Proper 17 There is NO wrath in God
In these past weeks we have read slowly through Paul’s letter to the Romans and today we come to one of his most beautiful passages. ‘Let love be genuine’ he says. Paul is possibly the earliest of the New Testament writers, and had no model, even a gospel, to guide what he might write, but what we have heard has clear similarities to Jesus’ words in Matthew’s version of the sermon on the Mount. What is so distinctive is the instruction about loving enemies. Matthew 5:44: “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” For Paul and for Matthew a central theme of Jesus’ teaching is this command to love even one’s enemies, thereby overcoming evil with good. It also quotes Proverbs 25:21-22: “If your enemies are hungry, give them bread to eat; and if they are thirsty, give them water to drink”.
What Paul says could be the model for the life of St. Giles, our patron saint whom we commemorate this weekend, who lived in great humility and gentleness and seems to have begun a monastic community. Years ago I was at a church dedicated to St. Aiden, whose feast day is the 1st September, who also lived a peaceful life and founded a community on Lindisfarne. ‘Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.’
In this beautiful picture in the epistle I find one note which jars, and it shouldn’t be there. Our translation says ‘Leave room for the wrath of God’. This is, to my mind, a deliberate falsification of scripture. Paul did not write ‘wrath of God’. It is not there in the Greek original and if you look at the King James Bible, it isn’t there either. It says ‘Give place unto wrath.’ It does not say ‘Wrath of God’ and this is very deliberate. It says ‘Give place’, get out of its way, don’t make it worse, don’t get involved in wrath, stand aside, don’t get corrupted by it.
We know the dangers. Wrath is the red rag to the bull. It is President Trump’s reaction to the missile launch from North Korea. You can afford to do that from the USA, thousands of miles away. But the reaction of North Korea’s neighbours, all of whom could be hurt if the conflict escalates, is far more measured. They get their resolution through the UN but they aren’t going to stir things up any further.
St. Paul has said a lot about wrath in writing to the Romans, and he has just said ‘never avenge yourselves’. Hot anger is like a burning fire, and it can consume all who approach too closely, or those who add coals to it. But the point is, it consumes itself. The fire burns everything, including the firebrand which began it. This is not God’s wrath. Rather it is evil and it is to be left alone to burn itself out. Follow the way of our patron, St. Giles, living in simplicity and humility, founding a monastic community for people to live in peace.
The whole wrong understanding we see so much of today in misplaced violence is based on a wrong understanding of the words ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’ Hot headed people think they are acting for God when they are being violent. But the instruction is NOT to be violent. Leave it to God, and God lets the violence destroy itself. God doesn’t get involved.
In today’s gospel, Peter has yet to learn this lesson. Jesus is going the way of non resistance. It is Peter, in John’s gospel, who when Jesus is arrested, takes a sword and cuts of the ear of the high priest’s servant. And Jesus replies ‘Put up your sword, for those who take up the sword perish by it.’ Here, Jesus’ rebuke is even more emphatic. ‘‘Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling-block to me”. Peter is both the very devil and a scandal, a stumbling block. He has been caught up into the culture of violence that is always around. He could be the terrorist on Westminster Bridge, in Barcelona, in Paris. His reaction is that of Trump to the provocative missile launch from North Korea, whereas what Trump should be doing is sending the most daring bombing raid ever, scattering a million tiny packets of rice over the starving population as a sign of goodwill. ‘Never avenge yourselves, no, if your enemies are hungry, feed them.’
When surrounded by people hostile to Jesus, Peter is caught up in the hostility of the mob. He imitates their rage, ultimately, as Pilate and Herod would. And yet, I think, the Gospels do not seek to stigmatize Peter, or the crowd as a whole, or the Jews as a people, but to reveal the enormous power of the contagion of mob violence — a revelation valid for the entire chain of murders stretching from the Passion back to “the foundation of the world.” The Gospels have an immensely powerful reason for their constant reference to these murders, and it concerns two essential and yet strangely neglected words, skandalon and Satan. The Greek skandalon designates an unavoidable obstacle that somehow becomes more attractive (as well as repulsive) each time we stumble against it. The first time Jesus predicts his violent death (Matthew 16:21-23), his resignation appals Peter, who tries to instil some worldly ambition in his master: Instead of imitating Jesus, Peter wants Jesus to imitate him. If two friends imitate each other’s desire, they both desire the same object. And if they cannot share this object, they will compete for it, each becoming simultaneously a model and an obstacle to the other. The competing desires intensify as model and obstacle reinforce each other, and an escalation of rivalry follows; admiration gives way to indignation, jealousy, envy, hatred, and, at last, violence and vengeance. Had Jesus imitated Peter’s ambition, the two thereby would have begun competing for the leadership of some politicized “Jesus movement.” Sensing the danger, Jesus vehemently interrupts Peter: “Get behind me, Satan, you are a skandalon to me.” Satan is the stumbling block personified.
But there is truth in what Peter says; ‘This must never happen to you.’ No, it shouldn’t. Because it will be what has happened to good people from the foundation of the world, from the death of Abel, people thinking they are doing good by sacrificing scapegoat out of envy, sacrificing a scapegoat to the blood lust of the mob. No, it shouldn’t happen. The wrongness in the cross is precisely what Jesus aims to oppose and overcome in bearing it. If Jesus’ death can oppose that evil, then that is why he will do it. But that injustice is also the strongest possible argument why he should not accept it. For all the wrong reasons, Peter has hit on the weakest point of Jesus’ resolve, and played Satan’s strongest card: to go through with this trip to Jerusalem is to implicitly cooperate in the most unjust in the long line of unjust sacrifices. Why would Jesus want to do Satan’s business for him? Precisely because Jesus is innocent, the strongest temptation to deflect him from his path is the simple truth. This injustice ought not happen. It ‘ought’ to happen only if it can be unlike all the others from the foundation of the world, if it can reverse the practice. We can hardly blame Peter for not seeing how that might be. It requires resurrection, and a new spirit.
The vindication is that the Son of Man will come with his angels, and come for every innocent victim. Our faith is founded on this. We follow in the footsteps of humble, peaceful followers of Jesus, our patron St. Giles, St Aiden of Lindisfarne celebrated the day before. They are the models for all who are truly followers of Christ, the models for us and for all who would call themselves Christian today.