News

Are you the Clerk or the Proper Officer?

It’s not for the Clerk to raise a Point of Order.

You have no authority here, Jackie Weaver, no authority at all!

I don’t apologise for quoting from the now infamous Handforth Parish Council Zoom meeting, only sorry that I couldn’t do it last week, when the Precentor offered me a nice bottle of wine if I could work it in.

Sadly, it’s only relevant now, as we consider the Pharisees throwing the rule book at the woman taken in adultery (and incidentally not at the man involved, who by Law was equally condemned). They were throwing the book at her and fully intending to follow up with stones.

And I’m going to suggest that the scene played out in the gospel is a scene played out in our hearts.

There are some people who act without conscience, but most of you listening will mind not just about your transgressions, but also about your shortcomings, failures and weaknesses. I’m losing count of the number of people who say they feel useless in lockdown. I mean, what can you actually achieve with your life on mute, and even if you do get something done, how can you know whether anyone cares about it?

We stand condemned, and our inner voices tell us that we’ve been caught in the very act of shame. That we are guilty, according to any reasonable measure of goodness. That the misfortunes raining in on us like rocks are the punishment for failing to keep the Rules, however hidden they were from our daily reckoning.

This is the game that can grind us down, playing Pharisees and Sinners.

Jesus doesn’t play these games, though. When the condemnation comes thick and fast, he interrupts by bending down and writing on the ground. The word he will give is going to come from a different place.

‘Let anyone among you without sin cast the first stone.’

Historically this was of course aimed at external accusers, but psychologically, let’s think: are these voices those of our inner critic whose standards aren’t those of a god but rather of an idealised version of ourselves who can never exist? Are these voices allowing uncomfortable truths about our real urges and impulses to be repressed?

While we’re playing the game of Pharisees and Sinners, we shall never know.

Jesus knows, however, that the voices have no right to condemn us. He has the right; he really knows what righteousness is, but he straightens up and says to the sinner’s face, ‘Neither do I condemn you’.

So the game is over: there’s not going to be a trial beyond this trail of facing Jesus Christ. Christ has spoken; she and we have been acquitted; and because of this she and we are free to live a completely different life – a completely different life, free from the bonds and burden of Rule-book righteousness.

Ash Weds is a wonderful chance for us all to begin again, to be rid of the rubbish in our head that tells us that we deserve punishment, and that we stand before a punishing God without a leg to stand on.

It’s not punishment that we are dust, however miserable we may feel about being limited, lonely, lost or lacking.

It’s the ground from which we hear a life-giving word from Christ, as he straightens up to face us, to tell us that we are loved and accepted, trusted and treasured, called and commissioned, exactly as we are, in all our dustiness.

Can we get this loving acquittal into our heads and heart? That is the journey of Lent. And maybe by the time we see him dying for us on the cross, accepting our hateful condemnation rather than meting out his, we will start to believe it.

‘Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.

Turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ, our Saviour.’