"Enemies of God"

Robert Berra

St. Matthew’s, Chandler

Lent 3, Yr A

Exodus 17:1-7

Romans 5:1-11

John 4:5-42

Psalm 95

How would you rate your moral life?

Average?  Above average?  Below average?

Do others seem to you to be really self-righteous? Judgmental?

There’s a reason.

Last October, researchers at the University of London published a study in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science. The title of the article was “The Illusion of Moral Superiority.” The findings were these:  Most people strongly believe they are just, virtuous, and moral; yet regard the average person as distinctly less so. Virtually all individuals involved in the random sample irrationally inflated their moral qualities.  These findings suggest that moral superiority is a strong and prevalent form of “positive illusion.”[1] 

This is not a new finding, actually.   At least since the late-1980s—and repeated in a significant number of studies—The common means of inferring the presence of positive illusions is to ask individuals how they compare with respect to the average person along some trait. This method consistently reveals that an implausibly high number of people believe that they are above average. This has been dubbed the ‘‘better-than-average effect.’’ Although this phenomenon emerges across a range of characteristics, the magnitude of self-enhancement is strongest for moral qualities.[2] 

Bottom line:  Most people consider themselves paragons of virtue; yet few folks perceive this abundance of virtue in others.[3] Such is the extent of this phenomenon that violent criminals consider themselves more moral than law-abiding citizens living in the same community.[4] 

And the thing is, it’s actually more reasonable and accurate to assume that another person is just as moral as we are. Normatively speaking, self-judgments act as valid cues to what the average person is like—justified by the fact that most people are in the majority most of the time. So gauging the typicality (typical-ness) of one’s own characteristics improves accuracy in judgments of others.  Neglecting this typical-ness amounts to a failure of inductive reasoning.

Still, we do this on the regular.  We tend to see ourselves as more moral than others, and almost always consider ourselves above average.

I bring this up because I imagine there might be a little bit of recoil when Paul calls us sinners and “enemies of God.”  Surely we aren’t that bad? 

Enemy?  Maybe that sounds too strong. Too dualistic.

Maybe we think we had or have a neutral relationship to God—a hands-off arrangement that goes both ways.

“I don’t bother God.  God doesn’t bother me.” 

“After all,”—we might think— “I’m a moral person.  I’m okay.  Surely there are worse people than me.”

What if we sat with that notion that we are—or were—enemies of God a little longer?  What does it mean to be an enemy of God?

It’s much easier to understand this rhetoric of “enemy” when we remember that Paul was writing this letter to a congregation in the heart of the empire that crucified Christ 25-30 years prior.

But there is more to it than the historical fact of the Roman Empire.  What continues to make this letter to the Romans and its naming of humankind as enemies of God so true—hard to hear, maybe; but true—is that humankind has rebelled against God, defied the divine purpose in our lives, and destroyed the fellowship for which we were intended.  From the beginning, we have erected upon a false foundation a whole series of relationships which constitute a kingdom of evil. [5]

While we were created for perfect relationship with God and with each other, humankind has been in the practice of rejecting these calls to take up our loving purpose.  We instead set up kingdoms in which the dignity of many is expendable for the comfort of a few who continue to live in suspicion of each other.  In which our fellow humans become commodities—things to be manipulated to our own will.  Or they are considered burdens, and all too easily we begin to regard others as expendable. 

Time and again the law, the prophets, Christ himself, and the apostles called us back into relationship with God and with each other with appeals to defend and care for the alien, the sick, the poor, the orphan, the widow, the hungry, the naked, the prisoner, the oppressed, the refugee, the workers seeking their wages. [6]  Yet humankind continues to sell each other cheaply. 

We name enemies we need to defeat.  We practice deceit and falsehood.  We create burdens, austerities, and hardships for others that we are not willing to face ourselves.[7]  We do not trust God’s love for us, and instead want to prove ourselves self-sufficient and free from everything and everyone. 

All of which intensifies our estrangement from God and from others and from ourselves.  And we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves.

The reality is that in our natural state we are separated from God.  And for Paul to refer to himself and all of us as enemies of God is harsh, but a less-pointed description would not match the situation.  Our reconciliation was absolutely necessary, and utterly unattainable by our own striving.  And God’s dogged love for all means that He is unwilling to turn a blind eye to our hostility to him and our apathy and animosity to each other.

So how does God treat God’s enemies? 

Paul tells us that in this lesson, too.  God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners, Christ his son died for us.  Christ’s life was necessary; his death was necessary; his resurrection was necessary.  Through all of these, the hostility between us and God is bridged. And rather than simply being acquitted, and declared in a neutral relationship with God, we are called into reconciled, loving, relationship.

And in the Gospel lesson from John today, we see what it means that God sends Jesus Christ into the world not to condemn the world, but to save it.  Jesus meets the woman at the well, not with judgment, but a desire.  A desire to do the work his father had given him to do.  A desire to seek out the lost and those left bereft of hope. A desire to open reconciliation where there had been ethnic strife (Samaritans and Jews hated each other.) If God and Jesus were only interested in reconciling a select few, or passively waiting for people to seek to reconcile themselves, Jesus didn’t have to say a word to that woman.  But he is the perfect image of God’s active pursuit of renewed relationship with his creation. And by his example, he brings his disciples and us with him into the relentless…seeking…labor of God’s redeeming purpose.

You see, the offer of God in the work of reconciling us to him is not an offer in which we get to choose to be left alone. Paul writes elsewhere that we are called into the ministry of reconciliation.[8]  We do not get to sit in a personal salvation, assured of our safety with an eternal fire insurance policy. We are called to actively pursue our own reconciliation—giving ourselves to God’s purpose, and to invite the world into that same work.

Others have labored.  It is our time.

It is always a renewed time to let go our own self-righteousness—which even secular psychology is now able to quantify—and seek God’s righteousness. 

It’s time to temper our faith in ourselves, and find our faith in God’s purposes and mission.

For it is not our own morality or righteousness or faith in ourselves that saves us or makes us worthy of boasting about ourselves.  Instead, we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.

…For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. But more than that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ [in whom we are knit as one body, and] through whom we have now received reconciliation.  Thanks be to God!

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[1] Tappin, Ben M. and Ryan T. McKay. "The Illusion of Moral Superiority". Social Psychological and Personality Science (2016): 194855061667387.  Illusions are "beliefs that depart from reality" and they are positive when they involve unrealistic optimism about one's capacities, prospects, or control over the external environment.

[2] Ibid, 1.

[3] Ibid, 2.

[4] Ibid, 4.

[5] This phrasing is heavily indebted to John Knox, The Interpreter's Bible, Volume 9 (Nashville: Abingdon, 1954), 460.

[6] Ex. 22:21, Jas 1:27, Mt . 25:31-46, Prov 13:41, Jas. 5:4.

[7] Mt 23:4.

[8] 2Cor 5:18.