|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Sermon
|
|
THE LISTENING HEART. HOW THE MIGHTY HAVE FALLEN. The first of thee texts deals with good versus evil, the second with good versus better. As to the first,I was summoned to jury duty on Friday and eventually found myself in the Supreme Court as part of a pool. The accused, looking a deathly grey and utterly alone, stood in the dock. He had allegedly murdered a man near Castlemaine and buried his body in a mineshaft. The panel of twelve jurors was nearly complete when I heard my own name and occupation read out. Now I was the one on the spot. I had to walk past the accused, who with a legal advisor beside him, had to decide quickly whether to challenge my selection. When his hand went up, signalling a challenge, I was both miffed and immensely relieved. For me, the picture of the sinner alone before the judgment seat of God has now taken on added meaning. It isn’t hard to imagine oneself in the shoes of the man in the dock. Add together the majesty of the legal system, the magnificence of the courtroom, the sight of his fellow citizens filing in to sit in judgement, and the judge sitting high and lifted up in her wig and scarlet robes. No doubt all of those things, plus many more, had caused the weight of dread to fall on my fellow mortal’s shoulders. Psalm 52 pictures a not dissimilar scene. A man who has been charged with wrongdoing faces his accuser. What has been the charge? The superscription on the Psalm is a guess by a later generation: “When Doeg the Edomite came to Saul and said to him, ‘David has come to the house of Ahimelech.’” In 1 Samuel Doeg is an informer who betrays to King Saul a group of priests who had assisted David in his flight. At Saul’s command Doeg kills eighty-five of them. He is a war criminal. The superscription may not be historically accurate. Whatever the alleged crime of the accused in the Psalm, it is a terrible one. The charge is the criminal misuse of power by a cutting and lying tongue. As you read on you find the prosecutor’s own sharp tongue at work:Why do you boast, O mighty one? Then he says of himself:The righteous will see and fear, Not a little, you might judge, schadenfreude (pleasure in the downfall of another) here.But I am like a green olive tree I hesitated to preach on the Psalm this week because of the baptism of little Hugo. Nevertheless, these hymns and liturgies of old Israel say something quite profound about the human condition. Throughout his life Hugo will experience within himself, as we all do, the battle between good and evil. In some situations, as in some individuals, the balance between good and evil is decidedly tipped in one direction rather than the other. Nevertheless, the Christian must always remember how facile it is to make a scapegoat of one individual or one human group and project “pure evil” into them. As Jesus asks, “Why do you see the speck in your neighbour’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?” (Matthew 7:3). We remember that on the cross Jesus became a scapegoat and the object of mocking: “He saved others; himself he cannot save.” (Mark 15:32 etc.) When I was rejected as a juror I felt judged. I also felt the weight of shame that clergy as a whole feel for the sins of some of our number, and for our own historical reluctance to bring charges. Too much empathy obscures judgment. Therefore good marks may be given to the prosecutor in our Psalm, despite the sharpness of his tongue and his self-righteousness. Good marks, but not full marks. We need to turn to today’s Gospel for a homelier version of the conflict, not so much between good and evil as between good and better. Here is a blog from ”Vern” on the internet: Both Martha and Mary have done a daring thing: they have invited Jesus into their living room. The even more daring thing is to take time to listen to him, for listening to him can be quite disruptive to your life.Martha is torn between two opposing forces. The culture prescribes that, having opened her home to Jesus; she must provide hospitality. But this is no ordinary guest. Martha is drawn by the same attraction that tugs at Mary. She would love the daring possibility of being a disciple at the feet of the Master. So torn is she, and at odds with her own heart's desire, that she erupts into angry frustration. So Jesus notes how torn she is, and blesses her with the freedom to choose, like Mary had so daringly chosen, the better part. It was said of King Solomon, a thousand years before Mary and Martha, that his great wisdom derived from his ability to listen. At the outset of his reign, Solomon takes time to pray. “Give your servant an understanding mind,” he asks, “to discern between good and evil.” Literally, Solomon asks for “a listening heart.” A listening heart attends to the feeling level of things as well as to the intellectual. If too much empathy can obscure judgment, the failure of empathy is the beginning of evil. Solomon’s prayer pleases God. It could be a prayer for ourselves, or for little Hugo — a prayer for an understanding mind, a listening heart, and the ability to discern between good and evil. When babies are newly born, as Hugo was a few months ago, their listening hearts begin to attend to the changed physical world they now experience. Slowly they begin to distinguish self, and what is beyond. Babies become aware of their mother’s breast and of those enfolding arms. The baby’s mother is the beginning of the great world beyond. Babies become aware of hunger and of soreness, of being alone when they want to be held, and of being held when they want to snuggle up alone. For every little one, different kinds of touch, sound, smell, taste, and sight slowly acquire meaning. From these, babies begin to build their world. In this activity the baby is like a scientist, who must first attend to the facts of the world around before doing any theorizing. A century ago, William James, when finishing his great treatise on The Principles of Psychology, wrote to his equally famed brother Henry, “I have to forge every sentence in the face of irreducible and stubborn facts.” So it is with Hugo. He builds his world out of the “irreducible and stubborn facts” that meet him every day. As he grows older he will find words and ideas by which to arrange “the facts” into a world of values, and according to that world of values he will be able to make choices. This is what it means to start becoming a responsible human being. As for ourselves, a listening heart must be attentive to all the facts -- the facts of nature like the golden wattle that in late July begins to splendidly festoon our parklands, or the irreducible and stubborn facts of experiments like those that convinced Einstein of relativity. The irreducible and stubborn facts that the listening heart must hear include the subtly nuanced facts of personal relationships, the harmonic facts of music, the elegant facts of poetry, and the accessible facts and connecting themes of history. Moreover, a listening heart must attend not only to the facts, but also must seek to integrate them into a unified whole. This is the spiritual life. It means being alert to the inner, integrating voice of the Spirit. It means being attentive to the wholeness of the world around us, and striving for a sense of that which lies beyond sight and sound and touch. We allow the world to speak to us in its details, and wait for the voice of God who is the wholeness of all that is. And like Mary, we may hear the voice of God in the words and the life of Jesus. Baptism is a good time to speak about these things. When we are baptised into Christ, we are baptised into his death. Sacramentally we go down into the deep waters of death with him, and emerge with the sign of his cross engraved on our foreheads. From that day we may live in hope, as if our own death were past, looking confidently towards sharing his resurrection. The integrating sign for the Christian is the cross. The vertical reaches up towards God, while the horizontal stretches outwards as Christ stretched out in both life and death, to embrace the world with love. The cross signifies the crucial point of the human journey through birth, growth, decline, death and hope of life beyond physical life. In Christ something greater than Solomon is present - a listening heart sensitive to every vibration of the natural world - a heart lovingly attuned to the throbbing human pulse, passionately open with desire towards God. God, as we have discovered in Christ, is the one who stands beside us when we are in the dock, and whose promise is to make us whole again. ___________________________________________________
A sermon presented by the
Rev Dr Stuart Murray at St Aidan's
Uniting Church North Balwyn, on 22nd July, 2007 IT MAY BE
REPRODUCED WITH ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF AUTHORSHIP. |
|||
Page updated 22/07/07