Psalm 3 & Mark 1 1-13

Recently an experiment in Aberystwyth came to an end.  The Local Authority had earlier decided that if they withdrew their traffic wardens and instead relied on people to park in obedience to the markings on the roads and the notices on lampposts, all would work well and money would be saved as a result.

Well, it didn’t quite work out like that.  Chaos reigned because a minority of people acting just like spoilt children, behaved without any consideration for either the law or other people.  As anyone who has travelled by road will testify – put some ordinary meek and mild persons behind the wheel of a car and they undergo a complete transformation and can behave like power-crazed maniacs.

What we learn from observing the conduct of our national life is that certain characteristics that we can observe on a small scale on our doorsteps and in our homes can also manifest themselves in the lives of our communities and indeed in our national life.

The spoiled and overindulged child who has not been required to observe rules and boundaries will believe that he or she can get away with doing whatever they like in adult life.  Such children are often bullies at school and bullies in the work place.  They are also bullies when they park whether thoughtlessly (“I don’t care”) or arrogantly (“I’m entitled”).  A multi-millionaire footballer recently parked his Bentley in a disabled parking spot when going to collect a pizza and when challenged responded “Don’t you know who I am?”

A similarly arrogant businessman tried jumping the queue at an airport check-in desk and said exactly the same thing to the receptionist who challenged him whereupon she smiled and picked up her microphone saying into the tannoy system ‘I have a gentleman at desk 14 who doesn’t know who he is.  If anybody is able to help this man please come to desk 14.’  The bully retreated to the back of the queue and took his turn.

The point of both stories is that each man might have had an adult body but each also still had the lack of maturity of the spoilt child unable to comprehend civilised conduct or courtesy.  Neither man had grown up.

Now the question is, “what has this got to do with the statement made by Jesus, “Except ye be born again?”  Well that challenge is one which demands a completely fresh approach to life.  And that approach needs, I believe, to be one which finds a better balance between Law and Freedom than many of us as individuals or as members of families, communities and nations have so far managed to achieve.

What is more, that failure is reflected in many of those self-same families, communities and nations.  How else does one explain a man who thinks it is reasonable to sire 17 children whose upkeep he could never afford or the five different females who allowed him to achieve this damaging outcome for the unfortunate children involved?

What am I suggesting is the problem?  Well, I think it is that we are very good at seeing things in black and white but not so good at coping with the shades of grey between the two.

For example in our political life things are either left or right and depending on where we are born and how we are nurtured (or not) there is a strong likelihood that we will be either one or the other for the rest of our lives.  Indeed some parts of the country regard it as bordering on treason to one’s family and community to even think outside the box with the appropriate label on it.

Yet, as Christians, Jesus teaches us that such attitudes are too limited in their outcome.  Take for example the woman caught in adultery.  The law says adultery is wrong, she has been caught, she should be stoned – easy – let’s go for it says the crowd and the outcome is inevitable until, that is, a new approach is brought to bear which asks the question, “Who is fit to carry out the sentence?”  Matters are rarely as black and white as we would like them to be.

But to question ourselves requires maturity and to teach our children maturity is even harder.  “Yes” someone should have said to that man I spoke of earlier ‘you do  have the right to sire children but only if you also have the ability to pay for their upkeep and the maturity to care for them and their mothers so that each of you can educate them and teach them how to live self-reliantly as adults.’

It is, in other words, love – mature love that is not immature lust – that teaches us to live holding our rights and our responsibilities in a harmonious balance.

There is a dynamic, living and evolving Trinity here isn’t there? – The demands of our responsibilities, the freedom of our rights and the mature love that holds them in creative tension.

And if we look carefully we will find that this is a recurrent theme throughout our lives.

The Trinity is supremely Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but it is also a gift for us to use in looking for the way forward in dealing with the difficult issues that can confront us day by day.

We will find when we examine the situations we face that there are choices and that we are very good at seeing two of them.

As a lawyer I was always being accused of being “Mr this and that” – on the one hand this; on the other hand that.  But the key is finding the path that love would take which often means rising above the obvious to discover that there is an alternative we hadn’t previously seen.

Jesus did just that when he said, “Go and sin no more,” and we might do things differently if we considered that what appears obvious is not always right.  Being one of the crowd sometimes means we can get carried away.

So in this Trinity season why not make it our task to look for the way of love as Jesus did.  Sometimes it can be both a difficult path to find and a hard one to follow as the rich young man did – he went away troubled – but how rewarding it is when we find the right way because we let the spirit guide us.  Let us pray that the Spirit fills each one of us with renewed power to see where Jesus is leading.

In His Name