Sermon: Do You Fear God?

Do we fear God? Do I fear God? In years gone by fearing God was thought of as being a real virtue. But we are now living in a thoroughly secular age. Not only has Christianity lost its grip upon British society as the main form of community building, but, so many people seem to be so eager to refer to themselves as “not religious.”  It seems everywhere I go people are quick to say to me, “I’m not religious.” It sometimes feels as though being “religious” is only for some, and perhaps the more needy and unstable, people. 

In this environment where faith is so often equated to superstition and attacked on the grounds of rationality and even science; In this environment, where to be religious, to be Christian, to be attending Church, is to be in the minority there is a great temptation for Christians to adopt an attitude of appeasement. We don’t want to appear too radical in our expression of faith, do we? And we want to do all we can to make our faith as palatable to others as we possibly can. We enjoy saying, “God loves you,” but we are less comfortable saying that God’s love can be very costly.  We want to talk about the good news of Jesus Christ but we are much less eager to mention God’s judgement. 

And yet I believe there is a hunger for judgement as can be seen on the TV: Where, on “X factor,” people are told that they just can’t sing, or that they are going to have to work a lot harder if they’re going to reach their full potential. And the audience love it! Because we all know that it takes hard work to reach our full potential.  People want others to reach their full potential and they want to reach their own potential. I saw Triny and Suzanna this week sizing up the nation. Did you see it? They are outrageously judgemental and almost cruel when they tell women what they should, and shouldn’t, be wearing. And we all love it because some one, at last, is daring to be honest.  

A little more serious is the call for judgement, coming through the media, on the head of Her Majesties Revenue and Customs after the loss of computer disks containing the personal details of 25 million people, including mine! Judgement is a valuable part of human, and social, experience whether we try to leave God out of it or not. 

In our gospel reading there are two criminals: two kakourgos, which literally means “evil doers.” These two are judged men according to the courts of the land. Jesus is being crucified with the evil-doers. It is a scene of shame (par excellence); extreme and public ridicule:

“they cast lots dividing his clothing...the leaders scoffed at him...let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God.”  

And one of the criminals joins in with the ridicule,  

“Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us.”  

If you are the Messiah of God then you have the power of God to save yourself. So save yourself and while you’re at it save us too. 

But the other criminal rebukes him, “Do you not fear God since you are under the same judgement [and in your case it is just]” If God’s judgement on his Messiah is this unjust crucifixion then this God is to be feared. Notice that it is a judged criminal, an evil-doer, who is willing to recognise a fearsome God in what is happening to Jesus. 

In many of our prayers we speak of an “Almighty God” and the Church teaches that this means an omnipotent God; an all-powerful God; that God is all-powerful, and, that nothing is impossible for God. And yet we claim to see this God at work in Christ crucified; an act of shame and apparent powerlessness. So if we say that God is all-powerful and if we pray saying, “Almighty God...” then what kind of power are we appealing to? 

Well, the answer to that is here also in this text: from the lips of Jesus: 

“Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” 

The power of God is chiefly one of forgiveness. This is not the kind of power with which people can be dominated with. Nor is it a power with which you can get your own way. It is not a power of control, rather, it is a power which seeks a higher reality than self-preservation and self-protection. Although not a worldly at all the power to forgive is an immense power. And as Jesus says the power of God to forgive is in cooperation with our forgiving each other. 

“...if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.” (Matthew 6.14f.) 

In the Lord’s prayer we say, “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” There is a co-operative action of forgiveness: God’s to us and ours to one another. 

In this way forgiveness is the foundation of community. For without forgiveness you cannot build fruitful human relationships.  

But the power of forgiveness is so alien to our instinct for survival and self-preservation and when it operates in the world it is hard to rationalise. It is like an alien environment breaking in which doesn’t make sense.  

When the black teenager Anthony Walker ws murdered in a racist attack his mother Gee Walker was able to forgive. This extract comes from an articel in The Times (March 2006):  
“Gee Walker was leaving the crown court room, where she had just forced herself to listen to the hideous forensic detail if how her son had been murdered with an axe, when somebody slipped her a note. It was from Paul Taylor, the racist thug who had buried the blade in Anthony’s skull and ended his life. The letter said that he was sorry. If Taylor had written it hoping for Mrs Walker’s forgiveness, he was too late. She had already forgiven him, just as she had forgiven his accomplice Michael Barton. ‘I cannot hate. I have to forgive them. Hate is what killed Anthony,’ she said after Taylor, 20 and Barton 17 were jailed for Anthony’s murder...The magnanimity of this gesture took the nation’s breath away...” 

None of us know just how we would react in such extreme circumstances and I hope we don’t have to find out. But in this case it is easy to see how Gee’s ability to forgive absorbed the hatred which had killed her son. In her forgiveness the hatred was not perpetuated but, sort of, quenched.  

If sin is a wound then forgiveness is the healing. In his book The Healing Power of the Sacraments McManus writes about the sacrament of reconciliation (otherwise known as confession) as a sacrament of healing. 

“For the sin itself there is forgiveness. For the wound of sin there is healing. The wound of sin is an inner wound. The person is wounded in his or her self-esteem, self-image, relationships or memory...”(quoted by Christopher Gower: 2007, 63) 

If sin is the wound of the world then in the crucifixion of Jesus, and in the answer to his prayer, 

“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing,” 

the sin of the world is absorbed on the cross and wound of the world finds its healing. In the crucified Christ, and the forgiveness of Almighty God, the world receives its healing. 

I’m going to finish with an extract from a Jewish Yom Kipur liturgy: 

“Now is the time for turning.

The leaves are beginning to turn from green to red to orange.

The birds are beginning to turn and are heading once more toward the south...

...unless we turn, we will be trapped for ever in yesterday’s ways.

Lord help us to turn from callousness to sensitivity, from hostility to love, from pettiness to purpose, from envy to contentment, from carelessness to discipline, from fear to faith.

Turn us around, O Lord, and bring us back toward you.

Revive our lives as at the beginning.

And turn us toward each other, Lord, for in isolation, there is no       life.” (quoted by Christopher Gower: 2007, 56) 

Amen.