Forgive me if I begin this morning on an autobiographical note, but I first came to Italy 45 years ago. I came here because I had my first job teaching English abroad, I was living in Puglia at the time and life looked so exciting: the sun, the colour, the vibrancy of the Mediterranean world have such an allure for those of us who grow up under the grey skies of Northern Europe. But that year coincided with another event in my life: it was the time that I gave up on my Christian faith. No doubt I was not the first young man – abroad, and with some money in my pocket – to do so. However, some of the reasons for my apostasy were well-intentioned: I believed that the Gospel made huge calls on a person, and I was honest enough to admit that I wasn’t prepared to meet them. I remember being on my knees in a church for the last time for many years and saying, in effect: ‘Father, I don’t want to be a hypocrite, so I’m out of here. But if you want me back, I’m sure you’ll come and get me.’ Less admirable were my other motives for leaving: the coins in my pocket, the sunshine, the pretty girls – I wanted the freedom to enjoy it all, as I thought, unshackled by any restraints.
If only, in that moment, the two readings we have heard this morning had been quoted at me and their implications explained. Take this short Gospel reading that concludes Matthew chapter 10: ‘Whoever welcomes a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, whoever welcomes a righteous one will receive the reward of the righteous, whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of the little ones will not be without their reward.’ You see! You don’t have to be a superhero to be a Christian: start by giving your assent; start by giving you support – and God’s grace will lead you forward.
Paul, on the other hand, issues a dire warning: there is no such thing as freedom, he says. Freedom, in his world view, is an illusion. We simply have a choice between two different servitudes; we can either be slaves of obedience, slaves of righteousness, or we can be slaves of the world, slaves of the flesh. One of those choices leads to death, the other the sanctification.
Elsewhere, in his letter to the Colossians chapter 3, Paul spells out what we have to change, and how that change comes about. He tells his newly converted audience that they have to jettison four vices, what he calls stripping off the old self: these are lust, anger, greed, and prejudice. These are fairly radical adjustments for the natural – or as Paul calls it, the ‘earthly’ – man to make. Incidentally if we want an idea of how you are doing on the spiritual plane, and as a Christian, this is your test: how much have you stopped seeing other people as sexual objects? How far have you grown beyond reactions of irritation and rage – even, perhaps especially, in the close family circle? What, or who, still pushes your buttons? Do you compensate for life’s frustrations with ‘treats’; do you have a tendency to spend your way out of the doldrums? And lastly, do you regard all people as equally God’s children? Paul declares that once you are clothed in the new self you will have moved on past such negative reactions as lust, anger, greed, and prejudice.
Such transformation is one of the fruits of salvation: our old-self dies with Christ on the Cross; our new self arises, as the Christ rose on the third day.
Contemporary secular culture hasn’t got a lot of time for Paul’s ‘new man’. To begin with it insists that private morality should remain just that: private. What goes on the heart is of no concern to anyone; What consenting adults get up to is for them to decide. We can be as angry as we like as long as we stop short of physical violence. As for greed, isn’t that what keeps the economy going? Only the call to drop prejudice still strikes a chord in public life.
At bottom we are dealing with two different understandings of freedom. That of the liberal democracy we can call the neutrality principle: let people live as they will as long as they don’t harm others. It is a wonderful freedom, hard won, and worth defending. What it won’t do is instruct people in how to be happy, or how to live well. It simply leaves people to their own devices.
But to go back to that Saturday afternoon in the South of Italy, when I thought I was choosing my freedom, I can see in retrospect that I was actually choosing sin: for the next 15 years I led a very self-centered life, some which I am not at all proud of.
I would like to end with one last thought: What does it mean to present your members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification? In part, it means that we have to work at being righteous – ‘be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect’ (Matthew 5: 48). As my Marxist friends were fond of saying, if a situation isn’t progressing, it’s sliding backwards. There is no such thing as standing still. And so it is with us: if we are not on the path to becoming more whole and more holy – at work, with our loved ones, in church – we are not doing it right. The Christian life needs to be one of ongoing transformation On the other hand – and this is the other essential teaching to put alongside Paul’s insistence that we live between two different types of slavery – we cannot pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps; change comes as we throw ourselves, day by day, and challenge by challenge, on the mercy of God, and by the grace of God we are drawn towards his love and to our own wholeness. Praise be to God that we have a saviour, Jesus, to show us the way, and a Holy Ghost – the Paraclete or Curse Ender – to guide us and strengthen us. Praise be to God for our deliverance. Amen and Alleluia!