For those who want a change from the Gospel

Trinity 13 – Jeremiah 15:15-21 (Related)

‘Let this people turn to you, but you must not turn to them’

This phrase, from v.19 of today’s OT, seems to me to sum up a really important current issue for the C of E, so let’s look at the background at see if we might understand and apply it.

Jeremiah is worn out. He might have been known and called by God whilst still in the womb (1:5), but that calling has turned out to be a mixed blessing. It was always going to be: to tell your nation that their sins are so offensive to God that punishment and destruction are the only option left open to him is never going to win friends and influence people. But this has been going on for so long that poor Jeremiah is at the end of his tether. Our passage comes in the context of a section of the book which begins in chapter 12, and is known as ‘Jeremiah’s complaint’. His constant need to oppose the important people of the nation has taken its toll, and now he wants to hand in his notice. Although his ministry started as a privilege, and the sacrifices he had to make for it, such as never marrying, or joining in with celebrations, were a gladly-borne part of his calling, it has all worn thin by now. No doubt the God-given pain he felt for the sins of the nation had become mixed up with the personal pain of constant persecution, loneliness, and also, I would imagine, really big questions about whether this is actually making any difference. We can all make great sacrifices if we feel it’s worth the effort, but to continue to do so with no visible effects can really make us feel like going for the softer option and just being nice to people. This is exactly the temptation which God is challenging him over in this text. To utter worthless words is a complete betrayal of his God and his calling.

Maybe it’s because I’m old and retired, but I can’t help but see in today’s church the same temptation. I’ve mentioned before my hero David Pawson’s comment that for the past 100 years the Church has been preaching the love of God instead of the righteousness of God, ‘and it is killing us’. There has been a spate recently of stories on social media about whether cathedrals should be used for fun things like helter-skelters, silent discos or crazy golf, or even nasty things like The Wicker Man, and whether churches should change their service times to accommodate those who would rather watch football. And all this against the background of the debate about prayers for blessing gay marriages. Underneath all this is a growing awareness of the marginalisation of the Church in our society, the narrative of our decline and ineffectiveness (much exaggerated IMHO), and the perceived need to ‘move with the times’ in order somehow to become ‘relevant’ again. Add to that the mood of our culture where tolerance and general niceness are our highest values, and ‘doing our own thing’ and ‘being who we want to be’ our greatest aspirations, and it all begins to feel uncannily close to Jeremiah’s world. The Church, it might seem to some, is worn out with trying to speak with the prophetic voice of God into a culture which hates it and, worse, ignores it. We’re just sick of it, we’re aching because of it, and we long for some bland niceness which will help people respect us again.

In today’s Gospel (Mt 16:21-28) we can see Peter succumbing to the same temptation, simply to be nice. We can totally understand his sentiments. His best friend is telling them that he will soon be tortured and killed, and no-one wants that for their friends. ‘There must be another way, Lord!’ he protests, and we would probably have said the same in his shoes. But Jesus, in one of the sternest rebukes he ever makes, calls Peter ‘Satan’. Behind the well-meaning concerns of his friend lies the evil plot of the Tempter Supreme to scupper the Father’s plans for redemption by getting him to avoid the pain of the cross.

God promises Jeremiah that if he speaks words worthy of his calling he will know protection, rescue and salvation. I can’t help but wonder whether the Church in our time might be in a better place if we started calling people to repent (as the first preachers in the Book of Acts consistently did). Maybe we should try it. We might even see people turning to us if we stopped turning to them so much. Just saying.

For those who want a change from the Gospel

Trinity 12 – Isaiah 51:1-6 (Related)

One of the happiest periods of our life in ministry was the 19 months we spent in Jersey. We went to do a three month locum, but ended up staying much longer. We were offered a permanent job out there, which it felt right at the time to turn down, a decision I regret most days. One of the highlights of that year was the ‘Tennerfest’ in October, when all the restaurants, probably to thank the locals for putting up with the tourists all summer, served up incredible meals for £10 a pop. There was such a rich variety of different types of food available, and of course you have to cram in as many as you can while it lasts. It’s the law.

But the islanders have not always known such bounty. Many of our parishioners could still remember, first hand or in family tales, the period of occupation during WWII when it was hard to find anything at all to eat. Flower bulbs had to function as onions, and basically you had to grow what you ate or starve. Liberation Day, on May 9^th 1945, is still celebrated as an Island holiday each year.

The exiles from our passage had similarly been living through not occupation but deportation to Babylon, and, like the Islanders, almost certainly developed a ‘scarcity mindset’. People who have very little often cling desperately on to what they do have, and lose any imagination about things ever getting better. If imagination was a muscle, it had completely atrophied through lack of use. The prophet is trying here to get them to begin to flex their imagination muscles again, by painting a picture of the future which is so outrageously extravagant that it was way beyond what they could ever dream of. ‘Remember how it used to be?’ he asks. Take a look back to the golden age. God is still the same! He promises Eden instead of deserts, singing songs of thanksgiving instead of lament, and the influencing of the nations towards God rather than being under the oppression of foreigners. The call in v.6 to ‘lift up your eyes’ is a call to pump those imagination muscles so that they could begin to comprehend what good things God had in store for them.

Many in our churches today also have atrophied imaginations. We have seen the stats which tell us that Christianity is in decline, and the C of E perhaps in terminal decline. We are fed stories of child abuse, falling attendances and financial crises, and we have come to believe it. So we hang desperately on to what little we have got, and become functional atheists, losing any belief that things can ever get better. We refuse to change anything because after all, the devil you know … One parish I knew went into vacancy and asked their bishop for a new vicar who would be a hospice chaplain ‘to help us die as painlessly as possible’. We know our church can’t survive, but as long is it outlives us we’ll be OK. The prophet wants to speak words of hope into a completely discouraged people, and he does so by reminding them of what God is able to do, and encouraging them to life up their eyes to see it, and to make changes to prepare for it.

Now of course there is a tension here. The fact is that the C of E is in decline. The fact is that many tiny village churches will die, just has many urban ones already have. So isn’t this passage just a triumph of hope over reality, a massive game of ‘Let’s pretend’? The fact is that the Israelites did return to Jerusalem, but that doesn’t mean that 21^st century British churches will suddenly become full again. We have to face reality, not just hold out for unrealistic dreams to come true.

But as is so often the case, there is a dual focus in the prophet’s words. The 15 chapters which make up Deutero-Isaiah do give detailed accounts of what God is going to do in returning the exiles to their homeland, for example in v.11 of this chapter. We know from history that these words did come true. But there is another focus. V.6 describes a cosmic cataclysm when heaven and earth themselves will disappear, not a feature of Israel’s return with which we are familiar. The prophet’s telescope has zoomed out to the time when God will come in triumph and life as we know it will be replaced by a life of such abundance that even the Tennerfest will seem like subsistence rations. Our hopes for this life may or may not be fulfilled, but for God’s people exiled on this earth there is no doubt about the banquet to come.

For those who want a change from the Gospel

Trinity 11 – Isaiah 56:1, 6-8 (Related)

For much of my pre-retirement career I worked in different ways as a church consultant, employed by different dioceses to help stimulate growth and health among their parishes. I would often spend extended periods with local churches helping them with Mission Action Planning, developing in two different dioceses two different programmes for this process. I noticed something again and again: every single church I worked with told me how welcoming they were. They might have acknowledged that their worship was dull, their teaching boring, their children’s work non-existent, but at least they were very very welcoming. I often had to ask why, if that was the case, I was so often left standing like a lemon with my cup of appalling coffee at the end of the service while everyone spoke to those they already knew? Like this passage, we all feel that welcome is important, but what we don’t often acknowledge is that it can be difficult and highly disruptive.

Our passage comes from Trito-Isaiah, the third section of the book, which was written by another unknown prophet in the years following the return from exile in Babylon, when Israel was trying to re-establish her identity and rebuilt her homeland after years in slavery far away. Quite understandably they were suspicious of foreigners, partly because of the cruel treatment they had received at the hands of their captors, but also because the prophets had long been saying that it was their corruption by the foreigners around them which had got them into exile in the first place. So the natural, and perhaps forgivable, reaction was to separate themselves as much as possible from all non-Jews, in order to retain their national and spiritual purity. You can see this attitude in the commands of Ezra (10) and Nehemiah (13) to separate from foreign wives.

But, somewhat counter-intuitively, our reading, whilst insisting on the maintenance of righteous behaviour (v.1), nevertheless shows a welcoming attitude to those from outside the community. There is a real tension here, though. This can appear a lovely ‘let’s-all-live-together-in-love-and-harmony’ passage, where anyone is welcome and anything goes, what we might fashionably call an ‘inclusive’ church. But this is to misread the text: the ‘foreigners’ who are welcome are those who have ‘bound themselves to the Lord’ (v.6), those who love and serve him, keep his covenant and don’t break the sabbath. In other words, we might put it, outsiders who have become Christians are welcome, and will have an equal share in the Kingdom of God. So this isn’t quite the kind of ‘everybody welcome’ passage we might have thought.

But note the final words of this passage: it is God’s purpose to gather ‘still others’ to his people (v.8). It isn’t a closed shop after all: there are still more to be welcomed in. So what does all this say about local church welcome?

The first thing to say is that welcome can be disruptive and unsettling. We all prefer that with which we are familiar, and few of us actually like change that much, particularly if it makes us feel threatened. I can remember a church I once attended where we counted 23 different nationalities in a congregation of around 70 people, and it was lovely, but I could imagine an English church in 1946 suddenly having an influx of German people. There might be some hesitation, to say the least!

Secondly, though, we need to remember to what we are inviting people. If we see church as a nice social club, then of course anyone is welcome. But if our purpose is to make disciples, then we need a strategy for that which applies to all, regulars and visitors alike. All of us together need to be growing to bind ourselves more closely to the Lord, to love him and work out our particular ministry to him, to behave righteously and maintain our relationship with him. This is so often forgotten in my experience, but the glowing promises for foreigners and eunuchs (those who under the Law would have been excluded from worship) of a full inclusion into the people of God and the promise of acceptance of their worship is a conditional one.

So let’s be welcoming, although that at times will be uncomfortable and difficult, but let’s also remember that we are all pilgrims together on the Way of Christ. That’s why the welcome imperative is so important. We’re not about boosting our numbers to make us feel better: we’re about introducing people to the living God and helping them to walk with us on the road of discipleship.

One practical suggestion: in my first parish we had a rule that people were not allowed to speak to their friends after services until they had first spoken to someone they didn’t know. At times it was as much aspirational as actual, to be honest, but nevertheless the fact that we had that rule said something important about what we did aspire to as a welcoming church.

For those who want a change from the Gospel

Trinity 10 – 1 Kings 19:9-18 (Related)

In the times in which we’re living there is, we are often told, a mental health crisis. Few of us will have escaped it, either ourselves or because we have had to watch close friends or family suffering. There is nothing quite as difficult as the feeling of powerless we get when we see someone we love suffering with depression, anxiety or any of the other symptoms of a troubled mind. I have had to watch two close relatives experiencing depression, and it’s awful. And it’s particularly bad for me because I have had counselling training and have had to face the fact that actually nothing I could say or do helped very much at all. We’re not told whether or not Elijah had any friends to suffer with him, but we do see God involved in his journey, and there are some hints for those of us who walk with friends through this dark valley. We would love just to be able to snap our fingers and make it all go away, but in real life, and in this story, it just doesn’t happen. It’s a journey people have to see through to the end, and hopefully they will emerge sadder but wiser. So what does God do for his friend?

He deals with Elijah’s physical needs

Earlier in this chapter we have seen God acknowledging that depressed people are still physical people. He provides food, drink and sleep, because he knows that Elijah needs these things, and that in his mental exhaustion he might not be able to provide them for himself. It sounds a bit EastEnders, but sometimes simply making someone a cup of tea might be just what they need at that moment. And giving people permission to rest and sleep can be a lifesaver. I can remember once being signed off for stress by my GP, and the enormous sense of relief that he had given me permission just to stop it for a while.

He listens to Elijah’s emotional needs

Our passage begins with God inviting Elijah to tell his story. A simple question in v.9 opens the floodgates for Elijah to pour out his grief and brokenness. At this stage God doesn’t interrupt, reinterpret or correct (although he will later). He just listens, and it is interesting that he does so repeatedly. Having heard it all in v.10, he asks the same question again in v.13, and hears the same answer. It is really hard to have that kind of patience when everything within us longs for our loved one to move on, to begin to get better. But we need to understand that telling one’s story is highly therapeutic, and we need to allow people do so over and over again.

He understands Elijah’s vocational needs

Part of depression is the feeling that you are useless, and are letting everyone down by not being able to function properly. You can be very well aware of the effect your illness is having on those around, particularly if they keep trying to snap you out of it or jolly you along towards recovery. When God judges that the time is right (and if you add up the chronology of this story we’re talking at least months, if not years) he calls Elijah to ‘go back the way you came’. He recalls him to his role as a prophet, and gives him some specific tasks to do. Note the gentleness of this calling: a nice easy bit of anointing, which is a lot less confrontational than facing up to 950 false prophets and calling down fire from heaven. I believe you’re ready to manage that, God is saying. And when you’ve done that, you need to think about succession planning, so I’m giving you a companion who will eventually take over from you. The underlying message here is twofold. You’ve still got what it takes to serve me in useful ways, but even without you my work will go on. So there’s no need to feel useless, and there’s not need to feel guilty: it isn’t all up to you. No pressure!

He restores Elijah’s perspective

Only now does he begin to suggest to Elijah that the reality with which he has lived for all the time of his illness might not be the only way of seeing things. Try telling someone running for fear of his life that it’s all OK and you’ll be accused, rightly, of not taking their illness seriously, not understanding the depth of their despair. But as he begins to get back on his feet God helps him to recover a more realistic view of things. Twice Elijah has told God that ‘I am the only one left’ who is faithful to you, and on neither occasion has God commented. But now Elijah is ready for the truth, that there are actually plenty beside him. His sense of isolation was just a symptom of his illness, and now he is recovering he is ready to hear that.

The Bible is not, of course, a psychiatric handbook, and yes, we have now discovered a lot more about what is going on for mentally ill people, both emotionally and biochemically. But as friends of a suffering person we can learn much from the practical wisdom of Scripture, even if we leave the treatment to those who know what they’re doing. To follow the common sense of this text can at the very least help us not to make things worse for sufferers.

For those who want a change from the Gospel

Trinity 9 – Isaiah 55:1-5 (Related)

Around five years ago, when we were beginning to experience government by three phrase slogan, Theresa May told us that she and her Tory party were ‘Strong and Stable’. It didn’t take long before those words were thoroughly disproved, as she became the second PM to fall foul of public opinion, a tradition which has continued since. She has had the grace all but to disappear from the public gaze since her moment of disgrace, but I wonder how people picture her now (if we ever do). Perhaps ‘Weak and vacillating’ might be two appropriate adjectives.

It had long been a part of Israelite spirituality that YHWH is both strong and stable, the king of kings and Lord of Hosts. But what do you think about him when he has allowed his beloved chosen people to be all but destroyed, with the remaining Jews in exile in Babylon? When he allowed the land he promised to his people do be desolated, and the Temple he caused to be built as a place for him to dwell torn down stone from stone? Just how strong and stable is he really?

Our passage gives half an answer to this question, and if we read on we get the most important part. The prophet doesn’t argue the toss here, as he does for example in 40:27f. He simply reminds the people who YHWH actually is, and what he is like, but then he goes on to explain why he has appeared to be weak and powerless. There is something the people need to know about God, and something they need to know about themselves. In both cases they should have known already, but the prophet needs to remind them now that they are in a new and different situation.

In fact some things have changed. In earlier chapters of Isaiah water has been withheld from the people (1:30, 3:1), but now it is free for all. Water is no longer used to dilute wine to stretch it out (1:22). And also in 1:22 the people’s silver has turned into scummy dross: now they don’t even need silver because everything God provides can’t be bought. The same is true of food: the austerity they will have experienced as exile (many of them living in slavery conditions) has come to an end, and there is an all-you-can-eat buffet on offer with free entrance.

But the promised restoration doesn’t stop with food and drink. At a much deeper level the relationship they have with God, and the reputation they have because of him will both be restored. The covenant God had with David will become a covenant with the whole people, and once again they will become known among the nations as one whose God is powerful and wise. They will seek the Jews out because of their God, a theme which occurs several times in these chapters and elsewhere. The splendour with which God will endow them will be seen and will attract the pagan nations to him.

Yeah, OK, but if all that is true why haven’t we seen it before now? If our God is that strong and stable, why did we go into exile? Nothing so far has really dealt with that question, and sadly this lectionary snippet doesn’t: we need to read on.

There is a slight clue in v.3, where a phrase is often mistranslated. The Hebrew doesn’t really say ‘I will make an everlasting covenant with you’, but rather ‘Let me make …’ This is the first indication here that it takes two to tango, and that God’s love is not unconditional but requires a response from his people. So the prophet continues in v.6 to tell the people to make sure that they actually seek God, and abandon their wicked thoughts and deeds. Only when they actively turn to him will they feel the benefit.

I once started a new job in a parish, and inherited a curate. She told me fairly early on that the people had only ever heard one sermon in living memory: ‘Jesus loves you, and everything is fine’. In fact I soon discovered that everything wasn’t fine, as I began to uncover some toxic relationships, hidden child abuse, financial mishandling and a lot more. My attempts to tell people that sin mattered, that God’s love is nowhere in scripture unconditional, and that facing the unpleasant things of life really matters cost me my job as I was bullied out of the parish. That church was typical of many which want the nice bits of v.1-5 but are not willing to face the important conditions of v.6-8. Instead of asking whether God is really strong and stable in his loving, perhaps we ought to be asking whether we are strong and stable in our repentance and forsaking of sin.