Category: Evensong

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Evensong Sermons

Love in the Song of Songs

Sixth Sunday of Easter, 2024. Year B.

Readings: Song of Solomon 4:16 – 5:2; 8:6,7 & Revelation 3.14-22.

One of the delights of the ‘lesser’ services like Evensong is that the lectionary departs into the hinterlands of the bible, with passages from books that we might not often hear in church for various reasons.  This evening we had two such passages, from books whose content is regarded with suspicion for different reasons.

Our second passage was from Revelations; a book that some Syriac churches still regard as not being part of the canon.  It certainly has a style and tone that sets it apart from all the other books of the new testament, except some particular chapters of Matthew, Mark and Luke, but which follows in the tradition of the book of Daniel, and of many contemporary Jewish works of the first century.  It therefore fits firmly into the biblical tradition, but unfortunately, all too often is read outside of that context, as a literal prophecy of the end of the world, rather than in its proper apocalyptic genre.  The reward for persevering through the heavy metal lyric inspiring section though is the beautiful description at the end of the final culmination of history, the new heaven and the new earth, joined by the glorious city of God where the faithful will once again live in the presence of God, as it was in the beginning in the garden.

Our first passage though is from a book that is indisputably part of the canon, but unfortunately rarely referred to.  Generations of commentators have overlaid on the Song of Songs allegorical structures to explain how it tells of the love between God and Israel, or between God and the individual worshipper, in order, it always seems, to cover the undeniable truth that this, in the middle of the bible is a book of scandalously erotic love poetry.  Undeniably beautifully written and evocative, but not really seemly in a serious religious work, surely.

And yet, why should this not be at the heart of scripture – scripture that celebrates a God who so loves us that he embraces our own flesh and lives amongst us.  At the very start of the Bible, in Genesis, God celebrates loving human relationships.  Nakedness is not sinful in Genesis – it is rather the shame at their nakedness that shows that Adam and Eve have taken a God-given gift and made it something to be shameful of.

Too much of the rest of scripture is filled with admonishments that reinforce this attitude of shamefulness, or that we have interpreted in this way, without seeing that actually many of them are concerned with reinforcing structures of oppressive power inequality and abuse.  Clever and manipulative humans can take God’s words and use them for their own ends – then as now.  The prophets knew this, and that is why they were moved by God to rebuke those who failed to live up to the intent of God’s laws.  The shining thread that runs through the Gospels is Jesus’ preaching of a kingdom of heaven where all are equal and included.

And the Song of Songs gives us a beautiful picture of lovers who are utterly entranced with one another.  There is no coercion, no arrangement, no bride-price, no dowry.  There is no inequality between man and woman in the Song of Songs – both love the other openly and equally.  As Paul says a millennium later, love does not envy, it does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it keeps no record of wrongs.

Yes, the commentators are right, this is a description of the love that God feels for us, and that we hope to feel for him; but it should not be read as only that.  The Song of Songs is God telling us also that our physical love for each other can also be pure and divine, and when it is, it is a wonderful way of showing us God’s love as well.  It is not something that God wants us to feel ashamed of, or embarrassed by, or hide away.

But, we still feel shame and embarrassment, because this is a broken and fallen world, and we are broken and fallen with it.  Physical love is a powerful positive force, but also something that we all too often misuse, in unequal, coercive, manipulative, exploitative or abusive relationships.  And our shame and secrecy often allows such misuse and abuse to flourish, even in an environment like church where we should be modelling the equality of God’s kingdom.  It is our failure to live up to this Gospel and kingdom imperative which means that our safeguarding policies and practices are not bureaucracy gone mad, but are us living out our Gospel driven missional life in the world.  So let us rejoice in our safeguarding policies as an expression of God’s love for us and our love for each other, in all its manifestations.

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Evensong Sermons

Adoption

Second Sunday of Easter 2024. Year B.

Readings: Galatians 4:1-5.

Much of Paul’s literary output seems to be dedicated to trying to sort out his own theological questions, which I suspect is something that links many of us and him, even over the span of two thousand years.

Paul has an outsized influence on early Christianity, probably because of his education and erudition.  As he himself tells us, he was taught in the school of Gamaliel, one of the great Pharisee rabbis of the first century.  He, like Jesus, is steeped in the scriptures in a way that many of the other leading apostles like Peter, James and John, simple Galilean fishermen were not, at least initially.

This deep scriptural understanding forces Paul to think about the impact that the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus have had on his Jewish history and faith more, or earlier, than we see the other apostles do, although to be fair to them, during Jesus’ life, their expectation is still a traditional Jewish Messianic expectation.  They are not forced to re-evaluate this expectation either until after it stops following the script that they had expected.

Paul has a similar, but at the same time completely different change in his understanding. The difference is that we hear less of Paul before his conversion experience.

Paul’s reflection here, in Galatians, regarded as one of his earlier letters, uses some common themes of his, based on the customs of his time.  As children, we are not in control of our own actions, but are enslaved by our guardians and trustees.  Hopefully not a situation our young people identify too closely with.  But then with the coming of Jesus, he doesn’t do the obvious pivot to us becoming adults, possibly because elsewhere he is keen to continue to stress that we are still children and slaves, but to God rather than to the forces of the world.  Instead, he introduces one of his other great ideas – that of inheritance by adoption, to explain how the covenant that the scriptures had made clear was for Abraham and his descendants could become available to everyone.

Adoption was a big thing in the Roman world – for noble houses where lineage was everything, adoption of a relative, or even a trusted ex-slave on occasions, was the best way to ensure that the noble line continued without interruption.  So the language of adoption for Paul may carry very different overtones to what adoption might mean for us today.

What is consistent in Paul’s writings is an overtone of dispensationalism – the idea that God’s revelation had been progressive throughout history.  First to the Jews in the covenant with Abraham and then with the law of Moses; then later in a completely new covenant based on Christ and the cross.  This finds its most explicit expression in Paul’s letter to the Romans, with its contrast of Jews living under the law and Christians redeemed through grace.  

This, along with other of Paul’s writings, have, unfortunately, throughout history led to a degree of justification for anti-semitism, and a characterisation of Judaism as being narrowly legalistic, which ignores the breadth of belief in second temple Judaism, and the emphasis on divine grace that is evident in extant writings of the Pharisees and Essenes.   

What Paul is trying instead to do, rather than castigating his own race, is to find the fulfilment of God’s promises – not just those to Abraham and Moses, but also the earlier ones to patriarchs such as Noah – find the fulfilment of these covenants, not just in Israel, but in the whole world, including Israel as God’s faithful servants, culminating in Jesus himself.  

In doing this, and in trying to work through this thoughts on this, he introduces a whole new idea, one that fell on more fertile ground in the eastern church than in the western church. 

This is the idea of deification – that Christ became human so that in some way, through his incarnation and scrifice, we might become more divine.

Here it finds one of its earliest vocalisations, the idea that we, as adopted children, can share in God’s own divine nature, through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, who in living and dying as one of us, brings us closer to being one with God.

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Evensong Sermons

Proclaim anew to each generation

Evensong, 2nd Sunday of Lent, 2023. Year A.

Readings: Numbers 21.4-9 & Luke 14:27-33.

Sometimes when writing a sermon you get two readings that relate to each other in a very obvious way, either through the intention of the lectionary compiler, or because they also interact with the events of the day in a particular way.  This evening didn’t feel like one of those evenings. 

The first reading we heard was from Numbers, and is one of those strange passages in the Pentateuch that really make you wonder if they have crept in by mistake, a bit like the one in Exodus where God attacks Moses in the night just after having given him his mission to go to Pharoah. 

The Israelites, detouring through the wilderness, complain once again about the conditions.  God gets angry and sends poisonous  (or maybe fiery) serpents to bite them.  The Israelites repent and ask Moses to intercede – he does, and so God tells him to make a bronze serpent on a pole, and everyone who sees the bronze serpent doesn’t die when a snake bites them. 

Why doesn’t God just stop sending the snakes? 

This is the bronze serpent, by the way, that King Hezekiah destroys in 2 Kings 18 verse 4, because the people are worshipping it with incense, and treating it as an idol. 

And maybe this is a clue to how we should be treating this passage.  Like much of the Bible, we shouldn’t be looking at this as literally true in a historical sense.   

If we do so, we just devalue the truth that is in the Bible.   

Instead, this is a mythological passage.   

In Jerusalem there was a bronze serpent on a pole that people said was originally made by Moses.  This story is a myth explaining why the temple had a bronze serpent on a pole that was made by Moses, despite it being somewhat inconsistent with later religious practice. 

Does this mean that the Bible is not telling the truth? 

No, it doesn’t.  Because in this case the Bible isn’t about literal historical truth.  In this case, the truth the Bible is telling us is about the relationship that Israel saw itself having with God through the ages.  The ways in which they understood providence – how blessings and curses came from their behaviour.  This is a true account of their relationship with God. 

To us now, it makes for tales of a God who can seem vindictive and un-loving, and also wildly inconsistent, if we have a more classical view of God as unchanging and benevolent.  But the Old Testament experience of God was different, and this was a different people in a different place and culture that it is hard for us to really understand. 

Christianity has a scandal of particularity – Jesus was incarnate in a particular place, Judea, at a particular time, the first century AD.  We can see this in our Gospel reading.  The examples that Jesus gives are just examples that his audience of the day would have understood.  They are probably not personal experiences – few of his audience would have built a tower, or decided to wage war on another king, but they are comprehensible, and the weightiness of them helps to emphasise the weightiness of the decision that Jesus is asking his audience to make.  We should not be analysing these examples in detail – he is not giving project management advice to anyone considering an extension – but focusing our attention on the first and last verses of the passage, and the verses we haven’t heard that immediately bracket it – his demand that we cannot follow him unless we hate our families and indeed life itself, and his exhortation about the value of salt. 

Jesus here is speaking in prophetic mode – in broad brush strokes, with exaggerated metaphors to emphasise the importance of what he is saying.  Again, this is not to be read literally.  If it were, the ranks of true Christians would be reduced to a mere handful of friars and monastics, for who else amongst us have given up all of our possessions? 

When the Church of England licences or ordains, one of the declarations states that the duty of the church is to proclaim the faith, revealed in the Holy Scriptures, afresh in each new generation.  Scripture reveals faith – it is not faith itself.  And that faith must be proclaimed afresh in each new generation.  Because of the particularity of Jesus’ incarnation, we cannot look to his literal words as a guide for all the ages, because he spoke in a manner which would enable his audience of the time to understand.  Jesus was eternal, but his audience we of that time. 

We are not that audience, and we deny two thousands years of the outworking of God in the Holy Spirit if we demand that we should still be that audience, and should still understand God in the same way that they did.  Jesus says that we must carry the cross and follow him to be his disciple.  He does not say we must follow the law to be his disciple.  He does not say that we must quote scripture to be his disciple.  He points us to the cross instead, the non-verbal symbol of his divine willingness to suffer and serve us, in order to reveal God’s unending love for all of his creation.   

In the shadow of that cross, we are called to proclaim the faith afresh, and the source of that faith is the true word of God, not scripture which reveals the word of God; but the true word of God, the logos, the Son that died for us, and was raised on the third day. 

Amen. 

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Evensong Sermons

Creation

Evensong. Tenth Sunday after Trinity, 2021. Year B.

Readings: Job 28 & Hebrews 11:17-31.

One of the great human questions is “why are we here?”

Genesis gives us an answer to that question, in that we were created by God to have dominion over the world, but a dominion under God. 

We are not necessary to God’s creation, but God chose to create us, as indeed he chose to create all of the heavens and the earth.

Our two readings today come from two possible responses to that act of creation.

The Book of Job is a long inquiry into all of the aspects of that creation, and its imperfections.  The ultimate response is a traditional one – in that our only ultimate response can be one of trust in and worship of God as the creator and sustainer of creation.

The passage dwells on the wisdom of God, which the Book of Job always affirms is beyond our understanding.

But it also dwells on our, God-given, wisdom as well.

Some religions place a stress on unconditional acceptance of the divine will.  The wisdom of God is so surpassing, and ours so limited, that our only response can be to submit utterly to God.

But the message that we read in the scriptures, mediated by our knowledge of Christ, is different.

In the incarnation, God partook in our human existence, and reminded us to what extent we can partake in his divinity.

And the divine gift of wisdom – the greatest of God’s gifts in the Old Testament, is the gateway to our adoption by God.

We may be justified by faith, but it is a faith that is informed, not blind.  Job questions, debates, raves and curses.  He does not meekly submit or blindly obey.  He is ultimately faithful, but his faith is a faith of questions.  He wants to understand the whys of the world, and to gain some glimpse of the mind of God.

We are fortunate.  In Christ we are shown the mind of God in human form.  Job is forced to conjecture about why he suffers, and takes refuge in his unswerving belief in his own righteousness.  We know that our righteousness comes not through our own efforts, but by the faith of God in his covenants, and while we still may not know the reasons for suffering, we can take solace in the knowledge of a God that suffers alongside us in the person of Jesus.

In the words and actions of Jesus, shown to us in the Gospels, we get our closest vision of the mind of God, and this example is what should inform all our thoughts.  True wisdom, as Job recognises, comes from God, and our exercise of it is one of the truest ways that we can worship God.

We may not have an answer to questions like ‘why are we here’ or ‘why is there suffering in the world’, but we know that these are valid questions; they are questions that God wants us to try and answer, and that one day, when we stand in the presence of God, we will know the answers truly.

Amen