pentecost 3 year C

2 Samuel 11:26-12:15 NRSV text
Psalm 32 NRSV text
Galatians 2: 15-21 NRSV text
Luke 7: 36-8:3 NRSV text

It’s all about the wisdom of grace – which is the wisdom of God. It’s about grace instead of judgement; forgiveness instead of condemnation; love instead of fear-driven obedience. It’s about the liberty – the freedom – of being under grace instead of Law and about the joy of being accepted instead of turned away.

Look at Luke 7:34-5: “The Son of Man has come [as] a friend of tax collectors and sinners! Nevertheless, wisdom is vindicated by all her children”. What is Jesus on about? He has just responded to the agonised request of John the Baptist: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” (7:20) John had staked all he had and was – all he believed about God – on the fact that Jesus was (a) the one to come (the Messiah) and (b) the wrath and judgement of God incarnate. In prison and with just days (if not hours) to live, John is inundated with rumours about the so-called Messiah: he is being far too gracious! He hangs out with prostitutes and tax collectors and other “sinners”. He proclaims that such people are okay – that God welcomes them. This is news that causes him to doubt all he thought he knew – not just about Jesus, but about God, too. What about God’s covenant? What about the Law? Wasn’t God supposed to be coming to sort everyone out – to burn up the chaff (the Law-breakers – sinners) with unquenchable fire?

Jesus’ response is to warn John gently not to take offence at him (at his graciousness) lest he miss out on what God is doing (17:23). The Kingdom is not about judgement (despite what John expected) but about God’s mercy and grace.

John shares this blindness about God with Jesus’ arch-opponents, the Pharisees and lawyers. This is ironic: they have rejected John’s baptism and therefore “rejected God’s purposes for themselves” (17:30). John was indeed preparing the way of the Messiah, and what he was doing out in the wilderness was in spite of and in the face of opposition from the Jerusalem religious establishment. Yet ironically, John has more in common with the Pharisees and lawyers than he has with Jesus and his message of the Kingdom – because he, like them cannot understand grace. He can see God only in terms of Law. This makes God the offended deity who is coming to vindicate the righteous covenant-keepers (the older brother in the parable of the Lost Son which Jesus will tell later) and condemn the sinners. Yet Jesus’ mission is to seek and to save precisely those who are most lost!

This is the wisdom of grace. It means that God (in Jesus) is shown to be the friend of sinners rather than the judge. Think about that for a moment. The accusation levelled against Jesus is a serious one. It’s not just, “Jesus is permissive; he’s soft on sin”. It’s more than that. What is so bewildering about Jesus for the religious people and leaders of his day (the list that includes both the Pharisees and lawyers and John the Baptist) is this: Jesus’ actions and power are clearly from God. Yet his lifestyle is deeply offensive! He habitually hangs out in pubs and brothels. His closest friends are the worst low-life. He isn’t just a missionary to the sinners, he’s a mate of theirs! And, under the Law, that makes him a sinner. He’s contaminated – even if he himself is relatively well-behaved! Yet, if these accusations are correct (and Jesus doesn’t dispute them), he’s a party animal. He eats to excess and gets drunk in the seedy side of town. And all the time, instead of trying to reform those people, he welcomes them and tells them that God welcomes them too!

And then he says this strange thing: “Wisdom is vindicated by all her children”. What wisdom? Can you imagine the conversation with his respectable sympathisers? “Jesus, look: if you want to be effective, you really need to choose your friends more wisely! It’s no good antagonising the religious people. Sure, you may think they go too far with adhering to the strict letter of the Law, but at the end of the day, they’re the gatekeepers. Get them onsides and you’ve got a far better chance of success. Get wise, Jesus!”

But grace isn’t wisely strategic. Jesus won’t compromise because there are two different worlds here. The one is the world of Law and obedience (or failure to obey) and the other is the world of grace and love. You can’t live in both worlds at the same time.

Trying to have a foot in both camps (Galatians 2: 11-21)
Peter is trying to do precisely this in Galatia. There’s a real conflict of understanding between Paul and the Jerusalem-based apostles and it has to do with the relationship of the Gentile converts to Judaism. For the Jerusalem lot, Jesus is the Jewish Messiah and so becoming a Christian is necessarily becoming a Jew. Male converts to Christianity needed to be circumcised and the Christian communities ought to be keeping the Jewish Law.

How could it be otherwise? After all, the very title “Messiah” gets its content from Judaism. It wasn’t a free-floating title, any more than “Emperor” was! “Messiah” means the promised one of God – Yahweh. And Yahweh is the One revealed in the Law. You can’t shear the title “Messiah” of its Jewish connotations any more than you could employ “Fuhrer” as a non-German title free of its associations with Adolf Hitler.

But Paul has had to face the devastating realisation that Jesus was condemned by the Law – and yet turned out to be the Messiah after all! It was God’s own covenant people who crucified him. Jesus died under the Law – yet God raised him from the dead. This is the foundation of Paul’s theology of Law and grace. The Law does not save – it condemns Messiahs! Yet God, in grace, raises Jesus from the dead and declares him to be both Lord and Messiah! Therefore, something radically new has happened. The Law has been eclipsed by something new and more powerful: grace.

Peter, of course, ought to know this! After all, he had had the vision of the sheet filled with unclean animals in Acts 10. He had seen that God gave the Spirit to the Gentiles – which was proof that God was operating outside the boundaries of the Law (which divided the world into Jew and Gentile). Despite this, when trouble (in the form of the Judaizers, or Circumcision Party) comes to town in the form of Jerusalem Christians, insisting that the Christians ought to be keeping the Law, Peter compromises. He buys into the theology of contamination and withdraws from table fellowship with the “sinners”. Even Barnabas – Paul’s companion – can’t take the pressure. Paul flips – because he understands that you can’t have it both ways. It’s not just a matter of compromise (Paul is quite happy to compromise over some things, such as not eating meat sacrificed to idols, for the sake of harmony. He calls this compromising for the sake of the “weaker brothers and sisters”). But he realises, like Jesus, that this is a water-shed issue. It cuts to the very heart of the gospel and to what God is really like.

If the Law is still operational as before, then we’re in deep trouble. Failure to keep the Law will result in condemnation – justly. But it means that Jesus, too, stands condemned. Jesus did not keep the Law in the manner demanded by the understanding of the Covenant. He sat remarkably loose to the Law – which demanded careful avoidance of contamination. Jesus was technically a Law-breaker. He was a sinner – and was therefore justly condemned. Remember: in Old Testament terms, eating with the wrong sorts of people, eating the wrong sorts of food, and failing to honour the Sabbath properly were all as serious as adultery and murder.

Yet God had raised Jesus from the dead. Death was associated with sin and with just punishment by God. If God had raised Jesus from the dead, therefore, it was because Jesus was not a sinner in God’s eyes! That is what Paul means when he says that Jesus was without sin (2 Corinthians 5:21). Jesus, alone of every human being who had ever lived, was “righteous” under the Law. He alone had kept the Law.

Jesus, in Paul’s theology, is therefore the Second Adam – the new progenitor of a new humanity. If Jesus died under the Law but was raised, then Jesus died to the Law. The reign of Law ends with death. By raising Jesus from the dead, God has ushered in a new era in which the Law is obsolete. It is the era of grace. “Faith”, in Paul’s terms, means participation in Jesus – and that means being crucified with him, dying with him, rising with him and being glorified with him. It’s a thoroughly Jewish understanding. Its parallel is the Passover: through “remembering”, every Jew is incorporated into the saving events of the Exodus from Egypt. For Christians, faith and “remembering” (in Communion) is being incorporated into the saving events of Easter. We die to sin – because Christ did. We are raised into a new era – as Christ was. This is the New Creation. To be “in Christ” is to be part of this New Creation (2 Corinthians 5:17).

Life in the New Creation is not about keeping the Law (works) but about faith in Jesus – living as Jesus lived. Jesus saves us, not just because he died, but by the way he lived. His life shows us how to live appropriately in response to who God is – and that means to live in the same sort of freedom that Jesus did. God wills freedom. Paul will go on to argue that the Law was intended by God to bring freedom, but was continually thwarted because of human sinfulness. The Law is good; it is human sin that is bad. However, if human beings are fundamentally prone to sin, then we’re fated to be condemned by the Law instead of liberated by it. “Works of the Law” had led only to the condemnation of Jesus. It is grace alone that brings true freedom.

For Paul, therefore, Peter’s actions are a fundamental denial of the grace of God. They belong to the Old World, and the point about Christianity is that God has ushered in a New World – a world of grace.

The wisdom of grace (Luke 7: 36-8:3)
Luke launches straight into a test case to highlight the difference between the world of grace and the world of purity-maintenance. Jesus is incited to eat at the home of Simon the Pharisee. Jesus was an awkward guest: he brought his friends and hangers-on. When a prostitute heard that he was dining there, she gate-crashed the party with an alabaster jar of ointment. She’d presumably bought it using the money she’d made as a hooker. Normally, it would be used as a “special” for a very rich client – like a very expensive bottle of vintage wine.

Can you imagine how excruciatingly embarrassing the ensuing scene is? She’s there – and everyone knows what sort of woman she is! And she sits at Jesus’ feet, taking them in her hands and rubbing her cheeks against them as she weeps. If that isn’t enough, she dries them with her hair – and then begins kissing his feet and rubbing them with ointment! Is this some sort of foot fetish? And if, as seems obvious, it’s actually some sort of worship, (a) it’s way over the top, (b) embarrassing for everyone there and (c) a calculated insult to Simon. It’s like performing a vivisection on a monkey at a dinner for animal rights activists, or having a stripper in the House of Bishops, because she’s a prostitute.

And here’s the thing: Jesus accepts it! He alone is totally unfazed by her weird behaviour. In fact, he approves! Out of deference to Jesus, Simon only mutters to himself about the offence he feels. He respects Jesus, as we see in 7:40. He doesn’t throw Jesus and the woman out – even though they are contaminating his house – and at a meal, for God’s sake!

Jesus tells him a parable to illustrate how grace works. It’s a parable of grace – of forgiveness. And his question is this: who will love more? “The one who is forgiven more”, Simon is forced to reply. “Yes!” says Jesus. “Exactly!” And then he does the unthinkable: he pronounces that the woman’s sins are forgiven. Now when Jesus pronounces forgiveness, he does so entirely on his own authority. That is what rocks people’s boats. Only God could forgive sins. The priest could pronounce forgiveness – but only on the basis of proper observance of the Law. Repentance and restitution had to be made in the prescribed manner, and then the priest could pronounce forgiveness on behalf of God, secure that God’s criteria had been met.

In this case, no such criteria had been met – and Jesus takes it upon himself to forgive the woman! This is Luke telling us about Jesus’ divinity – but more than that: he is telling us that God is like that! Jesus is acting as a priest in that he is confident that God finds the woman’s actions acceptable.

What is his point? Jesus does not nullify the Law. Rather, he operates by a different criterion: love. The heart of the Law, for Jesus, is love. God is not primarily interested in obedience, but in love and relationship. Guilt stands in the way of love. Therefore, sin needs forgiveness, not condemnation. And forgiveness only increases love.

This isn’t a trick. God does not manipulate us into love. God doesn’t forgive in order to “buy” love: God forgives out of love and in order to free us to love fully. And it is in loving God fully – with heart, soul, mind and strength – that we discover the true freedom that the gospel brings. This is God’s wisdom – the wisdom of grace.

God and the “problem” of sin (2 Samuel 11:26-12:15/Psalm 32)
God is doing something new in Jesus. Grace is possible, it seems, because Jesus is peculiarly faithful to God – both in degree (he keeps the Law) and kind (he keeps it in a particular way). Grace hasn’t always been possible in the way it is in Jesus. There is something unique about grace in the Christian faith. That is not to say that there is no such thing as God’s grace until Jesus, or only in Christianity: it is to say that grace becomes Jesus-shaped.

It’s sobering to realise that most people’s perception of God (and the Church, through whom they learn about God) is that God is a male deity with a fragile, cosmic-sized ego who is aching to get his own back on everyone who has insulted or offended him in any way whatsoever. They have been led to believe that God’s Law has been given deliberately to cause condemn people and enable God to condemn them with justification. They find an almost voyeuristic relish in Christians who long to see the people “get theirs” from God.

How has God got such a reputation? Partly from Christians who baptise their own desires for vengeance and attribute them to God, and partly, at least, from a particular form of Reformed (and other) preaching that emphasises the holiness of God to the point that it appears really difficult for God to love and forgive sinful human beings. Sin is seen as an enormous “problem” for God. How can God tolerate sin when God is so holy? What hope do sinful people have in the face of such annihilative holiness?

God’s holiness is pitted against his love in this sort of preaching. God hates the sin, and is compelled by his (again, gender is not accidental!) holy rage to act to judge and condemn. But God is somewhat schizophrenic: he loves us, and so has to find a way out of the “legal” conundrum. His holiness demands retribution; his love demands salvation. And so, in a masterly stroke, he takes his wrath out on Jesus instead, so that we might be forgiven. Honour is satisfied, and God can forgive without compromising on his holiness!

There is a grudging-ness in this account that makes God far less loving and forgiving than God actually is. Human sin is not a problem for God! That isn’t to say that it doesn’t matter: it’s just to say that God finds it far easier to be extravagantly, ludicrously and offensively loving and forgiving than we find God to be!

The story of David and Bathsheba is a case in point in the Old Testament. David doesn’t go for a minor transgression in killing Uriah in order to nick his pregnant wife! This is deeply serious sin. He has committed adultery and murder. He has made a laughing stock of the throne. He has used royal power – supposedly a sign of Yahweh – to oppress, murder, and steal. The king – Yahweh’s regent – has abused his royal power in spectacularly evil fashion. (It’s worth noting, in parenthesis, that it ain’t the sex here that’s the big issue! That’s another thing about the Church: we get as hung up on sex as we do on sin and condemnation. Every sermon I have ever heard on David and Bathsheba has been about adultery – yet Nathan’s sermon is about theft and murder: the abuse of power! That’s not to condone adultery – it’s just to note how difficult we seem to find it to correlate our own moral priorities with those of God!)

Why does Yahweh send Nathan to David? Not to condemn him, but to make forgiveness possible! Yahweh yearns to restore relationship with David. Nathan tells David the parable in order to provoke David to repentance and make forgiveness possible. Psalm 32 is traditionally a psalm of David celebrating the joy of forgiveness. Note that: it’s the joy of forgiveness, not relief at being let off the hook! We so often assume that God is the great Negotiator, and that our challenge is to negotiate our way out of trouble. We try to make deals with God – to appease God. We assume that God wants us to be in trouble and is itching to unleash thunderbolts at the world.

Yet here’s the thing: God desires to forgive and restore us far, far more than we ever want to be restored! God is the One who cannot rest while human beings take themselves far away from God. God is the Lover who cannot eat or sleep or concentrate on anything while things are wrong between God and those whom God loves. God’s problem isn’t sin: God’s difficulty with the human race is God’s unrequited love. God is not the offended Zeus-figure in the sky so much as the lovesick father in the parable of the Lost Son. God is the one for whom no cost is too great if it means that relationships can be restored. And if it means the death of God’s Son, then so be it. Hardly wise … but then, that’s God’s wisom – the wisdom of grace! Hallelujah!

Amen.