10th Sunday in Ordinary Time: Sin Shall be a Glory
“God showed that sin shall not be a shame to man, but a glory” so wrote the medieval mystic and theologian, Julian of Norwich, in chapter 38 of her Revelations of Divine Love (see J.M. Mounteney, Sin Shall be a Glory). It is a counterintuitive statement, especially from the standpoint of a dualistic theology, which sees good and evil as almost equal and opposite. Lord God and his holy angels battling it out against Satan and the demons across the ages, and we mere humans dodging arrows as best we can on the battlefield of earth.
Traditional Calvinistic theology looks at the fallen human condition - Adam’s potuit peccareor “freedom to sin” - as an innate weakness of men and women. This freedom to choose to eat from the forbidden tree of the knowledge of good and evil, leads to condemnation for all but the elect. This freedom of Adam and Eve is a curse not a gift.
The existential, non-dualistic theology of Paul Tillich, by contrast, takes a stance much more akin to Julian’s, describing sin as a divine gift, part of God’s creation. He writes: “This gift is understandable only from the point of view of the divine glory, in that God decided to reveal his majesty not only through salvation but also through the condemnation of men … . Symbolically speaking, it is the image of God in man which gives the possibility of the Fall. Only he who is the image of God has the power of separating himself from God. His greatness and weakness are identical” (Systemmatic Theology II, p.37).
In his recent book, Julian of Norwich: Wisdom in a time of pandemic – and beyond (2020) Matthew Fox quotes another of the great medieval mystics, Thomas Aquinas, who wrote that the essence of true religion is “supreme gratitude” (p.130 – Kindle version). A dualistic Fall/Redemption spirituality is myopic, focusing only Genesis chapter 3, and reading that in a literalistic way. But chapter 3 is built on chapter 1: “God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good” (v.31). Julian’s theology of sin is creation-centred and non-dualistic. “God is the same thing as nature” she notes, in stark contrast to Thomas a Kempis, writing just a few years later: “Every time I go into nature I withdraw from God” (Fox, p.62).
Julian’s theology is of course profoundly Christocentric. In today’s gospel we see a similar battle between dualistic, literalistic temple theologians, and our Lord’s itinerant inclusive spirit of love. The Jerusalem scribes accuse Jesus of being possessed by the devil, casting out demons by evil tricks. Our Lord points out the flawed logic of their bitter argument: “How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand.” Later, speaking to a crowd of followers, he reminds them that we are all related; whatever our differences we are all family: “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”
Matthew Fox reminds us of the significance for the here and now, of the wisdom handed down to us over the ages (p.12):
A time of crisis and chaos, the kind that a pandemic brings, is, among other things, a time to call on our ancestors for their deep wisdom. Not just knowledge but true wisdom is needed in a time of death and profound change, for at such times we are beckoned not simply to return to the immediate past, that which we remember fondly as “the normal,” but to reimagine a new future, a renewed humanity, a more just and therefore sustainable culture, and one even filled with joy.
Just as sin, through God’s grace and mercy, is transformed into glory, so the painful challenges of the present time will give birth to new possibilities and even to joy in due course. But we cannot do this alone. It is pointless to pitch ourselves against others, to dig trenches and draw again old battlelines, to become a kingdom divided. We can never go back to the way things were. Change has been thrust on us; we cannot escape that reality. And we all grieve for what we have lost. The question is, how do we move into the future that God is laying out for us?
In chapter 68 of her Revelations Julian points towards an answer. Just as the scourge of sin shall be a glory, so too the trauma of times of crisis shall be transformed, in and through God’s grace. Writing in a time of plague, when one in three of those around her were taken, and she herself had suffered tremendously, these are far from empty words of shallow piety, but rather pure gold forged in the flame:
[Our Lord] did not say: ‘You shall not be tempest-tossed, you shall not be work-weary, you shall not be discomforted.’ But he did say: ‘You shall not be overcome.’ God wants us to heed these words so that we shall always be strong in trust – both in sorrow and in joy. For he loves us and delights in us. And so he wills that we love him and delight in him, and firmly trust in him – and all shall be well.