Social Holiness: Reaching Out
Be Perfect as Your Heavenly Father is Perfect
1 Thessalonians 2:1-8
Rev. Tim Callow
Preached Sun. Oct. 29th, 2023
John Wesley is often quoted as saying, “the gospel of Christ knows of no religion, but social; no holiness but social holiness. Faith working by love, is the length and breadth and depth and height of Christian perfection.” This is often misunderstood. Some people take “social holiness” to be a more pious way of saying social justice. Certainly holiness and justice do not conflict. But John Wesley really means to emphasize the social, corporate, nature of our salvation. We are not made holy by ourselves. We are not saved by ourselves. God works in and through the Church. God saves us together.
Or, more to the point, holiness simply is a way of relating to each other and to God. There is no holiness but social holiness because holiness concerns our relationships.
One of the effects of sin is to make us selfish. We are selfish almost instinctually. St. Augustine of Hippo said we are full of a lust for domination and were curved in on ourselves. We wish to dominate and control ourselves and others, and we are self-seeking self-aggrandizing creatures. But, generally speaking, a creature that has curved in on itself is a creature that is dead. We can’t be self reliant, we simply have to reach out. Herbert McCabe, a Dominican theologian, put it beautifully when he said the dilemma of human life is that we know that if we truly love others we will get crucified for it, but if we don’t love others we will be dead already. He was just summarizing Augustine’s point, and by extension Paul’s as well. Sin leads to selfishness, control, pride, and a lust for domination.
Holiness reverses that. In holiness we are open to those we encounter. We are selfless in love. We imitate Jesus who cured all who would come to him, who taught all, who engaged all, who died for all. And we imitate our Father in heaven who makes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust alike. “Be perfect,” Jesus tells us, “as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
There’s a beautiful story Dostoevsky tells in the Brothers Karamazov that illustrates what I mean. I know I’ve told this story before, but a good story is worth retelling. It’s a short parable about a very wicked woman who died in sin. The devils came and plunged her into the lake of Hell. But her Guardian Angel looked for one good deed that she might use to deliver the woman from the torment of hell. I think it’s important to remember that God is not out to damn anyone and makes every effort to save. The angel remembers that the woman once picked an onion and gave it to a beggar. She tells God this and God says, “You take that onion then, hold it out to her in the lake, and let her take hold and be pulled out. And if you can pull her out of the lake, let her come to Paradise, but if the onion breaks, then the woman must stay where she is.”
So the angel goes to the lake of fire and holds out the onion to her. The woman grabs the onion and the angel slowly draws her out of the lake. As soon as her ankles leave the flames the other sinners notice and leap for their salvation. They grip her ankles and form a chain hoping that they all might be taken out with her.
But she was a very wicked woman, so she began to kick them off. “I’m the one being pulled out! It’s my onion! Not yours!” She shouts.
And as soon as those words left her lips, the onion broke. So the angel wept and went away.
Her one good deed may have been used by God to deliver many. But instead of seeing the glory of God she grasped her own salvation in selfishness. And so the onion broke. That is sin. Sin is thinking about ourselves above others, our own glory of overs, being curved in on ourselves and seeking our own satiation at the expense of the suffering of others. Holiness is opening up to others, love in self-sacrifice. Mercy and forgiveness and joy at the glory of God.
We may be the wicked woman, but by God’s grace we may be made into the image of his Son.
This morning Paul talks about his own ministry in Thessaloniki. He says, “We might have made demands as apostles of Christ. But we were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children. So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.”
This is holiness, this is love. Paul lays aside his own rights for the sake of his sisters and brothers in Christ. He shares not only the Gospel, but his own self. He, as far as his earthly flesh can allow, empties himself the way Jesus did in taking the form of a slave and taking on human likeness. He imitates the very love of God. Because holiness is imitation of God in the Spirit.
There is no holiness but social holiness. Holiness simply is the reversal of sin, our opening up to others and reaching out in love. And this social holiness is the holiness of the saints.