Morning Service for 3rd before Advent 2022
The whole account to me is a cautionary tale to those tempted to take scripture literally, outside of context, authorship, or common sense. It is a lesson many Christian preachers would do well to revisit! The very preaching of Jesus went beyond his own people’s understanding of the nature of God which they found in their scriptures, to a point which shocked and disturbed them – especially the religious professionals.
We should be prepared for the same shock and disturbance when new science and new understanding of how human beings function lead us to question old certainties and old judgements of right and wrong – clean and unclean (to use an old term but a notion still embedded in our reactions). The question of why Church of England clergy, unlike those of the Methodist church and the Church of Scotland, are still prevented by law from marrying same-sex couples is for me just such an issue of new science and new understanding challenging old certainties and old judgements.