Micah 3:5-12; Psalm 43; Matthew 23:1-12; 1 Thessalonians 2:9-13
It's All Souls Day today - if you want to check up on the difference between All Saints and All Souls, have a look at this month's pastoral letter - but sanctity is still in the air. And this morning we're considering how to tell the real saints - those whose words and actions speak for God - from those who put on saintliness to get respect. All is not what it seems. Even our psalm this morning, Psalm 43, is an edited version. The original psalm starts off with another two verses. Listen: Vindicate me, O God, and defend my cause against an ungodly people; from those who are deceitful and unjust deliver me! For you are the God in whom I take refuge; why have you cast me off? Why must I walk about mournfully because of the oppression of the enemy?
I don't know why William Barton and Francis Rous chose to miss these first two verses out of their version in the Scottish Metrical Psalter, but I can see why we might not feel like singing them wholeheartedly. It's our old problem with the psalms: a lot of the time, the writer seems to think that while he (or possibly she, but probably he) is totally saintly, his enemies must be God's enemies, ripe for God's vengeance. The only thing he can't understand is why God hasn't yet arranged their comeuppance. Yet we daren't be superior about the psalmist's bias; for sometimes we're apt to do the same thing: to see ourselves as saints, and those with whom we disagree as sinners.
I spoke recently to a woman known for her unjudging kindness to all - but when it came to her daughter's mother-in-law, it was a very different story; the woman had so many grievous faults, the only surprise was she was still alive. Listening to that side of the story, I was inclined to agree with her assessment - yet when we're quite sure of the wickedness of our enemies, we're not seeing as God sees. But we can't count either on comfortable words being an unmistakeable sign of their speaker's sanctity. In our second reading Micah's got a long-running beef with other prophets. God wishes you peace, his opponents murmur to the people who've just given them a slap-up meal. But they also have words of impending doom - for others, from whom they look to gain nothing.
Micah is devastating about his society, where everything has its price: listen -
Its rulers give judgment for a bribe, its priests teach for a price, its prophets give oracles for money; yet they lean upon the LORD and say, "Surely the LORD is with us! No harm shall come upon us." And that basic assumption that everything, including God's gifts, can be bought and sold for the right price, underlies our own society's thinking - though less so since the credit crunch. One of the reasons I am very glad to be in the URC is that our ministers get paid centrally, rather than by individual churches; glad not only because that means we all get paid the same, whether someone's just started out, or whether they're serving as Moderator, but also because a church can never say, ‘We don't like what you say, and we pay the bills, so change your tack!'
We believe now that Micah was a prophet sent by God - that's why his prophecies have ended up in the Hebrew Bible. But at the time, it can't have been at all clear whether he was truly expressing God's holiness and righteousness, or whether he just had a grudge against his opponents, who were much more popular. It must have been like the American people just now, trying to make sense out of their forthcoming election: who is truly speaking words that will lead a nation in God's ways? Whose opinions can be trusted, and who is just trying to evoke fear and hatred?
Turning to Paul's letter to the church in Thessalonica, how would that church have evaluated Paul's words? He's certainly not backward in coming forward to describe how hard he and the others with him worked for the church's benefit. You are witnesses, he says, and God also, how pure, upright, and blameless our conduct was toward you believers. Steady on, I can imagine them thinking, is this Paul of Tarsus or an angel? Yet when he reminds them that he ‘worked night and day so that he might not burden any of them while he proclaimed the gospel of God', he's telling the truth. Paul chose to live as a tentmaker - not a very high-status occupation, since tentmakers dealt with animal skins and the tanners' pungent and unclean ways of curing them - because he didn't want to fall foul of Micah's accusation that his preaching was bought and paid for.
Yet how could the Thessalonians be sure that the letter Paul sent them was not just a matter of his own opinions, but God's words to them? 1 Thessalonians is supposed by scholars to have been Paul's first surviving letter to any church, so his literary reputation wouldn't have been made yet. They couldn't rely on his social status. What words of wisdom could this itinerant tent-maker have to offer them? Even his reputation as a well-educated, well-bred Jew would cut little ice in their largely Gentile congregation - remember, at the beginning of the letter he was praising them for turning to God from idols.
Paul could indeed appeal to his hearers' emotions, reminding them of their prior relationship with him: ‘As you know, we dealt with each one of you like a father with his children, urging and encouraging you and pleading that you lead a life worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.' That sort of bond can bear a good deal of weight. Yet, as we have heard from our Gospel reading, it is unwise to rest decisions about who to respect on anyone's status, since it is God to whom we must turn as our final authority.
And Paul, who knows this, appeals to the Thessalonian church's recent memory of their own response to his preaching: ‘when you received the word of God that you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word but as what it really is, God's word, which is also at work in you believers.' And that, I believe, may be the final test of sanctity: what response someone's words and deeds promotes in others. It's dangerous to assume, like those who heard Micah's opponents, that those who are more popular are the ones who speak for God. It's just as dangerous, of course, to think that because no one agrees with you, they must be wrong. But if words spoken from the pulpit, or in the committee meeting, or over the washing-up, if actions seen or unseen are truly from God, they will bear the Spirit's fruit: sometimes immediately and in plain view; sometimes in ways completely unforeseen by the staggered saints. They will produce people who struggle to love their enemies, however difficult that may be; who love their neighbour, whatever the inconvenience; who love themselves, however little there seems to be to love; and who, through all this, show their love for God.