Sermon Archive
What are you going to do about it?
Sermon preached by Kenneth Boyd at Holy Communion on 12 March 2006
Genesis 27:1-29 ; Luke 10:25-42
'Journalism', G K Chesterton once remarked, 'largely consists in saying "Lord Jones dead" to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive.' Perhaps that was a little unkind. But Chesterton himself was a journalist; and it's certainly true that the media bring to our attention many people we otherwise might never have heard of. Some of these people clearly are very pleased to get this media attention, which helps to advance their careers; and the cult of celebrity is nothing new. As long ago as the 18th century, a philosopher observed that 'journalists have constructed for themselves a little wooden chapel, which they call the Temple of Fame, in which they put up and take down portraits all day long'. And part of this temple too, now as then, is the media's rogues' gallery, where 'they put up and take down portraits all day long' of people, sometimes quite ordinary people, accused rightly or wrongly of various crimes or misdemeanours, who would much prefer that the rest of us had never heard of them. But then again, to their credit, the media's portraits have always included others, victims of injustice or of society's neglect, whose cause is taken up by campaigning journalists, and whose rightful claims are, in some cases, thereby vindicated.
There is much to be said for as well as against journalism then. But in all this, one thing rarely changes: 'time, like an ever-rolling stream, bears all its sons away'. Those who achieve celebrity, or notoriety, or occasionally vindication, in or through the media, are, almost all, soon forgotten by the rest of us – just as, no doubt, we in our turn will be when there is no-one left who remembers us. Who, for example, in the 21st century remembers the name, notorious in early 20th century newspapers, of George Edalji [Aydlji], a 28 year old Birmingham solicitor sentenced to seven years penal servitude for maiming and murdering horses? And who remembers the major role played in trying to establish Edalji's innocence by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle? The answer to that question perhaps will be obvious only if you happen to have read a fascinating novel published last year called Arthur and George. Written by Julian Barnes, one of our best contemporary novelists, it tells the story of these two very different men: George, whose father was an Indian Parsee vicar in rural Staffordshire, and who was criminally convicted in part through racial prejudice; Arthur, born in 'shabby-genteel' circumstances here in Edinburgh, the doctor who became a famous novelist and then took up George's case, but eventually, even with the help of some newspapers and sections of the legal profession, achieved only his early release, without any official admission of wrongful conviction or compensation.
Arthur and George is, in the very best sense, a historical novel. Its author, Julian Barnes, has carefully researched the legal case and the lives of these two men, and told their stories with great psychological insight and literary skill. The case itself also is historical, in that the deficiencies in English legal processes it revealed led to the creation of the Court of Criminal Appeal. But at the end of the novel, George, readmitted as a solicitor, surviving into the 1950s, and happy to be remembered only as the author of a small textbook on railway law, slips out of history. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, by contrast, lived on after his death in 1930 - initially, so his fellow spiritualists believed, in appearances at séances worldwide, but for the general public as the creator of Sherlock Holmes, and for Edinburgh, perhaps, most substantially in the statue of his detective raised in his memory at the top of Leith Walk. There is no doubt which of these men is most likely to live on in history. Yet the humble George was just as much a human being, with human feelings, as the famous Sir Arthur, and for the patient way he bore the cruel injustices heaped upon him, he has at least an equal claim to be remembered.
Yet that is not how history goes, and the great Sir Arthur himself, like 'Ozymandias, king of kings', has in the end only a very minor part in the grand narrative of humanity. A similar fate also befell Esau, about whom we heard in our Old Testament lesson today. One of the most influential stories human beings have ever told, is that which begins with Abraham and Isaac (according to St Matthew's gospel, the first ancestors of Jesus Christ) – and then continues through Jacob, Isaac's younger son. Jacob gained this place in history, not by right, but by his mother's favouritism and by tricking his blind old father Isaac. The older son, conveniently got out of the way by his mother while the deed is being done, arrives too late for history to record the genealogy of Abraham, Isaac and Esau – and, as the story continues beyond where we read it earlier, Esau, with no blessing left for him, unjustly disinherited, 'lifted up his voice and wept'.
Esau does not entirely pass out of history at this point however. Nor apparently did he continue simply to weep. Picking himself up, at first he vows to kill Jacob for tricking him out of his inheritance, but then, discovering that Jacob has made a swift exit to Mesopotamia to escape his revenge, he decides to get on with his life and apparently does quite well for himself. Twenty years later, when a nervous Jacob returns, with the wives and children he has accumulated in the meantime, and with gifts designed to appease Esau, Esau is more than generous. Seeing Jacob approaching, 'Esau ran to meet him, and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept'. The brothers are reconciled, and the reconciliation is permanent. When their father dies, they meet again to bury him. But when their father dies, it is still Jacob and not Esau who stands in the historic line; and it is Jacob, renamed Israel, who becomes the father of that people. Esau too becomes the father of a people, the Edomites. But the Edomites, although initially regarded as brothers of the Israelites, in time become their enemies; and eventually, in the era between the Old and New Testaments, when Edomite political power has waned, they are forcibly incorporated into the Jewish people. In terms of biblical history, it is the story of Jacob and Israel, not Esau and Edom, that prevails.
Now all of this, of course, may seem deeply unfair. 'How odd of God/ To choose the Jews', as the old rhyme has it. But in an interesting recent commentary on biblical stories such as this – and there are quite a number of biblical stories in which minor characters like Esau are unfairly treated – the literary critic Gabriel Josipovici observes that the Bible, especially the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament) is above all realistic… in its assessment of the human condition… It starts from the position that it is a fact of life that some are more fortunate than others, that fathers, [and in Jacob's case, we might add, mothers] love some of their children more than others. This may not be fair, but then why should life be fair? The Hebrew Bible, accepting this premiss, concentrates rather on the question: How do we respond to the unfairness of life?
Josipovici, I think, is touching here on something crucial for our understanding not only of Esau's circumstances but also of our own: how, for example, to respond to the disappointment of being rejected, of not being the parents' favourite? That was Esau's question, and we have seen how he responded to it – by letting his anger cool, by getting on with his life, and by being generous when Jacob returned. George Edalji, if Barnes' novel is to be believed, responded in a similar way. And, albeit in less dramatic ways, the question is one to which most of us may have to respond at some time in our lives. As Josipovici puts it: That is the way the world is, [the Bible] says, neither fair nor equitable. What are you going to do about it? How are you going to live so as to be contented and fulfilled? To these questions, Josipovici adds, the Bible gives us no theoretical answers. Rather, it 'shows us various forms of response to these questions' in the stories it relates.
How Esau responded to life's unfairness is one of these stories. He let his anger cool, he got on with his life, and he was generous. Our New Testament lesson today – Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan –tells a not dissimilar story. Samaritans were people of mixed ancestry, part Jewish, part not: it's possible, I suppose, that the Samaritan in the story may have had Edomites, Esau's people, among his ancestors. But certainly, by the Jewish establishment, Samaritans were regarded as not pure, but half-breeds – much the same prejudice as some 19th century English people in rural Staffordshire had against George Edalji because his father was an Indian Parsee and his mother English. At any rate, the Samaritan had every reason to have a chip on his shoulder. The world was neither fair nor equitable to him. So why should he bother with the man, quite possibly a Jew, lying half-dead by the roadside? As a world-weary doctor in one of Chekhov's stories asks: 'why hinder people dying, if death is the normal and lawful end of us all? What does it matter whether some tradesman or petty official lives, or does not live, an extra five years?' The good Samaritan, by contrast, was not beguiled by such questions. The crucial question for him, rather, was 'What are you going to do about it?'
The world is neither fair nor equitable. What are you going to do about it? Of course, we cannot prove by intellectual argument that what we do makes any ultimate difference. We cannot prove that the generosity of Esau or the Good Samaritan, or ourselves if and when we are generous, has anything more than the temporary effect of a sticking plaster on one or two of this world's countless wounds. But then, what can we prove intellectually about such a vast question? Despite all the knowledge we have gained in recent centuries, the ultimate questions about ourselves – Who are we? How ought we to live? What may we hope for? – are no nearer any agreed philosophical or scientific answer than they ever were. It is all a very great mystery. But what if our response is part of the meaning of that mystery? What if our generosity not only helps to heal another individual and ourselves, but also is what the wounded heart of the universe awaits, so that sad time may be transfigured into glad eternity? Here, of course, we reach the limits of human language and human knowledge. But still faith whispers, urgently: 'What are you going to do about it?'
The quotation by GK Chesterton is from The Wisdom of FatherBrown (1914)
The 18th century philosopher is Georg Christoph Lichtenberg Aphorismen (1904)
Arthur & George by Julian Barnes is published by Jonathan Cape (2005)
The quotations by Gabriel Josopovici appeared in his Commentary: 'An open Book: How the Bible places realism above consolation' Times Literary Supplement [No 5369] February 24 2006: 12-13.
The world-weary doctor is Dr Ragin in Chekhov's short story 'Ward No. 6' [section V].
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