Sermon: The eighteenth Sunday after Trinity

Preacher:

Date:

Sunday 7th October 2012

Service:

Mattins

Readings:

Isaiah 49:13-23

Luke 12:1-12

I love iced gems.  For me, they’re bound up with childhood memories; it’s the trivia that fuels social banter. Why’s a jaffa cake a cake not a biscuit? To dunk or not to dunk your digestive? Custard cream or bourbon? Seemingly inconsequential remarks touch on questions of self-worth, despair or easy virtue.  Entire packets consumed when stressed; or shared as acts compassion in grief; treats refused because we’re being good.

We try to be good; we confront despair. Simple gestures of comfort give us an anchor.

Frank McGuinness’ reworking of de Molina’s play Damned by Despair has no time for trivia.  We are plunged into the murky depths of human nature.  We’re a long way from 17^th century musings on heaven and hell; but we still wrestle with questions of forgiveness and  long for comfort.  Being good, by our own efforts, is a heavy burden.

Paulo, the pious hermit is obsessed with his own salvation. He is convinced that isolation, prayer and abstinence  will be his stairway to heaven.  He is captivated by creation; yet his awe is fearful and anxious.  The conflicting voices within him express his longing for peace, and desire to control. 

Enrico, a gangster, inhabits a world of excess: violence, sex, gambling and exploitation.  Yet in the presence of his ailing father his shows capacity for compassion; he reveals his longing to be loved; to be released from guilt.

Such extreme characters tease out the relationship between grace and faith, salvation and goodness.  The boundaries between the sinner and the saint are ambiguous.  Enrico and Paulo go to the edge of reason, faith, humanity and despair.  Mercy confronts pride; redemption embraces brokenness.

Is it our deeds that secure for us immortality?  Is salvation a matter of faith alone?

Paulo is told that his salvation will be found in matching Enrico.  His confusion shatters his fragile peace.  His unease was echoed by some in the audience. If being good is not all that matters why not live to the satisfaction of your own desires; and repent at the end.  If that is the truth being conveyed, grace sounds cheap. 

The programme notes include remarks from the psychoanalyst, Robin Anderson. He depicts Paulo as a fragmented soul, locked into a pattern of self-denial in order to feel close to God.  Self-control becomes self-loathing.  In despair he realises he is unable to redeem himself; seeing no purpose in the good and feeling rejected by God, he finds himself damned.

Anderson sees Enrico on a different trajectory. His redemption is rooted in the love he feels towards his father.  He is held back from despair by dependence on his father’s favourable opinion of him.  His capacity for love is revealed when he is condemned for his depravity and dehumanising violence.  He confronts the truth and struggles to receive forgiveness.  As McGuinness  says: the ‘most holy of bonds between father and son... [is] to be their means of salvation.  Sentenced to hang, the gangster Enrico embraces his broken, dying father, each helping the other to face death, and in the comfort of their touch they are redeemed together’.

Our human capacity for self-determination and check boxes for goodness is there in today’s reading from Luke. The crowds were so captivated by Jesus’ message they were all but trampling over one another. And his message warned them about hypocrisy; he warned them of the dangers of the leaven of rules and boundaries.  Our tendency to limit God’s mercy – to ourselves and to others – is bound up with the desire to control. But heaven is not a question of keeping the rules. In word where headlines record sorrow and tragedy; basic human bonds of love strengthen our capacity to resist despair. The simplest of actions: tea, an embrace, shared tears, not walking away. These things become conduits of mercy.

We are precious to God: he knows the hair on our head; he has inscribed us on to his hands.  We are created in his image and the recipients of his loving mercy.  Being good is not easy.  Both Enrico and Paulo know of the complexity of the human condition – our mixed motives, our deepest desires. One of them gave their lusts and aggression free reign; the other existed on a plane of utter self-denial.  Both found themselves in the midst of despair

Enrico painfully recognises all that he has lost; and hears words of mercy.  It is Enrico who in human compassion opens his heart to divine mercy.  Paulo is unable to accept his own failure and brokenness. Throughout the play he hears words of mercy in a shepherd’s song; even in despair his companion Pedresco offers wisdom and love. But his pride holds him back.

To be saved by grace alone undercuts our quests for self-improvement. There is no league table of goodness; no bonus points for keeping to the rules.  God’s love has redeemed us in midst of sin, suffering, tears and death.  We simply cannot save ourselves; but we can accept our own short comings.  Only in recognising our complexity and brokenness do we allow space for God’s grace to work in us.  It’s a massive risk; we make ourselves vulnerable. Marion Partington spoke on the Sunday Programme of how in ‘giving up all hope of a better past’ she journeyed towards forgiveness; recovering the memory of her murdered sister. It is a long road to trust in mercy and love; to accept the gift of a different future.

The hope of the prophet Isaiah was that God’s people would flourish, that ruins would be become places of human flourishing.  God does not forget us.  His Spirit will lead us into truth.  A truth that enables us to see that a lack of mercy condemns us; that compassion is the source of wisdom. Love alone saves us.  That can be hard for us to hear.  Yet beyond the extremes of self-denial and excess is a way that brings hope and assurance – for us, and for our world.

There will be tears; but the mercy of God is everlasting; our Lord is our everlasting strength.  We are to walk alongside people in darkness; itself a long a patient process. Despair itself is destructive. When confronted by the inexplicable cruelty of humanity, we cannot offer cheap answers; we can commit to bring light and comfort in the long term.  We are to reach out into deep sorrow. The whispers of compassion will be proclaimed as signs of hope and redemption.  Amen.