Sermon Ash Wednesday - 22nd February 2012

On this, the first day of Lent, one of our Lay Readers, Simon Brindley, preaches.

I met a one-time famous politician once. Jonathan Aitken. In Brixton Prison. He was preaching on a Sunday morning about 18 months ago when our parish team was helping lead the service. He spoke from the heart about his own time in prison and his finding faith and forgiveness in Jesus Christ, after he himself was disgraced and jailed. He was honest and open and the prisoners seemed to like it. He wasn’t always like that. Far from it. He was jailed for lying in court to protect his own reputation and political career, hiding behind a superficial veneer of respectability, manner and background. I’d walked past him once before, many years earlier, in the late 1990’s, on a street in Westminster. It was dark and quiet. I was working nearby and he lived near my office and the scandal about him had just broken. I remember being tempted to spit out something rude to him, express my disgust at lying politicians. I’m glad now I didn’t. He might have remembered my face!

What is it all about, this willingness of politicians to lie, this hiding behind superficial respectability? And what about my reaction on the street? Why does it matter that politicians should speak the truth?

I wonder what will happen to Chris Huhne shortly, you’ll probably be familiar with the allegations that he got his wife to lie for him about a traffic offence. And that he was proclaiming family values in his election campaign while having an affair with his assistant. “Not another one!”, we might be tempted to cry…but why should we not just give up and expect them to be all the same? Why do we long for them to be honest and hate it when they pretend?

My brother told me two weeks ago about a good friend of his. She is worried about a possible serious illness and he asked me to pray. She has had a hard time in recent years. Her father died suddenly. She has a sister. Everyone thinks the sister is lovely. She goes to church. But when my brother’s friend gave her niece, her sister’s little girl, a piece of cake at a party when the sister did not want her to have any, the sister flew into a rage. Now she won’t speak to her own sister, my brother’s friend. In fact she has moved to Australia and hasn’t made contact for some time. So what is this churchgoing all about?

A very good friend of mine from work used to take me and the rest of the team every Christmas to a church near Holborn where his sister’s cousin was a well-known priest. He was quite famous this priest, well known to many in the media and we had our team Christmas lunch in the café in his church for a few years on the trot. He always came over to say hello. He appeared very respectable, although to be fair he never claimed to be perfect. A pillar of the church nevertheless. Young people were proud to say he married them. But shortly before he died some now middle-aged men finally found the courage to talk about the abuse they suffered at his hands at a school in Africa in the 1960’s and the impact on their lives ever since. A TV programme was made and the priest confessed as he was dying. The family’s image of their successful, holy if human, charismatic, role model priest now lies shattered.

A footballer, lauded as one of the finest of his generation, a gentleman, polite, respectable, a perfect role model for youngsters, is finally confirmed yesterday as having had affair after affair after affair including with his brother’s wife. It’s not the human frailty that hurts so much as using a so-called “super injunction” to try to protect his misbehaviour and then hiding behind the superficiality of respectability for so long.

The Jewish people in Old Testament times seemed on the face of it to be doing everything right. They engaged in daily religious observance, fasting and prayers. They taught and they learned. They rigorously studied the scriptures. The whole nation was very, very “religious”. They seemed to want God to do what was right for them. “But the problem?” says Isaiah the prophet, “is that if your religion has no depth it is worthless. If it has no core of reality it will have no impact.” What is the point of your fasting if in the rest of your life you exploit your workforce, quarrel and fight with each other, even on the same day you have been fasting”. If you set out to claim true respectability, says God, prove to me that you have understood it and will live it, prove to me that you can make tough choices, prove to me that you can take the burdens of selfless living. Prove to me that it is more than this superficial veneer. Prove to me that it is true! Feed the hungry, fight for justice, provide homes for the homeless and do not reject your own families. A thin veneer of respectability will get you nowhere but actually live out these values and when the costs to yourselves may be high and then blessings will flow: light, healing, righteousness, glory. The vision is of repaired and fruitful communities. Walls repaired, broken dwellings restored, foundations rebuilt and strong.

But in New Testament times, they were at it again, turning up at the synagogue to make their gifts with trumpeters going ahead. “Look at me, look at me, look how good I am!” And praying, standing up in public in full view of everyone. “Just look how religious I am. I even stand on the street corner to pray so that everyone can see me!”

I’d like to suggest that this sense that those who proclaim to live by principles and values should live them in reality is a God-given sense. It does actually matter because these are real values. Truth matters. Depth matters. Hypocrisy is obnoxious because it is wrong. And these things matter because God wants the best for us. Honest leaders building strong communities. Churches where the hallmark is selfless giving and care for the needy, because this means they mean what they say. Families that are not at each other’s throats.

So when will it end? When will the politicians behave, the public figures not pretend, the priests not abuse? Are they all still just like those so called religious people of old, it doesn’t matter whether it is the Old Testament or the New? Bunch of hypocrites, the lot of them!

Of course these questions are important and of course we should react with careful anger when we see this behaviour in others. Truth and a desire for a society and lives where people practice what they preach and people are built up are God-given values.

But I suggest that in Lent in particular there is a potentially more uncomfortable question that all of us must face. And it is the one that I think Jesus consistently reminds his hearers of. And that is this. Forget others for now and start with yourself. For me, start with myself. How is my giving to others? Is it so real, so selfless, so generous that to be honest I have no real idea how much I give? I don’t even let my right hand see what my left is doing! Is my prayer real prayer, between me and God, in secret, from the heart? Do I demand forgiveness of others but can’t bring myself to forgive? Do I turn to the sinner and see the speck in his eye but ignore the log in my own? Do I secretly thank and praise God that I am not like the people I and others despise? Do I pick up stones to throw at the adulterer?

During Lent we are called to engage in a more disciplined life, possibly to forego some luxury, to pray more regularly, to contemplate, to reflect. We are preparing to commemorate what, if the Christians have got it right, are the most significant events in human history. So let’s catch sight of the depth and the wonder and the potential behind it all, the hope of glorious things. Let’s make sure that our self-discipline goes beyond the mere ritual of religious observance and leads us rather deeper into the life-changing, life-enhancing possibilities that lie behind.

Amen

Sermon 19th February 2012

Today, our Vicar, Cameron Barker, preaches based on the reading from Revelation 1, verses 4 - 20.

And now for something completely different! You don’t need to be of an age to recall that Monty Python catchphrase: all you had to do was listen to that vision described by St John the Divine. This is not what we expect to find in the Bible, now is it. There was John: in the Spirit; and he heard a voice that sounded like a trumpet; or a waterfall; he saw golden lamp-stands; and someone who looked like a son of man; with eyes like blazing fire; feet like glowing bronze; holding stars in his hand; with a sword coming out of his mouth; his face shining like the sun; saying he carried the keys of death: make sense of that lot, then! Little wonder that John fell at the feet of this person as though he was dead: what else would you do if it were you?! This is quite literally mind-blowing stuff; and it is deliberately meant to be.

Now my task today is not to explain all of that imagery, its meaning or significance. That’s not because I’m ducking it. I have done it here before, and could do it again – just like you also could, by reading the sorts of books that I have. In all fairness I should say that there are many parts of the book of Revelation where that’s not so. No matter: the point of this series has not been to unpack the specific passages that we’ve read each week. Unusually, but deliberately, we have focused on the bigger Bible picture. In this single-book library, that’s made up of 66 books, are 8 distinct forms of literature. That’s what we have been looking at so far this year: sample passages that illustrate a particular Bible literature type; and today is no different, as this series ends.

So, this passage, from Revelation 1, is illustrative of the Apocalyptic form of Bible literature, then. That’s probably not a word that many of us often use – unlike those for the other types of Bible literature, like history, law, or poetry, say. Even if we use it, it’s likely that the meaning in our head for ‘apocalyptic’ isn’t the same as this use of it in the Bible. There are plenty of passages in the Bible that do describe apocalyptic events. Think, for example of when the gospel writers record Jesus’ vision of the end of time. Jesus said that when he returns, on the clouds, in glory, with his angels, there will be earthquakes, eclipses and abominations. Such images should still be relatively fresh in our minds from Advent Sunday. But those are events, not a Bible literature type.

It’s not too neeky to say that our word ‘revelation’ comes from a Latin root. That word in Greek – the language that the New Testament was written in – is, wait for it: apokalupto. This type of Bible literature is all about revelation then. It does often happen to be full of what we’d see as apocalyptic images, in true 9/11 fashion. But that’s actually not the main point of this literature type, or why it’s in the Bible. Those are ‘only’ tools, which are used to reveal the same key message of God’s salvation to us afresh, in new and different ways. We are being invited to open our hearts, minds and imaginations, to enter into spiritual realities in ways that we have never even dreamed of. Welcome to God’s apocalypse, where all is revealed!

This type of literature may have more appeal to those in dire circumstances than to those in safe, comfortable 21^st-Century Britain. It’s based very much on the idea that God is coming to sort out all the current mess and the pain and trouble. Biblical Apocalyptic literature urges God’s people to hold on until that time, in faith and hope and trust. The writing of it peaked in what’s known as the inter-testamental period. The 400 years between the last book of Old Testament and the recording of Jesus’ birth that marks the start of the New Testament were especially tough times in Israel. God appeared to be silent through wave after wave of occupation and oppression that bit ever deeper. As we might expect, people searched the scriptures for signs of what God must surely be about to do. They wrote whole book of this type in faith and expectation in the God who does not remain silent or inactive while His people suffer. However earnestly all that was done, none of it added to what God had already said He would do. The birth of His Son, Jesus was the next step in God’s plan to communicate the good news of his salvation for all people. So none of those books made it into the Bible: and there is ‘just’ the one apocalyptic book in each Testament.

Both Daniel in the Old and Revelation in New are markedly different from the non-biblical apocalyptic books that still exist. What doesn’t exist any more, though, are records of the codes that these books all used. There were – apparently – set forms and conventions that writers used to convey particular messages. Not having those now means that we can’t be sure today of exactly how to interpret such literature. We know that they are a form of biblical prophecy. As we have heard, they tell how God sees the present, and they also describe what His future will be – but how? It doesn’t take much to work out that we can’t read them too literally: how can Jesus hold 7 stars in his hand, and put that same hand on John for example; or speak with a sword in his mouth? But that just eliminates one possibility: it doesn’t tell us how to understand these books; and we do need to, because they are just as integral to God’s word as the history books.

Maybe part of what they need to say to us in particular is that God is so much bigger, and other than we are. Because of His great love that longs to bring us into a relationship with Himself, it’s easy to think of Him as our friend. How often do you hear, or even say, that He’s there for you when you need Him? Well, I’m reminded of the Narnia books, when the children ask Mr Beaver if Aslan is safe. “Safe? He’s a lion!” Mr Beaver replies, “But he’s good, I tell you”. In their own ways Daniel and John were people who knew what God is truly like. They were given special revelation of Him, His nature, His reality, and of His plans – in a way that was almost beyond words. Note how the most common word in Revelation is “like”. These writers had somehow to find words to describe their experience, in order to invite others to enter the same amazing, majestic, mind-blowing reality where they had been taken.

Such is the place of apocalyptic literature in the Bible: it’s there to appeal to lesser used (though also in some ways over-used) parts of our being, to grapple with the mystery and the wonder of the God who loves us. It invites us also to engage with our limitations in seeing and believing in spiritual reality. I’m reminded of an incident in the life of Elisha the prophet, another man around whom apocalyptic events happened. Read the short story in 2 Kings 6 of when Elisha and his servant were surrounded by an army trying to kill them. Seeing the servant fearing for his life, Elisha prayed that his servant’s eyes would be opened. They were, and the servant saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all round Elisha; as you’d imagine, they didn’t die!

The Bible’s apocalyptic books are the place where such encounters and realities are revealed. They have been described as like where the curtain that separates heaven and earth has been ripped aside. It’s all based on the ancient Jewish belief that God’s sphere and ours aren’t separated by some vast gulf. Rather, they meet, merge and meld, in all sorts of ways; most notably in the person of Jesus, of course – as we explored at Ashburnham. This literature describes how God communicates His revelation directly with people; and not ‘just’ the people like Daniel, Elisha, Isaiah, Ezekiel or John who experienced it, but through them with all God’s people. As the voice said to John here in Revelation 1: [GNB “Write, then, the things you see, both the things that are now and the things that will happen afterward / NIV Write, therefore, what you have seen, what is now and what will take place later”]. The book of Revelation then became another letter; not ‘just’ written to 7 particular 1^st-Century churches in ancient Asia, but to all God’s people any time. All who have ears are to hear what the Spirit says to the church.

In that sense Revelation is like any other of the New Testament’s 22 letters. We’ve not had time to examine those as a Bible literature type in this series. We have also not approached the 4 Gospels in that way. We’ve taken much of that for granted in this series, for 2 main reasons. The fact is that we do spend most of our time as a Bible-believing church studying the stories of Jesus’ life on earth and of the church that he left to carry on his work here. So in this bigger-picture view we have instead tried to put the rest of the Bible into its most useful context. Our aim has been to help us to hear better God’s communication with us. We are sure that He still speaks to us through the Bible today: if we will but listen to Him.

The Apocalyptic literature sits alongside all the rest of it: Law, History, Wisdom, Poetry and Prophecy, with Gospels and Epistles. It’s all here to get us to hear and engage with the good news of God’s love in the person of His Son, Jesus, who died to save us. As we’ve seen from the start of the series, he, Jesus, is the central, focal point of the Bible. He is God’s living Word to us, the one who it’s all about: the visible face of the invisible God. What was written in the Bible before his birth points on to Jesus; what was written after him in it tells us about his life here and beyond. It’s all present, in all its variety, so that we might come to know the good news of God’s love in his person; and be for ever changed by it.

The series summary needs now to be very brief. We have covered much ground in it, but don’t worry if you missed anything. It’s here on our website to visit any time, or do ask for copies. What you need to know from it above all is that it’s all God’s story. All these forms of literature, be they Law, History, Wisdom, Poetry, Prophecy, Apocalyptic, Gospels or Epistles, in their own ways tell that story of His love for us. It’s a story that we are meant to read, explore, and know, for ourselves – and be radically changed by. This book does not just change us; it changes communities, the world even. God does that through ordinary people like us joining in His story by hearing, believing, living and telling that good news. As we enter Lent, where we prepare to celebrate the story that’s at the heart of God’s story, are you ready and willing to join in? Will you hear, believe, live and tell that good news of God’s love for us through Jesus’ death for our salvation? Let’s pray ...

Sermon 12th February 2012

Today, our Curate, Gill Tayleur, continues our look at different types of Bible literature. Her sermon is based around Isaiah 1: 1-20 - PROPHECY.

Over breakfast one morning, a woman said to her husband, “I bet you don’t know what day it is today.” “Of course I do” he answered indignantly, leaving for work.

At 10am, the doorbell rang and when the woman answered it, she was handed a bouquet of a dozen red roses. At 2pm a wrapped box of chocolates arrived and at 4pm a beautiful necklace from her favourite jewellers. She couldn’t wait for her husband to get home. “First the flowers, then the chocolates, and then the necklace!” she exclaimed. “I’ve never had a more wonderful Shrove Tuesday in my life!”

The connection with this morning’s subject of prophecy is tenuous, I admit, but it’s about correctly understanding the time you live in. This Tues is Valentine’s Day, and the following one is Shrove Tues!

In this series on types of Bible literature, we’ve looked so far at the Law, or Torah, at history, wisdom and poetry. Today we’re looking at the books of prophecy. There are 17 prophecy books, from Isaiah through to the end of the Old Testament. They are Isaiah, Jeremiah, - some include Lamentations – Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah & Malachi. The 3 longest books, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel are known as the major prophets, because their books are long, and the shorter books are known as the minor prophets. Some of these 17 prophets lived in the northern kingdom of Israel, and some in the southern kingdom of Judah. Some were prophets before the exile, in the 8^th century BC, and some lived during the exile in the 7^th century BC. And some prophets lived after the exile when the people had returned to Jerusalem. The point being that each prophet lived in a particular time and place, and it’s good to be aware of that context when we read the book about them.

The books of prophecy have one major thing in common, the use of the words, “The Lord says” or “the mouth of the Lord has spoken”. These phrases, plus “the word of the Lord came to so and so” are used no less than 700 times in the prophecy books! And that tells us what a prophet was. A prophet was God’s spokesperson or mouthpiece, someone sent by God to speak in his name, with his authority. It was a rare and special calling to be God’s prophet.

Special – and costly. Because prophets spoke out about injustice and the abuse of power, they were often in conflict with kings or temple authorities, and for this they were sometimes punished. Prophets were often equally unpopular with ordinary people, as their messages were confrontational & deeply challenging. Prophets were often misunderstood – and considered very odd, to say the least! Some of them had visions, and some not only spoke God’s messages, they acted them out, showing the meaning of the message with symbolic actions. For example, Isaiah walked around Jerusalem naked for 3 years, Ezekiel shut himself up in his house, lay only on his left side for over a year and shaved himself with a sword. And some prophets not only acted the message but lived it. God called Jeremiah to renounce marriage because of the trouble to fall upon Judah and he was very lonely. God told Hosea to marry a woman who would be terribly unfaithful to him and have other men’s children, and to continue to love her.

He was to do this as a picture of how unfaithful God’s people were to him and his love & longing that they would return to him. Poor Hosea!

All these different ways of bringing God’s message to the people were designed to shake, stir up, intrigue and provoke them to listen and to change!

The 17 prophets we read about in these books weren’t the first or only prophets. Moses was a prophet. He brought God’s message to the people, brought the law and the covenant, the solemn agreement that God would be their God, and if the people lived with him as their God, worshipping him and in obedience to his law, they would be God’s people, live in his promised place, under his rule and great blessing. The next great prophets after Moses were Elijah and Elisha, and they and all the Old Testament prophets had a very similar message. Again and again they reinforced the covenant, urging the people to worship God and obey the law, and reminding them of the blessings that followed obedience and the judgement that followed disobedience.

The messages that the prophets brought with the words, “The Lord says” mostly fall into two categories – what has been called forth telling and foretelling. Forth telling is speaking out about the present, whereas foretelling is about the future. We may think prophecy is mostly predictions about the future, but in fact far far more of what the prophets said from the Lord, was about their present than their future.

Forth telling messages from God were to change the people’s understanding of the present, to show it from God’s perspective, which was usually very different from the people’s! Prophets said, ‘You may think this is what’s going on, but actually God says this is how it really is.’ The Isaiah 1 passage we just read has an example of this, in verse 3, it says the people don’t understand.

These forth telling messages nearly always involved a big rousing challenge to change the present, for the people to repent of their sin and come back to God.

Fore telling messages were about the future, about what God was going to do in the future. The timing of the fulfilment of the prophecy wasn’t specified, and most fore telling prophecies use a phrase like “in the days to come”.

In both the forth telling and foretelling prophecies, there were two main themes, judgement and hope.

First, judgement. There are long sections in the prophetic books that exposed the people’s sin and announced God’s judgement against it. In the passage from Isaiah 1

we just heard, Isaiah said the people are “loaded with guilt, given to corruption, have turned their backs on God” He calls upon them to “stop doing wrong, learn to do right, seek justice, encourage the oppressed, defend the fatherless and the widow.”

The prophets said that the issues of justice, greed and the abuse of power were often the cause of God’s anger with the people.

As was their unfaithfulness, as they either went and worshipped other so called gods, or they worshipped God in outward appearance only, not engaging the heart or lifestyle. In our Isaiah 1 passage, there’s a tirade against the sacrifices offered at the temple, as meaningless and a wearisome burden to God.

The people of both the northern and southern kingdoms were complacent and didn’t take the warnings of the prophets seriously. But their complacency was shattered when the Assyrians defeated Israel and the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and took the people of Judah into exile. The prophets stressed that these events were not historical accidents; they were acts of God’s judgement as a consequence of their disobedience, as set out in the covenant. Even before they entered the land all those centuries before they had been warned, ’If you turn away from God, you will be judged and sent into exile.’ They did disobey, so God, through the prophets, reminded them, “If you continue to live like this, God will judge you”. God was patient with them for many, many years, but still they did not repent, so in the end, judgement came. And then God spoke again, through prophets like Ezekiel during the exile, explaining what was happening to them; “God is punishing you, just as he said he would have to.” They were not to think that Jerusalem had been defeated because God was less powerful than the Babylonian gods. He was still in control. He had been at work through the Babylonians, carrying out the judgement he had promised.

God has not changed. He is still the God of infinite love, but he is also a holy God who hates what is evil and gets angry when he sees it. His judgement on the people in the Old Testament should warn us too against being complacent.

Are we complacent about issues of justice, as Isaiah’s listeners were? What do we do to

“seek justice, encourage the oppressed, defend the fatherless and the widow”?

Really, what do we do? On our doorstep, or further away?

This week on Wednesday we have Gita Paton from the Prison Fellowship is coming to tell us about the work of restorative justice. Come and listen, and maybe see how you can support them, 8pm at St Saviour’s.

In Chennai in India, the International Justice Mission and our very own Andy Griffiths are working for justice by literally setting slaves free. They do all the legal work necessary, and then carry out a rescue operation that swoops in and frees whole families from abusive bonded labour and gives them a fresh start in liberty! Support them, with prayer and/or giving.

Go and look at the traidcraft stall after church, that brings trade justice to those who make or farm the things on sale.

And is there someone you know, a neighbour or colleague, who comes under the ‘oppressed, orphans and widows’ category who needs your support? What could you do to draw alongside them?

And what about unfaithfulness to God? We may not obviously worship other gods – although what we put first in our life could helpfully be the subject of a whole sermon – but in our Sunday morning worship, are we sometimes just going through the motions?

Or are we truly attentive, repentant and worshipful, bringing all our hearts, minds and wills to God? And do we live a whole life of worship to God 24/7, doing what is right not just in word but in deed?

Actions have consequences and the everyday choices we make, matter. As Bishop Tom Wright says, real human life isn’t like a game of chess where even if we do badly the pieces get put back in the box at the end of the day and we can start again tomorrow. The great, deep truth of God’s forgiveness isn’t the same as saying, that whatever we do isn’t really important because it’ll all work out somehow.

No, the judgement we see in the Old Testament is a foretaste of a far more terrible judgement to come at the end of time. On that day we shall have to stand before God and be held to account for how we have lived on earth.

BUT THERE IS HOPE!

Hope is the other main theme of the prophets. For although God’s prophets spoke of terrible judgement, they also spoke of forgiveness and of restoration. Again, our Isaiah 1 reading has an example of this.

“Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.”

Again and again, the prophets called on the people – and rulers – to turn from their sin,

to repent, to come back to God and be forgiven. And some of the prophets spoke of a new way that God would deal with sin, a way that would surpass the sacrificial system of killing animals as a sin offering. Isaiah spoke of a slightly mysterious figure he called ‘the servant’, an individual who would be used by God to rescue his people, by dying for their sins, facing their punishment, so that they could be forgiven. This fore-telling prophecy was fulfilled when Jesus died on the cross. He took on himself the sins of the whole world for all time, and because of that, we can all be forgiven and have a new start with God.

The prophets spoke of God’s intention to make a new start for his people. They brought this hope of good times ahead by talking of the past. ‘Do you remember what it was like in the good old days of Moses, David and Solomon?’ they asked. ‘Well it will be like that again in the future, only much better. There will be a new covenant, a new nation, a new Jerusalem, a new temple, a new king, even a new creation. Everything in the old covenant will be surpassed in the new. Still God’s people in God’s place under God’s rule and enjoying his blessing, but perfectly. The prophets spoke of the ultimate fulfilment of these promises.

God’s people. There were prophecies about the servant restoring not only Israel but also to be a light for the Gentiles, the non Jews, so that all people everywhere would know God’s love, his forgiveness and goodness.

God’s people in God’s place. The prophet Ezekiel had a vision of new temple, even more magnificent than the first, as a symbol of a new creation. Isaiah also foretold of God the creator of everything being determined to undo the effects of sin in every way and renewing the whole world, creating a new heaven and new earth.

God’s people in God’s place enjoying God’s rule and blessing. Isaiah prophesied about a new king to be born, “to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be upon his shoulders...He will reign on David's throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and for ever.”

Daniel prophesied about one called the Son of Man, who was to be given authority,

glory and sovereign power.Oh there is so much in the prophecy books that look ahead to Jesus, to both his first coming 2000 years ago, and his second coming when history will be wound up and the world renewed with Jesus’ rule finally established and peace and prosperity abounding forever. More about those last days of history next week!

But what for us, for now?

The message of the Old Testament prophets was reinforced and developed by the New. Indeed there were more people with gifts of prophecy in the New Testament,

and prophecy is listed as a spiritual gift that God gave, and still gives, his church.

Today it looks rather different, but still people are gifted by God to bring his message in a specific way, to forth tell God’s perspective on the present and to foretell of what God is going to do in future. Words, pictures, actions, all have their place in speaking God’s message today. Again, there’s plenty that could be said on that if there was time!

But I want to end by concluding that the message of the prophecy books, the message of judgement and of hope, is surely as relevant today as it was all those years ago. Yes our context and our world is very different, but God is the same yesterday today and forever, and his holiness and anger at sin is the same. We need to take very seriously the reality of his judgement to come. But God’s love and forgiveness are the same too.

He sent his son Jesus to die on a cross, for us, that we can be offered a fresh start in his loving mercy. So that we can live in a relationship with him, knowing him, worshipping him, loving him as he loves us. This is the hope he offers each of us today – for now and for eternity. So let’s hear the message God sent through his prophets, and his son Jesus, to repent, believe, receive his love and forgiveness, and to live for him today.

And so let’s pray, as we sit.

Dear God, we thank you for the message of the prophets. Please help us to grasp afresh, the severity of sin, and your judgement to come, and the wonderful love and forgiveness you offer through Jesus. Give us your power to hear and respond to your call to justice and heartfelt worship that changes our lives.

In your name we pray, amen.

Sermon 5th February 2012

Today, one of our Lay Readers, Adjoa Andoh-Cunnell, looks at the poetry to be found in the Psalms.

For those of you living calm, measured lives, with no anxiety, grief or stress, there may be a selection of joyous praise giving psalms of interest to you this morning but much of this sermon may appear irrelevant , so if you need to nip out early to get the roast on, or sort out your washing or flick through the Sunday papers, now’s the time to do it…for the rest of us who seem to live in the washer dryer of daily emotion and domestic drama, may I suggest…the Poetic books are for us – the equivalent of standing in an open space and shouting to the heavens with whichever powerful emotion is overwhelming you at any given moment, Let us give a relieved welcome to the Poetic Books of the Bible!

As I began to write this, I was sitting on a train going to Bristol on a frosty grey -skied Tuesday morning. The fields and the trees rushed by through the bleak landscape.

I had been so busy, head down typing on the laptop, talking on the I-phone, reading, making notes, I forgot to look up and see the countryside passing me by.

Whenever I am on a train, usually busy doing something else, I always have to stop and remind myself to look up, to look out at what is passing by the window. You’sd think by now I’d remember….And I am always glad.

This country is so much more countryside than town and city, there is so much more of nature and God’s creation around than I think. And even on a bleak overcast day like last Tuesday I was exhilarated once again by the sparse beauty of it all, by the sense of being a part of God’s creation.

When thinking about the Poetic books as we continue our series of exploration of the Bible as literature, I have been struck by the number of recent encounters with friends in real difficulties that make us turn to the Poetics for help, for help in trying to reconnect with a sense of being part of God’s creation, seen , remembered, loved, not abandoned. A sense of being a part of God’s plan, not one flailing in the wind.

A friend of mine once observed whilst trying to stop smoking

‘there is a cigarette for every occasion’

I need to calm down, I’ll have a cigarette,

Hooray it went well, let's have a cigarette,

I need to concentrate, I’ll just have a cigarette,

I’m so unhappy, I need a cigarette…

Now clearly God is a much more rewarding response to circumstances then tobacco, but in all of these poetic Books we witness a turning to God in response to ‘every occasion.’

As Trevor said two weeks ago when contemplating the Wisdom Books, there is some crossover, so the books of Job Proverbs and Ecclesiastes are sometimes placed within the Wisdom books and sometimes within the Poetic books.

For our purposes this morning since we have already been led beautifully through Job, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes by Trevor, I will focus on the Poetic books of the Psalms, Lamentations and the Song of Songs also known as The Song Of Solomon.

The first 17 books of the Bible, the books of Law, Genesis to Deuteronomy and the Historical books, Joshua to Esther, are said to deal with the creation and journey of the nation of Israel, whereas the six Wisdom and Poetical books, a much smaller section of the Bible, live within the timeframe of the first 17 books, but are more concerned with the individual’s life journey and the experiences of the human heart.

Why call them the Poetic Books, why poetry?

Does your heart sink at the thought of poetry?

Do you have long repressed flashbacks of hot airless classrooms and unbelievably dreary English teachers droning on about metre and stanzas and symbolism and imagery….or is that just me?

Or does poetry hold a special place in your heart as the place to turn to in moments of extreme emotion,

Or do you not think much about Poetry at all?

Naming the Psalms, Lamentations and Song of Songs the Poetical books, is not to assume that there aren’t passages of great poetic beauty amongst the Prophets for example, but in these Poetic books the response of the human heart to particular experiences is expressed in a very particular poetic form.

A form that allows us to access emotion in a way we are perhaps familiar with at times of great joy like significant anniversaries or weddings or terrible grief such as funerals or memorials perhaps, when people choose to express their feelings in poetry.

So poetic does not imply an airey faireyness in these books. They portray real human experience, where people grapple with profound problems, and give voice to our godly or not, responses to the circumstances of life which can engulf us…

Whilst some commentators regard our Psalm this morning, Psalm 42 as a Psalm for those who are suffering with depression, CSLewis in his Reflections on The Psalms, hears the poet ,like himself, as one in need of and longing for

"the joy and delight in God, which meets us in the Psalms". CSLewis says. These poets knew far less reason than we for loving God. They did not know that He offered them eternal joy; still less that He would die to win it for them. Yet they express a longing for Him, for His mere presence. Their longing to go up to Jerusalem and “(Psalm 42) appear before the presence of God” is like a physical thirst.

CSLewis calls this longing ‘the appetite for God’. It’s a longing that is visceral, with nothing “meritorious or pious” in it, but rather it contains the ‘spontaneity of a natural, even a physical desire.’

This same appetite for God is found as equally in the psalms of joy and celebration as in those of sorrow, defeat and hopelessness, equally in the psalms calling on God to judge and to punish, as to save and to forgive.

As to the author of The Psalms;

The brief descriptions that introduce each psalm have David listed as author of 73 of them, but he is definitely not the author of the entire collection. Two of the psalms (72) and (127) are attributed to Solomon, Psalm 90 to Moses, Psalms 50 and 73—83 to the family of Asaph, while the sons of Korah wrote 11 psalms including this mornings 42, 44-49, 84-85,87-88, and 89 is assigned to Ethan the Ezrahite.

With the exception of Solomon and Moses, all these additional authors were priests or Levites who were responsible for providing music for worship during David's reign.

Leaving Fifty of the psalms given no specific person as author.

The Psalms span many centuries. The oldest is probably the prayer of Moses (90), a reflection on the frailty of man as compared to the eternity of God. The latest psalm is probably 137, a song of lament clearly written during the days when the Jews were being held captive by the Babylonians, from about 586 to 538 B.C. The psalms are believed to have been compiled and put together in their present form by some unknown editor shortly after the captivity ended about 537 B.C.

With its 150 psalms the Book of Psalms is the longest book in the Bible, and deals with such subjects as God and His creation, war, worship, wisdom, sin and evil, judgment, justice, and the coming of the longed for Messiah.

The title The psalms comes from a Greek word PSALMOS which means "a song sung to the accompaniment of a musical instrument."

Parts of this book were used as a hymnal in the worship services of ancient Israel. God’s provision of a Savior for His people is a recurring theme in the Psalms. And so the psalms became the “songbook” of the early church that reflected the new truth in Christ and that continue to inspire , renew and comfort us today.

In both the Psalms and in Lamentations we experience the grief despair and anger of the Jewish Nation in response to the destruction of Jerusalem, the destruction of the Temple, and the forced exile and enslavement of the people of Israel by the Babylonians. These were devastating events, bewildering terrifying, enraging and the psalmists don’t hold back.

Psalm 137 8-9

GOOD NEWS

Babylon, you will be destroyed.

Happy are those who pay you back

For what you have done to us –

Who take your babies and smash them against a rock

NIV

O, Daughter of Babylon, doomed to

Destruction,

Happy is he who repays you

For what you have done to us –

He who seizes your infants

And dashes them against the rocks.

Lamentations in contrast to the Psalms is an extremely short Book with only 5 chapters, and yet is so painful and so raw in its reliving of the devastation of the nation of Israel and a yearning for forgiveness and future hope.

Although the book of Lamentations is written anonymously, tradition and scholars agree, the prophet Jeremiah, known as the weeping prophet, probably wrote it.

As the author, like Jeremiah, was an eyewitness to the destruction of Jerusalem, it was likely written between 586 and 575 B.C.

He laments the fall of Jerusalem... , laments that there are no comforters, confesses the guilt of God’s people in placing their trust in false gods, and cries to Yahweh.

The New Illustrated Bible Commentary says that Lamentations provides companionship for those who are suffering ,and plants seeds of hope for the rebuilding of lives.

In Lamentations grief, and hope sit together as we read of grief in Lam 2:17

GOOD NEWS

The Lord has finally done what he

Threatened to do:

He has destroyed us without

Mercy, as he warned us long ago.

He gave our enemies victory, gave

Them the joy at our downfall

NIV

“The LORD has done what he planned; he has fulfilled his word, which he decreed long ago. He has overthrown you without pity, he has let the enemy gloat over you, he has exalted the horn of your foes.”

And of hope in Lam 3:22-

GOOD NEWS

The Lord’s unfailing love and mercy still continue,

24Fresh as the morning, as sure as the sunrise.

The Lord is all I have and so I put my hope in him.

NIV

“Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”

The horror of the author of Lamentations is unswerving and hits us with it’s similarity to war stories from the world today.Lam 4: 9-10

GN

Those who died in the war were

better off than those who died

later,

who starved slowly to death, with

no food to keep them alive.

The disaster that came to my

People brought horror;

Loving mothers boiled their own

Children for food.

NIV

Those killed by the sword are better off than those who die of famine

Racked with hunger, they waste away fro lack of food from the field

With their own hands compassionate women have cooked their own children,

Who became their food when my people were destroyed.

And yet there is humility and yearning also in Lamentations as the final verses tell us

GN

Lam 5:21-22

Bring us back to you, Lord! Bring us

Back!\Restore our ancient glory.

Or have you rejected us for ever?

Is there no limit to your anger?

NIV

Restore us to yourself O Lord, that we may return;

Renew our days as of old

Unless you have utterly rejected us and are angry with us beyond measure

This same sorrow of Jeremiah’s over the sins of the people and their rejection of God was expressed by Jesus as He approached Jerusalem and looked ahead to her destruction yet again, this time at the hands of the Romans (Luke 19:41-44).

And yet we know that Christ who died to carry our sins, gives us hope of a life eternal, accepted once more into God’s love, that hope is as much for our broken world today as it was for the writers of the Poetic books and for the early Christian church.

Returning to the Psalms we can see what the grief stricken author of Lamentations is yearning for, that godly acceptance, that support in present circumstances and that hope for the future;

the encouragement of

Psalm 23:1

"The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want."

Or the earnest plea of

Psalm 51:10

"Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. and the great joy that can be found, even in the simple look up pleasures I remembered on the train, the reassurance of knowing we are part of God’s creation. For instance

In this celebration of the sun in Psalm 19:

4b -6

GN

God made a home in the sky for

the sun;

It comes out in the morning like a happy bridegroom,

Like an athlete eager to run a race.

It starts at one end of the sky

And goes across to the other.

Nothing can hide from it’s heat.

NIV

In the heavens he has pitched a tent for the sun

Which is like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion,

Like a champion rejoicing to run his course.

It rises from one ned of the heavens and makes it circuit to the other; nothing is hidden from it’s heat.

And talking of heat and happy bridegrooms let’s turn to the Song of Songs, also known as The Song of Solomon - King Solomon that is, Son of David and builder of the Temple in Jerusalem, who is often attributed as the composer of this poetic book.

Have you read the Song of Songs recently?

CSLewis’ Appetite for God may well hold a key to understanding this book, but it can still make me blush just reading it on my own, though I have to tell you, as part of the 400 year celebration of the King James version of the Bible, I had to record the Song Of Songs for Radio 4, with the actor Rory Kinnear.

Now Rory and I have worked together, are friends, are married (to other people) have children, have been in all sorts of work related embarrassing acting situations, but we could barely look each other in the eye when reading from this particular section of the Good Book.

As one writer queries, could we not have moved smartly along from Ecclesiastes to Isaiah?

Why on earth was this book included in the canon?

There’s not even any mention of God?

You check, not one mention!

Now of course logically if we can stomach dashing out babies brains on rocks and boiling our children for food, then surely we are not too fragile for the likes of verses 2-4 from ch 1

GN

Your lips cover me with kisses;

Your love is better than wine.

There is a fragrance about you;

The sound of your name recalls it.

No woman could help loving you.

Take me with you, and we’ll run away;

Be my king and take me to your room.

We’ll be happy together,

drink deep and lose ourselves in love.

No wonder all women love you!

NIV

Let me kiss me with the kisses of his mouth

For your love is more delightful than wine.

Pleasing is the fragrance of your perfumes;

Your name is like perfume poured out

No wonder the maidens love you.

Take me away with you – let us hurry!

Let the king bring me into his chambers

We rejoice and delight in you

We will praise your love more than wine.

How right they are to adore you!

And that’s the Song of Solomon just warming up…

If it were Solomon who composed this it is most likely thought he wrote this song during the early part of his reign, around 965 B.C.The Song of Solomon is described as a lyric poem written to celebrate the virtues of love between a husband and his wife, loving each other spiritually, emotionally, and physically. The marriage in the Song of Songs is a model of care, commitment, and delight… and yet so passionate

S of S 8:6-7

“Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave. It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty

flame. Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot wash it away. If one were to give all the wealth of his house for love, it would be utterly scorned.”

Phew! The poetry takes the form of a dialogue between a husband/king and his bride/wife before and during their marriage.

Some Bible interpreters see in Song of Solomon a symbolic representation of Christ and His church. Christ is seen as the husband king, while the church is the bride wife – with all the joy commitment and passionate love such a relationship should entail.

How do these poetic books speak to us today?

They speak of Christ at the centre of our lives, the embodiment of God’s eternal promise to us of love no matter what, in all circumstances. They give us a way to articulate what lies heavy on our hearts and what gives us great joy.

They illustrate for us in the lives of others, in the great celebrations and the great griefs of those who have gone before, a path to finding our way back to our faithful God who is always waiting for us. There is no human experience , empowering, bewildering, devastating ,that the people of the poetic books have not been through, they are a mirror to our own lives today And to the God of Moses and David and Solomon and Jeremiah who calls to us in Christ to return to Him, to fill our appetites for God, who is love, who is home, who is hope, who is eternal, because in all circumstances, His love is the answer.