Sermons Author: The Rev. Canon Michael Hampel

Equal in God's Eyes

October 23, 2016

The Twenty-Third Sunday After Pentecost

 

Earlier this month at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London we launched Hate Crime Awareness Week – a week of campaigning to make people aware of the crimes committed against people on the grounds of their gender, ethnic background, sexuality or disability. We do this every year and, on each occasion, a candle is lit which then burns under the great Dome of St. Paul’s every day for the ensuing week.

This year, it was lit by Son of a Tutu, a drag queen no less, in remembrance of the people who lost their lives in the shootings at the Pulse Night Club in Orlando earlier this year. It burned during the ensuing week surrounded by the photographs of the people who lost their lives in that night club on that terrible night not so long ago.

Six days later, the Patriarch of Serbia, His Holiness Irinej, Archbishop of Pec, preached at St. Paul’s on the hundredth anniversary of a sermon given by Nikolaj Verimirovic, who has recently been canonized by the Orthodox Church: the first non-Anglican to preach at St. Paul’s and probably the only person to preach in the current building who subsequently became a saint – although the vergers very kindly think that this same virtue will eventually be afforded to their precentor!

It was made clear to us that it would be unacceptable for the Hate Crime candle and its accompanying photographs to be seen by the Patriarch and so it had to be surreptitiously removed for the duration of the service. No explanation was given although it didn’t take much imagination to guess that it had something to do with that “terrible sin of homosexuality”.

Why did we concede and remove the candle, you might ask? Well, because a spotlight shines pretty unrelentingly and unremittingly onto St. Paul’s and we have to weigh up the balance between different types of good news and different types of bad news. And the story about St Paul’s insulting the Patriarch of Serbia and embarrassing the Archbishop of Canterbury whose guest he was is probably greater and more damaging than the story about St. Paul’s standing up for gay rights is significant and more positive.

So, we were compromised.

But I can’t help thinking about all of this when I read this morning’s gospel lesson. Let me read it to you again:

Jesus also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: ‘Two men went up to the temple to pray, one an archbishop and the other a drag queen. The archbishop, standing by himself, was praying thus, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this drag queen. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.” But the drag queen, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.’

I suppose it’s a rather cheap dig on my part and I’m terribly conscious of that other line from the Gospel; ‘Judge not that you be not judged.’ But it does rather strike at the heart of what Our Lord is trying to say: none of us is better than anyone else – not only because we are all equal in God’s eyes but, perhaps more pertinently, because our appraisal of ourselves and others can only ever be partial and incomplete. Partial and incomplete because it is nearly always a subjective rather than an objective appraisal and that’s because we do our appraising and judging based on what we already think and believe, rather than on what we are willing to have revealed to us.

If that’s simply what it means to be human and we’re stuck with it, then how about this for a way forward? We are always going to be subjective about our understanding of faith and about our estimation of ourselves and others but God is always going to be objective about those things. An objective appraisal is always going to be more complete and therefore more accurate so let’s leave the judging to God who will do a much better job of it than we will do not only because God is Judge but also because God is Defender.

That’s quite a thought, isn’t it? Can you imagine standing in court and looking up at the judge, in fear and trembling, only to discover that this judge has also decided of his own free will to be your defence – your advocate – at the same time? Well, that’s the wonderful topsy turvy world of faith which we Christians have chosen to espouse because we are followers of Jesus Christ who turned the world upside down. ‘For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.’

Let me leave you with one final image from St. Paul’s Cathedral. At least a couple of times a year, Her Majesty The Queen attends special services at St. Paul’s. It’s a big deal for us and the place is agog with activity and excitement for months in advance. We want everything to be just perfect for this amazing lady – now the longest-serving head of state in the world – and it’s quite clear to everyone that a very important person is paying us a visit.

But, when she arrives, despite the road closures and blue lights, the ultra security, the fanfare trumpeters, the Lord Mayor in all his finery, an extraordinarily humble, quiet and peaceful lady steps through the Great West Doors and stands quietly already focused on the act of worship she is there to attend. And this is because she is quite profoundly committed to her faith in Christ – a faith of which she speaks openly and confidently and regularly – such that, while she may be exalted by all the rest of us, she has never and will never exalt herself.

There’s a human lesson to us all in the spirit of today’s divine lesson from St. Luke’s Gospel.