23rd September 2007TRINITY XVI
Fr David Cherry
Amos 8 : 4 – 7 ; I Timothy 2 : 1 – 7 ; Luke 16 : 1 – 13
Words from the Introit : “I am the saving health of my people, saith the Lord God”
And to be human, humane, is to deal justly with others.
What kind of religion can you bear? A religion where you are
being instructed as to how to live or a religion which is evoking
within you a true desire to love and serve God….?
On holiday in South Africa I read a book by the South Africa
theologian, John de Gruchy called BEING HUMAN. His thesis, a
distillation of thought and prayer over his career as a thinker and
teacher at Cape Town University, is that God’s desire for us is
that we become more who we are – more fully human, humane.
God’s desire is not that we become more ‘religious’
– whatever that might mean - but that you and I, and all people
on the earth, discover what it is to be really human. His book is
a recovery of Christian Humanism and highly recommended.
I read a quote last night : “Being Christ-like does not involve
us in a personality transplant. Rather being Christ-like involves
discovering what aspect of the life of Christ we are drawn to, and what
aspect of the life of Christ we can realistically and gracefully
develop within our lives. Being Christ-like is not about being
something or someone we are not….”
Somewhere in one of Fr Herbert McCabe’s books he writes
that ‘Jesus died of being human’. Jesus was so
perfectly loving and accepting of those around him, he died of it
because others couldn’t bear it and had to get rid of him.
The way in which Jesus dealt with others, his relationships with
others, was unlike the competitive society he lived in. Jesus
shows us, reveals to us, what being fully human looks like.
‘God is the ultimate materialist’ – to misquote
Archbp William Temple.
It is this desire of God (that we become more who we are) which is so
unsettling to the Church and to our society. A.N. Wilson in his
review of the Pope’s latest book talks of the Book of the Gospels
(now with a beautiful new cover!) carried ‘half as if it were a
vulnerable child, half as if it were a bomb that might explode.’
It unsettles the church in its certainty, but it also unsettles a world
that expects a church to be keeping up moral standards. Some –
even the critics of institutional Christianity - think the church
should be wagging a finger at a naughty world, instructing and imposing
God’s law – only then to lambaste it for being
superstitious! To a large extent the world has just walked away.
The gospel, proclaimed in our midst, is that slow time-bomb subverting
our habits of thought, enabling you and me to see our lives in a new
way : full of God’s potential waiting to burst forth into freedom.
So what we are conveying in worship; through preaching and prayer in
the Mass is extremely important. Some of us are still recovering
from a grotesque portrayal of God – the felt experiences and
images that were formed early on. But – please God - we are
beginning to let go of sad, dreary faces and to adorn ourselves with
gladness. We are becoming human and we are inviting others to
join us in how God is subverting us and making us glad to be human.
In at least one healing story, we are told that the man was at table in his ‘right mind’ – in health, human again.
And to be human, humane, is to deal justly with others. The
prophet Amos is scathing of those who can’t wait to get back from
their holy days to the business of exploitation and evil gain at the
expense of others. Jesus, in this rather dense and complicated
parable, is talking about the virtue of forgiving others. Among
the many interpretations of today’s Gospel, one of them is that
what Jesus is commending is forgiveness – letting go, cancelling
the debt owed.
“Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
Forgive us – that is, let us go from the debt we owe others and enable us to let go of the debt others owe to us.
Not to want to let go or forgive is – as one commentator says
– eating the rat poison meant for the rat!
And this debt that needs to be let go – whether it be financial
or moral - is so that you and I can be brought to our full humanity,
living in freedom
Debts bind us up. Debts of resentment and fear. Can we find
ourselves in the common market place of humanity that is undergoing
God’s grace – where we deal justly with one another?
Can I notice that I am just as stupid and foolish and hurt and damaged
as the next person; and – like the next person –still a
handiwork in process in the hands of God being slowly improved?
Let’s face it – so much resentment and fear and keeping
others at bay is because they have similar character traits or flaws to
our own.
You and I are called to be faithful in our stewardship of the things of
this world. But we are also being called, invited into ‘an
aliveness’, an awareness that we need to be faithful with God and
with one another so that we deal justly with one another – so
that we become more humane.
And to begin to see the point of this kind of religion is to realise
there is a choice – you cannot live in two kinds of ways.
One, with a God exacting a price of obedience which we then exact from
others; and the other a life in which we are celebrating and living in
God’s grace. There’s a film called Breach, soon to hit the circuit about this. You cannot serve God and mammon.
God is faithful to us, always, everywhere, trusting, drawing us, in
every breath in every moment, sustaining his Creation. As he
poured out his life in Christ’s humanity, here in the Sacrament
of Holy Communion he gives himself – his very Self in his
Body and Blood.
I am the saving health of my people, saith the Lord God : out of
whatsoever tribulation they shall pray to me, I will surely help them,
and I will be their God for ever and ever. Amen