First Sunday after Trinity – evening
Sunday 3rd June 2018
Proper 4 – 1st Sunday after Trinity – evening
Jeremiah 5. 1-19
Romans 7. 7-end
Revd Preb Maureen Hobbs
OK, I got off pretty lightly the last two Sundays having contrived (not deliberately!) to miss both Pentecost and Trinity Sundays, so I suppose it is only fair that I should be faced with a good bit of impenetrable Paul to wrestle with this evening!
But, as we come to pick this passage from Romans apart I am left with the conclusion that Paul may not have been such a bad sort after all! Many of you will know that I (along with some others in this church!) have a sort of Love/Hate relationship with Paul. But he is such a towering figure in the New Testament and in the Early Church, that we really cannot ignore him – even if he does make us want to tear our hair out on occasion!
(He’d probably say the same about me!)
This seventh chapter of the letter to the Romans is Paul trying to be as open and vulnerable as he can be to his fellow Christians. Here is a model for real accountability in a leader. Confessing in a very frank way that he makes mistakes and gets it wrong, even when he can see the right way to act.
Part of this he puts down to good old human nature. And I’m sure that many here can sympathise.
Think back to Lent, or to the last time you tried to diet… as soon as you tell yourself that you cannot have something – be it a delicious cake or biscuit or slab of chocolate; be it that lovely glass of wine, or gin and tonic, or pint of beer, I would be willing to bet that you immediately begin to think of nothing else and to dream and obsess about it!
Some people find that they can only fall in love with those who seem out of reach; either because they are already married to someone else, or because they play ‘hard to get’. The concept of ‘forbidden fruit’ has been with us since the myths of Genesis were committed to parchment scrolls, and no doubt before that in oral tradition. The very thing that makes human beings so successful as animals; our curiosity and desire to possess resources, power and ultimately other souls, is also our downfall.
And Paul is no better or no worse than any of us. It is quite encouraging in a perverse sort of way! If such a holy person as St Paul can admit that he makes the wrong choices, does the wrong things – commits the sins that he tries to avoid, then no wonder the rest of us find it hard too!
So how are we to deal with our own natures? How are we to cope and to get ourselves, back on track? Heading in the right direction and at one with God? How are we ever to gain peace of mind?
Well the first lesson to learn from Paul is that we have to own up to our shortcomings and mistakes. That is why almost every act of public worship includes within its structure a prayer of confession. It is also why parts of the church – particularly the Catholic church of course, but also in some Anglican churches, the sacrament of confession is regarded as essential for spiritual well-being.
You cannot begin to solve a problem until you recognise there is a problem and give it a name! Trying to ignore a problem will not make it go away – it is usually better to face-up to and confront it – even if it makes us feel uncomfortable in the short-term. And what follows confession of course, is absolution. God’s expression of his unending love and forgiveness – even when we don’t deserve it.
Some people think – wrongly – that this is an easy way out. That it gives us carte blanche to go on doing or saying the wrong thing. But that is to misunderstand what is really going on.
The prophet Jeremiah understood – like Paul – that God’s love and God’s justice were completely interdependent. God never gives up on us, although sometimes his love can feel very much like tough love. Any parent will understand that idea.
And although you may think that Bishop Michael Curry got a bit carried away with his wedding sermon for Harry and Meghan, I think that is what he wanted to get at with his analogy of love and fire. Real love can have a cleansing and a corrective force that can be painful as well as joyful.
And the second lesson that I think we can take from Paul is that – once we have owned up to the things about ourselves that we really don’t like very much, the things that we do and keep on doing wrong, even when we know they are wrong, God’s love is there to burn away the impurities, to heal our disease, to restore us to health and right relationship with him.
We don’t get the full force of his argument in our passage this evening – it takes him the whole of the next chapter of Romans to get round to it! But when you turn on to the end of Chapter 8, you will find one of my very favourite passages of scripture – and St Paul wrote it! Whadyaknow?!
For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor the present age, nor the age to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creation will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8. 38-39