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Saturday, June 24, 2023

Measure for measure?

Sermon for the third Sunday after Trinity

How tall would you say you are?

Would you use feet and inches?

Would you use metres and centimetres?

Or would you use a different measurement?

[PAUSE]

In order to take measurements,
we need a standard to measure them by.

A yard is the distance
between the king’s outstretched arm
and the tip of his nose.

You see, the problem of course.

King Edward I’s yard
is going to be considerably longer
than King Charles I’s yard
at least before the latter’s execution.

A foot is twelve inches
and an inch is the size of a thumb.

An ounce is the weight of a thumb
which is why ounce and inch come from
the same Latin word for thumb.

But these aren’t fixed
so we have to be careful
to measure things against
the same standard.

[PAUSE]

Which is greater in value:
one or ninety-nine?

Of course,
we are very tempted
by the mathematical answer.

If ninety-nine is substantially
greater than one,
then that one is certainly
not as valuable as the ninety-nine.

You might then say that
it is better to look after the ninety-nine
and forget about one that is missing.

It makes no sense
to ignore ninety-nine sheep
over one lost sheep.

It’s just a sheep after all.

There’s nothing special about it,
we’re told.

It’s just one sheep out of a hundred.

One percent.

And yet, to the Good Shepherd,
it is as valuable as the other ninety-nine.

That takes some getting used to.

Any one of the hundred sheep
is as valuable as the other ninety-nine.

We can see that easily.

While the shepherd has left the ninety-nine
in search of the lost one,
one of the ninety-nine could wander off
and get lost.

How can any one sheep be as valuable
as ninety-nine other individual sheep?

[PAUSE]

The trouble is that we’re looking
mathematically,
and mathematics isn’t the system
that God uses to give value to His Children.

We know that from His very nature:
how can Three be One?

It’s clear that God is not concerned
with making value-judgements
based on numbers
or even on a notion of equality.

The labourers who arrive
at the eleventh hour
are paid as much as
those who were there at the first hour.

No-one gets defrauded
but everyone is treated fairly,
just not mathematically.

[PAUSE]

In our society,
we focus on
equal pay for equal jobs
equal rights
equal responsibilities.

These are good issues
to consider in a society
that seeks to be fair,
but here value is not really based on love
but on practicality.

When we consider
that we have no rights with God,
let alone equal right,
that we have no right to equal pay
for equal jobs,
that there is no
equality of outcome
or
equality of opportunity
in God’s valuation,
then we realise just how bound up
with human politics we are.



Our Lord shows us
that our value of human beings
cannot be based on number
let alone on social status.

It means that we cannot
value our neighbour
based on any comparisons
with anyone else.

Our love of neighbour
has to be unconditional
and unique.

We want their perfection
in God,
not based on what
we consider to be perfection
but a perfection determined by God.

When we are faced with those decisions
as to whether to save
five lives or one,
as long as we make the decision
in the agony of the purest love we can muster,
we do the right thing
because we aim for everyone’s perfection
and allow God to save the lost.

[PAUSE]

Love is not a
mathematical way of thinking.

It goes above and beyond
any form of measurement
that we have at our disposal.

The only thing we can count on
is the love of God.

 

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