He was reflecting on the experience of a Methodist minister in London who had done a lot of work with people suffering from HIV.

Transcription

1 Sermon on John 10: The Problem of Goodness While I was at Wesley there was an old woman who always liked to ask me how I was as soon as I came in. How are you today Michael?. Before I could think about it and remind myself of this familiar routine, I d say, I m good thanks. As quick as a flash she d whip back to me in a slightly judgemental tone which seemed to say, ministers should know better, Only God is good. Accepting my rebuke, half crestfallen and half annoyed that I d fallen for the old trap again, I d concede: Yes, only God is good. By agreeing, I was, of course, encouraging her to repeat this game of theological baiting. I was listening to a lecture by Rowan Williams during the week. He was reflecting on the experience of a Methodist minister in London who had done a lot of work with people suffering from HIV. Among the minister s reflections was a posed question to the churches who sought to help. The problem, this minister, reflected, was that a lot of the help offered was, predicated on the assumption that the work and ministry with people living with HIV, was about good people, doing good, to other people. Good people, doing good, to other people. Goodness, so the minister said, was the problem. That with the best will and intention in the world such goodness actually intensified people s sense of isolation, rejection, and powerlessness, rather than healing it. Goodness, so defined - We have things together, morally, spiritually, relationally, materially - and we re here to help. - is actually toxic. Williams gave the pastoral example of the supposedly soothing refrain: God loves everyone, even someone like you. Such patronising platitudes don t lead those on the other end to say, even someone like me, wow, how wonderful. Rather, likely, it just makes them feel smaller than they already do. However unintentional, and however pure (supposedly) our motives are, such a view of goodness is subtly, but unmistakably, judgemental. 1

2 And there is almost no greater human temptation than to consider ourselves, to place ourselves in the place of the judge, the superior ones, over others. We do it all the time in little things and large. Goodness, so constructed, assumes separation in kind between the giver ( us whomever the us it might be, church, family, nation etc), and the receiver ( them the poor unfortunate folk who, without our help, will surely founder and die). International development thinking and practice, for instance, has changed over the past half century to address exactly this concern. For all the good intent of wealthier nations to help those less fortunate, it came with a vast sense of superiority; of our implicit goodness. And in the end this proved completely unhelpful to those most in need. The sense of powerlessness, disenfranchisement, and inadequacy was simply reinforced, rather than reversed. It was the problem of goodness. A different way needed to be found. Now you might be inwardly protesting, but isn t it good to be good? Aren t we supposed to clothe the naked, and feed the hungry, and tend to the sick, and love the outcast? Aren t we supposed to live lives worthy of the calling we have received? Isn t this exactly what Jesus is always going on about? Indeed, as it is a fruit of the Spirit, isn t goodness a virtue we should aspire to and nurture and pray for? Can any of us conceive of the Christian life without acts of charity and love? Or the church without the vast social interventions it has made across history to heal, educate, love by which the whole of society has taken on a more compassionate shape? These are indeed reasonable and faithful questions. Faith, without works, as James so memorably put it, is dead. 2

3 So much depends, though, on where we re coming from when we ask such questions. Of what position we assume in approaching them. If such questions arise from a place of indignity, of affront that anyone could possibly think of us fine upstanding folk as anything other than good, then we re identifying the very problem. The problem of goodness is in wanting to be understood, seen, regarded as good. It s kind of like in CS Lewis marvellous interrogation of human nature and good/evil in The Screwtape Letters. The senior devil, in instructing the junior devil as to how to bring human beings over to their nefarious way, suggests he help even the most humble people to become aware, and proud of their humility. And then when they realise they are resisting becoming proud of their humility, to become proud of that. And the beat goes on. In the Christian life, all self seeking, self righteousness, is spiritually fatal. Goodness is perhaps especially susceptible to being corrupted by such human attitudes, as we so earnestly want to be good, to do the right thing, to reflect the goodness of God. We would say we are good people. But when goodness becomes a vehicle for pride, it becomes something very different from the fruit of Spirit Paul lists in Galatians 5. Amid these reflections swirling around in our minds, we hear Jesus statement from our reading today in John 10, I am the good shepherd. It is one of seven such I am sayings we find in John s Gospel where Jesus speaks to the heart of his own identity and purpose. He declares, I am the good shepherd., whilst in a fierce disputation with the Pharisees. 3

4 We do well to recall that this dispute is bookended by them wanting to stone him on one side, and wanting to take him captive on the other. It s tense, in other words. And for the Pharisees, steeped in the religious life of the people of Israel, they would have remembered as they heard Jesus words that in Psalm 23, Ezekiel 34, and elsewhere, it is the Lord God Almighty who is identified as the shepherd of the people. This is no nice, comfortable, placid image of agrarian serenity (as stylised pictures often portray), Jesus is invoking the identity of God in his own self identification. I am the good shepherd Jesus says, the one who seeks, who protects, who leads, who guards, the people of God. And importantly, in the space of these nine short verses, five times Jesus reminds them and us, that the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. This is the incarnate, dying and rising Son of God, who identifies himself as the good shepherd of the people. This is the character of his life and mission. But there is more, the good shepherd not only identifies himself as the shepherd of the people, but as one with the people. I am the good shepherd, I know my sheep, and my sheep know me just as the father knows me, and I know the father I have other sheep who are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock, and one shepherd. It is incredible to think that Jesus compares our knowledge and relationship with him, to his with God the Father. We can barely scratch the surface of what this means, of the mutual interchange of divine love between Jesus and his father, which flows between Jesus and us by faith. But it is profound beyond words. This inter-connectedness, inter-relationality, what Williams calls the implicatedness of our identity, redraws the picture of our own identity and life. 4

5 God will not be God for us, without being God with us. God implicates our lives in his, our lives with his, by sending Jesus in our flesh, to live our life and die our death. There is no part of human experience that God doesn t enter into. Even death. Thus our healing, redemption, salvation, is achieved by God drawing our life into his by love. And just as God is with us in the totality of our human experience as Jesus dies on the cross, so in Jesus resurrection God s love and grace draws us up beyond death that we may live forever with him: one shepherd, one flock, one God. Our lives are implicated with Jesus, just as his life is implicated with his father s in heaven, and the holy spirit. He is our good shepherd, we the sheep of his fold. So what might this tell us about the nature of our life, goodness, and our relationship with others? To draw a well worn analogy we might think of a family in whatever guise. At its best, it s a context of deep implicatedness, deep inter-relationality and dependence. Deep love. Our identity as a person, while unique, is always bound up with our place as part of the wider family. Part of what makes me who I am is that I am a son, a father, a husband. My life is formed by my implicatedness with God and with others and the love that binds us together. When they are joyful, I share in it. When they are in pain, I feel it. I remember this last summer when we went and visited the grave of my little cousin Susannah who died when she was only three in tragic circumstances. 5

6 Even though I never knew her, still I felt this wrenching sadness next to her final resting place. There was a connection, a relationship which meant I was deeply moved in that time of remembering. My life was implicated with hers, and hers mine. My hunch is we can all recall a time when we have felt (perhaps are feeling even now) such connection; that as we stand in relationship, in solidarity with loved ones, their burdens become ours, their heartache ours, their grief, ours. We might even reflect on our own life for a minute and remember a time when we were really struggling for some reason, and perhaps recall that it was the loved ones around us, non-judgementally, who made the greatest difference. Viewed from this angle, we can never come from the place of judgement because we share in each other s brokenness, pain, suffering, mourning. We share in the human potential to mess life up. Thus any judgement we might bring is actually a judgement of ourselves. We are judging our own fallenness by judging that of others, pouring hot coals down on our own heads. Goodness is the problem. Thank you Lord for not making me like them, but aren t they fortunate that good people like me are here to help., is the attitude that assumes separation, not implicatedness, not solidarity, not, in the end, grace. I am the good shepherd., Jesus says. While it is certainly true that only God is truly good, untainted by sin and evil, the heart of the goodness of God is in his willingness to implicate himself with us in Jesus. And this is because God s goodness and God s grace are inseparable. Only a gracious God can finally be good, because he looks on our lives with such compassion, on our lack of goodness with such mercy, that he comes down alongside 6

7 us to shepherd us back into the fold, implicates his life with ours, the good shepherd and the sheep. Our identity in faith is always tied up with both God and our neighbour. We love one another, support one another, care for one another, not through our goodness, in the end my lady at Wesley was right, only God is good. Our willingness to parade a goodness we do not actually have or own, and to sit in the place of moral or spiritual judgement, is proof positive of that. No we love one another through grace. Through having our lives implicated in God s, and so, with our neighbours, our friends, strangers, even enemies. Everything we do as Christians is in company. We worship together, we confess our sins together, we serve together, we live and die, and are raised, together. And we need not ever fear, because God s very being and nature is grounded in togetherness, in inter relationality. The miracle is, even though there is nothing we can add to God, God does not need us in that sense, still God opens the circle of his love and draws us in: one flock, one love, one grace, in one shepherd. Amen. 7