The readings on which this sermon is
based can
be found at: http://web.me.com/frsparky/iWeb/r042.htm
s042g11 Sunday 9 Amberley 6/3/2011
In the name of God, Life-giver, Pain-bearer and Love-maker.
(Fr Jim Cotter http://www.cottercairns.co.uk/)
‘you evildoers’ Matthew 7.23
It is interesting that a number of times Jesus tells his listeners that
they are evildoers or that they are evil, as in today’s
gospel. This
has a parallel passage in Luke (13.27) where Jesus’ followers are
rejected, even though they address him as ‘Lord, Lord’. So
calling
ourselves ‘christian’ does not exempt us from being rejected.
And the other significant words are in Matt 7.11 (//Lk 11.13) ‘if you
who are evil give good things to your children’. So evil
implies
giving things only to those of our family. Evil is loving
only those
who love us. And so Jesus addresses the scribes and
Pharisees - you
brood of vipers - evil doers - they only loved devout people like
themselves. Indeed, the division between the Sadducees and
the
Pharisees (as there are divisions between factions in the church today)
show us that church people can be particularly picky about who they
love and who they despise.
So the church corporate does not escape being charged with evil when it
worships Jesus but denies dignity to others, just as the church of
Jesus’ day was charged with evil when it worshipped God but denied
dignity to others. As I frequently say, it was precisely
those who
loved God with all their hearts and minds and souls and strength who
had Jesus killed because he associated with others. Jesus
treated
tax-collectors, prostitutes and sinners identically to how he treated
the devout - and THAT was blasphemy!
Indeed these words are prefaced by Jesus’ warning: ‘Beware of false
prophets, who .. inwardly are ravenous wolves’. Jesus warns
not about
advancing atheist secularism (like most leaders in the church seem to
do these days) but Jesus warns against those religious teachers who
deny the dignity of others - who deny the dignity of atheist
secularists! As I have often said, atheists often think
about faith
much more than most ‘christians’. Indeed for some
‘christians’
thinking about faith is a contradiction in terms, faith is unthinking
acceptance, believing the unbelievable.
I was interested to hear an Anglican priest say of using round
unleavened bread manufactured hosts for the holy communion, that they
had more difficulty believing the hosts to be bread than the doctrine
of transubstantiation :-)
Look at what those (many!) will come and claim: ‘did we not prophesy in
your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power
in your name?’ How easy it is to do great things and to
claim divine
inspiration and effectively make oneself so much better, so much more
spiritual, so much more close to God than others - and Jesus’ reply is:
'I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.' When
our religion
is all about OUR power and authority then it is evil.
Evil is when we love only those who love us - and the church has a
habit of loving only those who love the church and condemning everyone
else to everlasting damnation. So the second way we
distinguish evil
is when we act to demonstrate our superiority over others.
I have been reflecting on the Maori concept of Mana, one’s personal
authority, recently and how often the church has diminished other
people’s Mana.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mana Colonialism, which
is ever allied to the Church of England and her descendants, has made a
habit of diminishing the inhabitants of a land they have
invaded. In
Australia in 1835 ‘Governor Bourke implemented the doctrine of terra
nullius "land belonging to no one" by proclaiming that Indigenous
Australians could not sell or assign land, nor could an individual
person acquire it, other than through distribution by the Crown.’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_nullius#History_in_Australia
Essentially
he
declared that the indigenous people did not exist.
And I have been wondering if we in the church mean by ‘evangelism’
removing people’s personal Mana and replacing it with church sanctioned
authority - and if this is true why should we be surprised if we have
got a proliferation of ‘gate-keepers’ both lay and ordained in
churches. It is like child molesters, usually they
themselves have
been molested in their early lives. And as I often comment
that when
I grew up: ‘children were to be seen and not heard’ - another form of
abuse, of diminishing the Mana, of a young person.
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher once said: ‘Being powerful is like
being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you
aren't.’
http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/4510.html And if we as
the church
have to tell others how powerful God is, it is no wonder to me that
people who hear us are sceptical.
A real God is not a being who has a gigantic inferiority complex and
needs lots of followers to continue to exist, but a god who restores
the primal human dignity of all people, to stand on their own two feet
(rather than cower before the Almighty) and to think and make decisions
for ourselves (rather than making a virtue of compliance).
And continuing after the earthquake had struck on the 22nd of February
..
If we tell others that God caused the earthquake to get people to
worship the divine, then the ‘god’ we portray to others is nothing more
than a petulant child and no one in their right mind worships a
petulant child, and nor do you try to placate a petulant child.
It is curious, after the earthquake in September I preached at the
Redcliff Union Church. They, at the base of the cliff, had
suffered
some fairly minor damage whereas houses on the top of the cliff had
escaped. Those at the bottom of the cliff had reasoned that
an
earthquake would affect those on the top of the hill - they would come
tumbling down. In a curious twist, the houses built on the rock,
on
the top of the cliff, survived, but those at the bottom, built on the
sand, didn’t. In the latest quake all the houses built on
the rock at
the top of the cliff were damaged because of the sharpness of the
tremor and the proximity of the epicentre. And the houses
at the
bottom of the cliff were damaged too, both by the quake and from rocks
shaken loose and falling. If we take Jesus’ words to
determine where
we might build a house, we are not getting the point. They
call us to
think, and to think wider than my own personal security, and to realise
that the house built on the rock is that which is built on the
corporate and global security of all. It is only when we
build a
house on the basis of the corporate and global security of all that we
will have friends when storms come. Indeed the storms of need and
envy
might well be lessened if our house is indeed built on the security of
all. The earthquake has shown us dramatically that
the church that
lives only to itself is not adequate to survive in the real world.
And I reflect that the church has been good about defining just what is
and what is not sinful - mostly of course focussing on what people
happen to do with their genitalia. But Jesus focusses on
evil rather
than sin. As I have observed, St Paul is the one who talks
about sin,
and since he includes himself, sin is all about religious
imperialism. But Jesus goes around indiscriminately and
unbidden
forgiving people.
But Jesus talks about evil. And the ancient story in
Genesis talks
about the tree of the knowledge of ‘good and evil’. The
immediate
outcome was the murder of Abel by his brother Cain, who perceived that
his brother’s offering to God was more accepted than his
own. Why do
we think that the knowledge given by the eating of that apple was
necessarily accurate? Is it not evil to think that our
offering to
God is more acceptable than our brother’s or sister’s? But is not
this
precisely what the church has been doing for centuries? Do
we not
kill our brother and sister to make sure it is only our offering that
comes to God?
Let us forget about sin and let us concentrate on evil, that evil which
says that our chorus of ‘Lord, Lord’ will be more accepted than
others. That evil that suggests that our prophecy, our exorcisms
and
our good works will give us precedence over others. Let us
see that
‘christian’ imperialism is as evil as anti-Semitism, white supremacy
and homophobia.
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