"Consider that you might be mistaken"

My sermon for the fourth Sunday in Lent, Year A:

The lines from the First Book of Samuel in the first reading today make up one of many Scripture passages that highlight the difference between God's way of thinking and ours, and, maybe more precisely, the difference between the qualities of character that God seeks out in a person when he wants him or her to carry out some aspect of his work, and the qualities that we tend to find admirable or striking.

The issue here, without going into the background too deeply, is: who is going to take over from Saul as King of Israel? Through Samuel, God communicates his preference for David, a young shepherd-boy, over the other, apparently better-qualified, candidates. And this is God's consistent pattern. If we think of Moses and Jeremiah for example, or St Peter in New Testament times, they were all men with glaring faults and weaknesses, men who judged themselves inferior to the vocation that God was calling them to, and who tried to get out of the task that God was setting them.

God's way, it seems, is never to be impressed by the sort of natural talents and abilities or the easy self-confidence that we applaud in a "leader", and he certainly isn't mesmerised by worldly wealth, power or glamour. He always summons individuals who are only too conscious of their lack of authority, their clumsiness in communicating, their general lack of worldly sophistication.

The reason is, as he tells Samuel here: God's ways are not men's ways. Man looks at appearances while God searches the heart. The qualities that make for worldly success aren't the qualities that make us good servants of God's Kingdom.

During his public ministry Jesus was faithful to this consistent attitude of God's. Christ's association with tax collectors, prostitutes and sinners, coupled with his constant attacks on the hypocrisy and self-righteousness of the Pharisees, was the main cause of the plot against him that led to his crucifixion.

St Luke, in his gospel, describes the Pharisees as men who prided themselves on their virtue and looked down on everyone else. (This was yesterday's gospel reading, in fact). St John's way of describing their attitude was to label it as spiritual blindness.

It's worth remembering that the Pharisee movement was actually a spiritual reform movement within the Jewish faith. The whole direction of their reform was to put a huge stress on keeping the religious law very meticulously - as here, regarding the keeping of the Sabbath. They tended to think that strict law-keeping and ritual cleanliness made them holy and close to God almost automatically.

Jesus' criticism of the Pharisees was that their striving for virtue led to an arrogant, condescending attitude which actually alienated them from God. Christ further scandalised the Pharisees by stating that many of the people they regarded as sinful and impure were closer to God and understood his will better, because they approached God humbly and self-critically, admitted their faults readily and turned to God to ask for forgiveness and help.

In many ways the blindness of the Pharisees is a warning to any individual or group of individuals who cast themselves in the role of reformers. The temptation for would-be reformers is to divide the world into the righteous and the unrighteous - to regard oneself or one's group as the embodiment of all goodness and truth and right, and to see everyone else as sunk in error, ignorance or prejudice.

And this is a form of blindness that isn't restricted to religious-minded people like the Pharisees. One of the unpleasant features of the moral and political debates that take place in our society today is that there are lots of campaigners and pressure groups who adopt a fanatical and unquestioning stance towards their own cause, while easily justifying a dismissive or even abusive attitude to those who happen not to share, or to disagree with, their commitment.

It's a sort of secular pharisaism - taking pride in their own virtue and looking down on everyone else. What's lacking is the note of self-criticism or self-questioning that the Old Testament prophets encouraged among the Chosen People, and that we all need to have as fallible, sinful human beings.

When we can look at ourselves honestly and acknowledge our own blind-spots we find it less easy to be self-righteous towards other people, and we learn that, if we don't want to be hypocrites, kindness, compassion and courtesy are the only acceptable attitudes. And then, when it comes to debates on issues that people feel strongly about, a sense of our own blind-spots helps us to conduct the argument in a more civilised and respectful, less polarised and abusive tone.

It was Oliver Cromwell, wasn't it?, in the 17th century, who appealed in a letter to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland: "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, consider that you might be mistaken". That's the attitude that Jesus found missing among the Pharisees, and it's the attitude that St John recommends to us as the starting-point of our relationship with God and with our neighbour.