Sermon Archive
Responsibility
Sermon preached by John McLuckie at Matins on 16 March 2003
Genesis 27.1-29 ; Luke 10.25-42
On Tuesdays, I receive instructions from Lucy, who's four, about how we'll spend my day off. This is generally straightforward and is mainly a question of what worthy activity will follow our visit to some indulgent café. We tend to alternate between an art gallery one week and the Museum the next week. Lucy refers to the Museum as the 'stuffed animals', since they are the only things she really wants to see there. She has a particular thing about the rats in the sewer and the wonderfully gothic millennium clock. The other thing she likes there is a film presentation about the ecological dangers facing our planet. The presentation is entitled 'The World in our Hands' and makes clear the responsibilities of our species for creating the mess we're in and our equal responsibility for sorting it out. The message is clear and incontestable, but I do have a bit of a problem with it. It's really a tactical problem and is to do with the paralysis that many people feel when faced with a responsibility which is simply too big. I can recycle my cans but I can't fix the ozone layer. I can make compost but I'm not sure what to do about nuclear pollution.
On a more personal level, we all know the dangers faced by people whose lives feel simply unmanageable. The temptation to duck out completely is huge. I think the same thing happens when we're faced with global enormities such as ecological meltdown or unfettered conflict. The story goes that the Holy Synod in Russia, on the day that the Revolution broke out in its full force, was discussing the colour of vestments to be used during Lent. I'm afraid I can believe it. So what about Lent? What about this season of self-examination and penitence? Isn't this a time for considering our responsibilities and doing something about our failure to meet them? Maybe so, but not, I think, in a way that simply makes us feel all the more useless in the face of unmanageable problems. I really don't think we do ourselves any favours by bashing ourselves over the head for things we can't possibly sort out. That's where today's readings come to the rescue, because they help us think through what are the limits and realities of our responsibilities.
The wonderful moral complexity of the Genesis reading is a good place to start. Here we have one of the major Matriarchs, Rebekah, and one of the major patriarchs, Jacob, of the Hebrew tradition acting in a manner that can only be described as morally questionable at the very least. They conspire together to con Esau out of his blessing from Isaac, the men's father. They act despicably with a heady mixture of disguise, contempt and plain deceit. They pass off a goat stew for prize game. They pass off a sly stay-at-home man for his father's beloved and wholesome son, maybe not the sharpest tool in the box, but his father's favourite. Surely such behaviour cannot be condoned by scripture? The text is careful not to pass judgement on the behaviour of the characters. The writer is skilful and such judgements are left to the reader. Good stories don't preach at you. (I imagine good preachers don't either, but that's another sermon!). What the story does do is to present us with other characters whose behaviour must be questioned. Esau is hardly a good candidate for the responsibilities of his expected role - his judgements are not that keen and he's already given his parents some amount of grief. However, we cannot but feel real pathos in the portrayal of the cheated brother. The bigger question hangs over the behaviour of Isaac himself.
Jewish tradition, being a subtle thing, spotted long ago that Isaac's actions are hardly those of a straightforward victim. The rabbis have, for a long time, wondered if Isaac really knew all along what was going on. There are lots of narrative clues that suggest just that. He's never really convinced by Jacob and Rebekah's scam and uses every sense bar sight to establish the son's identity. He touches, smells, listens, tastes the stew, but simply refuses to see what is in front of him - this is not Esau! Isaac is, in short, refusing to accept responsibility for what he really knows: Esau is not up to the job of bearing the duties his blessing will bring. Jacob is, but he doesn't have the moral courage to be honest about this with his sons. Instead, he colludes with a shabby scam and weeps over its consequences. He has failed to take responsibility for the one thing he is truly responsible for - his own actions.
In a similar way, the two stories from the gospel today ask whether we might take responsibility for ourselves. The Good Samaritan is not a story about who my neighbour is. It's a story about taking responsibility for the need I see right in front of me. The story of Mary and Martha is not a story about action versus contemplation as we've often been led to believe. It's about the virtue of Mary taking responsibility for her choice and Martha complaining about her sister's choice as if her own had been made for her by someone else. When faced with a complex world, the stories of our Jewish and Christian traditions offer not a call to unattainable universal responsibility, nor even a call to be burdened by the choices of others. Instead, they invite us to consider what it means to take responsibility for the very particular part of the creation that is me. This piece of the universe bounded by my flesh is a small thing, but large in its interactions and its inheritance. And this small universe of my self is all that I have ultimate responsibility for. I don't think that's a selfish or unambitious thing. On the contrary, it is a humble realisation of the limits God places on our weight of responsibility. Lent, then, is not a time for increasing the burden of our guilt for what's wrong in the world, it's a gentle invitation to consider the limits and the reality of our responsibility. I don't think there's great merit in outdoing one another in culpability, but there are particular decisions we each face more or less on our own and we seek, with God's grace, to meet those decisions creatively and with a realisation of where our responsibility starts and ends. May we have the moral courage always to choose the better part and the humility to accept with joy the limits within which we exercise the beautiful freedom of the children of God.
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