Category Archives: Uncategorized

Old Testament Lectionary

For those who want a change from the Gospel

Trinity 11 – Isaiah 51:1-6 (Related)

It’s a pretty well established opinion that the book of Isaiah which we have comes from three different authors and three different periods of history. In a nutshell part one (chapters 1 – 39) warns the people that if they don’t stop it they’ll end up in exile, part 2 (40 – 55) tells them that they are soon to come home from exile, and part 3 (56 – 66) asks the question ‘Now what?’ in the light of the previous two parts. Last week’s passage came from part 3, and reminded the people of Israel that their calling was to everyone, not just themselves. But now we have to make a mental leap backwards a few decades to imagine the people still in exile, far from home, and smarting at the punishment they are receiving. The good news, though, is that soon they’ll be home. The challenge often thrown out by the prophet who wrote this section is ‘Can you not believe it?’ This parallels the challenge thrown out by Jesus in the Gospel to his disciples: who do you really think I am?

We know something of the pain and bewilderment of the exiles, because several times the prophet quotes, no doubt from what he has heard on the streets, the plight of the people. 40:27 and 49:14 are two examples:


My way is hidden from the Lord,
my cause is disregarded by my God …
The LORD has forsaken me,
the Lord has forgotten me.

The prophet faces this despair head on, and our passage reassures the people that there will be an end to their troubles. So what does this passage say to us today?

We too are exiles, yes, in the sense that our real home is heaven and we’re not there yet, but also because we’re in exile from the life we used to know pre-Coronavirus. There is a widespread feeling (which of course you may or may not agree with – other political views are available) that we are in the grip not just of an evil little bundle of genetic material but also an incompetent (at best) or downright evil government who are completely out of their depth, headed for an isolated future as the laughing-stock of the world. Life as we knew it has been suddenly snatched away from us, we are unclear what the latest instructions are, and quite honestly we can see no end to it, with the threat of future spikes and a second (and third …?) lockdown on the cards. Whether or not this is God’s punishment on us is a question I won’t stop to debate now, but I do know, because like Isaiah I listen to what people tell me, that it’s really hard to see how on earth we’re going to get out of this. Yet the passage is full of reassurance and glowing promises for a glorious future. So the $64,000 question is this: is this God’s message to Britain today? To put it another way, just because you have a little plaque with Jeremiah 29:11 on your fridge or in a greetings card, does that mean that life for you is going to be great from now on? How do we discern which bits of the Bible are God’s words for us now?

Personally I think we have to remain a bit agnostic, but while to place the passage in its historical context does at least tell us about the Word of the Lord for the exiles, that isn’t the real point of this particular bit of part 2. It deals, I think, not so much with whether God is going to rescue them, but rather with whether or not they believe he can. And there’s the rub.

The people had not just lost their home and the life they once knew: they had lost faith in their God’s ability to do anything about it. That’s a much more serious problem. The prophet here is telling people that God will rescue them, but he’s also telling them that he can. We may not be sure about the first in our Covid-ridden world, but the prophet would, I believe want us to take note of the second. Like the exiles Christians have been praying fervently for God’s mercy on our land, for the removal of the virus, for the scientists to find an injection which will make us immune, and, in some cases, for us to learn whatever lesson it is God is trying to teach us through it. Will he? Dunno. Can he? That’s the real question, and Isaiah would tell us without a shadow of a doubt that he can.

That might not answer all our agonised questions, or bring back those we love and have lost to the virus, but it certainly ought to spur us on to prayer, to fervent crying out to God for his mercy on us.

Old Testament Lectionary

For those who want a change from the Gospel

Trinity 10 – Isaiah 56:1-8 (Related)

First of all, apologies for last week’s omission. I have now located my proper computer and I’m ready to rock and roll from the new house in Sheffield, surrounded though I am with other, as yet unpacked, boxes.

And so to Isaiah, and to the eternal question ‘Just who is God for?’ That’s the subject both for today’s Gospel and for our OT passage, which I have taken the liberty of unfilleting in order that it might make some sense. It might seem a silly question, although both theologically and practically it is a vitally important one. Theologically it is raised by the very idea of a ‘chosen people’, those whom in the OT God had apparently selected to be his own special possession, those who would have a relationship with him and a privileged position in his heart and purposes which other nations were not to share. Is God, then, as universal as we might think? And of course practically it is raised by our natural human tendency to want to be with ‘PLU’s – People Like Us – rather than those who are in some way different. This attitude has manifested itself down the ages through the middle-class culture of the British Church, through apartheid in Dutch South Africa, to denominational mistrust across the globe, and has done so with differing attempts at theological justification.

So let’s go back to basics. When God called Abraham back in Genesis 12, the call was twofold – to be a blessing and to bless. Right at the very start of the Jewish nation there was built in a universality which has always been God’s purpose for this people. But throughout the OT, and on into the New and the Church today, two things have happened. First of all God’s people have been too welcoming, and secondly they have not been welcoming enough.

From very early on the Jewish people formed relationships with other nations, usually either through intermarriage or political expediency, on their terms, not God’s. This inevitably led to false worship, idolatry, and of course idolatry inevitably leads to immorality, since only the True God, Yahweh, is a God or righteousness (far more, incidentally, in the Bible than he is a God of love). The OT prophets could see this happening and so they responded with all that stuff about separation from the nations around, and the need for purity and exclusivism. But that in turn led to a kind of arrogant superiority which made God’s people look down their noses not only at ‘foreigners’ but also at those of their own race whom they considered to be sinners. That’s the kind of attitude characterised by the Pharisees in the time of Jesus. Again the prophets responded, this time with the opposite message, recalling the people to their original vocation to bless other nations, not just to receive God’s blessings for themselves. The classic example of this comes in Is 49:6.

The early Church had to battle with the same question, and it wasn’t until Acts 15 that they finally realised that you didn’t have to be Jewish to follow Jesus, and then only after two dramatic interventions by the Holy Spirit. And all this in spite of Jesus’ quoting from our passage when he cleansed the Temple from those who were out to make money – significantly this market place was set up in the Court of the Gentiles, the nearest non-Jews could get to God. Yet still today, in so many ways, the Church is an exclusive organisation. Every church I have visited in my diocesan ministry has told me that it was a very welcoming place, yet most of the time I have been left standing like a lemon at the back with my coffee while everyone else talks to their friends. When I was a parish priest we tried to enforce a rule that after worship you weren’t allowed to speak to a friend before you had first spoken to someone you didn’t know.

Isaiah today reinforces the original message to Abraham – you are there to be a blessing to all. Even eunuchs, specifically banned from Israelite worship in Leviticus 21 and 22, are included in this dramatic reversal of Scripture – if they are welcome, anybody is.

Yet Isaiah is not taking one prophetic side against the other with his universality. He is very keen to make the point that this inclusion has to be on God’s terms, so that ‘outsiders’ are drawn to God, rather than ‘insiders’ being tempted away from him. Note the conditions Isaiah builds into this passage: maintaining  justice, not doing evil, binding oneself to God to minister to him and love him, and interestingly keeping the Sabbath, which is mentioned twice. This inclusion is not a watering down of the faith, but rather an invitation to all to experience its benefits.

It would be worth pondering three things: firstly, where in my church is there any kind of exclusion, any kind of fear of non-PLUs, any practical actions which ‘others’ might find offputting and unwelcoming? Secondly, where are the areas where our desire to be inclusive has compromised the gospel? And thirdly, might it be possible that like many many churches, we’re blind to our exclusion and kidding ourselves?

Old Testament Lectionary

For those who want a change from the Gospel

Trinity 7 – 1 Kings 3:5-12 (Related)

Oliver Cromwell was by all accounts not the most handsome chap in history. But when sitting for his portrait by artist Peter Lely, he refused the offer to ‘airbrush’ him up a bit, and insisted that Lely paint him as we was, warts and all. Once again our lectionary compilers have painted a glowingly positive picture of King Solomon in the snippet they have chosen from this story, whilst the two key words from the passage (one of which isn’t even in our selection) show a much more realistic picture, with Solomon’s warts and all. So we shall need to read wider if we are to see beyond the hagiography to the real person, who, we shall see, is much more like us than verses 5 – 12 would suggest.

The first key word is in v.5 – Gibeon. It’s easy to pass over it, but when OT writers give us locations they usually do so deliberately in order to tell us something important. So what was Solomon doing in Gibeon? V.4 tells us – he had gone there to offer sacrifices. On one level, why not? The Temple had not yet been built in Jerusalem, so Gibeon seemed as good a place as anywhere. But a little research into its background soon shows that it was a dark place, a place of rebellion, trickery and false worship. Whilst the text tries to excuse Solomon’s behaviour, there is still an underlying sense that this was a big mistake. It is in this context that God appears to him, not perhaps because of his extravagant sacrifices, but maybe to interrupt them. Furthermore, v.1 tells us another sinister fact about Solomon – he had used marriage to forge a political alliance with Egypt, the very nation who had enslaved and oppressed Israel for so many hundreds of years. The OT always takes a dim view of such alliances, and the verse sends out signals to us that all is not quite well with this man.

The sense of the section actually set for us, though, is clear and paints Solomon in a completely positive light. Like a genii God asks him to make a wish. Rather than choosing fame and fortune, he asks for wisdom to rule well, a highly commendable choice from God’s pint of view. Wisdom in the Bible isn’t like academic intelligence – good ‘A’ level grades and even maybe a PhD. It’s what the French call savoir faire, ‘street wisdom’, knowing instinctively the best way to behave in any given situation. Therefore it is an important quality in any decent leader. God is pleased with this request, and in his grace decides to grant Solomon his wish, along with what he didn’t ask for, wealth and honour (v.13). He is going to become ‘proverbial’ (see what I did there?) for his wisdom, the ‘patron saint’ of all wise men, and so he is to this day. But there is a catch, and it is contained in our second key word, which occurs in v.14.

It’s only a little two-letter word, but the word ‘if’ proves to be Solomon’s downfall. All God’s promises to him are wonderful but also conditional. He has to follow his father David’s example and remain faithful and obedient to God all his life. Two little letters, but they proved too hard for the wisest man who has ever lived, and his reign, perhaps like David Cameron’s premiership, has gone down in history as the one which sowed the seeds of a broken and divided nation which his successors were unable to mend, leading to the greatest North-South divide ever, and ultimately to defeat and captivity.

Maybe if you only read or heard the set section of this sorry tale, from verses 5 to 12, you were left feeling what a wonderful hero Solomon was, and how unlike mere mortals like you he was. But to read wider paints a very different picture, one which shows a much more human Solomon. Has our worship at times not been pleasing to God? Have we not tripped up over the ‘if’ word, and felt ourselves distanced from God because we have failed to remain faithful and obedient to him? There is a sense in which Solomon is no so very different from you and me as we waver and lurch through our Christian discipleship, reaching mountaintops but then crashing into the valleys below. And isn’t it exactly for people like us that God sent his Son to rescue us, to teach us wisdom and to assure us of the gift of the Holy Spirit to help us in our struggle against the ‘if’ word? Isn’t that exactly why we need both grace and the cross, because at the end of the day we’re just like Solomon, even if we don’t have quite as many wives?

Old Testament Lectionary

For those who want a change from the Gospel

Trinity 5 – Isaiah 55:10-13 (related)

It is almost universally accepted that the book which we call ‘Isaiah’ comes from three different authors and three different periods. The middle section, which today’s lection draws to a close, runs from chapters 40 – 55, and comes from the time close to the end of the exile, when after a period of letting his people stew and reflect on their unfaithfulness, God is finally going to comfort them, assure them that their sin has been paid for, and bring them home to Jerusalem. Having heard this message, the exiles, I would imagine, must have had mixed feelings. Relief, of course, particularly because of those six words with which this section (‘Deutero- or Second Isaiah’) begins: ‘Comfort my people says your God’. That phrase reflects the covenant deal which comes time and again throughout the OT – ‘You shall be my people and I will be your God’. The pronouns which the prophet uses here are vital. They emphasise, to a nation who no doubt felt that they had really blown it with God this time, and broken the covenant once and for all, that in fact the deal is still on. My people, your God. Phew – what a relief! Is there nothing we can do to offend God so much that he simply abandons us? Not according to this prophet.

But I wonder whether there was another side to the people’s reaction: we’ll believe that when we see it! Hope deferred, says Proverbs 13, makes the heart grow sick. When we suffer so much, and for so long, we really can abandon hope, and every promise of God’s goodness and redemption simply serves to rub our noses in our pain and distress. Cynicism is the sickness of heart which can so easily result. Singing those dreadful worship-songs in church, all about how good and wonderful God is, can be profoundly painful when that simply isn’t your experience. So perhaps just as the prophet began his work with words of comfort, he ends with words of assurance for the downtrodden and cynical. How can we believe these words? Answer: because they are God’s words, and they have power behind them.

The prophet uses a poem which attacks our senses to make the point as strongly and as emotionally as he can. We can feel the cool rain and the freezing snow, even in Babylon in the middle of a desert. We can smell the fragrance of seeds sprouting from damp earth, and of the baking bread, and we can almost taste it in our mouths. And when you are set free from your slavery, says the prophet, all creation is going to line the route home to cheer you on your way. Picture piles on top of picture as abundance surrounds the broken and dispirited people on their way back to their homeland. How can this ‘word’ be trusted? Simply because God said it. It is going to happen, and indeed so it did.

But before we all get carried away, spare a thought for today’s Gospel, the parable of the sower. Again there is a picture of abundance, with up to 100-fold return, but that isn’t the whole story. For Isaiah God’s word is effective full stop. But for Jesus’ sower it all depends on the soil. And there is one of the big paradoxes of the Christian faith. We have an almighty, all-powerful God who rules the universe and can do anything he likes, who simply speaks new things into existence. And yet he chooses to allow himself to be limited by us humans. He doesn’t always get his way: he wouldn’t have told us to pray ‘Your kingdom come’ if it was simply automatic. For those who suffer, who find themselves in all kinds of exiles, we have to live with the purposes of God, which he promises will surely come to pass, not happening because of human sin and rebellion. This paradox might drive us to despair, but it certainly ought to drive us to fervent prayer.