Christ Church Cathedral
3rd Sunday of Lent - March 7, 2010
Proper B & C
Lent is always kicked off by the reading of the story of Jesus' 40 days in the wilderness and his temptation by the devil. As Canon Sanchez reminded us two weeks ago, our understanding of this event does not include regarding the devil as a person but rather as a personification of the universal presence of evil in our world. Today's New Testament readings are concerned with sins and discount their role if any in our understanding of world events as Divine punishment for human actions. There is also a important caveat - does this understanding of sins help us to understand the complexities of give and take which are required for solving or even ameliorating contemporary personal and cultural conflicts? Do we take seriously the challenge posited by the good guy - to good guy situation which in the words of contemporary philosophy are not commensurate. It seems to me that what we note here is the presence of two not quite distinct but certainly very different ways of providing a moral framework for understanding our capacity for destroying personal and social relationships in the world.
By and large the western Christian tradition has opted to be in the sin business and has made a pretty good trade in guilt as the optimal means for understanding and managing of education and control of the moral process When it comes to confronting evil in all its horror, exorcism may make good cinema box office but sadly trivializes the awesome challenge that evil presents to human existence. The current debate over the status of Pius XII suggests that a healing miracle or two shows how deliberately this issue has been sidestepped.
Over the years the church has developed to a greater or lesser degree an elaborate international consortium to handle its sin business. It includes volumes called Penitentials which detail the role of the confessor in the extensive trade in the guilt market. In saying this, I do not wish to demean the careful and vigorous development of contrition, confession and restoration which are present in all forms of our traditions but only to invite you to consider that there is a significant difference between the systemic consequences of evil and the laundry list of sins. The distinction is obvious if we consider the recent political popularity of apology and expression of sorry that are in vogue. For example, most recently in the apology given to British children who from the late 90's of the 19th centuries to the 30's of the last century were conveniently dumped in various parts of the empire including Canada. The purpose of these confessions by contemporary politicals is to bring closure to what has been a dreadful blot on the record of western democracies. The canonization of Pius XII and the dumping of kids in assorted parts of the British Empire won't go away with an apology because both represent examples of failure to confront endemic evil - the Nazi world domination plan and the fundamental wretchedness of life for working classes of Britain before WW I and II.
I would offer a different take on the complex and tragic relationship between both government and church and the native peoples of Canada. Recent action by several layers of Government beginning with Ottawa as well as the churches has resulted in a long awaited apology and serious attempts of restitution to those involved in the sad history of the Residential Schools. But, what remains after this effort has reached its goal is the same problem which touched it off in the first place but with a new name, (at least here in Quebec), the issue of Accommodation. I would like to simplify the situation by arguing that what we have here is a matter of how two good guys needing to reach an agreement when they have differences that may not be reconcilable they go about effecting a situation in which both can live and thrive? Of course, it might be possible to dismiss the whole dilemma by arguing that it is really nothing more than one group of sinners meeting another and that mutual confession and contrition would able them to resolve their differences. But what I wish to argue is that in this sense there are differences. What we are talking about here is a clash of cultures which is not resolvable. Since the parties don't speak the same language so what is required of both is a new civil (pun intended) language in which to frame the conflict and its resolution. Both parties have to give up something what can be called their unimodal language in favor of one which resets their identity in a more universal frame.
Here in Quebec the conflict is complicated by the language issue, that is the fact that even if everyone agreed to speak French, the problem would still remain because what remains is the unacknowledged cultural clash involving values and actions which reflect quite disperate ideas of about family, women, morality and the role of reason.
The quiet revolution which created modern Quebec happened little more than half a century ago, in my view emerged to me was a society comfortably immersed in a french catholic culture, openly and ideologically anti hierarchal and anti clerical and somewhat inebriated with the openness possible in what I will call liberal secularity celebrated by Isaiah Berlin in his work TWO CONCEPTS
Indeed the very desire for guarantees that our values are eternal and secure in some objective heaven as perhaps only a craving for the certainties of childhood or the absolute values of a primitive past "To realize the relative fallibility of one's convictions " said one remarkable writer of our time Joseph Schumpeter, " and yet stand for them unflinchingly is what distinguishes a civilized man from a barbarian". To demand more than this is perhaps a deep and incurable metaphysical need; but to allow it to determine one's practice is a symptom of an equally deep and dangerous, moral and political immaturity.1
The possibility of creating a civil society on the basis of the revolution of the 1950's no longer exists. In the presence of a multi-religious new immigrant society with a variety of cultural and ethnic roots, the presence of a significant secular minority which wants to rule out the active role of religions in the new developing Quebec society which is challenged by a plurality of those who wish to maintain its Christian roots and here I include Protestants and jews outside of the ultra orthodox the dream that French language alone is capable of creating a civil society is questionable at best.
So what does this have to with our long standing commitment to the sin business? Well, we have to acknowledge that the conversation in which we are involved is between good guys. We have to present our nation and its values in a language which is able to go beyond the terms and posturing that I want to call missionary. Those coming as immigrant must be made aware that their move is not geographic but will require a re-examination of their cultural identity and practices. The church, here in the inclusive sense I just mentioned, must be prepared to step back to the extent its vision is of a multi-religious society and stated in a way which makes clear its role in the flourishing of the human enterprise. It needs to affirm the triumphant secularity of the founders of the revolution which I would add in an historical note is dramatically similar to that of the founding fathers of the United States. We need to accept that our belief in social values involves commitment and discipline that the sin business used to promulgate but can no longer deliver. We need to listen to the cries coming from multitude of quarters from those concerned that the current state of affairs is not sustainable. Here is Madeline Bunting in this week's Guardian Weekly -
It's year 10's in a London comprehensive school. The kids are debating the purpose of a school."Teaching social skills,"they suggest. Why do you need them? I ask, playing the devil's advocate."To get a job"/ Is that the only point of having social skills? "What else is there?" .....
It was a fascinating illustration of how deeply the instrumentalist values of the market place have penetrated our thinking when kids talk of having "Social skills" is the type of phrase management experts dreamed up to put a market value on a set of human characteristics. But to many of these kids, equipping them for the labor market is the purpose of education ..... Any idea of its deepening their understanding of what it means to be human and leading a meaningful adult lives has been entirely lost....... A poll at the World Economic Forum last month found in G20 countries that two-thirds of respondents attributed the credit crunch and the ensuing economy... recession to a crisis of ethics and values.... However (while) most of the contributors to Christian Ethics express their commitment to ethics is without any reference to religious practice, perhaps but is finally possible to move beyond these familiar anxieties and resume the task of ethical reasoning regarded throughout most of history as essential to being human. ... our aim is to invoke a noisy debate on what kinds of habits and character we need to run a good society.2
So, the question being posed to our Christian community is whether we should participate in this debate and discussion knowing full well that we may not have all the answers. Our answer should be tempered by the knowledge that the centuries old sin business which we have cultivated derived its power from a conviction that this life was but a preparation for that which is to come. In the mad scramble to get a seat on the heavenly flight we way well have missed our potential for old fashioned domestic travel. At least we should see that routing out sin has very little to do with the power of evil and in the company of other sinners we need a new transforming penitential language that we can all contribute and share.
1. Quoted by Nicholas Krisf, On Isaiah Berlin, THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS, January 25, 2010, p26
2. Time to Dust Off The Big Moral Questions, The Guardian Weekly, Feb 4 - March 4, 2010, p19
