Sermon preached by the Dean of Wells at the Cathedral Eucharist on Sunday July 20th
(Trinity 5) Romans 8 v 12- 15; Matthew 13 v 24 – 30, 36 – 43
Who are we in debt to? That is the question that St Paul is asking in the Epistle to the Romans this morning.
Debt is an ever present feature in our society. All of us I suspect live with debt, whether it is the payments due on our mortgage, the repayments on the purchase of a car, the contract on the mobile phone or the student loan needed to finance university studies. Most of the time we are unaware of the debt, aware only that borrowing enables us to own things more quickly by extending credit and we are confident that our earnings will cover our commitments and that we will continue to prosper. The consequences of debt become more acute if we lose our job, or if we are living at subsistence level and have to borrow at high interest rates to buy food or to heat the house. At that point debt can feel like a trap from which there is no escape.
Debt goes wider than our personal finances. We speak of the burden of national debt upon our economy and all chancellors want to reduce the costs of government borrowing. During the recession we have seen nations such as Greece reach the point of bankruptcy and need the support of the international community to avoid economic collapse. Such support, is, of course, not disinterested, because the continued working of international trade, of global companies and international finances is in the interests of those who are the principal creditors in the international economy – the United States, the EU and China. If you are part of the Global South indebtedness is a way of life, your economy is a source of food, or minerals or tourism for the rich nations and even if a few people grow rich, the majority rely on periodic debt cancellations and aid packages to continue to survive even at a very basic standard. Under such reduced circumstances war and famine can kill thousands of people, whilst others become refugees seeking to escape impending catastrophe.
Peter Selby in his book ‘Grace and Mortgage’ speaks of debt as the ‘binding of the future’. He writes ‘Lending and borrowing can, when this transaction is undertaken between two voluntary and equal participants, facilitate the best use of available resources; but it can only do that if its highly dangerous capacity to bind the future and impose the will of the creditor on the debtor are recognised and controlled.’
There are echoes here of St Paul who exhorts his brothers and sisters in the church at Rome not to be debtors to the flesh but to be led by the spirit of God so as to become children of God. The flesh for Paul is not just the physical body but a whole series of relationships that can bind us to the world, to distorted relationships, to self-interest and a vain search for pleasure. The images of the flesh for the apostle are drunken orgies, brutal Roman authority and in the Jewish tradition a belief that works, the precise fulfilment of the commands of the law, can somehow draw a human being closer to God. Paul has known that particular trap from his own experience.
For Paul, over against the distortions of the flesh stands the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God comes to set us free from the binding of the flesh. It comes to give a new identity that is not opposed to the physical but is rooted in continual reliance upon the grace of God. This identity is made visible by the fruits of the spirit. St Paul lists these in the letter to the Galatians, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. He notes that ‘there is no law against such things.’ In fact the fruits of the Spirit are beyond either keeping the law or the breaking of the law. These qualities are not about self but about what it means to live for the future that God is creating, the new creation that has been shown in Jesus and is pointed to by the life of the church.
But St Paul also knows that this future is seen now only in anticipation. He is well aware of his own suffering and the sufferings of those around him who grapple with the power of the flesh. He says to the Romans that the whole world is groaning waiting for this freedom that comes when our debt is to God. ‘Not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly, while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.’
Christians are those who are to wait and hope for what is still to come. A similar message is given in the parable we heard in today’s gospel. The world is mixed, there is indeed good seed in the field, but ‘whilst everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and then went away’. But the householder exhorts his slaves to let the good seed and the weeds grow together until harvest-time. For if you gather the weeds now you will uproot the wheat together with them.
Although you may not have noticed it during the reading the parable of the wheat and the weeds comes in two parts. The first section is the telling of the story in the way I have just summarised. The second is the interpretation given for the disciples. Scholars think this interpretation was written at a later date. The interpretation changes the meaning of the story and loses the key dimension of patience. Now it has become a graphic tale about God’s wrath at the end of time upon sin and evildoers, and his blessing on the righteouswho are the good seed, the children of the kingdom.
But it is patience that shapes our experience of God in everyday life. We may see signs of God’s presence around us in the courage and generosity and faithfulness of others; and we may know that this is the direction that we are called to travel. But we also know that the promise of a world transformed into the kingdom of God remains obstinately far off. If we are honest we will realise that we are as much part of the problem as the solution. We are quick to judge others, to try and tear up the weeds without any regard for the wheat, the good seed that is growing as well.
I began with the image of debt and especially financial debt that is so prevalent today. As Christians we are debtors to the flesh who have glimpsed the possibility of the freedom that faith in God will bring. Yet we cannot shake off, cut ourselves loose, from our physical bodies, from the economy of our society, from the hidden urgings of pleasure that tell us not to worry about other people. In this world attaining or preserving absolute purity is an illusion.
Instead what is important is the direction we are facing. Are we looking for the gifts of the Spirit? Are we looking for the kingdom of God amidst the ambiguities of daily life? Or are we bound, called up in a wheel of instant gratification and forgetfulness, unable to look towards the more distant horizons and ask the question as to who and what I am giving my life? What will I want to say about what I have done and who I have become when I meet God face to face?
Let me finish with a short story from the desert fathers. It is a reminder of how little we really know of our own and of each other’s life with God.
‘The brothers surrounded John the Short when he was sitting in front of the church, and each of them asked him about their thoughts. When he saw this, another hermit was jealous, and said, “John, your cup is full of poison”; John answered, “Yes, Father, it is . But you said that when you could see only the outside; I wonder what you would say if you saw the inside”.’
John Clarke (Dean of Wells)