Sermon for The Twelfth Sunday after Trinity
Readings: Deuteronomy 30. 15-20; Philemon 1. 21, 15-16; Luke 14. 25-33.
Theme: Either/Or.
Scripture confronts us with some difficult passages. On this twelfth Sunday after Trinity, the question that this raises for us is, just how should we read the Bible when it may seem to us rather extreme? This is not an easy question to answer because it is tempting to simply adopt one or other of two equally unsatisfactory solutions to these difficulties. Either we simply say, “well that was then and this is now, so don’t take it too literally”, or, we say, “the Word of God is always to be taken literally, at face value.” Neither of these approaches is the whole story of a well-rounded reception of biblical truth in the Christian tradition.
For a well-rounded reading and reception of the truth of the Bible, it is important to avoid two very different, and sharply contrasting, stances to it. The first, we can call the ‘maximalist’ approach, and the second the ‘minimalist’ approach. In the ‘maximalist’ approach, deviation from the literal meaning of the text is never possible. In fact, any ‘interpretation’ is viewed as not understanding the (literal) meaning of scripture. We see this approach adopted in some fundamentalist Christian groups, and it also characterizes some highly vocal Muslim readings of the Koran today.
The other approach, the ‘minimalist’ one, is shared by many of our secularist contemporaries, and indeed even some liberal Christians, Muslims and Jews. Here, scripture is understood to be simply a ‘genre’ of great literature, a little like Shakespeare, Cervantes, or Goethe, and in this approach, you should never understand scripture as anything more than this.
For a healthy and balanced ‘Christian’ reading of scripture, neither of these two positions should be adopted. God’s word is the revelation of God’s own Trinitarian self to us, and this has a meaning that we always need to receive ‘attentively’, and hence prayerfully. But the reception of this self-communication of God through the scriptures needs to take place in such a way that we use all of our God-given faculties to receive it. This reception of the revelation of God, mediated to us through the hearing of scripture, is aided by the sciences of interpretation, which have developed over the centuries. ‘Hermeneutics’ is the term used in biblical studies, for this aspect of attentively receiving the word of God, and it involves a rigorous study of the origins of the text, its linguistic structure and so on. While each of us is not called to be a biblical scholar, we are all called to prepare ourselves so that we can properly receive the message of the biblical texts.
The diversity of conflictual interpretations of the Bible over the centuries has, as I am sure many of you know, a long and complicated history, and it is good for us to be aware of some of the twists and turns of this history, because this can save us from making some of the mistakes that previous generations have made. If in doubt, a good criterion to use is “by its fruits you shall know it” (Matthew 7. 15-18). Has this interpretation led to a greater love of the God of love manifest in Jesus or not?
However, this balanced and healthy reading of scripture does not mean that we should blunt its radical meaning by the ‘qualifications of a thousand nuances’. This can result in an insipid set of banalities which substitutes an ‘agnostic’ paralysis for the commitment of a true leap of faith.
The Danish philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard (1813-55), is an interesting guide, for us in this respect, because he places this radical leap of faith at the core of what makes for an authentic Christian. He uses the expression “Either/Or” in his 1843 book, of the same title, to express a fundamental Christian attitude that is echoed in John’s gospel, that God’s kingdom is not of this world. Either we walk in the way of the gospel or we walk in the way of the world. There is no intermediate position between these two poles, and we have to choose between them. Disgusted by the compromises of the Lutheran State Church of his time, and indeed by his own reading of some of Luther’s theological views, Kierkegaard railed against the ‘mediocrity’ of the Christianity that he saw in nineteenth century Denmark, and set about developing an alternative Christian apologetics for his time.
This attitude, paradigmatically portrayed by Kierkegaard, of making a radical decision for God, is at the heart of our readings for the twelfth Sunday after Trinity. Kierkegaard’s position has given us a clear way of identifying the, what we might call, “Protestant” principle of Christianity and its manner of interpreting the holy scriptures: “Radical choice for God, and God’s word, and against the interpretations of the world and its secular reasoning”. This “Protestant” principle, stresses the discontinuous leap between the ‘herd’-like attitude of simply following the world and that of a real adoption of the faith, which is an attitude of genuine personal Christian authenticity. A radical reading of scripture commands us to this authenticity, for Kierkegaard.
This Kierkegaardian “Protestant” attitude of Christian authenticity, set over against compromises with the world, should also be put in relation to, what we might call, the “Catholic” principle of interpreting scripture. This is a principle in which human reason, involving our powers of rational interpretation, and the divine gift of revelation, are gradually correlated allowing human nature, its natural reason and the freely given gift of revelation to work step-by-step in an ever-more harmoniously “Both/And”, continuous manner.
In a balanced stance towards the Christian life, each of these biblical attitudes to receiving the truth of the scriptures, involving elements of both discontinuities with the way of the thinking of the world and continuities with the God-given capacities of our understanding, should inform our interpretation of the scriptures, ourselves, and the world.
However, on this twelfth Sunday after Trinity, it is the “Protestant” principle of Kierkegaard which is front and centre. “See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity….if your heart turns away and you do not hear….you shall perish”, says the first reading from the Book of Deuteronomy. Harsh words indeed, but words we all need to hear to awaken, or re-awaken, us from the mediocrity of a lukewarm attitude to Christianity that we may have fallen into.
If the words of Deuteronomy do not alert us to the radical nature of God’s message, then those of the gospel should leave us in no doubt about what is required of the followers of Jesus: “none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions”. We are even told that “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes even life itself, cannot be my disciple”. What should these words of Jesus mean to us in our lives as Christians today?
In facing these challenging words of scripture, we should avoid the all-too-easy temptation to ‘soften their edges’, which can be a tendency of some liberal and secular interpretations of scripture. The radical words of scripture about ourselves and the world are there for a divine purpose. They make it clear to us that to become disciples of Jesus, we need to be confronted by the hard question of whether God is truly the centre of my life or not. Does my life revolve around me, my family and personal wellbeing, worldly forms of success, or God? Hard questions indeed, and ones that we should not try and avoid on this twelfth Sunday after Trinity.
So, in this year of renewal in the chaplaincy, let us ask the Lord to teach us how to read and receive the meaning of the scriptures attentively in the power of the Spirit. May the same revelation, given to us in the flesh of Jesus and now mediated to us by the actions of the Holy Spirit, enlighten our hearts and minds, so that we may come to know and love, ever more deeply, God’s self-communication to us through the holy scriptures and the sacraments.