Readings: 2 Corinthians 4:6-11
Mark 2:23-3:6
There are many variants to this joke. A handsome figure of a man went to a tailor for a made to measure suit. He was a polite person who trusted professionals and so did not comment that it was not as comfortable as he had expected. One arm was too short, as was one leg, the waist was too large and the shoulders were asymmetrical. Indeed, to exit the tailors he had to disfigure himself and use his umbrella as a walking stick. “My what a wonderful tailor that is.” Said a bystander, “If they can make someone like him with such a complex posture, who knows what they can do for me.”
I have had a few made to measure suits, sadly only one made for me, most from Charity shops or family members have needed adapting. My one was for my wedding and is testimony to how my wife has enabled me to become twice the man I was when I met her.
Easter was a wonderful season exploring what the resurrection means. Towards the end of that time, we asked for God’s blessing on life (Rogation), celebrated Christ’s ascension, and then focussed on the gift of the Holy Spirit, and last week the full mystery of God in Trinity. Having looked in detail at the nature of God, this week we turn to what all this means for us as human beings. What are we like and how should we act. In the very technical sense, issues of morality.
Religion by its nature of binding people together in an identity is intricately intertwined with issues of morality, how one acts. For Christians, how we see God, and especially how God is seen in Jesus shapes our definition of what it is to be human and what how actions should be. This is why the ordinary Sundays are often referenced in relation either to the gift of the Holy Spirit, “Sundays after Pentecost” or the full mystery of God with “Sundays after Trinity.” Our belief that God made the whole of creation and includes it into the fullness of God’s definition, that God intervened in love to seek to heal and restore it (salvation) and pours onto it the lifeforce of the Holy Spirit should then impact all that we do. Do we act as God intends out of love and care and response?
This relatively simplistic approach to what it is to be human, “ones made in the image and likeness of God” gives to us both a gift and an obligation in terms of how we live. The gift through love of both the Son and the Holy Spirit should enable us to live out being part of a new creation, that is heavenly and puts us into an intimacy to be able to pray, “Our Father.”
However, the complexities of life combined with the essential freewill that we have been given means that we can struggle to shape our lives according to this fundamental definition.
If William of Wykeham was accurate in realising that how we act shapes who we are in the pithy maxim of “manners maketh man,” then sadly humanity is all too often an ill-mannered community that behaves more akin to “brute beasts that have no understanding.” (To quote from the Prayer book marriage service. Thus, structures and norms are needed to assist us both personally and collectively to act appropriately. These are the civilising norms that both informally and formally then shape lives.
They are a means to an end and not the end its self. This was something that exercised Paul as he sought to work out what the relationship is between a codified pattern of behaviour given by God and the gift by God of the Son and the Spirit. In our Gospel reading we have Jesus being confronted over the morality of the disciples. Their flagrant disregard for one of the fundamental “words” given to Moses about resting on the Sabbath. Jesus’ response includes a suitable case of legal precedence citing David’s actions. He then crucially and fundamentally shows how our actions and behaviours should be guided by our relationship to Jesus and who he is, and therefore how we should respond. Simply keeping to regulations and legal interpretations for their own sakes rather than enabling a “Fake it till you make it culture” simply makes a whole new world that is artificial and disconnected from the original author, in this case the author of life itself.
To return to the joke with which I began, we have enabled the cut of the suit to shape who we are and have become disfigured by it along the way as we have contorted ourselves to fit it. Jesus comes to free us and, as Whittier writes,
“Reclothe us in our rightful mind,
In purer lives Thy service find,
In deeper reverence, praise.”
St Paul realises for humanity to live this high calling, we embody a fragility. Human nature has demonstrated that it is delusional to think otherwise. Augustine later is to explain this in terms of original sin that is at the heart of what we became from our origins. We are akin to earthenware vessels, or cracked pots as I once preached, within which is poured the grace of God, a precious Cargo, which thankfully infuses into our very existence and when we are either poured out, or utilised we reveal the wonderful nature of what is contained within.
Our fragility can indeed lead to a brokenness. And at another time it would be interesting to explore the concept of Kintsugi, the Japanese technique of repairing broken vessels with precious metals to form a new item that shows its history but also a new embellished future. But that is for another day.
We need to ensure that the clothing of respectability, is neither simply discarding attire from others, “the hand me downs of my youth,” nor ill fitting garments, either because they were not quite right at the start, as in the joke, or of a previous age in our lives when we were differently shaped, as in my wedding suit. By recognising the value of what is within, namely the spirit of God, and the life that we live, akin to the celebrations of a bridegroom in Christ, we need to shape our lives. This is more binding that trying to work out the contemporary equivalents of eating or not eating corn on the Sabbath.
This is to be our moral code, our shaping ethic, as Paul to the Colossians wrote.
Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity” Amen
- The Revd Canon Michael Everitt