A Homily by the Very Revd Michael J Pitts for Lent 3
March 11, 2007
Isaiah 55:1-9
1 Corinthians 10:1-13
Luke 13:1-9
The Biblical readings of our liturgies for Lent this year centre round the theme of Covenant. Covenant, in scripture, refers to the agreement God freely offers to his people to be their God. In return, God expects his people to take on the covenant through living by certain laws. Contrary to the impression given in some quarters that there is one covenant and that the laws are clear, there are references to several covenants with different set of laws. The covenant with David in the past and a hoped for renewal of that covenant in the future, mentioned in our reading from second Isaiah this morning, are quite different from the covenant with the people through Moses. Of that I have spoken before, and no doubt will do again in the future. But for the moment I want to look at the particular feature of covenant relationship on which all three readings focus this morning, that of sin as the reverse side of the coin of covenant. Again, as with covenant, there are diverse understandings of the nature of sin in our scriptures, and the most egregious aberration is the tendency of Christians to equate sin largely with sex.
I want to concentrate on the Gospel reading. The incidents referred to must have a question mark against them historically. They are not mentioned by Josephus or any other source as far as I know, and the stories would fit well as narrative into a context after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE, which is when the gospel is being written. Is this Luke’s comment on the reasons for the fall of Jerusalem, namely, that the people had not changed their attitudes?
Possibly, but I want to leave aside the uncertain historical context, and look at the story. The question being put is, do sinners get punished? Behind that is the further question, is suffering to be seen as the result of sin? I am sure we have all heard horror stories of people suffering from HIV/Aids or cancer being told by their church that they are receiving the just rewards of their sin. It is important to notice that the clear unequivocal first answer in the story to both questions is:
No, I tell you… [i]
But Jesus continues:
…unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.
What is this warning about? I think we have to understand it in the light of what follows in the next part of the story
“A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, 'See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?' He replied, 'Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.'" [ii]
God is compassionate, gentle and patient. She is not waiting to zap the sinner with a thunderbolt or any other kind of suffering. So the problem exposed in the previous part of the story is not about the punishment of sinners: it is instead about our over-readiness to point to the sins of others, while assuming that we are the righteous. It is about the constant human problem of always wanting to define ourselves, whether as individuals or as collectivities, as different from, as and better than, other individuals or collectivities. Even when we begin to see and discuss this problem we tend to see it in terms of individual sin and sexuality, and we close our minds to its collective and political dimension.
So I want to spend the rest of this meditation looking at a very current political problem, the debate about reasonable accommodation. What I am about to say clearly comes from my orientation in Christian faith, but I want to try at least, to look at the question from a purely secular point of view.
Let me begin by saying that I find the very name given to this debate, “reasonable accommodation” to be troubling. For it immediately suggests that we have a definition of ourselves as the dominant culture, and that we tolerate, to a limited extent, the cultures of others in our society. We accommodate them but only insofar as we deem to be reasonable. This is not what I want to understand of a multi cultural society.
I will now, as I often do, oversimplify, but this time it may be sociologists and political scientists who will want to tear my thoughts apart, for a change, rather than historians and physicists! There seem to me to be three models for a society enveloping more than a singular culture. One is that provided, in theory, by France and by our neighbors, the United States of America. In France since 1902 and in the United States since the Bill of Rights of 1791 we have a secular state in which different cultures can co-exist. In the case of France, the original aim was to free the governance structures from the power of the Catholic Church. In the case of the United States it was to ensure freedom of religion by refusing to have any established religious structure. In both countries, in the past half century, the same principle has come to enable the co-existence of different religions and cultures. But the model only works if religion is a purely private and personal phenomenon. There should be no claim by religious collectivities to influence either social ethics or political processes. In the case of France, as we have seen recently, even any display of religious affiliation in a public setting is discouraged. But such a requirement strikes at the heart of what the world religions have always represented. Christianity, Judaism, Islam. Hinduism, and even Buddhism, have always assumed that an important part of their role is very precisely to influence the way society lives.
The second model is that I have already begun to describe, the model presumed by the concept of reasonable accommodation. A society has a dominant culture, which provides the structures, self-understanding and self definition of the society. People of other cultures are tolerated only to a certain extent, the extent which does not challenge the basic self-understanding of the dominant culture. In reality, as opposed to theory, this is the model which actually operates in the United States, where the dominant culture is the American way of life, which finds its roots in Christianity. Churches may not be established, but Christian religion in multifarious forms certainly is. But let us stay with Quebec. The problem with this model is that as soon as we start trying to define the dominant culture, we run into problems. Is it mostly white, mostly European or British colonial and mostly Christian? In that case those who are to be accommodated are non-white or non-colonial and non-Christian. Or is the dominant culture French-speaking with Roman Catholic roots? In that case those to be accommodated include non-French-speakers, and non-Catholics, like most of us. And where do the Cree, Ojibwa Innu, Mohawk and Inuit people fit in? What gives any group the right to define itself as the dominant culture, other than right established by political or military might?
The third model, and the one which I have always dreamed that multi-culturalism should be, is one where different cultures live together, whether majority or minority, pooling the political and ethical, as well as religious, resources of their cultures. Such a society would need to be in constant ongoing dialogue and debate. There would be ethical and cultural conflicts. An example would be the conflict between the right to maintain religious traditions versus the right of women or persons of non-heterosexual orientation to respect and equality before the law and in social life. Another example would be the conflict between the right to the security of persons and society versus the right to dress in certain ways, or the right to possess firearms. But such conflicts would be resolved in the process of social and political dialogue, with the education it would involve, rather than by the imposition of one worldview by a dominant group within society.
I have come a long way from Pilate and the Galileans, and from the gardener and his favorite tree. But I have always believed that our Gospel has a contribution to make to our understanding of society and its politics. And I believe that the Gospel challenges us to think inclusively rather than exclusively. Of course the question of who is inside and who is outside, who is “us” and who is “them” is not only a secular issue. We are currently facing the same issue in our worldwide Anglican Church. A key question in both church and secular society is whether an inclusive collectivity can include those who exclude. How we deal with that problem in our church many help us to deal with the same problem in world society.
[i] Luke 1:3, repeated in 1:5
[ii] Luke 1:6-9