Sermon Archive
Childlike hope
Sermon preached by Kenneth Boyd at Holy Communion on 6 July 2007
Genesis 24:34-38,42-49,58-67 ; Romans 7:15-25, Matthew 11:16-19,25-30
I had the pleasure last Thursday evening of taking part in an event to launch the latest book by one of my former university colleagues, Dr Hazel McHaffie. Entitled Right to Die, it is a novel about a highly intelligent and independent young journalist, who has a slowly progressing, degenerative and wasting disease, from which he will eventually die, but not until he has become utterly dependent for every physical need on his family and professional carers. By skilfully telling his story, the novel is also an education in all of the ethical arguments for and against voluntary euthanasia or assisted dying; and on Thursday evening the book launch was followed by a debate about those ethical issues, with speakers including Jeremy Purvis, the Borders MSP who has been trying to introduce legislation on the subject in the Scottish Parliament.
Now I’m not going to go into all those ethical arguments now, but one aspect of the debate struck me as particularly interesting. It was that speakers on both sides, for and against euthanasia, often appealed to the same idea – the idea of human dignity. Those who wanted to legalise assisted dying spoke of the loss of dignity suffered by people like the young man in the novel; and they argued that if people in such circumstances asked to be helped to die, so that their suffering should not be prolonged, then the way to respect their human dignity, surely, was to respect their wishes and agree to gently end their lives by medical means.
But those opposed to legalising euthanasia spoke of human dignity very differently. Human dignity, they argued, is something that never can be lost, even by the terrible consequences of cruel diseases; and the way to respect that essentially human dignity is to treat dying people, not as we would an animal, by putting it out of its misery, but as a fellow human being, by accompanying them on their last earthly journey with care, compassion, and all the alleviation of their suffering that medical means now make possible, until they sleep away and die naturally. It is not undignified, they said, to be utterly dependent on others at the end as at the beginning of our lives. It is an illusion to imagine that we can always be in control of everything that happens to us in life or in death.
Now there is something to be said both for and against each of these views of human dignity. Dignity is not necessarily lost by being physically helpless and dependent on others: it depends on how others and the person involved see and respond to these circumstances. The risk in legalising voluntary euthanasia as ‘dying with dignity’, moreover, is that it may confirm the view that to be dependent is to lose one’s dignity, and so make our society less willing to respond in the often demanding ways that respect the essential human dignity of each one of us. Yet on the other hand, respecting other people’s considered wishes about how they themselves want to die also is a way of respecting their essential human dignity, and it is surely wrong to prolong avoidable suffering.
Because there are such strong arguments both for and against legalising voluntary euthanasia then, it is very difficult for some of us to come down on one side or the other of this debate. But part of the difficulty, I think, may be precisely because we see it as a debate, with one side or the other trying to persuade public opinion that it alone has the right answer. There may well be no one right answer; and as politicians learn to their cost, public opinion can be fickle, being persuaded one way today and the other tomorrow. What Jesus says in today’s gospel is as true now as it was then:
To what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.’
When we are confronted by this, or indeed by many of the other moral dilemmas of modern life, then, and if we are unwilling or unable to come down firmly on one side or the other of the debate, must we just confess that it is all too difficult for us? Have we no guidance from the Bible, from Tradition, from Reason, from the Spirit? If we want the right answer in all circumstances to be given to us, I think we will be disappointed. But if we are looking for help in how to answer such questions when they actually arise for ourselves or for others, I believe we have important clues to guide us, not least in today’s epistle and gospel.
In his letter to the Romans, for example, agonising over not doing the good he wants but the evil he does not want, St Paul reminds us that, confronted with life’s conflicts and dilemmas, we are limited, both by the weakness of our human understanding and by the frailty of our human nature. Yet St Paul does not give up hope for himself or for humanity. What reason has he for that hope? St Paul thanks God through Jesus Christ for it; and in today’s gospel Jesus thanks his Father for revealing the truth not to the wise and intelligent, but to infants. What kind of truth can be revealed to infants? Not doctrines, dogmas or philosophies, but the truth of hope, an awakening in the human heart of hope, a greeting of each new day with hope, an overcoming of dullness and despair with hope, a mood of hope in which to tackle life’s challenges, and ultimately the last earthly challenge of death.
But isn’t what St Paul and Jesus are speaking about, specifically Christian hope, in God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the truth of which can be known only through the Son. In today’s gospel Jesus says: ‘no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him’? Yes, but who has the wisdom to say to whom the Son chooses to reveal himself, and in what mysterious ways? The Church’s all-too-human attempts to identify and restrict those to whom the Son has revealed himself are repeatedly undermined by its own gospel, of the Word made flesh, not words, and of the Spirit going out into all the world. If the truth is the truth of hope, of an awakening in the human heart of the hope whose seed was planted in that heart by the Creator, then whether or not that truth has been revealed to anyone, ultimately is known only to one unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid.
Nevertheless it is hope, awakening in human hearts and illuminating them that the Church, at its best, across the centuries has nourished against all evidence to the contrary. And hope, awakened in human hearts by the Son and the Spirit, in whatever way they choose, has encouraged human beings to believe that the universe is meaningful and can respond to our questions. Thus, despite some of the Church’s worst efforts, it is hope, encouraging a great deal of hard work, that has enabled science and technology to develop, to flourish, and to ease the lot of so many. So much scientific and technological progress has been made in recent centuries indeed, that modern life is sometimes described as the coming of age of the human race. But perhaps a more apt description would be the adolescence of the human race. It is because we have not yet fully grown up that we still want the certainty of having the right answers in our debates, and that we are often so intolerant of one another’s weakness and frailty.
How does hope help when we are confronted with life’s conflicts and dilemmas? Again, it is not by providing us with answers or certainties. It is, rather, by encouraging us never to give up on growing up – on growing up into people with the maturity to understand life and death ever more adequately, and to respond to them ever more appropriately. This is the task of a lifetime, never fully accomplished; and it does not necessarily make life’s conflicts and dilemmas any easier; indeed it may make them more difficult. What is right for one person in one set of circumstances, may be wrong for others in another; and while there are commandments, rules and precepts, inherited from the wisdom of the ages, that we must pay heed to, mature wisdom is learning how to interpret those commandments, rules and precepts in the circumstances we and others find ourselves in. True wisdom moreover is learnt only by first making many mistakes and by being repeatedly forgiven by one another. That is why, paradoxical though it may sound, to gain mature wisdom, we must retain childlike hope; and we must also allow that hope, as St Paul most famously reminds us, to be warmed and enlivened by love. Thanks be to God, there is still hope for all of us, in time and in eternity.
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