Posts Tagged ‘obedience’

Being good or being godly – Joseph takes Mary as wife

December 20, 2025

Advent 4 – 2025

Matthew 1:18-25

Marian Free

With Joseph and Mary, and all the prophets and saints, may we never fear responding to the call of God, no matter how difficult, or outrageous the call. Amen.

Some of you may remember that on Advent 1 I said that being a Christian is not about being good, but about being in relationship. At the time no one challenged me so I’m thinking that we are all on the same page – that we understand that following Christ is the centre of our faith and that goodness flows from that relationship not the other way around. Goodness on its own does not build ties of loyalty, develop a depth of spirituality, encourage submission to the Creator of the universe, or create an understanding that even though we can never be good enough, we are loved and treasured just as we are. 

My view is this: being good does not in itself distinguish a Christian from a non-Christian. Anyone can be good in the conventional sense – by not breaking laws of the state or of the church, by being kind and thoughtful to others and by observing cultural norms. However, I would claim that goodness and godliness are two different things and that godliness does not always equate with goodness – in fact just the opposite. There will be times when being godly (allowing our lives to reflect the presence of God) may require us to be anything but good in the conventional sense. In fact, godliness may demand only that we ignore the norms of the society in which we live, but that we challenge and even overthrow those norms. 

For proof of this view, we need look no further than the example of Jesus, but here in the Christmas narrative are the first signs that responding to and following God does not mean following the crowd. In both Matthew and Luke, the Jesus’ story has barely begun when already we are confronted by the fact that through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus God is turning everything upside down. It is no wonder that the ‘good’ people of the day failed to see what was happening and that God was acting in ways that they hadn’t begun to imagine. 

It would appear from the gospels that the leaders of the day had begun to confuse goodness with godliness, observance of rules with relationship. For example, the Pharisees believed that if only they could get the minute details of the law right, they would be put right with God. The priestly class on the other hand appear to have relied on getting the Temple rituals right as a means of getting close to God. Society as a whole seemed to believe that not rocking the boat would enable them to keep on the right side of the Roman oppressors would. 

To be fair – they might have been misguided but they did believe that they had to put themselves right with God and they did it the only way they knew how – obedience to law and proper observance of ritual. The problem was that though they hoped that God would send a Saviour, they believed that it was their actions that would lead God to act, thus demonstrating that they had totally missed the point. Observance of rituals and law were simply evidence that, at least subconsciously, they believed that their own efforts could force God’s hand– that they, not God, were responsible for their own salvation. 

At the heart of John the Baptist’s message is the refrain: “Repent for the Kingdom of God is near”. The Greek word “metanoia” does not mean “to be sorry”, but “to turn.” Both John, then Jesus are calling the people not to be good, but to turn their lives around, to turn towards God, to live lives that demonstrate a relationship with the living God. From the very beginning faith in Jesus was never about being good, but about being godly, about allowing the divine in us to have full reign – which has nothing to do with goodness as it is usually understood.

Take the story of Joseph – whose first reaction is to separate himself from the pregnant Mary. If we forget the sentimentality that presents Joseph as holy and righteous and selfless and take a look at some hard cold facts, we see a different story. 

Joseph is minding his own business when he learns that Mary – his betrothed – is pregnant. He does not know who the father is only that it is not him.  Can you imagine how that news must have hit him? He knows the baby cannot be his, he presumably wonders if he completely misjudged Mary and he almost certainly feels cuckolded. Did Mary tell him or does he know because of the gossip that is swirling around the village? No matter how he responds his reputation has already been ruined. He will have lost face in the eyes of community. Mary’s shame will not only be his shame but will reflect on his whole family. 

Joseph was within his rights to claim compensation, to expose the situation further – even demand the legal consequences – Mary should be stoned to death. He does none of these things but resolves to quietly free Mary of her obligations to him. This will not diminish the shame but will spare Mary the added consequences of her pregnancy. Already Joseph has shown a casual disregard for the law, but when the angel appears his actions become even more radical. In response to God’s call, Joseph ignores his obligations to his church, his community and his family. He agrees to marry Mary and to raise a child who is not his own one consequence of which will be that the child will inherit and Joseph’s line may come to an end. Not only that, his actions mean that he will lose face in the eyes of his community. 

It is easy to read this as a sentimental story about an honourable man protecting his fiancé, but in the cold, hard light of a first century day, Joseph is both defying the law by not allowing Mary to be stoned to death and breaking convention through his decision to marry her regardless of the shame. But, and here’s the point, Joseph is being obedient to God even though obedience to God means disobedience to religious law, cultural norms and familial obligations.

Joseph chooses fidelity to God over observance of human law; he chooses godliness over goodness, so should we no matter the cost or the shame. 

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The impossibility of perfection

February 11, 2017

Epiphany 6 – 2017

Matthew 5:13-37

Marian Free

In the name of God who demands perfection, but who overlooks all our faults. Amen.

Most of us will have been astounded by the information coming out of the Royal Commission this week. The percentages of Roman Catholic priests and religious who are believed to have engaged in child sexual abuse are astonishing and distressing. (40.4% of all St John of God Brothers and 14.7% of the priests from Sale just for starters.) Not that we Anglicans have anything to be proud of – our percentages haven’t been published and we have escaped some of the worst excesses because we have very few religious orders and therefore fewer schools and children’s homes. What is interesting is that the revelations of child sex abuse has not led to vast numbers of practicing Christians leaving the church in disappointment or disgust. The reason for this, I believe, is that many people lost confidence in and abandoned the institution of the church decades ago.

Why then did people become disillusioned with the church? What caused them to abandon what was once a foundation of our society? It is impossible to be definitive of course and there are many and varied reasons why people no longer give up their Sunday mornings to attend church. My observations suggest there were sources of disquiet before our record on child sex abuse was exposed. Among these was the perceived discrepancy between what the church preached and how the church and its members behaved. It was not uncommon in the sixties and seventies to hear the charge of hypocrisy leveled at the church. There was a feeling among some that the church and its members did not live up to the standards it imposed nor did it live out the principles it proclaimed – “forgiveness of sins” and “unconditional love”. And there was disquiet with the way in which church applied these principles such that a woman who was abused by her husband was asked to forgive, but the abuser was not asked to stop the abuse or that a young woman who found herself to be pregnant was forced to give up her child. The church of the fifties and sixties often claimed the moral high ground when it was clear that its members were as vulnerable and flawed as the rest of society.

One of the problems, at least so I believe is the way in which the faith has been taught which in turn relates to the way in which the church assumed the role as the guardian of morals for society at large. So while it may not have been universally true, it seemed to me that the church placed an emphasis on “being good” or with keeping the Ten Commandments. There is of course no problem with encouraging goodness except that, not only does it suggest that being good is sufficient in itself and have the effect of emphasising obedience to a set of rules rather than on having a change of heart, it also indirectly suggests that it is possible, by adherence to the rules to somehow become faultless, to achieve perfection. The reality is, that while it is relatively easy not to steal, not to lie, not to commit adultery and not to murder, it is impossible for anyone to be absolutely perfect. So a person who is able to obey the rules might present an outward show of goodness or uprightness that may or may not hide an inner turmoil of selfishness, mean spiritedness or anger. Such a person is rightly called “hypocritical” because he or she makes out that they are one thing when really they are another and any discerning person can see through the surface to what lies beneath. It is this sort of double standard or false image that brings the church into discredit – a belief that what is on the surface is more important than what lies beneath.

It is exactly this sort of complacency that Jesus is challenging in the strange and disparate mixture of sayings that make up today’s gospel. It is not enough Jesus says to stop short of killing someone – anything less than unconditional love of the other is the same as murder. Not committing adultery is commendable, but if we have lustful thoughts towards someone to whom we are not married then we demonstrate that we are a long way from achieving the sort of perfection that rivals the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees. In other words, there is not a sliding scale of perfection – one is either perfect or one is not.

Jesus is demanding the impossible – or at least that is how it seems. No one can be perfect except God and Jesus who is God. But that is just the point – we can’t be perfect. Few if any of us would ever be able to achieve the sinlessness modeled by Jesus and the good news is that we do not have to. What we do have to do is recognise our imperfections and acknowledge that we are no better than anyone else. Instead of comparing ourselves with others in order to reassure ourselves that we are somehow superior, instead of papering over our inner weaknesses with a superficial show of obedience and goodness, Jesus suggests that we recognise that we share the same faults and flaws as the rest of humanity. Only if we have the courage to see ourselves as we really are will we be able to change into the people God wants us to be and only if we have the confidence to allow others to see beyond the surface will they accept that we really are authentic and that even though we fail, we are struggling to live the faith that we proclaim.

God demands perfection – not because perfection is possible, but because it forces us to recognise our imperfections and to throw ourselves on God’s mercy.

If we have been putting on an outward show, if we have been trying to fool ourselves and others, perhaps now is the time to be honest with ourselves, to let go of any falsehood and to realise that only if we recognise that we need to change, will it be possible for God to change us.

 

 

 

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Gospel Truth?

May 23, 2015

Pentecost – 2015

John 15:26-27, 16:4b-15

Marian Free

 In the name of God who has entrusted us with God’s very word. Amen.

Occasionally I watch an Australian crime drama set in the 1920’s: “Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries”. If you are unfamiliar with the programme, Miss Fisher is apparently an independently wealthy woman turned private detective. Phryne (yes, that is her name) has a personal assistant named Dotty. Dotty, under Phryne’s tutelage, assists her employer in the art of detection. Both women are unusually independent and intrepid for their time and place and both take risks that even today some of us would consider foolish. One of the on-going sub-plots is a growing affection between Dotty and a junior Police Officer, Hugh. Like most men, then and now, Hugh is protective of Dotty and would prefer that she keep herself out of danger.

When I caught up with the show last week I discovered that Dotty and Hugh are engaged. Dotty is a practicing Roman Catholic so Hugh needs to adopt Catholicism before they can be married in the Catholic Church. At first, Hugh is hesitant, but his enthusiasm grows when he discovers that a Catholic wife must obey her husband. (Remember it is the 1920’s!) Having clarified with the priest that he has understood this aspect of the faith correctly, Hugh becomes much more engaged in the process. An obedient wife, he thinks, will have to take his concerns and his cautions seriously, an obedient Dotty will stop taking risks and stop engaging in amateur sleuthing.

Unfortunately for Hugh, Dotty is not to be so easily restrained. In a private conversation with the priest, she happens to mention that Protestantism has a lot to offer – implying that if the priest insists on her obedience, she will leave his congregation for another. Poor Hugh is completely nonplussed when, at their next meeting, the priest points out that of course, times have changed, and that in the modern world one needn’t take the obedience clause absolutely literally!

I don’t have to tell you that in the Anglican tradition many things that were once held to be sacrosanct have been softened or even abandoned. It is almost impossible to believe that only fifty years ago people who were divorced could not be remarried in an Anglican church, children of parents who were unmarried were refused baptism and women were not admitted to holy orders. The debates that accompanied these changes were often fierce and uncompromising because those who opposed change found support for their position in the Bible and were unable to see things any other way.

It is tempting to think that there is such a thing as “gospel truth” but the reality is vastly different. What was “true” four thousand years ago for a nomadic Middle Eastern tribe cannot always be applied in a digital, technological twenty first century world. No one today would take all of the Old Testament literally. Medical science has come to the conclusion that circumcision can be detrimental rather than beneficial. The development of refrigeration means that the health risks of eating shellfish have been significantly reduced and I think that I am safe in saying that none of us believes that a woman caught in adultery should be stoned to death.

Even Jesus did not seem to think that the rules and regulations of the Old Testament were immutable. Where the Old Testament counselled: “love your neighbour and hate your enemy” Jesus taught “love your enemy”. Where teh Old Testament demanded “an eye for an eye”, Jesus said: “Do not resist an evildoer”. Where the Old Testament allowed divorce and remarriage Jesus claimed this to be adultery[1]. Just as Jesus did not feel utterly bound by the Old Testament, later New Testament writers did not feel obliged to follow absolutely the teaching of earlier writers. Colossians and Ephesians, then the Pastoral letters seriously altered Jesus’ and Paul’s inclusive view of the role of women. And over time societal values change. Both Jesus and Paul took slavery for granted, something that we find abhorrent today.

It is impossible (when human writers are concerned) to be completely dispassionate and not to allow one’s own views to permeate what is written. It is equally impossible to imagine that someone writing four or even two thousand years ago could envisage and therefore write comprehensively for a situation so far removed from their times as ours. Our scriptures – Old and New – have a great deal to say about love, forgiveness and compassion and about the care for the weak and vulnerable, but they have nothing to say about climate change, genetic modification or IVF. On many of the issues of our time, we are left to our own devices. Rightly or wrongly God expects us to work through the ethical issues of such things as stem cell research and to come up with answers that are right and just. Rightly or wrongly God has given us responsibility to determine how far we should take genetic engineering and other medical advances.

Because nothing stays the same and few things are true for all time, God has given us minds to use and hearts to feel. Far more importantly God has blessed us with the Holy Spirit. Three years were not nearly enough for Jesus to prepare the disciples and thus the church for every possible eventuality. He does not leave them/us unresourced but promises to send the Spirit who then, as now will guide them/us in all truth.

God who sent Jesus, Jesus the sent one, and the Holy Spirit whom Jesus sent empower us (the church) to think and act as God the Trinity would act. It is an awesome responsibility and one that requires of us a union with God – Father, Son and Spirit – such that their mind is our mind and that decisions that we make are in accord with decisions that they would have us make. In a complex and ever-changing environment, God has entrusted us not only with God’s word, but also with the power and the resources to interpret that word across time and space.

History has shown that time and again we have abused that trust, yet God has not withdrawn it. In our time and place let us demonstrate that we are worthy of God’s confidence and whatever the cost, let us give ourselves entirely to God, Creator, Redeemer and Holy Spirit so that all our decisions are wise, compassionate and just and consistent with God’s desires for us and for the world.

[1] Albeit to protect women from arbitrary abandonment.

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