2 Samuel 12:1b-14; Psalm 5:1-8; Luke 7:36-8:3; Galatians 2:15-21
Well, of course, we'd never behave like the sneering hosts or guests on Come Dine With Me, let alone like Simon the Pharisee, ignoring the basic needs of his guest of honour. We've been brought up much better than that. We know how to do hospitality at St Andrew's, whether it's a cup of tea with our friends or a full-scale Burns Supper with the whole church and the Caledonian Society put together. But I suspect it's easier for us, as it is for most people, to be hospitable when we're dealing with people we know, people like us. If, in a modern version of Simon's dilemma, a stripper in full costume, or lack thereof, were to gatecrash one of our Network meals and start giving the speaker a neck massage, would we offer her the chance to take the weight off her high heels, or might we be more inclined to reach for our mobiles and call 999? If that seems a bit unlikely, what if, as happens from time to time, someone from the Broomhall Breakfast turns up at church? How warm a welcome do they find among us? Alternatively, I wonder: when was the last time you came to the Breakfast yourself, to discover the Breakfasters setting up and clearing away, bringing cups of coffee and plates of food, chatting to one another - offering you a welcome, if you chose to accept it? For it's not always easy to tell who the host is and who the guest.
King David must have thought he was a pretty good host when Nathan the prophet came round to call. Maybe Nathan was a bit of a bore, as the minister sometimes is when making a visit, but David could put out the Hebrew Bible equivalent of tea and biscuits with the best of them. If Nathan wanted to tell one of his interminable stories, David would hear him out graciously. He knew his kingly duty. Yet Nathan didn't seem to know his duties as a guest. Instead of complimenting the king on his taste in biscuits, Nathan's chosen story hit the monarch where it hurt: right in his self esteem. For David prided himself on being a good king, one who saw justice done. When he heard of a poor man robbed by a rich man, he was furious -
until Nathan told him: You are the man. Then David let himself recognise, maybe for the first time, just how much he had wronged his general Uriah by sleeping with Bathsheba, Uriah's wife, and giving orders for him to be killed in the thick of battle when Bathsheba became pregnant. Like Simon the Pharisee, he could no longer ignore the inconvenient truth that he was, in old-fashioned parlance, a sinner: someone who could not keep God's law for humanity, but had missed the mark.
It's not always easy for us to realise or admit that we're part of the problem, not part of the solution. I remember six years ago coming to Sheffield for the first time, before I ever knew of St Andrew's, for a summer school with Sheffield Industrial Mission, as it then was. We were taken to see aspects of industry in Sheffield - a steelworks, a call centre, a cinema - and invited to look more deeply into one of the places we studied, to ask ourselves what was going on there theologically as well as economically.
Our group decided to look at the call centre we had visited and question the operatives' self-understanding. They were working on behalf of a building society, chasing people whose mortgage payments had fallen behind. They evidently believed that they were the good guys, looking for people in trouble to help them out of it. But behind their pastoral concern, we found out that enforcers were doing a more sinister job - ringing up defaulting clients incessantly, badgering them at home and work, making their lives a misery. Behind that again, before ever we'd heard the term subprime mortgage, we saw the hand of an irresponsible mortgage lender, offering huge loans to people who would never be able to afford to pay them off, then milking defaulting borrowers by charging hefty interest rates ad infinitum. We concluded that the call centre operatives, though themselves well-meaning, were part of a much less well-meaning system. Yet behind it all, I received a shock. For the building society justified its actions by appeal to its savers, due their interest payments. And I myself was one of those savers. It's not always easy to tell who the saint is, and who the sinner.
In his letter to the Galatians, Paul is grappling with a similar difficulty. As a Jew, he sees himself as a good guy, not a sinner - someone righteous, who has worked hard all his life to keep God's law. We may identify with Paul, too. We have been brought up to pay our taxes, to obey the rules of the road, to be generous to worthy charities, to be good and upstanding citizens. But, says Paul, as Christians we believe it's not our keeping of the law that makes God accept us. Instead, it's the trust, the faith we have in Jesus. That's still the case, he argues, if Christians go wrong and break God's law - as happens spectacularly from time to time. That doesn't mean Jesus condones wrongdoing when it is Christians who sin. It is part of the barrier separating people from God, the barrier between us only his death could remove. But however good the lives we lead, we can be thankful that is irrelevant to the way God judges us - for no one living can be perfect, and God's standard is perfection.
No one living is perfect; yet, Paul argues, for Christians, it is no longer we who live, but Christ, the perfection of God in human form, who lives in us. Christ is the perfect human being, never separated from God by sin; Christ is the gracious host who never ignores or mistreats his guests. As we follow in his footsteps, as we grow like him, we will gain confidence in offering his gracious hospitality to others, and in receiving it graciously too. We know that there will be times when we get it wrong; when, like Simon the Pharisee or like David the King, we rely too much on our own virtue, and try to ignore our own wrongdoing. Yet, when we realise our mistake, we have the choice of going on pretending to be in the right, or admitting to our fault with sorrow, along with the damage it has done in our and others' lives, and of finding God's forgiveness. So every day, as the psalmist invites us, whether at morning or evening, let us pause in prayer to share the events of our lives, good or bad, with God: asking for mercy when we have done what is wrong, asking for guidance to do what is right. For through such prayer we can find God in all the events of our lives, whether bad or good.