Sermon preach by the Rev. Dr A. K. M. Adam

Pentecost 3 (Proper 11), 13 June 2010

[Jesus] said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.” But those who were at the table with him began to say among themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?” And he said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

In the Name of God Almighty, the Blessed Trinity. Amen.

Neighbours, you don’t know me, but over the years I have been characterised as a mild-mannered kind of guy. I don’t usually get into shouting matches, and I prefer to avoid a fight if I can see a more peaceful way of getting out of a conflict. Now, this is partly because I don’t have a taste for arguments; I like the smooth parts of life more than the rough. I like using my ingenuity to fix a problem more than I like using force to crush it. But some times my elastic temperament stretches a little too far — far enough to snap — and I get lose my temper. Sometimes a person just pushes all the wrong buttons and finds the most irritating thing they possibly could say to you, and no matter how even-tempered you usually are, they push you off the cliff of serenity onto the jagged rocks of seething wrath.

And the very fastest way to get my goat is to say dumb things about theology. By and large, we’re not supposed to care a lot about theological thinking nowadays. Caring about theology is in bad taste; it implies that you’re actually right about theology, and your neighbor is actually wrong, and modern culture is still comfortably lodged in the doctrine that it doesn’t matter what you believe, so long as you believe it sincerely. Some of you may be acquainted with the public-service announcements from long ago that said, “Radio London reminds you, go to the church of your choice” — as though going to church were like choosing a soda drink. Well, I do care about what our church teaches, and I care that other people understand well why they might care. I come to church Sunday morning not because I chose to worship God from a market shelf of brightly-coloured deities, but because God calls us to gather together with our sisters and brothers to do one of the most important things a person can do: to give thanks to the God who created us, who brings us together as a the Body of Christ, and to live in ways that reflect the glory of God’s way.

So that’s why I was angry, I was incredulous, the day that I heard a clergyman say that he didn’t believe that God judges us, but only forgives us. He figured that when Christians talk about judgment, they inevitably called to mind images of eternal fire and tormented sinners. He thought “judgment” meant the same things as using threats of damnation to coerce our neighbours to knuckle under to whatever commands that some bishop or Pope or vicar wanted to thrust at them. When this fellow said he didn’t believe in judgment, he wanted to emphasise that God isn’t eternally angry at us, that God is kind-hearted and welcoming in dealing with us — just the way that Jesus welcomes the wayward woman who anoints his feet in this morning’s gospel lesson.

I say I was angry not because I disagree with what the reverend gentleman said (though I do disagree, as I’ll explain in a minute); I’m used to disagreeing with people, and I even enjoy getting tangled in a good, complicated web of argument. We learn a lot by disagreeing well with one another. What made me angry was that this sort of theology, this “go-to-the-church-of-your-choice” brand theology, has its sole purpose to make people feel good whether it makes any sense or not. I was irritated because my clergy colleague was fobbing off nonsense dressed up as broadmindedness.

Instead of swallowing that codswollop, let’s try to think clearly about what’s at stake when we talk about judgment and forgiveness. Let’s start out by agreeing with the words of our Nicene Creed, that we ardently believe in God’s forgiveness of our sins; we’ll go to the mat with anyone who wants to curtail God’s freedom and mercy by telling us what God won’t or can’t forgive. But — and here’s the vital point — the idea of forgiveness doesn’t make much sense unless we’ve already decided that something is wrong. If we haven’t done anything wrong, there’s nothing to be forgiven.

And that’s the catch, because without judgment we don’t know that anything is wrong. “Judgment” doesn’t mean the same thing as “condemnation”; “judgment” means using our capacity to discern what we ought to do, what we ought to approve. In the Letter to the Galatians, a little before this morning’s reading, Paul catches Peter in a bad mistake; Peter took sides with some believers who discriminated against Gentiles, and Paul scolds him. In order to recognise Peter’s slip as wrong, Paul has to exercise judgment — but he doesn’t tell us that Peter was going to burn forever because he wouldn’t eat with the Gentiles. It’s by judgment that Nathan convicts David of his grievous sin. In the same way, the epistle of John says, “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God” (1 Jn 4:1); and that’s what Paul means when he says, “Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil.” It’s our capacity for judgment that enables us to recognise and cry out against bigotry and violence; by judgment we speak out against the unfairnesses and oppressions that bear down on God’s people. All these kinds of judgment are necessary, they’re inevitable if we don’t want to say that just anyone can do anything they feel like. If we’re against terrorism, or against crimes against children, or against hooliganism, we need to make room for judgment.

So our unwavering belief in forgiveness goes along with a belief in judgment. Our belief in both forgiveness and judgment says, “We believe that God cares what we do, God cares how we live, and God wishes for us lives of strength and truth and peace and steadfastness.” But when instead we fall into habits that weaken us, that draw us to compromise with lies and violence and betrayal, God will not let us go. God doesn’t cut us loose, God doesn’t abandon us to the consequences of our sin. That is perhaps the most frightening, and at the same time the most comforting dimension of the church’s teaching about forgiveness — that God recognises our smallness, and yet loves us greatly. Forgiveness, in other words, isn’t a masquerade, where God pretends that we’re perfect despite ourselves; forgiveness is God looking into our hearts, seeing the truth about what we are, what we’ve done, and loving the person that we are every bit as much as if we had been very much better — just as Jesus loved and forgave the woman at this morning’s gospel dinner party. And the appropriate response to that kind of love isn’t guilt, as though we answer affection with cringing apology. The appropriate response to God’s forgiving love is joy and thanksgiving and a love that echoes God’s love for us.

When our love for God resounds with the notes of God’s love for us, we willingly guide our feet into the ways Jesus set out for us. When we answer forgiveness with thanksgiving, we use our strength to resist sin, to set things right with one another. A people truly and fully forgiven guide their lives by the way God sets before them, and they constantly exercise judgment so that they can discern which are the paths of godliness and truth, and which are the ways that lead us away from the forgiveness that we need.

In short, we can’t have a world without judgment; indeed, we must not even want a world without judgment, for in such a world the wicked would prey upon the righteous, the strong would exploit the weak, without any sense that this was wrong. There would be no judgment of wrongs. Far from our disbelieving in judgment, we live in a world that is so desperately in need of judgment, in need of setting right, that whenever we remember the Lord’s Prayer, we pray for God to come to administer the world rightly; and because each of us is bound up with the problems of this whole world, we pray for the forgiveness that our Lord promises us in the Gospel. Not the shabby comfort of a crony who pretends we’ve never done anything wrong, but the profound consolation of the real forgiveness of real faults, a free gift from the God who knows us through and through, who longs to love everything we do, and who will do anything to help us live right.