SECOND SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY (Proper 6)
13 June 2010

Although we celebrate them together in two week's time, and both met a martyr's death in Rome within a few years of each other, Peter and Paul didn't always get on. That's the background our Epistle reading today, which follows a passage in which Paul has been essentially condemning Peter and some of the other leaders of the Church, including Barnabas, for hypocrisy. Why? For refusing to eat with non-Jewish Christians who didn't keep Jewish dietary law.

Now that may seem to us like a relatively trivial matter; but it wasn't to the first generation of Christians. The relationship between Judaism and Christianity was a live issue; and the question of how much Jewish law, in matters such as ritual circumcision and dietary practice, was binding on new converts from a non-Jewish background, was a key area of dispute. And so even though our reading does not include Paul's condemnation of Peter and Barnabas, it nevertheless begins with some fairly strong language: We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners.

What Paul saw as being at stake here was the question of how people are saved. In Judaism it was clear – salvation came through obediently carrying out all that God had commanded through Moses. A righteous person was someone who conformed externally to the Jewish Law; and since Christ himself had been a Jew as had the first Christians, believers from a Jewish background naturally took it for granted that any new believers would be under the same obligation. They would have to keep Jewish dietary laws, and male converts would have to be circumcised.

Not so, says Paul; because Christ has fundamentally changed the mechanics of salvation. It's not about obedience any more, but faith. And if it is faith that justifies, then observance of the law is neither here nor there, and the distinction between Jew and Gentile no longer matters, because we are all one in Christ. In fact, insisting on observance of the law – even for Christians with a Jewish background – actually undermines what Jesus has done for us on the cross. And so Paul continues,

We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners; yet we know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ … I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.

In today's Gospel we see all this worked out in the ministry of Jesus himself. We do not know who the nameless "woman who was a sinner" was, though similar stories are found in all four Gospels and tradition has identified her with Mary Magdalene, who is often depicted in art with long hair for that reason – in fact I saw two of the best-known of all depictions of Mary Magdalene during my recent sabbatical, one a statue by Donatello, the other a wall fresco by Piero della Francesca.

But what is abundantly clear is that, whoever she was, she was outside the Jewish law. She should not have been there; she certainly should not have been touching Jesus, thereby making him ritually unclean; and, in the mind of Simon the Pharisee, Jesus ought to have known all this and put a stop to it. But he didn't; and in his own words says essentially what Paul argues at greater length in his letters: her ritual status under the law doesn't matter – her faith is what matters and it is that that brings her Jesus' forgiveness and blessing. Your faith has saved you; go in peace.

Now Paul is conscious, as becomes apparent later on in Galatians and in his other letters, that there is a risk here. There is a heresy known as anti-nomianism, that says, in effect, if we are saved by faith it doesn't matter what we do; and we are bound by no constraints whatsoever. To which Paul says, Oh yes, we are bound by a constraint even greater than the law – the constraint of love. So it's not inappropriate (though it is technically a coincidence) that in our collect today we should be praying for an increase of love in our hearts. But that is another argument.

Ultimately, of course, Paul's view prevailed. If it hadn't Christianity would probably have remained no more than a sub-sect of Judaism, and we wouldn't be here today. But that doesn't mean Paul's argument is irrelevant. Because while the Christian community inevitably needs rules and structures to order its common life, it can be very easy to elevate those rules and structures into the means of salvation. That was one of the perceived problems at the time of the Reformation in the 16th Century, that salvation had become a matter of following rules; and it becomes a problem when ever the Church forgets her fundamental call to love and becomes, as Bishop Gordon liked to say, an institution instead of a movement.

But it can become a problem in our own lives too, because there is something natural in the human soul, alas, that wants to draw lines and to make distinctions between different classes of people. We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners. “We're church-goers, not like that lot over there.” “What's he doing here? He doesn't belong in this place!” Or even, “Why is the Vicar spending so much time with so-and-so? He should know better!”. Yes, the Church needs to order its common life, but we do not find salvation in Canon Law.

Because we all need to remember, with Paul, that none of us was saved by our righteousness or our obedience or our good deeds. Those things are the fruit, not the seed; the seed is love planted in our hearts by faith in the Son of God, who, as Paul himself says, loved me and gave himself for me. And living up to that is far more challenging (and rewarding) than simply following a set of rules.

We know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ … I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.