Sermon. St Michael and All Angels, Little Ilford, 19 November 2017.
Second Before Advent (Year A)
Zephaniah 1.7, 12-18
Psalm 90.1-12
1 Thessalonians 5.1-11
Matthew 25.14-30
Do you have a favourite book title (just the title). I do, at least if we stay in the field of theology. It is this: What may we hope for, if hope we may? It’s by a German theologian, Friedrich Marquardt. So it’s “Was duerfen wir hoffen, wenn wir hoffen duerften?”. That’s actually: “What may we hope for, if hope we might”. There is an extra degree of conditionality, of uncertainty. Now, I am not going to discuss the content of this work, for three reasons: it is in German, it’s three volumes long, and I haven’t read them. That doesn’t normally stop me (as I think I may just have heard the rector saying), but I’m on my best behaviour.
And indeed being on my best behaviour, I’ll make a full confession now: that’s pretty much how I began a sermon when I was away. I was preaching to Worcester College Oxford. Oh yes, Oxbridge, don’t you know! I say that not to show off (not really), but rather as a way of stressing something - that this is a question for us all, wherever we are: What may we hope for, if hope we might?
It’s a question with different layers. When it comes to our own life, and the lives of our families and indeed the family which is this church, we are, I suspect, pretty good at adjusting our answers. What may we hope for, if hope we might? We look at what is probable. We think that if things go well, such may be possible, if things go badly, rather such. We adjust our hopes from moment to moment. All well and good. This is arguably how it has to be. It may even be what the “virtue of prudence” requires of us.
But, whether we realise it or not, when we gather as a church, we are being led into a larger story of hope. Indeed the largest possible. Not just in our Bible readings, but time and again in the liturgy (in the prayers) and in our hymns, we have to do with a story of hope, of hope for… well, for the whole of human history, for the universe. What’s more, this hope doesn’t change as circumstances change; it is fixed.
Again, I suspect we know this. We know that the Christian faith teaches that there will come a time when all shall be well. That human history is not just one random act after another, but is “going somewhere”. There is a direction of travel, and a destination - even if there are countless billion diversions along the way. Gd will see to it, that all ends well. We carry this belief around with us.
By the way, we might say this is one of the Church’s more successful exports. Many if not most secular people, including self-defining atheists, have a version of this sense of a fixed direction of travel. It claims that it is self-evident that humankind is progressing. So, when human beings do bad things, when civilisations collapse, even in our days, that’s judged to be a temporary relapse, a momentary error. It does not, cannot tell us anything vital about what the human being is. It does not affect the steady progress of humankind. Such is the faith of many an atheist.
What may we hope for, for if hope we might? For some good fortune for ourselves, and some sense that Gd will put things right, at the end of time? I am not going to answer that question. Instead, I am going to draw our feel obliged to ask, though the reason is not easy. The obligation comes from my awareness of a radically different picture of our destiny, set out in today’s first reading from the Hebrew Scriptures. We find it easy to overlook. Understandably so, for it is difficult. But perhaps it is worth pausing, and pondering.
Let us be honest: Zephaniah’s news is bad, the very worst kind of news. His message is that, in the end, in “the day of the Lord”, things will get worse before they can get better. Indeed, that’s far too mildly put. There will be destruction, chaos and the disintegration of everything we think of as civilisation. That’s a fairer way of putting it. “I will bring such distress upon people that they shall walk like the blind; because they have sinned against the LORD, their blood shall be poured out like dust, and their flesh like dung.”
How do we relate to this? No, really: how do we relate to this? I’d like to say three things.
First, I do not think we can say: “Oh, that’s the Old Testament. Jesus did away with those kinds of threats.” To say that, we’s have to push out of our consciousness, or out of the New Testament itself, a fair bit of Matthew’s Gospel (including the “outer darkness” and the “wailing and gnashing of teeth” of today’s gospel), and the whole of the Book of Revelation, which presents just this kind of tumult and collapse - apparently all willed by Gd - and at greater length than Zephaniah does.
Second (and hear I take a deep breath), we might ask if these horrors are really so alien from us. Can we not imagine a Christian in Syria, even today, in 2017, reading precisely these words and finding some kind of admittedly strange comfort in them - a renewed sense that Gd is in control, even in the chaos they themselves know only too well?
Third (and don’t worry here I am able to lighten things a little), let us be clear what the prophetic approach is. It is:
- to compound threat upon horror upon disaster upon declarations of Gd’s unalterable determination to destroy;
- and then, in the next breath to speak of forgiveness and love and tenderness, and everyone under their own fig-tree and vine;
- and to make that shift without any hint of embarrassment or need to explain.
We may find that puzzling and infuriating. But it is the classic prophetic way. Certainly, it’s true for Zephaniah. His book is only three chapters long. After today’s passage, it continues in similar vein, pouring down fury and ferocity not only upon the People of Gd, but also upon other nations.
Indeed, Zephaniah 3.8:
“Therefore wait for me, says the Lord,
for the day when I arise as a witness.
For my decision is to gather nations,
to assemble kingdoms,
to pour out upon them my indignation,
all the heat of my anger;
for in the fire of my passion
all the earth shall be consumed.”
But then Zephaniah 3:9 (with barely a full-stop separating the two):
“At that time I will change the speech of the peoples
to a pure speech,
that all of them may call on the name of the Lord
and serve him with one accord.”
And before long:
“Sing aloud, O daughter Zion;
shout, O Israel!
Rejoice and exult with all your heart,
O daughter Jerusalem…
At that time I will bring you home,
at the time when I gather you;
for I will make you renowned and praised
among all the peoples of the earth,
when I restore your fortunes
before your eyes, says the Lord.”
That is how the prophecy ends.
Puzzling and infuriating indeed. How to make sense of this? I am not sure I can help us. The Bible’s message - by no means only Zephaniah’s - seems to be that the very worst of times can change to the very best of times, with next-to-no intervening stage whatsoever. I think ours is not to understand this, so much as to welcome it.
Our other readings give us practical advice:
- The psalmist tells us to count our days, to treat our lives and our opportunities to help as precious, as surely they are.
- Paul tells us to be vigilant and sober, and to encourage one another. We know nothing about Gd’s timings. But we can live well, from day to day, from moment to moment.
- Jesus in the gospel may be telling us just to do what we can with what we have been given. Do anything (even if it’s the equivalent of gaining forbidden interest on savings). Just keep working at it. The least you do may be enough.
And for the rest, we draw confidence from the fact that even the most wrathful of prophets also promises mercy and restoration.
I am not at all sure I have even nudged us in the direction of an answer to my question. But I think I will not apologise for bringing it to you. As we look to Advent, which is the season of hope and of questions about hope above all, there are worse questions to leave hanging, than: What may we hope for, if hope we might?
Amen.
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