Herewith a version of my sermon for Advent Sunday 2009...
This week the inquiry into the Iraq war began. According to Sir John Chilcott, the Chair of the inquiry, ‘...We need to establish what happened. We are piecing this together from the evidence we are collecting from documents or from those who have first hand experience. We will then need to evaluate what went well and what didn’t – and, crucially, why...’ I have to say that I remain cynical that the inquiry will achieve what it needs to, and if it did, would it make any real difference to the families of nearly 5000 dead since 2003? Will it rebuild Iraqi society and it’s infrastructure?
This week the newly created supreme court of the UK overturned a ruling by the High Court that banks should allow the Office of Fair Trading to investigate the fairness of charges for unauthorised overdrafts. Just when you thought that banking might have changed having been so thoroughly accused following the global recession, no, situation normal continues...
Next week, tens of thousands of us will gather in London for The Wave. We will march to march to Parliament to encourage 60 of the world’s political leaders meeting in summit in Copenhagen, including leaders from China and the USA, to agree to the firm foundation for a legally binding climate treaty as early as possible in 2010. I passionately believe that I have to do something to wake the world’s leaders up, it is my duty as a Christian, but I have to confess that I remain cynical if I am really honest that any binding agreement will be made then..
I am sure that speak for all of us when I say that throughout my life, I have had longing that things on the world stage as well as things local and personal would be better by now. God knows we pray that it would be. And yet, as we we edge ever nearer another season of goodwill, it feels like we no nearer that utopian goal. The things that I hope might have been resolved have been replaced by other seemingly unsolvable issues.
The people of Israel, at the time that God spoke through Jeremiah, understood hopelessness on a far grander scale. In 587 BC Assyria attacked the nation of Israel, burned Jerusalem, destroyed the temple, and carried off its people into slavery. Their situation puts ours into stark contrast doesn’t it? In those years of exile the people of God quite rightly asked God again and again ‘why?, Why are we in this situation? Why did you allow it God?’
It is into this sense of devestating defeat and discouragement, this longing for God to right things, that these words from Jeremiah come. In that context, they feel like naive words indeed. Yet it is all to easy to ‘grin and bear it’, because it takes real courage to stand up, to make your voice heard, to swim against the flow, and to complain.
But Jeremiah goes one step further. In the midst of their sense of gut-wrenching hopelessness, Jeremiah along with the prophet Isaiah, proclaim a different vision based on a renewed trust in God. "Your God reigns!" All of those grand phrases that are so well celebrated in Handel’s Messiah "Comfort, ye, my people," "And he shall reign forever and ever" came out of exile. "The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah... In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety" says Jeremiah. The time is coming! I will restore, re-gather Israel and Judah, do for you that which you cannot do for yourselves, namely, bring you home.
Pushy, risky theological claim that, all present evidence to the contrary, God still reigns and God's purposes shall not be finally defeated. It takes a lot of faith to express confident joy in the reign of God and at the same time honesty about the situation. Israel's prophets managed to pull it off.
But,,, The nation never returned to their homeland as a whole. The restoring vision that God shared through the prophets was true for only a handful, a remnant of the the people ever made it back... But look again at what God says through Jeremiah as that’s not what he promised - a future time is coming, when I shall not only restore things to the way they were, but also do a new thing - a righteous branch shall spring up for David. A new spring shoot will begin to grow from the long dead tree that is the historical line of King David. When that time comes says God - things will not only restored to the way they were but the lasting the peace and security that you long for will come.
Advent is a time when Christians are invited into exile. It is a time when the church calls us to live differently. To slow down. To refocus our priorities. To step away from the madness that is the innevetiable rush to Christmas and to stop and look at the world and our lives and the mess that they often really are. But instead of being stilled into inactivity through a crippling hopelessness and despair that thing have ever been thus and will not change. Instead we should live as exiles - refocussing our lives and hopes on God, knowing that it is only He who can bring the transformation we long for.
Advent calls us to hear the hope of God through Jeremiah - that things in our world and in our lives will not only be restored, but that God will do a new thing in us and amongst us personally and globally. Advent must be time to cry to God about the injustice of war, of debt, of a climate change, but also to expect, with sure hope, that God will bring a new spring shoot of faithfulness to grow in us, so that through us our world and our lives together can be transformed. Friends I still hope that the world would be a better place and that my life would be in better shape - in Advent God reminds me that it will be. That’s not wild hope. That’s certain hope. Amen
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