TRINITY I, Year A: May 25 2008

Preacher: Fr Andrew Greany

A few years ago I was listening to Radio 4 one morning; one particular item concerned the decision of Heinz to cease production of salad cream. As so often happens, two people were set up by an interviewer to speak for and against this decision: one, so far as I recall, passionately in favour of continental salad dressing; the other, equally passionate about salad cream as purveyed by Heinz. Each of them put their point of view with enthusiasm and total conviction, interrupting one another and drowning the attempts of the interviewer to hold the balance. It was remarkable that salad cream should arouse such passionate feeling and such conviction. The next item on the programme was about abortion; I think that it related to the particular case of an under-age pregnant girl in Scotland. Again there were two protagonists, one pro-abortion, the other (the spokesman, I think, of a Scottish Roman Catholic Bishop or Archbishop) against. Here was a serious ethical issue; but the debate was in many respects just the same as the one about salad cream: ever more strident proclamation of each case, interruptions, raised voices, a real challenge to the interviewer.

I'm reminded of that juxtaposition whenever, as happened in Parliament last week, there's a great debate on some contemporary ethical question; and if you read or heard anything about the series of debates on human fertilisation and embryology bill, you will have been aware that, although commentators described it as a 'good debate', powerfully held opinions were expressed from polarised positions, often in very emotive language. The language of 'rights', for example, was used in an adversarial manner in the debate about the timing of abortions: the right of the mother to choose, the right of the unborn child to life. How any of us, whether MPs or the man or woman in the street, go about the making of ethical decisions is fascinating and revealing. Some people might say that they would use the Bible as a basis; yet within the pages of the Bible, there is not one single approach. In our OT lesson this morning, for example, from Leviticus, it is the revealed holiness of God which governs conduct: 'you shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy'. And after every injunction — whether it's about generosity to the poor and the alien, justice for all, or the forbidding of harbouring hatred in your heart towards another — the solemn words are repeated: 'I am the Lord your God'. Today's gospel offers a section of the Sermon on the Mount: in this, Jesus presents himself as the bringer of a more radical ethic than his forbears: 'but I say to you'; and the passage concludes with the challenging words 'You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect'. Many have sought to base their ethical principles on the radical challenge of this teaching; the holiness of God, if you like, is here enfleshed and verbalised in what Jesus proclaims. What Jesus says, that I seek to follow. So both these passages from scripture which we've heard this morning in their different ways ground their call to a particular way of behaviour in a divine call: 'I am the Lord'; or 'I say unto you'. There are other ways of 'doing ethics' from scripture — in particular, reading certain texts as instructions which must be obeyed, or as final answers to ethical issues — and here too Christians frequently find themselves in adversarial positions among themselves, for example on the issue of homosexuality, since some are keen to explore the context in which Biblical texts were written, and/or the presuppositions about human nature which were accepted at the time that they were written. Even with the Sermon on the Mount, there has been prolonged debate and disagreement among Christians as to whether Jesus was presenting a realistic pattern of behaviour for the here-and-now — turn the other cheek, give him your coat as well as your cloak, and so on — or whether he was setting out the ethics of the kingdom which is to come: as it is called technically, an 'eschatological' vision and ideal. This, you will realise, is only to touch on differences among Christians, and not at all on the many ways of 'doing ethics' in the secular world. The fact is that there are very few people, and very few Christians, who consistently follow one way of making moral decisions; at one moment we may be working emotively — 'I feel that this is right'. At another, we may be operating some sort of utilitarian calculus — 'I approve of this because it is for the greatest good of the greatest number'. Others may have a sense of duty, and one not necessarily formed by religious views. I suspect that if any one of us took a moment to reflect, we would recognise that we ourselves may operate with a variety of methods in coming to our decisions.

It mightn't appear at the moment that the Anglican Communion is well placed to contribute creatively to ethical debate, being itself characterised by much strident expression of divergent views in the style of that salad cream debate. Yet surely it should; Anglicans have generally sought to respect both Scripture, and Tradition and Reason, and to allow all three to inform one another. To read off truth from texts and traditions which were inevitably influenced by context and culture is one danger; but equally dangerous is to say that the continuing and dynamic promptings of the people of God by the Holy Spirit — which operate in the writing of scripture and the development of tradition — are irrelevant in our contemporary world. 'We have to conceive of truth', writes John Milbank, 'as working itself out through our reasonings, a participation in something which we intimate, but never fully grasp'. Ethics are hard work, demanding not least a profound attentiveness to word and tradition received, but also to the discoveries — scientific, psychological — of our times —and, crucially, to the other person. Would that in our Communion we might exhibit such attentiveness and courtesy, and so be signs of it to the wider world.

Two final points which arise from Milbank's words: 'participation in something which we intimate, but never fully grasp', and their relationship both to ethics and to the eucharist. First, that word participation: this puts us firmly in the realm of community, conversation. The Mass is the place par excellence of conversing, with scripture, with Jesus, with our neighbour. From that perspective, it must be recognised as the context in which we discover what it means, ethically, to be attentive; and to so to live with a deep awareness of fellowship, peace, generosity. Second: what we never fully grasp: if the eucharist is about re-calling and making present Christ's empowering story, it has also a future orientation: it is a foretaste of the future kingdom; and thus it kindles and sustains our ultimate hope, the end for which as Christians we should long as we pray that God's will may be done on earth, as it is in heaven, and as it is shown to us in the Mass.