
So let’s think a bit about those examples we heard about this evening. Solomon the wise – so called because in exercising the responsibility of the crown at this time, to decide court cases between his subjects, the King earned the reputation of making just and fair decisions. But it does not sound anything of the sort at first – especially if the child were old enough to understand what was being said. The idea of being split down the middle and half a body being handed to each so-called ‘mother’ might be fair, but it is hardly very just – certainly not for the boy!
But of course, with hindsight we know that Solomon was gambling – taking a calculated risk. He was sure that the real mother would do anything to avoid harm coming to her own child – even if it meant giving him up forever to another woman. But it does beg the question, if neither mother had been willing to surrender her case, would he really have gone through with it? Would he have divided the living boy in two? And these women were pretty defenceless. They were working as prostitutes. Almost certainly not by choice, or to feed an expensive drug habit – as might be the case today, but because they lacked father, husband or brother to provide for them. There is some sort of tragedy in the back-story here that we will never know in all its painful detail. But quite possibly the women were desperate to have a son – not just out of maternal love, but because a male child might be able to provide for them in their old age – when their looks will have deserted them, and quite possibly their health too. The child was in effect their pension … and we know how passionate people feel about their pension provision!
In our NT reading, Peter and John have restored the well-being of an adult male. Making him viable again as an ‘economic unit’ in first century Jewish society. At a stroke improving the lot, not only of the man himself, as important as that is, but of his family too – which in Middle Eastern Culture, may mean tens of people all dependent on each other in the household. Parents possibly, aunts, uncles, cousins as well as brothers and sisters; all now able to look forward to a more comfortable, more secure future, thanks to Peter and John and the message they have come to bring. God loves us, but leaves us free to respond or not, as we choose.
Those in power chose to hang Jesus on a cross – that was pretty emphatic, and we might now say ‘poorly judged’, but at the time my guess is they thought they really had done the right thing in sending Jesus of Nazareth to the gallows. After all, ‘nothing any good ever came out of Galilee’ – it was a common saying. Northern trouble-makers, rabble-rousers. Anyone of good sound judgment would have done the same! And don’t think that any of us might not be capable of making the same mistake.
Those who fear they have made serious errors of judgment often try to suppress the truth and the evidence – after all, no-one likes being made to look like a fool, or worse, corrupt. We have seen plenty of that in the various scandals and conflicts affecting our public life in this country. They tried to suppress Peter and John – but to no avail. Peter and John cannot keep from speaking out about what they have seen and heard – and there is the evidence of what they can do as well!
Good judgment truly is an elusive thing – and who knows whether we have made the right decision at any single point in our lives?
God does. God will be there, waiting to pick up the pieces, willing us to make the right decision, but standing by us when we make poor ones.