Trinity 6
Many of you may know this passage –
In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.
Thus speaks my hero, Mr Darcy, in Pride and Prejudice.
The avowal of all that he felt and had long felt for her, immediately followed. He spoke well, but there were feelings besides those of the heart to be detailed, and he was not more eloquent on the subject of tenderness than of pride. His sense of her inferiority – of its being a degradation – of family obstacles which judgment had always opposed to inclination, were dwelt on with a warmth which seemed due to the consequence he was wounding …
Later my heroine, Elizabeth Bennet, replies,
I might as well enquire why with so evident a design of offending and insulting me, you chose to tell me that you liked me against your will, against your reason, and even against your character?
You see, I do not only read the Bible; my lessons are drawn from many places, and I think this lesson is what Paul is talking about in his letter to the Romans. Let me tell you why I think so.
Darcy speaks eloquently of his offended sensibility, which finds expression in family, friends and social status. This, I have always thought, had to do with what Paul calls “the Law” – well certainly in my understanding of “the Law” after the Epiphany of our Lord. “The Law” is the control of the lives we lead, through strict regulation of what we can do and what we cannot do. The law tells us that we cannot eat this or that, that we cannot do this or that, that this or that is unholy. Often the law is restrictive to the point of suffocation. That is what faith in Christ saves us from, a death to being alive, where we are afraid to do what our hearts tell us is right and good. Much like the law on our favourite television programs such as Law and Order where murder mystery is the focus, and the police and lawyers are hamstrung because of the way the law is used against itself and the people for whom it was formulated, and because of the way they abuse it themselves, but enough of television for today.
Our prayer of confession from the Book of Common Prayer says, “we have done those things which we ought not to have done and we have not done those things which we ought to have done, and there is no health in us.” Like Darcy we are afflicted with doubt and indecision, with shame; like Darcy, we must make up our minds, we must confess what we are. And so we say, “in vain have I struggled, I must approach you.” We say this to God, while Darcy speaks to his beloved … but what a reception the profession of his love receives! To be seen on the basis of false perceptions. That is the fate of all believers, and I would say lovers as well – but that is another discussion.
So what does all of this have to do with this convoluted passage from Paul’s letter to the Romans? Paul and Darcy are torn apart by their respective traditions. Paul is under the Law, and he has kept it admirably, more than that, Paul is a better Law-Keeper than anyone in Israel. Darcy is the foremost in the land, the personification of the gentry who rule over the meek and humble, the downtrodden and humiliated, of that society. Both men keep the Law with no equivocation, until …
Yes, that magical moment, when love is first acknowledged, when we become believers in the beloved. Sometimes we can name the time and place, but sometimes we are like Darcy, “I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.”
That is the lesson we must learn from both Paul and Darcy. That moment of conversion from one thing to another, from the prideful, conceited prig to the admirable lover of a deserving girl, from the harsh disciplinarian to the faithful believer in the law of love. That moment of conversion is too often never to be named, but the effects of that moment are everlasting, if that moment is true.
Darcy and Paul do not change in their particulars. As Elizabeth says of Darcy, “In essentials, I believe he is very much what he ever was,” and later says, “When I said that he improved on acquaintance, I did not mean that either his mind or manners were in a state of improvement, but that from knowing him better, his disposition was better understood.” The misperception of pride and prejudice on the lovers’ parts must be overcome by careful observation and openness of heart to one another. Again, it is that magical moment when all is transformed.
So it is with Paul also, for only by further reading his letters do we realise that there is a great deal more to admire in this correspondent with christians of every age. Paul does not change in his particulars, but he does improve as we come to know him more fully. Although Paul wants us all to live under the law, since it has been given to us and is still in effect, the law which overarches the whole of it is that of charity. So Paul must be understood. He is still pretty irascible and cantankerous. But underneath all of it, is a believer whose compassion is all consuming, even if it is hidden away from us all under the burden of tradition.
So it is with the object of our faith. God is often seen to be this or that, a mask which is only an aspect of the reality. God is beyond everything, but through everything we can behold our God. We can know our God through positive and negative ways, just at the people of God have done in the history of salvation. We must continue to search out our God for our own benefit, never mind to do justice to his reality.
Pride and Prejudice, as well as being a very good read – why, the title alone should give us pause for thought – must guide us in our reflections about ourselves. We in the church are much like Miss Eliza and Mr Darcy, immediately too eager to be clever and too clever to be honest immediately. We do injustice to ourselves and the objects of our observation. Pride and prejudice builds the walls of the law too high for anyone to benefit from them. With insight and patience, we will repair those wretched walls the law builds up around us. Perhaps faith, when Pride and Prejudice has been transformed by some Persuasion, with a modicum of Sense and Sensibility will do the world some good.