For those who want a change from the Gospel

Advent Sunday – Psalm 80:1-8, 18-20

In my experience of churches I would say that it is even more rare to use a Psalm at the Eucharist than it is to hear an OT reading (maybe I’ve just been at the wrong churches). In fact the Psalter is one of the most neglected parts of the Bible, particularly in evangelical and charismatic churches. We might sing a worship song or two based loosely on a Psalm, although only ever on one of the nice ones, but the liturgical reading or singing of Psalms has almost completely dropped out of the repertoire of many churches. (Personally I blame Anglican Chant, but don’t get me going on that!) So having been round the three year cycle of OT readings, I thought it might be fun to spend the next three years (God willing) to look more deeply into the Psalms.

As usual I’ll be taking a ‘critical’ look at the texts rather then merely a devotional one. In other words I’ll be seeking to place the Psalm in its original context, rather than trying to find Jesus in it all the time. The study of the Psalms has a long and distinguished history, which we don’t need to go into here, but it will be worth you knowing that the Psalter has been categorised into several different types, which we’ll talk about each week. The pioneer was Hermann Gunkel, who wrote in 1926, but of course many scholars have since refined his work. All the Psalms follow the structure of Hebrew poetry, which works not by rhyming, but by ‘parallelism’, the repeating of a line with slightly different wording. So for example in today’s Psalm:

⁵You have fed them with the bread of tears;
    you have made them drink tears by the bowlful.
⁶You have made us an object of derision to our neighbours,
    and our enemies mock us.

Anyway, enough background – let’s get on with Psalm 80.

The stuff here about ‘The Lilies of the Covenant’ you can ignore. We don’t really know what it means, but the suggestion is that directions like this might be the tunes to which the Psalm would have been sung, as we might say today Love Divine to Blaenwern. The Psalm is a Psalm of National Lament, which cries out to God, with a repeated refrain:

Restore us, O God;
    make your face shine on us,
    that we may be saved.

The people are conscious of God’s rejection of their prayers, and the perilous state which their rebellion has brought the nation into, so they cry out for him to restore their fortunes, and promise that when he does so they will not turn away from him again. The mention of three Northern tribes in v.2 might mean that the Psalm was composed in the Northern Kingdom, with no mention of Judah or Jerusalem in the South, or it might be from the South but showing either sympathy for the Northern tribes who were being conquered by Assyria, or indeed fear that the Assyrian threat would continue southwards and consume them too. The dating, therefore, depends on which way you read this question, but the point is that the people had seen a threat and were crying on God to help them, and promising that if he did they would not be naughty again.

It’s easy to see why this Psalm has been chosen for Advent Sunday, when we turn from the celebration of Christ as King and focus on our need for salvation and rescue, a salvation, Christians believe, which will come in its fulness when Jesus returns to reign and conquers once for all everything which is evil and destructive. The season of Advent is marked liturgically and emotionally by this sense of both helpless desperation and hopeful anticipation. But the historical setting of the Psalm raises for us an important question about the genuineness of this national outcry. History shows us that restoration did not come for Judah for another 150 years or more, and that Israel in the North was pretty well obliterated. Just because the liturgy says something and we all join in heartily, that might not be where our hearts actually are. However this Psalm was used liturgically by the nation, the fact is that the OT repeatedly depicts repentance as shallow and temporary. So the challenge for us this Advent season is quite simple: will we mean what we say and sing?

For those who want a change from the Gospel

Christ the King – Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24

Christ the King is my very fave Sunday of the year. The idea of Jesus Christ reigning over all the universe is one which I find profoundly exciting and hopeful. But the first commentary I read on todays passage was from America, and the writer admitted that this Sunday meant nothing to him, and that the idea of kindship was a completely alien idea, which encapsulated a patriarchal power figure, which seems odd in our modern lives. He goes on to ask ‘When was the last time you saw a King in real life?’ Last night on the telly, mate.

Here in the UK we love our Royal Family, or at least most of us do. And now, for the first time in most of our lifetimes, we have an actual King, difficult though it still is to remember to sing the National Anthem right. But of course to project from Charles III onto God is never going to work, any more than we can get an accurate picture of God as Father by thinking about our human fathers. It’s meant to work the other way round. Fathers, and Kings, are meant to understand their roles by looking at God, and how he handles it, and then try to perform like that. So what does today’s passage tell us about God as King, and how does Jesus fulfil that role?

First of all, let’s set this passage in context. Judah is in exile in Babylon, and the people are far from home, both physically, culturally and theologically. There are huge questions in the air. How did we get into this mess? How can we spirit God without a Temple? Has God given up on us? Will we ever get home again? These were the sorts of questions and anxieties which people were trying to make sense of. It seems that there was a felt crisis of leadership. The leaders, or shepherds, had failed to protect or nurture their people. Therefore, says Ezekiel, God himself is going to step in and do the job properly. Human leadership had failed, so there was only one option: for God to take over. So how would he act as their leader? I think three points come strongly from this text and beyond.

The first doesn’t really come from this passage, to be honest, but I love it so you’re getting it anyway. The first characteristic of Jesus’ Kingship will be majesty. I once heard Jack Heyford speak, and he told us the story of his famous worship-song Majesty. He happened to be in Britain in 1977 when the nation was preparing to celebrate our late Queen’s silver Jubilee, and he was struck by the British sense of majesty. Unlike my commentator he was deeply moved by the way Brits celebrated majesty and royalty, the reverence we had for our monarchy, and how as a nation our ‘redemptive gift’ to the rest of the world was an awareness of God’s splendour. His song was written out of that experience. We’ve seen it again recently with the two events of the Queen’s funeral and the King’s Coronation, and I can’t be alone in feeling an all too rare tear of pride come to my eye as I reflected that nobody does these occasions better than Britain (and the C of E specifically).  In an age when Church is becoming increasingly informal and all about me and how I feel, Christ the King is a good reminder that as well as being my chum, he is also the splendid King of Kings and Lord of Lords, ruler of the universe and ‘potentate of time’. It’s a good week to remember that in our oh-so-trendy worship.

But now let’s go back to the text, and the first thing we see is this great and mighty king as a shepherd. This is such a nurturing, healing view of leadership, particularly when previous leaders have been abusive and self-serving. See how bang up to date this is? The hope of our coming King is one of healing from what other human leaders have done to us, or allowed to happen to us. How we need that hope!

But alongside that picture of a loving, caring King is the more familiar one of the King as Judge. We’re actually not used to this either, since our monarchy doesn’t actually have that much real power, can be lied to deliberately by politicians, and have to sit and read a speech much of which must have been said through gritted teeth. Not so Jesus our King. He is more than just a puppet or figurehead, and when he comes those who have treated his people harshly will be called to account. And of course as with any pictures of judgement, we need to think first about ourselves before gloating over the fate of others.

In a world where leaders have lost the trust of their people, and where conflict and suffering are the result of the decisions of evil leaders, I can’t think of any Sunday which inspires as much hope as Christ the King. Enjoy, and pray for that King to take up his reign soon, as we will next week. And pray too for those shouting ‘Not my King!’

This post completes three years of OT Lectionary blogs (which remain archived on this site), and I feel it’s time to move on, having gone round the three-year cycle. I decided to look at a part of Scripture even more neglected, in my experience, than the OT, so from Advent Sunday next week I’ll be beginning a series on the Lectionary Psalms. See you next year!

For those who want a change from the Gospel

Kingdom 3/2 before Advent – Zephaniah 1:7, 12-18

Last week our lectionary sent us to Amos chapter 5, where the prophet turned on its head the people’s understanding of the ‘Day of the Lord’. They expected it would be a wonderful occasion when God would come to judge all the other nations and leave Israel as top dog. Instead, said Amos, they would be at the front of the queue for judgement. What Amos said to the Northern Kingdom, Zephaniah said in the South to Judah 100 or so years later. We never learn!

But Zephaniah’s teaching goes deeper than that of Amos. I particularly like him, because he is talking about liturgy. Amos mentions worship, but his main point is that injustice and corruption are rife, and there is no concern in the land for the poor and disadvantaged by the rich and privileged. Their worship is almost beside the point, but for Zephaniah it is central. His key idea comes in the strange idea in v.7-8; that God is about to offer a sacrifice, and that sacrifice will be the corrupt nation of Judah.

So what does that actually mean, and what crime had the nation committed to demand such a punitive sacrifice? Our filleted passage doesn’t tell us, but v.4-6 do. It’s all about the worship of false gods. And, v.12-13 add, the complacency and accumulation of wealth which that false worship has engendered.

There is a strand of OT theology which suggests that the Temple was seen as a microcosm of the whole creation. Solomon knew that no earthly house could contain or limit God (2 Chron 6:18), but the Temple was the place where God was, as it were, available to his people. Israelite worship both re-enacted the mighty acts done by God for his people and celebrated them. But it also actualised God’s presence among them. He was present, and available to his people, in and through their worship. All creation is present in their liturgy. So what happens when that liturgy goes horribly wrong? All creation suffers. The terrifying postscript to Zephaniah’s pronouncement of judgement on Judah is that actually the whole earth is going to be punished. False worship will not just harm you: it will affect the whole created order, because that’s what liturgy does.

So in a terrifying twist, God is about to offer his own sacrifice. To purify the nation from their own corruption a sin offering has to be made – the whole of creation has to be consumed. The next couple of chapters are a Cook’s tour of the nations around Judah, and all of them are held to account. Particularly poignant at the moment is the fate of Gaza, which will be left in ruins 2:4). God calls the people to silence (v.7) with the onomatopoeic word ‘hassa’, like our word ‘hush’, a common call to worship in the OT. Then he announces his words of judgement.

Recently at our home group we have been studying evangelism, but last night we spent a period in intercession for the war going on in Israel and Gaza, most of us admitting that we really had no idea how to pray into that tragic situation. But I quickly made the link between evangelism and the terrible state of the world. Jesus called his followers to be salt and light, and the function of salt in his time was twofold: as a preservative and as a fertiliser. Christians are sprinkled in society to stop bad things from growing and to help good things to grow. Jesus warned against being so polluted with other chemicals that we lose our distinctive saltiness and become useless. But the other thing which would make salt ineffective would be if there simply wasn’t enough of it to make any difference. As our world has neglected both God and godliness, there are truly cosmic effects. We don’t engage in evangelism to get our church numbers up so that we can have help to pay the bills. We desperately need in our world more godly people who worship and live righteously.

It sounds a strange idea to suggest that if we don’t get our liturgy right war will break out in our world, but Zephaniah certainly suggests that what we do or don’t do in worship really does have cosmic effects. Perhaps we are beginning to see them now.

Coming soon – a new series on revjohnleachblog from Advent Sunday. Stay tuned!

For those who want a change from the Gospel

Kingdom 2/3 before Advent/Remembrance Sunday – Amos 5:18-24

For a brief moment my eyes lit up when I saw that today’s OT reading was from Amos, but my joy was short-lived as I realised that it was the wrong chapter! I have often preached on Amos 4 on Remembrance Sunday, and especially on v.10 – ‘I killed your young men with the sword … yet you have not returned to me, says the Lord.’ Oh well, I’m sure I’ll get that in somewhere before this post ends.

Instead we have chapter 5, which is far more often used to teach that God doesn’t like charismatic worship, especially if it isn’t matched by social action. So why this particular text today? In this chapter Amos is drawing together three different themes, and exploring the relationship between them. In doing so he is deliberately subverting the expectations of his hearers, something which he does repeatedly throughout his book. He is a master of rhetoric.

The first idea is that of the ‘Day of the Lord’. We might call this day ‘Comeuppance Day’, as Israel believed that God would show up in power, defeat all his enemies and make the nation top dog again. This is a nice thought, which accounts for its persistence into the time of Jesus and the political expectations on the Messiah. But don’t get too excited, says Amos. If you’re looking forward to that day, you need to remember that if God is going to do away with evil nations, you’ll be top of his hit list. That day for which you long so much will be darkness, not light.

But then Amos turns to Israel’s worship. Surely God enjoys what we get up to in the Temple, the people no doubt thought. Surely our faithful religious observances will impress him enough to get us off the hook? No, says Amos, he hates it all, actually. Why so? Not because he doesn’t like worship songs (although with some songs I have a sneaking suspicion that maybe he doesn’t). Let’s take a step back – what are we doing when we worship, especially at the festivals which Amos specifically mentions? Israel’s annual cycle of worship, like the Church Calendar today, is based around events from history at which God acted decisively for the salvation of his people. The Jewish festivals recall the rescue from slavery in Egypt, the giving of the Law, God’s faithful provision of the harvest, and so on, as do ours, although they have become Jesus-flavoured and celebrate an even greater redemption. God had been good to them in so many ways, but their gratefulness did not mean that they had stopped living in the ways from which they needed God to rescue them in the first place. They thanked God, but they weren’t listening. They went round and round the cycles, but mindlessly kept living in the same ways which had got them into trouble before.

So what’s the answer? Listen to your own worship, says Amos. Let it remind you of what God did, and why he needed to do it. Live with justice, so that his anger will be turned away from you. Care for those you are oppressing, don’t simply sing your songs and carry on.

And that, I think, is where Remembrance Day can be so dangerous. We have moved on from the kind of jingoistic ways in which we celebrated when I was very young, fresh from our victory over those nasty foreigners in the Second World War. With Viet Nam, the Gulf, Iraq, Ukraine and now Gaza behind us we do now regard war with a greater sense of horror, fuelled, of course, by all those ‘scenes which some may find distressing’ which are pumped into our lives on a daily basis. Yes, war is awful, and we really are grateful for those who fight so that we don’t have to, and so yes, it is good to wear our poppies for them and give them a respectful nod once a year. But like Israel of old, it is easy to go through the ceremonies without learning the lessons. ‘I killed your young men with the sword … yet you have not returned to me.’ Unless our world does that, and starts living out of love and respect rather than hatred and greed, we will not escape the judgement of God when Jesus returns. Not many of us probably are responsible for foreign policy, and certainly not for that of other nations, but as the old worship songs says, ‘Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.’ And let there be a massive turning to God in prayer and repentance for the seeds of violence which are planted deep in human hearts, and which only the grace of God can prevent from growing.

Coming soon to revjohnleachblog: a brand new series! Watch this space …

For those who want a change from the Gospel

Kingdom 1/4 before Advent – Micah 3:5-12

We used to sing a song in the old days which began ‘Think of a world without any flowers’ (remember that?) Well today’s passage invites us to think of a world without any prophets. Or, perhaps, to think of a world with only artificial flowers/prophets. Micah was writing in the early 700s, just before the siege of Jerusalem by Sennacherib King of Assyria. The nation had enjoyed a long period of relative peace, but the biblical prophets knew better. Sooner of later the nation’s corruption and idolatry would lead to pay-back time, when Assyria captured the North and 100 years later Babylon overran the South, including Jerusalem. The role of the prophets was to warn the people, to turn them from both their idolatry and their immorality, and thus avert God’s anger from them. But Micah paints a picture instead of ‘tame’ prophets who would say anything you wanted if you paid them well enough. Needless to say, what the people wanted were prophecies of peace and prosperity.

So Micah warns of a time when the voices of the prophets would be silenced, and when God would stop speaking. He also denounces the national and religious leaders who, because they have listened to the false prophets, are leading and indeed worshipping with corruption. So what would it be like to live in a world without any prophets?

A question behind this question, of course, is ‘What do we mean by “prophets”?’ Are we simply to think of OT prophets, wild and hairy men confronting kings and calling down fire from heaven? Or are they more like modern-day charismatic prophets who stand up in meetings and say things like ‘My children, I love you’? or are the prophets actually people like Martin Luther King and even Gandhi who inspire others to live better? Are we to think of prophets as the conscience of the nation, and like biblical prophets are they doomed always to be ignored at best or assassinated at worst? The answer is probably ‘all of the above’, but a nation which no longer has those willing to stand up and call people to something better is in dire trouble. Much later Jesus was to weep over Jerusalem as the city which had persecuted and killed the prophets, not many years before the Temple was razed to the ground (again) in AD70.

I’m not one of those who believes that what the Bible calls prophecy is actually only the faithful preaching of Scripture. I do believe in a God who speaks and brings revelation thorough the Holy Spirit, sometimes with life-changing consequences. But I also believe that in the pages of the Bible we have God’s living word to us, and that to ignore it is to walk dangerously near to trouble. So as Christians one of our roles, I believe, is to live lives which call people back to biblical standards, not necessarily by what we say, but by how we live, and in particular how we refuse to live in a corrupt culture. In a nation where trust has largely broken down, where virtually any kind of leadership is seen as corrupt, and where the conscience God has put into us is more and more silenced, there is an important role for the Church to be seen to be different. Instead, we seem to be bent on trying to be seen as ‘relevant’.

One of the maxims of church growth is that a local church is more likely to grow if it is perceived by the community in which it is set as useful. Just this week there was a report on BBC News of a church which was offering practical help to those whose homes had been devastated by floods, and I’m sure it was by no means the only church to be doing the same. That church will be building up capital by its usefulness, and gaining the respect of people which has been lost to other institutions which are perceived to have been useless. That care for devastated people was a prophetic action, and no doubt they are praying that for many, changed lives will result.

Think of a world without anything like that, where the survivors are those who can afford to pay for it and stuff everyone else, and where the voice of normal humanity and conscience has been washed away altogether. That was Micah’s world: pray God it won’t be ours.

For those who want a change from the Gospel

Last after Trinity – Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-18 (Related)

The section of the book of Leviticus from which our passage comes is often called the ‘Holiness Code’ (Lev 17-27). These chapters spell out how, and why, Israelites should live differently from the nations around them. The whole of chapter 19 seems like a hotch-potch of odd laws, from which we pick and choose which ones we fancy obeying nowadays. So most Christians would probably agree that deliberately making blind people trip over (v.14) is probably not good behaviour, yet we blithely wear poly-cotton clothing (v.19), we almost certainly do not grow side-mullets (v.27), but we’re happy to plant different crops in our vegetable patches (v.19). And going further afield in Leviticus, most of us are happy to eat prawns, even if we draw the line at herons (Lev 11:12, 19). And don’t even go near the sexual restrictions in chapter 18, most of which we would still uphold today whilst we are busy legislating to ignore others. The whole book, in fact presents us with some hermeneutical conundrums: how exactly are we supposed to interpret and obey such regulations?

A literalist approach would say that we are still bound by all these laws as written, but few Christians subscribe to that view. The opposite extreme is to say that now that we have Jesus none of this, or indeed any of the OT applies any more. But surely we’d still want to uphold justice and integrity in our dealings with others? The NT does give us some precedent for ignoring some of the OT regulations now that we are no longer living under the Law, but in the grace of Christ. But is there a deeper and more sensible way of reading Leviticus, and in particular the sections on holiness?

It’s always a good principle when seeking to interpret Scripture to try to understand what the text is really saying. Is there a guiding principle by which we might understand the rest? The key to our chapter comes at its start: God’s people are to be holy, just as he is holy. God is not like us. He is what the theologians describe as ‘transcendent’, way over, above and apart from his creation. We who are made in his image reflect him, but we are not perfectly like him, as a photo of the sunsets I enjoyed last week in Turkey can never capture on my phone the full beauty of what we actually saw and felt. Therefore, in the light of that, we are to grow more and more to reflect God’s image in us, and we do this partly because he has given us the potential, but also by our own refusal to act in ways which run counter to that holiness. So it is easy to see how showing favouritism or seeking bloody revenge are by that definition unholy, and few would have any argument with those moral kind of principles. Those, interestingly, are the bits of the chapter not filleted out by the lectionary. But the problems come when we see, on the same page, other rules which we find it hard to equate to holiness, such as our hairstyles or farming techniques.

Perhaps the answer, or at least a way forward, is to read this chapter through the lens of difference. Look at the world around you. You won’t have to look far to see people who cheat, lie, hate foreigners or practice the occult. What would it mean for you to I’ve differently from people like these, rather reflecting the holiness of God? What would it mean for the Jewish community to live differently, and be recognised to be doing so? Maybe then the other portions which seem less moral are rather badges or signs of difference. Go to any multicultural part of a British city and you’ll easily recognise people of different faiths by the way they look and dress. Christians are not commanded to look particularly distinctive in terms of hairstyles or uniforms, but maybe the whole point is that it is our behaviour which should make us recognisable and distinctive. In today’s Gospel Jesus is asked what the most important commandment is, and his answer reflects morality rather than physical appearance. The old song says that people will know we are Christians by our love: maybe today’s readings say that they should know we are Christians by our holiness, our difference from the world around us.

For those who want a change from the Gospel

Trinity 20 – Isaiah 45:1-7 (Related)

Many years ago now I made a big mistake. I remember it well because it happens so rarely! I was speaking at an event, and for my sins I was doing a young people’s slot, aimed at teenagers. In those days I was desperately trendy, so I decided to base my talk around several current songs, which nowadays would be classed as Ibiza Classics, but which then were all the rage. As I was doing what I thought was a rather good talk on discipleship, service and our heavenly reward, through the medium of Dance music, I could feel the atmosphere in the room chilling. The response I got at the end made it all clear. Just before this, the youth leader had made all the kids chuck away all their secular CDs (remember them?) because only Christian worship music was acceptable for Christians, the rest apparently being satanic. And now I had come in and used Fatboy Slim, ATB, Alice DJ and the rest to encourage them in their discipleship. Of course I apologised profusely. However naïve and stupid I thought this point of view to be, I would never use a speaking gig deliberately to undermine a particular church’s teaching. But the storm I created raged on for some while.

Isaiah, I believe, would have agreed with me, and this passage explains why I believe that. In the second part of the book which bears his name, the prophet has turned up out of the blue to announce to the exiles in Babylon that God had come to comfort them, that their sins had been paid for, and their captivity was about to come to and end. But how exactly was this going to happen? The prophet explains in chapter 45. He is going to use Cyrus, the pagan king of Persia, to attack and conquer Babylon, and then Cyrus is going to allow the captive Jews to return home. This is exactly what happened. The underlying message to this great news is that God can use anyone, even those who do not know or acknowledge him, to work out his purposes. Verses 1-2 explain that God is going to lead this conquering king by the hand, that he will remove anything which stands in his way, and help him in the defeat and looting of Babylon. For the sake of his people, God will allow Cyrus great honour and wealth, even though he does not acknowledge God. but the most incredible thing is the term used in v.1, where God calls Cyrus his ‘anointed’, the English translation of the Hebrew from which we get the term ‘Messiah’. God is going to use this pagan king in a way similar to the way in which he would later use Jesus, to set his people free. So it appears that God is able to use people who do not acknowledge or even know him for his purposes.

But we all know that, don’t we? Only recently I had one of the most profound spiritual experiences of my life, triggered by a random Peter Gabriel track which happened to pop up while I was listening to music and working on my computer. In fact, there are times when I find myself drawn into profound worship through the art and music of people who as far as I know have no Christian faith at all. Far more so, in fact, than I do through the genre of ‘contemporary Christian music’, which largely bores me to tears. To close our ears to ‘secular’ music is an unnecessary policy when God speaks so clearly through anyone whom he chooses to use.

But there’s another motif in this passage, which is perhaps the most important message of all. It is captured in the repeated phrase ‘so you may know …’ God uses the lives of those who have no interest in him or knowledge of him so that we may know. What do we know? That there is nothing or no-one, no situation or event, which is outside or beyond his control. Elsewhere in the OT God is seen as the one who directs the nations, moves them around for his purposes, brings them victory or defeat according to his will. That’s how big our God is. If he can use the might of the Persian Empire and its ruler like that, for the blessing of his people, I’m pretty sure that on a good day he might be able to use Fatboy Slim.

For those who want a change from the Gospel

Trinity 18 – Isaiah 25:1-9 (Related)

Every day’s a school day. I learnt a new word this week – ‘anagogic’. It comes from two Greek words which mean ‘to be led above’, and it refers to a method of biblical exegesis, popular in mediaeval times, in which a passage is seen as having a much higher, or longer, focus. It’s like being taken up a mountain to get a different perspective on what life in the valley is really like. Isaiah 25 stands out like a mountain peak from the series of grim oracles of judgement to be found in chapters 13-24, and suddenly we are able to see things we have never seen before, with the result that a new song of praise to God comes forth from within us.

Clearly, in contrast to the very specific promises of judgement and destruction, this is a timeless prophecy. There’s a clue in the motif in v.8 of the end of death: no-one expects that to happen in this life. So what extra might we be able to see from on high, or from the perspective of the end of time, that we can’t see clearly now. And what effect might all that have on our present struggles?

For the last few chapters Isaiah has been prophesying against the nations around Judah, beginning with Babylon, who were soon going to capture Jerusalem and exile the people. but he has also added Jerusalem to the list (Is 22). The Jews are going to be the recipients of God’s anger every bit as much as the pagan nations they hate and fear. But in this vision we are led up to see beyond the coming destruction, and gain a longer perspective. The foreigners’ city (unspecified) is going to become a heap of rubble, never to be rebuilt. And the foreigners themselves are going to hold the Jews in honour, and be the recipients of God’s bounty at a great feast. This is more than just Magnificat theology, where the mighty are cast down and the humble and meek exalted. It is an eschatological vision of a world in harmony, where death, sorrow and disgrace will be things of the past. What looked so devastating from the valley floor is a mere blip when you can see from the mountaintop.

But what is really interesting about this passage is what it reveals of God. The people are encouraged to praise God’s name, although his name is not given here. But Isaiah’s favourite name for God, which occurs across all three sections of the book, is ‘The Holy One of Israel’. It is God’s holiness, and not his love, which is to be celebrated. And that personal holiness, a characteristic of God, shows itself in righteousness, his treatment of his creation. So the uproar of Judah’s oppressors is silenced, and their ruthlessness is stilled. Instead, let’s all have a great banquet, where those same ruthless people will come to honour God and his people.

But there are two other interesting pictures of God here. The first is that he is a shelter from the storm and a shade from the heat (v.4), where the oppression of the nations is seen as stormy or hot. How does a shelter work? It absorbs. It comes between us and the danger and takes the oppression on itself so that it doesn’t get through to us. Umbrellas do keep us dry, but they get wet themselves. God doesn’t remove evil but he does absorb it so that we are protected. That sounds just like the cross to me! The disciples and others expected Jesus to defeat the Roman oppressors, but he took in his body the violence that should have been ours. And then there’s that unusual phrase in v.8, about God ‘swallowing up’ death. It’s the same idea. God absorbs death in himself. He is, in the words of one commentator, the ‘death-eater’.

When you’re struggling in the valley, or living in a bombed-out shell of a building in Ukraine, or desperately trying to escape the Taliban in Afghanistan, all you can see is the here and now, just as Judah could only see the collapse of their nation and the looming threat from those around. God reminds his people that there is a longer view, calls them to praise him, and promises a future of life and prosperity. I’m glad to be one of his people!

For those who want a change from the Gospel

Trinity 18 – Isaiah 5:1-7 (Related)

‘You can’t always get what you want’ screamed Mick Jagger in 1969. God would agree. Even for God, it doesn’t always go smoothly, and this song is an 8^th century predecessor of the Stones’ anthem. It’s the tale of a landowner who wanted a great crop and a wonderful vintage from his vines, and it was such a popular song that 800 odd years on Jesus was alluding to it.

But, as the song says, you can’t always get what you want, and with a series of puns Isaiah expresses God’s disappointment that the fruit he was hoping for from his people Israel was highly disappointing, to say the least. He had hoped for justice, mishpat, but found only bloodshed, mishpah: he wanted righteousness, tsedikah, but instead found a cry of distress, tsakah.

When Jesus retold this story, as in today’s Gospel, it was with a subtle twist. It was the tenants of the vineyard who were crooked, a reference, which they themselves recognised, to the religious leaders of Israel. But here the emphasis is different: the vineyard itself is corrupt, not those who are tending it. In fact God is the vintner, and he does all he can to ensure its fruitfulness, but to no avail. You can almost sense his bewilderment and disappointment. How on earth can this have happened? Jesus might have blamed the leaders, but here it is the whole thing which has become corrupt.

It can be good sometimes to be able to blame others, particularly when we are lamenting the state of an organisation, such as an incompetent of even corrupt government, or a marginalised, divided and ineffective Church. If only the Government/Bishops/Vicar/whatever weren’t so awful we’d all be in a much better state. But Isaiah reminds us here that corruption can go beyond leaders, important though they are in setting the tone and culture. And the harsh words of judgement, which come, interestingly, after God’s invitation to the onlookers to tell him what they think he should do about this situation, are not for others, but for all of us who are a part of the system. The vineyard of the Lord Almighty is the sum of his people, and that includes us.

But historically there were other reasons why listeners might have found it easier to point the finger at others rather than themselves. This parable is clearly about the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile of Judah, but that was decades in the future, while the devastation of the Northern Kingdom of Israel would have been fresh in everyone’s minds. It would have been easy to hear this song as an explanation of why the North had been overrun, rather than as a challenge to us here and now.

So how do we hear words of criticism and judgement? Does Isaiah give us a good model here? I think there are two hints as to how we hear (and give) criticism well. The first is to resist the temptation to hear it as aimed at others, and to ask whether it might just be for us. When my wife was a teacher a regular response to a telling off was the phrase ‘Miss, he made me do it!’ We might want to reject the criticism as nasty and unjust, but we must begin by trying on the cap to see if it does in any small way fit. Are there any ways in which God might be disappointed with me, any areas where in looking for justice and righteousness he finds only bloodshed and pain, literal or figurative? It never hurts to ask ourselves those kinds of questions, and it might be that repentance is required.

But the second strategy for hearing criticism is to ask some questions about the critic. We all face unfair accusation from time to time, and the best way to deal with it is to be secure enough in our own personalities to let it wash over our heads and to pray for those who persecute us. Easier said than done, I know, but still right. But God’s disappointment with his chosen people here is different. Look at the beginning: the vineyard is, perhaps strangely, ‘the one he loves’. This is the starting point, and we must never forget that. Then there is the invitation to think about it. V.3-4 invite the objects of God’s judgement to participate in deciding whether or not it is fair. This is not the cruel act of someone who has taken against us, but the logically thought-out response to our misguided actions.

Thirdly, looking at the much broader context, there is always hope. The book of Isaiah will move on to promise restoration and reinstatement for God’s people after a period of exile, and of course in Jesus there is condemnation only for the most hard-hearted and unrepentant. Criticism, if it is not deliberately vindictive, is redemptive and healing. So what is this text saying to you today which might require action?

For those who want a change from the Gospel

Trinity 17 – Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32 (Related)

This passage raises some fascinating questions about the nature of sin, punishment and repentance. The first is about God’s mercy, the second is about God’s timing, and the third our responsibility.

‘I have not come to abolish the Law’, said Jesus, ‘but to fulfil it.’ But we might also say that he also came to make it more complicated. Take the stuff in the Sermon on the Mount, for example, about how even thinking something wrong is as bad as actually doing it. Suddenly it all gets a lot more serious, and a lot more complicated. There are all sorts of areas where a trip through the Bible gives much more nuanced information the further you go on in time. This text from Ezekiel 18 is an example of things which were previously believed by the Israelite community are shown actually to be not quite as simple as they might have believed previously. Yet while the demands of God may become more stringent, we also get a glimpse of an increasing awareness of God’s mercy.

Verses 1-4 appear completely to contradict the 10 Commandments, about the sins of the parents being visited on future generations. Clearly that remains true, and there are all kinds of sins and attitudes which are clearly passed down the family line, and inherited from previous generations. But there is another truth which runs alongside this: it is not inevitable nor unchangeable. There is a way of breaking the cycle, through repentance and turning back to God. Christians know that we don’t just inherit from our earthly fathers, but we now have a new father in God who can put the right moral genes into us. That’s the first take-home from this complex passage, that individual repentance can liberate us from generational sin.

But there is a further idea which is challenged not in this text but in some which follow it. Is it really true that ‘The one who sins is the one who will die’? Later biblical texts such as Job and Ecclesiastes have to wrestle with the apparent fact that this simply is not true, as evil people prosper while the righteous suffer. This further nuances the issue of sin and punishment by suggesting that justice is not always seen to be done in this life, but that there is an eschatological dimension. Only in the age to come will right triumph and evil be destroyed. Meanwhile we have to live with the delay.

Thirdly, there are questions about our own responsibility for sin. It is often said that in Judaism the emphasis is on right living, while in Christianity it is all about right believing. If you look at the list of sins which a righteous person avoids in the verses filleted out of this reading, you’ll find a real emphasis on behaviour, and while there are a couple of surprises for modern readers it is mainly about the familiar stuff from the 10 Commandments about murder, lying, adultery and the rest. This would seek to support the idea that for the Jews right behaviour was what counted, until you get to the last verse, where, in v.31, a new heart and a new spirit are what is needed. This is a common theme in Ezekiel, and it reminds us that the dichotomy between believing and behaving is a false one. We are to rid ourselves of evil behaviour, and seek newness inside. When our hearts, our thinking and our desires are right, our actions will follow.

Ultimately we have decisions to make, and this passage reminds us that sin is a personal choice, as is repentance from sin. We might be left with outstanding questions about the big issues – is God fair, does he actively punish sinners, and so on – but ultimately our own responsibility is to live in ways which please him, driven by nothing less that the desire to please him.