Playing Games with God
by damianfeeney
A Sermon preached on Trinity 17
Readings: Isaiah xlv 1-7, 1 Thess i.1-10, John xxii 15-22
It’s easy to see this morning’s gospel as focusing on what our friends in the United States call ‘the separation of powers.’ ‘Give to the emperor’ ‘give to God’: Church is church, state is state. I’m not sure that that’s what’s going on here. In the first place, part of the paradox of Jesus’ answer to the Pharisaic disciples and Herodians lies in the belief that everything is created, hallowed and sanctified by God. There is no part of life or human endeavour that can be so privatised as to render it immune from God’s dominion and oversight, and that includes money with the head of a monarch or emperor on it. What we do with our money is a key question of faith and discernment, part of our rule of life. So perhaps there is something of a false distinction in Jesus’ answer. In any case, the Herodians would in all likelihood been in favour of the tax, as it was only Roman intervention which kept Herod and his followers in power.
Rather, what’s happening here, is that Jesus outwits those who are looking to beat him down by presenting him with a question to which there is no right answer without discredit. He evades their grasp, whilst at the same time tying them in knots, bringing to mind the words of Psalm 57:
they have dug a pit before me and will fall into it themselves .
Universities – and, indeed, theological colleges – are great places for jousts, paradoxes, sleight of word, competitiveness, intellectual japery of all kinds. Points scoring and one up-personship are, to a degree, inevitable, given the nature and character of debate. On one level, it’s part of the business of being a University at all. We should argue, not in the sense of rowing with one another, (hopefully) but so that we may travel closer to the light of truth. Thoughts, opinions and prejudices are refined by our coming up against ideas which are new, or different from our own. We can operate both with confidence in our own thoughts and yet with the humility to accept the different things we receive. I forget who said that true listening is only achieved if you are prepared to be changed by what you encounter, but they had a definite point. Debate, reasonably conducted, is crucial not only to our academic life, but also our political and civic endeavours. In some places this is more adversarial than in others, and Oxford is something of an epicentre for this kind of thing, and I put it to you that a considerable proportion of it – that devoted to self-aggrandisement and point-scoring – is an utter waste of time.
There is so much happening in the world which wants and deserves our attention, our compassion, our prayerful concern. Countries in turmoil, peoples at war, the hungry, the Aids-ravaged, the disease-ridden and the just plain forgotten. Their images invade our screens. And sometimes it seems too overwhelming, and we ask what good our prayers or charity may be, forgetting that part of our calling is to care, and to do so through every means at our disposal. ‘To care’ is not just an action – it starts with an attitude, a state of concern, which should be the birthright of every baptized Christian. And one of the reasons we have to care, even when we are fed up with caring, is that there are too many people who don’t care.
There are too many people who are prepared, like the Herodians, to go along with whatever will prop up their delusions of power and certainty. Not for them the moral agonizing about right and wrong, truth and falsehood – in Eliot’s words, they measure out their lives in coffee spoons, afraid merely for their own survival, afraid of the truth that will force them, blinking, into the light. Can we blame Jesus for being irritated by people of weasel words? Their task was not to seek the truth. Rather, they employed a sickly-sweet faux humility to push Jesus into a trap. But in the face of the one who is the way, the truth and the life they failed to do so.
The path of the Christian soul is littered with distraction. The path of those seeking the way to ordination and beyond is no clearer. We can waste our time, if we choose, in verbal encounters whose purpose is to make ourselves feel good (usually at the expense of another). We can waste our time being merely entertained when we should in fact be edified. But this time of concentration upon formation, prayer and study is precious, and all too short. This is where habits of hard work, thorough prayer and dedicated conviviality and fellowship are formed, to be continued as a witness to the people we will serve.
Above all, let us not insult God with point-scoring, feelings of moral superiority or any other time-wasting nonsense. For God sees through it all. Our vain and pathetic attempts to impress God are a waste of time, because God knows all the secrets of our hearts, and cannot love us more than he already does. We cannot play games with God. Before I was ordained I suggested a fear of mine to a fine and experienced priest. I hypothesized that I had thus far bluffed my way through the process of selection and discernment, through three years of academic, formational and spiritual endeavour, and now, on the verge of ordination to the diaconate, was feeling something of a fraud. The priest grimaced. I won’t say what word he used to describe me, but please be assured that it was very rude indeed. He then went on to say ‘You think you’ve been playing a game with God? You can’t do that. Actually, God has been playing a game with you. He has appealed to all your weakness and your silly vanity and everything else and he has skillfully manoeuvred you into the place where He wants you. Now shut up and get ordained’.
Any remaining shreds of moral superiority I might have had were dispelled on my deacon’s retreat, when the retreat conductor told me that God was only ordaining me because He couldn’t trust me to be a lay person. This is also painfully true. Don’t smile, because the same is true of anyone who is ordained. Those who offer themselves for ordination, and who explore God’s will for their lives, cannot but end up with a profound sense of inadequacy and unworthiness; once there, we must pray and trust that God will indeed choose us, and use us. Let me conclude with some words of George Herbert which have always resonated with me. They are from his poem The Priesthood, written in 1633.
Wherefore I dare not, I, put forth my hand
To hold the Ark,1 although it seems to shake
Through th’ old sinnes and new doctrines of our land.
Onely, since God doth often vessels make
Of lowly matter for high uses meet,
I throw me at his feet.
There will I lie, untill my Maker seek
For some mean stuffe thereon to show his skill:
Then is my time. The distance of the meek
Doth flatter power. Lest good come short of ill
In praising might, the poore do by submission
What pride by opposition.
Given at S Stephen’s House, Oxford, on 16th October 2011
