|
|
 |
There is one particular scene where Wilberforce is lying in the garden muttering away at God. There, his bemused butler found him and asked,"Have you found God, Sir?" to which Wilberforce replied, "Found God, sir! I think he found me. Have you any idea how inconvenient that can be?" A sentiment that will be readily appreciated by any who have responded to the Call of God to some particular vocation or other!
What comes across most strongly, and equally strongly in the excellent biography of him by William Hague, is that he was driven by his faith in God which led him to have a deep compassion for his fellow-man, and particularly for those who have no-one to speak for them; no-one to champion their cause. This is especially true of the many, many thousands who were transported from Africa to the West Indies to become slaves living under the most appalling conditions and treated as sub-human.
Compassion is a theme that is central to both our readings today.
Elijah was lodging with a widow in Zarephath - the same woman of whom he had demanded water and food. She was unable to supply the latter because there was little left in her jar of meal. By a miracle of Elijah, she found that no matter how much she baked, the meal never ran out. Soon after this miracle, however, her only son became mortally ill and this is where we enter the story today. As the breath of life left the boy she turned on the man of God for causing her son's death. Taking the boy, Elijah then blamed God and shouted at heaven before pleading with God to restore his life. God readily does so and it is important to note that the compassion showed to the widow and her son was not that of Elijah. He just saw it as an inconvenience to himself that the widow blamed him and he quickly transferred the blame onto God.
It must be hard being God because he gets blamed when things go wrong and rarely acknowledged when things go right - as in this case, Elijah accepts the widow's praise and accolades and gets all the credit.
In the Gospel passage, though similar to the Elijah story, it is an entirely different matter. The poor widow of Nain lost everything when her son died. Jesus met her as the funeral procession reached him and he saw the harrowing grief. His heart opened to her and, as St Luke says, "He had compassion for her." Out of this compassion, he restores the boy to life. The crowd recognised the power of Jesus and compared him to the Prophets who acted in God's name and power - of whom Elijah was the most powerful.
The similarity between the two stories is that in both it is God who acts and shows the real compassion. He gave power to Elijah to save the child. In Jesus, of course, it was God who acted not simply through Jesus as if he were God's agent. Jesus IS GOD - God Incarnate - Jesus is no mere agent.
The crowd didn't realise that of course. Even Christians don't always behave as if they recognise it either.
There was, for example, a time in the Church's story when people saw Jesus as a Godly man - someone in whom God was acting - but they stopped short of recognising him as God. During the 4th century this came to a head and threatened to rip the Church apart. The very question of who Jesus is was a deep and fundamental question. If you think the Church of England has problems, then try to put yourself in the place of a 4th century Christian. At the heart of the dispute was the view of a Christian theologian called Arius. His view was that Jesus was a good man whom God adopted as his Son in a special way and who became a model for people to follow and imitate. But he had been created as we are and had no pre-existence beyond his birth at Nazareth. Arius maintained that there was a time when Jesus was not. There was no way he could therefore be God and no way, therefore, that he could be Saviour.
Well it took a lot more than ACAS to sort that one out and the Church was bitterly divided. It led to the Council of Nicea in 325AD when a Creed was finally formulated that sought to deal with the matter and which affirmed Jesus both as true man and true God. Even then, the rumblings went on and division continued until another creed, that of Chalcedon over a century later, in 451AD, finally settled the matter. When we shall say in a few minutes that Jesus is and is eternally begotten from the Father and is true God from true God, begotten not made, we take it for granted that Jesus really IS God, but we need to remember that those words cost Christians a great deal of struggle. Yet it is there in the Gospel and other New Testament scriptures, plain for all to see. It is as God that Jesus gives life back to the son of the Widow of Nain. Unlike Elijah he doesn't appeal to a higher authority. He doesn't plead of God to act. He acts on his own authority because HE IS God.
-
When Jesus shows compassion, it is God who is showing compassion. There is nothing in between. No pleading intercession. He simply commands the young man to rise. In Jesus, we do not see someone in whom the grace of God operates as that grace may operate in our own lives. Jesus is the actual giver of a grace which is the very essence of his being - it is the very loving action of one who is pure Love - and only God is actually pure Love and pure Grace.
John Newton, a former slave ship captain who, sick in his soul, turned away from his vile traced and embraced God and became a minister in God's Church, recognised the power of this grace in the wonderful hymn (which began our service today) - Amazing Grace. A contemporary and friend of William Wilberforce he wrote from his own personal experience of God's compassion, grace and mercy which he found in Jesus. What he gained because of this grace was a spectacular as that gained by the son of the widow of Nain - he gained new life. That is what Jesus offers to us at all times and when our lives are up against it or when we have become jaded in our Christian belief, it is Jesus, true God and true man, who shows us the way forward to renewed grace-filled life.
We perhaps need to constantly remind ourselves just how radical God is acting in the New Testament and how different Jesus is from all the great prophets like Elijah who went before him. Nowhere, of course, is this so evident than on the Cross itself and yet nowhere is it so easy to get the sacrifice that Jesus made there so wrong. There is a view in Christianity which suggests that Jesus is the man who gives his life for his fellow men as a kind of scapegoat for sins and wrongdoings and unloving acts. He pays the price for our freedom and somehow placates what some call the wrath of God. It is a very deep seated theological view but it can be questioned. If Jesus is really God then how can he placate himself. Why would he need to do that? If Jesus accepts us and claims us as his own because He is God, why would he have to pay a ransom to God to buy us from the slavery of sin?
It is a question that has exercised me a lot over many years and it may be that William Wilberforce can help me a little in finding an answer. Wilberforce saw people enslave at a time when slavery was an acceptable thing even amongst devout Christians. He saw that slavery was a denial of humanity - not just of human rights - but of fundamental humanity. In his eyes, we are all equal in God's sight - and that truth is not hard to find in Scripture. Knowing nothing personally about these slaves, apart from one he met who had become free, he acted with a passion that he showed in other social areas of British life too. he was not just consumed with passion he was filled with com-passion But it was a compassion that had a double edge. In freeing the slaves, he also freed the slave-traders who were deeply sinful in what they were doing. Despite their failure to see this, he acted, year after year, for abolition, until all were free - slaves and slave-traders. It was an iconic victory and remains a beacon for all who in this world are seeking the same freedom for the millions who still live in slavery of many kinds including of course those Palestinians who are being enslaved by Israel in Gaza today. It seems to me that Wilberforce shows us something about how God acts in Jesus Christ. Unlike Wilberforce, Jesus does know us and loves each of us which is why He confronts everything that enslaves us; all the things that prevent the love of God working in our lives and which stops Grace from transforming us. He especially does this on the Cross where he confronts evil finally and destroys it with Love.
The Cross is the ultimate statement of God that his compassion for us is eternal. His battle is not against humanity, for as Paul reminds us in Ephesians, it is a battle against he cosmic forces of evil which Paul calls, in Ephesians 6:11, the wiles of the devil. He doesn't just take on our sinfulness - he takes on sin itself - the total dark unloving for which the devil stands . He reclaims us from nothing less than the evil with Peter in his epistle likens to a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. From the Cross it is as if he is looking at the deadness of human life which as been robbed of all purpose and spirit and, at total cost to himself, says - Get up; have life again.
In order to free us from this slavery of the devil God actually became human - true human - to save us from within. That was an IMMENSE thing for God to do and it is total love and total compassion for us which motivates him. God really was doing something radical and totally new. In pouring out his Grace he transforms us and renews us with his gift of sheer love - not any old love, but the love which can only come from God - out of who He IS - and who HE is, says St John, is total Love.
Of course, we still have to battle with personal sin, but we do not do this alone. God is with us. God had struggled as one of us and God upholds us. That is what Jesus tells us, not only in word and deed but by who He is - God Incarnate - God amongst us - God who frees us. Believing that truly changes how we view Jesus who gives to us a very special and unique relationship with God himself because to be close to Jesus is to be with God.
Jesus gave new life to the young man of Nain.
He can do the same for us - if we let him.