“But, oh Granny, what big ears you have; oh Granny what hard eyes you have; oh Granny, what big teeth…….”
So says Little Red Riding Hood in the moments before – at least in some versions of the fairytale – she’s gobbled up by the wolf.
We live in a very connected world, so that not only through radio and television but increasingly through the internet, we are not just open to positive good and reliable information, but to those who would tempt us by offering money making schemes, investments, loans and services. We’ve probably all heard the warnings about websites which imitate legitimate ones and then charge a fee for what is a free service. Or websites which offer, for a vast price, non-existent tickets for popular events. We’re aware of politicians who seem to say one thing and do another. We learn that nothing and no one can be taken at face value.
However, this is also a world where image is all-important. Our heroes and heroines must have film-star looks. Even our politicians, who surely deal above all in ideas, must worry about how they look – especially if they are eating a snack! People are constantly made to feel that if they do not look a certain way or dress in certain clothing, then they are unacceptable. It’s as if we believe that the way we look on the outside really does show what we are like underneath. Like little red riding hood, we can be taken in by appearances. For some of the time perhaps we even succeed in deceiving ourselves.
Our Gospel passage shows Jesus grappling with a problem of appearances – the “false prophets”. At the time when Matthew was writing, the problem may have been some highly charismatic, possibly itinerant so-called Christian teachers and leaders. Later on in the Gospel Jesus warns that many such people will come, some even claiming to be the Messiah (Matthew 24: 3 – 14). But the people of God are not to be influenced or led astray by them. Crucially, says Jesus: “Ye shall know them by their fruits” (Matthew 7: 16), in other words, by what they do. Here Matthew is concerned not with erroneous theology, but with bad behaviour. If they talk the talk, they must also walk the walk. We’ve had some notable instances recently of some of our popular heroes being toppled because of bad behaviour. It happens in the church sometimes too, as we know to our cost. So Matthew’s new Christian community are to judge those who claim to be prophets not by the way they appear or by what they say, but by the way they behave.
We may hope to be less naïve than Red Riding Hood when it comes to recognising the wolves of the virtual or the real world. Most of us are probably inherently fairly sceptical about any claims that seem too good to be true. But how can we be sure that we won’t, ourselves, fall into the trap of self-deception. That we won’t end up coming to church, sounding pious but living a lie?
Here our passage from Romans is a real help. Adoption was common in first century society, especially among Romans, although usually only for boys. For the upper classes it was a way of ensuring succession and cementing family alliances. It could be a less costly alternative to raising children of one’s own or a way of mitigating child mortality. Slave children were regarded as illegitimate, but slaves could also be adopted as sons by affluent but childless adults. The adopted child had all the rights and rank of the family into which they had been adopted, but often also retained ties with their birth family.
As Christians, we have all received the gift of the Holy Spirit. For Paul, in this passage, the Holy Spirit is the spirit of adoption who seals our new status as children of God. We’ve been released from a state of slavery and adopted into the family of God. Our slavery was not our humanity itself or our natural human concerns, but our fear which tended to make us put other things or people in the place of God. We bring our full humanity with us into our new family relationship with God, but as adopted children, conscious of the Holy Spirit who “beareth witness with our spirit” (Romans 8:16), we cannot fall back again into slavery. If we listen to the promptings of the Spirit there will be an integrity between what we say and who we are – or what we do. We can hope to grow more Christlike too. However, there is no guarantee that the result will be an easier life. On the contrary, Paul expects that we too will have our share of suffering. We cannot perhaps imagine now what it might mean to be glorified with Christ, but we trust that one day we shall know and experience this for ourselves.
Amen