Does the name Clarence Norris mean anything to you? No?
In 1931 nine teenagers were falsely accused of having raped two young women. Unfortunately for the young men, their arrest took place in Alabama, and they were black, and the women were white. After a trial that inspired Harper Lee’s novel ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, they were convicted and condemned to death. 19 year old Clarence Norris was the oldest of the Scottsboro Boys.
Though their sentences were, eventually, commuted and one by one they were paroled, it was only 46 years later that Clarence was ‘pardoned’. But even today, their convictions stand and they are still guilty in the eyes of the law. On yesterday’s Today report, Clarence’s daughter spoke of the effect on her father: ‘I could see the hurt in his eyes. I’ve seen so much pain in his eyes and that pain never left. It never left.’
To live under a stigma of guilt – especially undeserved guilt – is a dreadful thing.
The background to the parable told by Jesus, and recorded in Luke 18 9-14, is of guilt and innocence in the law court.
What mattered to both the Pharisee and the tax collector was that they should be declared righteous or justified (our two words come from the same Greek word) – both the self righteous Pharisee and penitent tax collector wanted to know that they were innocent in the sight of God.
The Pharisee considered that his confidence could be placed in his adherence to the requirements of the Old Testament laws. He though he was able to stand up and assert his justification because he had done all that was required of him and more.
The tax collector had no such confidence. His circumstances were such that he would have found it almost impossible to meet the strict requirements of the Old Testament laws. His only possible response was to throw himself on the mercy of God.
Today is Bible Sunday. When we seek to understand – especially a gospel –narrative, a useful approach is to look at it on three levels:
What was Jesus seeking to convey to his listeners in what he said?
Well, he wasn’t having a go at the Pharisees on this occasion. Rather, his message was directed at all those ‘who trusted in themselves that they were righteous (justified/innocent) and regarded others with contempt.’ The tendency to bolster our own sense of self worth, by identifying others as having less value – being less worthy – than oneself, is universal – it long predated the famous ‘that was the week that was’ class sketches with John Cleese, Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett – anyone who is two young to remember those sketches, ask one of us oldies later! The message of the kingdom, Jesus asserted, called for repentance – and then for dependence on God’s grace and not on his hearers’ attempts to satisfy God by their own efforts. It was the penitent who would be declared innocent not the ones who strove to comply with their understanding of God’s expectations.
Why did the gospel writer include an account of this incident in his narrative – i.e., what was he seeking to convey to his readers?
One of the key debates among the early church was about whether gentile (non-Jew) converts to the Christian way should be expected to follow the Jewish rules – especially with regard to circumcision, the dietary laws and the celebration of particular festivals. You may recall that Paul and Peter had been involved in some fairly robust disagreements on this issue. There was a tendency for Jewish Christians to look down on the gentile converts – even to refuse to eat with them. Luke’s inclusion of Jesus’ parable will have served as a powerful reminder to those Jewish Christians that they must depend upon God’s grace as demonstrated in Jesus death and resurrection if they wished to be ‘found innocent’, and not on their Jewish heritage and status.
And finally, What is the Holy Spirit seeking to convey to us today?
Our parable is part of the bigger theme – that we are declared innocent not because of the way we live, not because we understand more of God’s word than those around us, not because we pray regularly, not because we come to church, not because we make our offerings to God and seek to serve him. Even though all of these things are good and to be encouraged. Rather, we are declared innocent because God, in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, took our sin upon himself on the cross, and because he rose from the dead. In the cross and resurrection, and only in the cross and resurrection, we may be confident of being declared innocent in the sight of God.
Clarence Norris lived with the stigma of an undeserved declaration of guilt. We are invited to live with the accolade of an undeserved declaration of innocence.
theodoresfriend 