Sunday 14 October 2012, 19th after Trinity

"Hate evil and love good, and establish justice..."

 

Delegates to the Conservative Party conference, which met in Birmingham last week, listened to two proposals from the platform aimed at establishing justice. Chris Grayling wants to change the law on self-defence to allow individuals to defend their property instinctively and honestly, even if the force they use is disproportionate to the threat they face. Theresa May wants to change the law on sentencing to allow individuals who are victims of anti-social behaviour to choose the penalty that those convicted receive.

 

We should be under no illusions: both proposals represent a change in the way we conceive of society. Both represent substantial shifts in the balance that we have historically struck between the individual and the community. The first will, if passed into law, allow an individual to use inappropriate force upon another as long as he judges that his act is reasonable. The community will hand that judgement over to the individual and, as long as the individual judges that his act is reasonable, the community will not question his exercise of it. The second will, if passed into law, hand to the individual who has been wronged the authority to select the wrong-doer's punishment. No longer will this function be exercised by the Crown, acting on behalf of the wronged individual and on behalf of the whole community out of the deeply-held belief that a wrong against an individual is a wrong against the whole community. The wrong suffered by the individual, and the individual's response to it, will be what determines the wrong-doer's fate.

 

As I have said, the proposals represent a change in the way we conceive of society.

 

In his lecture to the Theos think-tank, delivered not far from here the week before last, Rowan Williams spoke eloquently about how we conceive of society - how we will miss him. He suggested that to conceive of society as a balance between the individual and the community, a balance exaggerated by these two proposals, is to conceive of  it wrongly. The real balance is the balance between the individual and the person. Williams reminded his audience of Saint Augustine's observation that a person is in relationship with God before he is anything else, or before he is in relationship with anything else. None of us is on our own, and none of us cannot pretend to be - or, at least, we can pretend to be. We can pretend that human society is a matter of managing the relationship between a collection of individuals, each of whom has a stockpiled birthright of liberties and dignities. But for people of faith human society is a matter of ordering the relationship between a collection of persons, each of whom is the object of unconditional divine love.

 

In his encounter with the rich young man and in the exchanges that follow it Jesus has a lot to say about how we conceive of society. He has a lot to say about how wealth, property and family all conspire to distort the loyalty that our primary relationship should command. The young man is good-hearted and eager to please, but the possessions that he loves mean that God's claim on him will always have to compete with the business affairs and commercial anxieties that fill his head. He sees himself as an individual in a matrix of relationships which he has chosen, just one of which is with God. Jesus addresses the complexity directly.  "Sell what you own" he advises. In other words, stop trying to amass an identity for yourself; stop relying on what you own to create your conception of who you are; stop building yourself up as one individual among many. Remember instead who you really are: God's beloved. Rely  instead on who you really are: God's beloved. Give away everything else. Don't build up, and you will discover the treasure of heaven.

 

The rich young man goes away grieving and we do not hear of him again. Yet all who respond to the call to follow Jesus are asked to do what the young man was asked to do. They are asked to give up everything that they cling to, everything that distorts their loyalty to their primary relationship. This is what we call Baptism, in which God washes away every trace of present sin and through which God offers a sure route home from all future sin. Try hanging on to wealth or position; try hanging onto brothers or sisters, aunts or uncles when you are plunged into the healing and cleansing water. Baptism is an assertion of our primary relationship with God; it reminds us of our duty to it; and it underlines its fundamental significance for everything we are.

 

So where does this leave last week's proposals? Perpetrators of anti-social crime offend against the primary relationship, against the truth of God's eternal regard for every one of us. But a system of justice that panders to us as individuals, a system of justice that neglects our common origin in God, in a God who gives each of us equal eternal worth, offends against that truth as well. We of all people have an interest in the treatment meted out to alleged offenders. After all, we worship one. Faith compels us to see ourselves in them, and them in us, too. Amen.

 

 

Sunday 7 October 2012: Harvest Thanksgiving-The Screwtape Emails

My dear Wormwood,

 

Seventy years have passed since your uncle Screwtape picked up his pen to send you words of counsel. I suppose I ought to say that it feels like an eternity, but demons who inhabit everlasting fire know what eternity feels like, and it feels a good bit longer than seventy years. And now that I have picked up my pen I find that pens have largely been replaced by keyboards and letters by electronic communications. 'The Screwtape Emails'. It doesn't have quite the same ring.

 

I am writing in response to your difficulties with the tiresome people of St Peter's Eaton Square: the shiny, happy central Londoners who are so smugly pleased to describe themselves as a growing community, a vibrant community, and an inclusive community. I know, nephew Wormwood, I know. It makes my horns droop, too. What is to be done with a collection of people who are so confident and so competent, and who have rarely ever been more so than now? This year alone they have staged a blockbuster Jubilee Fete and hosted the mother of all pig roasts. They have run a cafe on their portico and launched a new Mission Action Plan.   They have begun the rebuilding of their school and hosted their bishop, their Lord Mayor, and a celebrated Paralympian. Now they are planning a gala autumn party, a parish pantomime, and a four-week exploration of Luke's Gospel. There is no end to what they are willing to do. They seem utterly formidable, utterly beyond our reach. Our Enemy once urged his scatter-brained companions to consider the lilies in the sublime effortlessness of their beauty. St Peter's Eaton Square looks like a field full of them: gorgeous, exotic, unique.

 

But do not despair, Wormwood, do not despair, for their moment of triumph can yet be our moment of triumph. Today at St Peter's they celebrate Harvest Thanksgiving. They will bring to church tins of baked beans, boxes of tea bags and, because their postcode is what it is, bottles of extra virgin olive oil. These will be given to the poor. It is all part of the same tiresome pattern. People at St Peter's are ceaselessly active. They do things. But you and I have something in common with the Enemy. And that is that we see them as they really are. Confident, of course; competent, definitely; active, certainly. The sun shines in SW1. But the sun always casts shadows. So they are also ridden with anxiety, crushed by fatigue, bruised by their relationships, disappointed in their hopes, and hurting bitterly. And all that, my dear nephew, gives us plenty to work with.

 

The more successful they seem the harder it is for them to acknowledge the shadows. They can raise £20,000 from a church fete, cook canapés to die for and plot strategies for their children's schooling that would shame Napoleon Bonaparte. How can they also be exhausted, stressed, and angry? The Enemy knows that they are, of course, and he loves them for it. That's the whole dreary point of the Enemy. He wants the disposable razors and the instant coffee. He wants their home-baked cakes, he wants their committee membership, he wants them to erect marquees and hand out hymn-books in church. But he also wants their weariness and their pain, their dysfunction and their dis-ease, their depression and their despair. The Enemy knows that lilies flower only briefly. He knows that for every luxuriously extravagant bloom, wondrous to gaze upon, there is a brown and shrivelled-up stick, excruciating to gaze upon. Being the Enemy he gazes upon both, knows them to be one and the same, and loves them nonetheless. And if he gets his way he will go on loving them until the dryness and the deadness and the lifelessness have been pruned away and glorious, abundant, eternal life springs up in its place.

 

It's a frankly appalling prospect, but, luckily for us, the people at St Peter's don't get it. They still believe that the only harvest that matters is the harvest of their success. They still believe that everything else is to be hidden away. I hope you'll understand the opportunity that this creates for us. Let them believe in the myth of their confidence and their competence. Let them believe that they are world-beaters. Let them believe that it's what they do rather than what they are that ultimately counts. Let them believe all that, and the poor fools have purchased a one-way ticket to destruction. How wonderful.

 

They must never know that it could be different. They must never know that the Enemy longs for it to be different. They must never know that they could do more than nod at him with a 'sorry God', 'please God', 'thank you God'. They must never know that they could stop, that they could be still. They must never know that they could look at themselves in the light that shines so blindingly from the Enemy's face. They must never know that if they did they would begin to discover who they really are - the cherished objects of unmerited, unconditional, everlasting love. But I'm not going to tell them that and neither - I am quite sure - are you.

 

With my most infernal regards, as ever,

 

Your affectionate uncle,

 

Screwtape.