Posts Tagged ‘condemnation’

Elizabeth welcomes Mary

December 21, 2024

Advent 4 – 2024

Luke 1:39-35

Marian Free

In the name of God who alone can see into our hearts and who alone can judge between good and evil, right and wrong. Amen.

Many years ago, at church, I met a woman who worked as a prostitute. I’ll call her Jan. She was a remarkable person. After a powerful religious experience, she gave up drugs, alcohol and smoking! When Billy Graham came to Australia for what was to be his last visit, Jan attended a rally and was one of those who responded to the altar call. The team who were on hand to counsel and pray with those who had committed their lives to God recommended that she become a member of her nearest church. This happened to be the church where I was serving my curacy. As was the custom, the counsellor ran me to alert me to look out for Jan saying only that Jan had been at the rally and that she had made a confession of faith. 

There was no hint of judgement. No mention was made of her profession. This was something Jan shared over a meal after one of the services. She also felt safe enough to. tell the Parish Priest. You see, even though Jan had given up smoking, drinking and drugs, she was not in a position to stop working. Jan owed her drug dealers $5000 and no other way to repay them and, surprisingly, they were prepared to wait.

One day Jan rang me in tears. She was absolutely distraught. Her Christian psychologist had accused her of not being a true believer. Despite being a psychologist, he appears to have been a black and white thinker. In his mind, if Jan had truly given her life to Christ she would have given up prostitution. (He didn’t offer any advice with regard to the debt, nor did he offer to pay it for her.) Jan was made to feel worthless, worse, that she had been rejected by God.

Jan was a person of integrity. While she continued working, she refused to be baptised. (In her own mind prostitution and faith didn’t belong together.) That afternoon, it took me the best part of an hour to reassure Jan and to convince her that God knew her heart and that her faith was sincere[1].

I remember being astounded that the supporters of Billy Graham (usually from a more conservative tradition) accepted Jan just as she was and saw her as a child of God. They made no demands and withheld judgement. I was absolutely aghast that an educated, psychologist, a member of the ‘caring’ profession thought that it was in Jan’s best interest that he insinuate that she was not worthy of God’s love as long as she continued working. In so doing, this psychologist utterly undermined Jan’s confidence that she was a child of God, utterly beloved and accepted and instead left her completely bereft, uncertain of her place in the kingdom.

How different the encounter between Elizabeth and her young cousin! Mary unmarried and pregnant, a source of shame not only for Mary but for her whole family turns up unexpectedly. Elizabeth, caught up in her own untimely God-given pregnancy would have been justified in sending Mary away, or at the very least have greeted Mary with questions, cynicism and judgement. After all, if Elizabeth welcomes Mary into her home, Elizabeth is, by implication, indicating her support of Mary’s out-of-wedlock pregnancy. Instead, led by the Spirit, Elizabeth is able to see God at work in Mary’s pregnancy and to rejoice that Mary’s role was to be more significant than her own. 

We take it for granted that Elizabeth should respond to Mary in this way because that is how Luke choses to tell the story. We forget that Mary has turned up unannounced, has made a difficult journey (on her own which in itself is shocking) over a considerable distance and that Elizabeth greets her before Mary has a chance to explain herself. It would not have been at all surprising had Elizabeth thought that Mary was trying to escape her situation and her shame, hoping that her cousin would provide refuge and allow her to hide away from the prying judgement eyes of her neighbours, but Elizabeth’s openness and receptivity to the presence of God allow her to see a different story.

We live in a world that is increasing quick to judge. We are drowning in social media that provides a platform for those who want to promote their own hardline views and those who find s a sense of self-worth in condemning others. 

The encounter between Elizabeth is a reminder of how important it is that we withhold our judgement of another unless and until we are sure that we know all the circumstances behind their behaviour, more important still is to err on the side of caution unless and until we are absolutely confident that we know the mind of God. To do less might be to reject and condemn something that is the work of God or to rebuff and judge harshly someone in whom God’s will is being enacted.  

Like so many biblical accounts, the lesson to take from the meeting between two cousins is not just the miracle of recognition, but the miracle of receptivity to the work of God – in the world and in each one of us.  When we are truly open to the presence of God in ourselves and in others and when we allow our judgement to be guided by the Holy Spirit, we are better able to see all people as children of God, to love and accept them as God does, and even to recognise that God just might be teaching us something through their presence in our lives. 

[1] A year or two later Jan rang to tell me that she had given up the work and was going to be baptised.

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Living with the tension

November 28, 2020

Advent 1 – 2020

 Mark 13:24-37

Marian Free

May I speak in the name of God, Earth-Maker, Pain-Bearer, Life-Giver. Amen.

What is it that keeps you awake at night? Is it a fear that someone is going to break in? Or perhaps you are tossing and turning because you have so much to do? Maybe you are anxious about a future event and are lying awake going through a variety of possible scenarios. Pain or ill -health may be robbing you of sleep or was it just something you ate?

I once met someone who was afraid to sleep in case he died during the night. Jim had been raised by his very conservative, Evangelical grandmother who had literally put the fear of hell into him. Whether she had done this as a means to control him or because she was genuinely concerned for his salvation is irrelevant. The end result was that Jim, though he believed in God and was in church every week, lived in terror. This beautiful, faithful man felt that he had done something that was so unpardonable that God would condemn him for all eternity.[1]

Jim’s grandmother came from a particular tradition – one that emphasized condemnation over love, judgement over compassion and control over freedom.

To be fair, while I don’t hold that view of faith, I can see how the Bible can be used to support it. As we have seen over the past three weeks, the parables of the wise and foolish maidens, of the talents and of the sheep and the goats, could all be used to paint a picture of a harsh and exacting God – who will shut the door in our face, throw us into outer darkness or send us to eternal punishment if we don’t conform to God’s exacting standards or if we are simply inattentive. Those parables, today’s gospel and much of the Old Testament can be used to present God as a terrifying being whose high standards are impossible for us to reach.

The problem with this view is that it emphasizes the negative at the expense of the positive and views the Bible through a particular lens that allows the reader to ignore or to discount any other way of looking at scripture. It fails to take note of the fact that, despite the fact that God (through the prophets) expresses frustration and anger God invariably relents and God never, ever stops believing in God’s people. This is why Jonah sits and sulks under a tree – God didn’t destroy Nineveh. It is why God pleads with the people to return to God. It is why God persists with a recalcitrant people and it is why God, through Hosea says, “How can I give you up O Israel? My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger. (Hos 11 1:9)

A God whose sole focus (and pleasure?) is to try to catch us out in wrong doing is not a God who would expose Godself to the malevolence of this world or who would risk everything to save us. God didn’t enter this world by tearing apart the heavens and creating cosmic and earthly disruption. God didn’t sit in judgement on the evil, the ignorance and complacency that characterized the first century. God in Jesus didn’t use punitive means to ensure our conformity or to command our respect. God in Jesus came in love in the hope that love would inspire love. God in Jesus went to the cross to demonstrate what love looked like.

Today’s gospel looks forward in time to Jesus’ return and uses Old Testament imagery to envisage upheaval and terror. The parable exhorts us to ‘keep alert’, ‘be on the watch’ and to ‘keep awake’. It could be used to feed our anxieties about judgement or but I suggest, especially in light of the the reflections of the last three weeks that we see it as a warning not to become complacent, not to take God (or salvation) for granted and as an encouragement to strengthen our relationship with God such that nothing could could come between us.

Advent is a time of contrast. We are called to prepare ourselves both to look back in awe that God should deign to become one of us and forward in expectation that God will come at the end of time and will call us to account. During Advent, we are reminded that, as Christians, we are called to live in creative tension – holding together the knowledge that God loves us unconditionally and the awareness that with that love comes responsibility to live up to that love.  We are to be over awed by the might and power of God and filled with awe that God should lay all that aside to become one of, one with us. We are to strive to be one with God while remembering that God understands and forgives all our shortcomings.

‘Keep alert’, ‘be on the watch’, ‘keep awake’. It would be awful if Jesus were to return and we failed to notice, or if we had paid so little attention to our relationship God that we were uncomfortable in God’s presence or if by our indifference we had forgotten the importance of God’s presence in our lives.

Advent provides an opportunity for us to set things straight, to restore the balance in our lives and in our relationship with God and to learn once again what it is to live with the tension of a God who is utterly beyond comprehension and who, at the same time is completely familiar.

[1] Fortunately, I was able to dismantle his negative view of himself and God and for his last few years he was at peace.

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