Old Testament Reading
At that time it will be said to this people and to Jerusalem: A hot wind comes from me out of the bare heights in the desert toward my poor people, not to winnow or cleanse – a wind too strong for that. Now it is I who speak in judgment against them. "For my people are foolish, they do not know me; they are stupid children, they have no understanding. They are skilled in doing evil, but do not know how to do good."
I looked on the earth, and lo, it was waste and void; and to the heavens, and they had no light. I looked on the mountains, and lo, they were quaking, and all the hills moved to and fro. I looked, and lo, there was no one at all, and all the birds of the air had fled. I looked, and lo, the fruitful land was a desert, and all its cities were laid in ruins before the LORD, before his fierce anger.
For thus says the LORD: The whole land shall be a desolation; yet I will not make a full end. Because of this the earth shall mourn, and the heavens above grow black; for I have spoken, I have purposed; I have not relented nor will I turn back.
Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28
Psalm
1 Fools say in their hearts, "There is no God." They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds; there is no one who does good.
2 The LORD looks down from heaven on humankind to see if there are any who are wise, who seek after God.
3 They have all gone astray, they are all alike perverse; there is no one who does good, no, not one.
4 Have they no knowledge, all the evildoers who eat up my people as they eat bread, and do not call upon the LORD?
5 There they shall be in great terror, for God is with the company of the righteous.
6 You would confound the plans of the poor, but the LORD is their refuge.
7 O that deliverance for Israel would come from Zion! When the LORD restores the fortunes of his people, Jacob will rejoice; Israel will be glad.
Psalm 14
Alternative OT (related)
The LORD said to Moses, "Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely; they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them; they have cast for themselves an image of a calf, and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’"
The LORD said to Moses, "I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are. Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation."
But Moses implored the LORD his God, and said, "O LORD, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out to kill them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, how you swore to them by your own self, saying to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.’"
And the LORD changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.
Exodus 32:7-14
Psalm (related)
1 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.
2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.
3 For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.
4 Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgment.
5 Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me.
6 You desire truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.
7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
8 Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have crushed rejoice.
9 Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.
10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.
Psalm 51:1-10
Epistle
I am grateful to Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me, because he judged me faithful and appointed me to his service, even though I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.
The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners–of whom I am the foremost. But for that very reason I received mercy, so that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display the utmost patience, making me an example to those who would come to believe in him for eternal life. To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.
1 Timothy 1:12-17
Gospel
Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” So he told them this parable: “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.”
“Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
Luke 15:1-10
Sermon on Sixteenth Sunday of Trinity
There are phrases in our speech which reveal an awful lot about us, aren’t there? I am struck by the phrase “just between ourselves.” Don’t we use this as a code for secrecy? We collude with someone else, to impart knowledge, or to foment a plan, or to become associated together. “Just between us” is a phrase which has what I consider negative connotations. It is “privative” as the grammarians would say. It restricts our freedom. – After all, we can not share with anyone else the substance of what is “just between us”.
But there is a French phrase, “Entre nous”, which strikes me as having a positive understanding of this intimacy. Entre nous reminds me of my mother, since she used the phrase as a way of revealing something, not as a method of hiding it from the world. Amongst ourselves, that is the way I would translate the phrase in this case. Entre nous becomes the region in which truth is revealed in love, just as the apostle exhorts us to behave with one another.
I have dipped into a book called Entre Nous – a collection of philosophical pieces by a man one of my teachers in Vermont had as his inspiration on his wanderings through which his love of wisdom led. – “Just between ourselves” and Entre Nous are phrases that open up the human condition when we examine the content and its use. These phrases show us that we are truly social animals – or, as another philosopher would say, Being-with defines us. It is the with and between which speak of where human really shows being. The ourselves is the who human being is.
These phrases have positive and negative meanings, explicit and implicit significations. To disentangle them only a little, I would like to look at our NT readings. They reinforce this understanding of who the human being is. Let’s take that reading from the letter to Timothy as our starting point. I am grateful to Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me, because he judged me faithful and appointed me to his service, even though I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief,
Paul immediately confesses that he is not his own person. Something outside of himself brings reality to his life. He acknowledges Christ Jesus our Lord as the source of his strength. Why? Why does Paul thank God that strength has finally come his way? Because God judged him favourably, that God accounted him faithful, as God reckoned Abraham faithful. This is a theme that is central to our faith, isn’t it? We need only think about the source of the protestant reformation – Martin Luther and his insistence on justification by faith alone. That God’s grace has settled on each one of us from mercy, not merit. (We can discuss that another time.) However, Paul goes on – he acknowledges that God has “appointed” him in spite of the fact that he was completely unsuitable – he describes himself as “a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence.” Paul describes himself in such despicable terms, doesn’t he? Who would describe themselves with such words? I know I would never wish to be called “a man of violence”. Would you be wished to be called a “blasphemer” or “a persecutor” – and that is not a barrister acting on behalf of the Crown – sorry that is a “prosecutor”, isn’t it? However sometimes the law does appear just so negatively.
I think these are actions of a man in the world, impacting on others, he calls himself these awful things because his actions amongst others were so despicable – he must have taken God’s name in vain as he spoke about others and then his activities were of an unpeaceable nature as he came into contact with others.
That is the negative account of our writer’s actions in the world, but he goes on to describe how another set of activity has overwhelmed him. Gushing over him were faith and love. How can these be isolated from the rest of humanity?
We can only be faithful with others and we can only truly love others. Faith and love, to be worthy of such a name, are not personal and narcissistic – they have to do with others even more than myself. I am faithful in relation to my wife, my friends and even the stranger. I can only love when I look to others – when I engage with my wife, my friends and especially the stranger. and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.
This is a very theological understanding of being with the Other – that life is given reality because of the grace of God. It comes from outside, not from myself alone. That is not how we normally understand our sociality, our most profound being-with, is it? This is a too abstract self understanding, one that none of us actually has as we go about our daily business, as we impact on the lives of the others around us.
That is why I considered our Gospel reading as part of the way I understood the way we kept things “just between ourselves”, how we behaved “amongst ourselves”.
“Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
This is a very different way of sharing things “amongst ourselves” – she does not privately keep it just between ourselves, does she? No, she shares her joy – that joy of discovery, or enlightenment. Finding that silver coin for the person Jesus knew is like being a Lotto multimillionaire – how can we keep that a secret?
The most significant aspect of this behaviour revelation, is that the woman does not restrict how it affects everyone. Her joy overflows and covers the world around her and the people in that world. Her happiness makes her sociality a completely different way of being in the world.
Jesus tells us that God is just the same. God’s joy at discovery is unbounded. God’s delight at being known has no limits. That glass is full to overflowing, never mind just half a glass, and it will always be so. We will always want to keep this amongst ourselves, not “just between us”, the select few. How can we? Why should we? Let our joy at discovering our faith and love interweave with everything we do with our friends, our neighbours, and even those strangers amongst us, our loved ones.