THE GIFT OF TRUE DISCRIMINATION

 

Sermon delivered on the Second Sunday of Advent, the 6^th December 2009 by Fr Nicholas JG Sykes in the congregation of St. Alban's Church of England, George Town, Cayman Islands.

 

Scriptures: Malachi 3:1-4               Philippians 1:3-11                    S. Luke 3: 1-6

 

Luke 3: 4 “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make His paths straight.”

 

The basic themes of Advent contain themes of preparation - getting ready for something tremendous to happen. And we thought a little last week about how that tremendous happening that we are preparing for has already indeed begun to happen. Jesus’ arrival on earth 2000 years ago was the advance notice, in one sense, of the fullness of the Kingdom that we are to prepare for and that will finally come at an unspecified time. Yet in another sense, in Jesus’ coming and presence the fullness of the Kingdom could already also be seen. So now in the New Testament age we live in two worlds simultaneously. We are British, Canadian, Jamaican, American, Caymanian and so on, and quite possibly more than one of these, attached to the earth; but simultaneously we are called by our baptism and our faith to be here on this earth as “heavenians”, those who are citizens and belongers of a Kingdom that we are to prepare for actively, a Kingdom that demands of us by new rules laid down that we act differently from our fellow-citizens of the earth. This Kingdom of God  will finally come at an unspecified time, and yet in the revelation of Jesus has already been seen in its fullness. John the Baptist, the last of the line of Old Testament prophets, the first biblical prophet after a break of some 460 years and the unique forerunner of the Kingdom that would be revealed in Jesus, called his contemporaries to get ready for what was about to be revealed, to clear and level the roadway, so to speak, for the King to travel on when He arrived. John the Baptist’s ministry reminds us that as Christians we too are to take thought not only for what has happened, but for what will happen,  to be prepared ourselves and to call others to preparation.

 

In our New Testament lesson today from the letter to the Philippians, in a spirit of thankfulness for their fellowship with him in the gospel, St. Paul says that He who began a good work in them will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. They are to prepare for that day, and God Himself will help them to do so. With preparation will come Christian maturity and grace. “It is my prayer,” St. Paul says, “that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruits of righteousness.” Now it is quite easy for us to let such mellifluous-seeming words slide right past us and not take notice of them, but we do well to pay them and their meaning some close attention.

 

First, in verses 9 and 10 St. Paul links the increase of love to what is translated “knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent.” St. Paul sees these things as the marks of Christian maturity. We should note that this involves making all sorts of distinctions, making judgments about the good and the bad, or the good and the better. In the maturing of the Christian character, love is most certainly not “blind”, as the saying goes: no, the increase of love supports the capacity to make distinctions and judgments, rather than diminishing it. Interestingly, this is the New English Bible’s translation of the same passage: “This is my prayer, that your love may grow ever richer and richer in knowledge and insight of every kind, and may thus bring you the gift of true discrimination.” In the politically correct lexicography of today’s media, politics, and even law, “discrimination” has become a demonised word, never to be thought of in a positive sense. But if we are to have the discernment, or perception, or sensitivity to distinguish the things that differ, in order to “approve what is excellent”, or even in the words of the John Gray High School motto, to “hold fast to that which is good”, then it is clear we are being counselled to have the capacity to discriminate between the good and the not good, and to choose and approve the good rather than the other. We might also ask ourselves what the worth of any course of learning might be without such a healthy exercise of discrimination.

 

When we were struggling with the wording of the new constitution last year and early this year, I wanted to preserve the idea in that document that “discrimination” could be understood positively as well as otherwise, but found that the negative connotation was so deeply entrenched in the legal psyche that to do this was not possible. The best thing we could do was to limit its negative stretch by defining being discriminatory as “affording different and unjustifiable treatment to different persons”. So although a teacher, to take this sort of example again, would be right to approve one student getting a maths answer right and not to approve another for getting it wrong, thus in truth “discriminating” between one and the other, in our constitutional law it would not be classed as discrimination, because the different treatment that the teacher was affording to the one who got it right over the one who got it wrong, was not “unjustifiable”.

 

In the published material about AIDS one sees and hears quite a lot about how bad stigma and discrimination can be, when it comes to AIDS, and I can identify reasonably well with the intention of this.

 

Yet when it comes to moral behaviour and the prevention of disease, I believe we are being gravely misled if we become convinced that the gift of true discrimination, or the ability to distinguish and approve what is excellent, is a bad thing. Those who advocate what is called “safe sex” rather than abstinence outside marriage do themselves advocate a limited kind of change of behaviour, albeit in Christian thought not nearly enough change. In fact even from a purely health point of view, the situation necessitates more than just that level of discernment. The most prevalent contagions of these sorts, the Human Papilloma Viruses, are not affected by condom use. By not advocating true discrimination in thought and behaviour, we are increasingly harming our population. We should remember that the safety measures advocated other than abstinence do not prevent some of the contagious transmissions. Those practices advocated by safe sex professionals cut down AIDS transmission by no more than 90%. The psychological dimension of lax sexuality, not to speak of the spiritual dimension, should not be ignored. Perhaps it is better to have in our minds the thought that sex is inherently unsafe. In any event we and our young and those we interact with socially need to know the excellence of exercising the gift of true discrimination in our behaviour and approving marital exclusiveness. Unfortunately this message does not always get a hearing where it should. As Christians we should always remember that we and our youngsters are called to the exercise of abstinence and marital faithfulness, for an array of considerations connected with our citizenship of that Kingdom to which above all other kingdoms we as “heavenians” most belong.

 

The Advent preparation of a discipline of abounding love requires a true discernment, a true discrimination, between the grace-filled counsels of Christ and the gospel, and the various voices that assail those who listen to them daily. As those baptised into Christ, increasingly we must approve out of love the excellent ways that are consistent with our baptism and discern and reject those that are not. Let us be about the true business with which we are charged, being made pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruits of righteousness. Let us obey and apply to ourselves and the whole body of Christ, the prophetic voice of the Baptist: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”