hope – The Raynville Rambler

Hope cannot wait

An Advent sermon for St Peter’s Bramley, Sunday 27 November 2022

I was given the title for this sermon by our new Rector. For more details of the Tearfund project referred to here, see https://www.tearfund.org/stories/2022/06/turning-guns-into-garden-tools-in-the-drc or the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xCD6z3bAas

Advent is often presented as a time of waiting. But over the next four Sundays leading up to Christmas we’re looking at four of the great themes of Christianity as found in the book of Isaiah: Hope, Peace, Joy and Love – and why actually they cannot wait. We start today with the idea of ‘Hope’.

Hope can mean different things to different people. Some of you will know Sue Davey, a member of our congregation who can’t get to church these days. She recently put it like this:

“Without hope life really is hopeLESS. We need to have hope that things will work out in the end, that things will get better. That will be different for every one of us. Hope makes life worth living.”

The prophet Isaiah lived in troubled times like ours. Fewer people were worshiping God and doing what God wanted them to do. There was an increase in crime, leaders had become corrupt, the rich were getting richer and no-one was looking after the poor. In countries all around there was war, and sooner or later war would come even to his city of Jerusalem. The situation may well have seemed hopeless.

But through this book of Isaiah with all these troubles, there runs a thread of hope like a rainbow appearing out of a dark cloud. Isaiah had a vision from God. A vision of what God would do to bring hope out of despair. A vision, as we see in today’s reading, of God breaking into human life to end war and bring peace. This striking image of swords being beaten into ploughshares, that is, weapons becoming farming tools, is a picture of what can happen when we let God make that vision a reality. But what if someone decided to take it literally?

The Democratic Republic of Congo is one of the hardest places to live on Earth. Decades of war and violence have cost hundreds of thousands of lives and forced millions of people from their homes. Tens of thousands of children have been recruited by armed gangs to fight.

The Christian development agency Tearfund has a partner organisation that seeks to take positive steps to work for peace and save these children from the physical and emotional harm of war. Last year, more than 3,300 children were rescued from armed groups.

As part of this project, the guns that came with them have been melted down and turned into gardening tools, to put Isaiah’s vision into practice. The outcome is a community that is less in fear of war, and that can better feed themselves. What can we learn from their example?

First of all, it was an ecumenical project. Not one, but many churches of different traditions got involved. Practical forms of mission like this bring Christians together on common ground to work for the good of the community.

But it was hard work. Rescuing children from armed gangs is highly risky. Melting down steel is very hot work; beating it into shape on an anvil as this pastor is doing is hard physical work. Using the tools, whether to dig an allotment or plough with oxen, is equally hard. When we work with God to bring a vision of hope into reality, it will mean hard work in one form or another.

What made it worth the hard work? It was the vision of peace and hope, the vision found throughout the Bible that God wants to redeem people from war, poverty and slavery and give them a hope that will last. it was an idea rooted in the love of Jesus and the hope that he brings. In the words of a Tearfund spokesperson:

“We cannot do what we do without the hope of Jesus.

We cannot do what we do without the power of Jesus.

We cannot do what we do without the love of Jesus.”

Those Congolese Christians realised that the vision of hope couldn’t wait for the fighting to end. They had to act even as war raged around them. As in Isaiah’s day, they heard the call to strive for justice and peace even in the face of the troubles around them.

It’s good to see what’s happening around the world. But Isaiah’s prophecy, although part of God’s plan for the world, was also for the people of his own city, Jerusalem. What might it mean for us, here and now, in Leeds?

Today’s reading also speaks of the ‘mountain of the Lord’s house’. Isaiah’s vision includes many people saying ‘come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob’. This is a theme that appears throughout Isaiah and represents Jerusalem, a symbol of the whole Jewish people, but also the coming Kingdom of God. The people who worshipped God in the Temple had a calling to reach out to the surrounding nations and participate in bringing God’s peace and justice to those around them.

A few years ago I spoke in a sermon about the problem of loneliness in our society, which is one of the particular concerns of our own MP, Rachel Reeves. I quoted from another part of Isaiah’s vision, which also draws on that symbolism of the mountain of God. In chapter 25 it says “On this mountain, the Lord of Hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines”. That prophecy may point to the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross, and the communion service in which we remember that. The broken bread is the life of Christ, broken in order to be shared with everyone who needs it.

Just like turning arms into tools, the sharing of bread as a symbol of the sharing of the life of Christ, and the vision of a feast of rich food in God’s holy place, is one that can be acted out in the reality of people’s daily lives.

Along with other churches and charities in Bramley, we aim to bring some hope this Christmas to families who are struggling to afford food, by giving them a full Christmas dinner. In line with Isaiah’s vision of God’s feast – one of rich food and well-aged wine – we offer not just meat and veg, but all the trimmings, the crackers and the sweets to make the day enjoyable.

In sharing with our neighbours in this way, we want not only to feed them, but also bring the hope that comes from feeling part of a wider community and of participating in the joy of Christmas. If this is what hope looks like for the people of Bramley this Christmas time, hope cannot wait.

Amen.

Come, light of the world

Picture from Salvation Army Canada. Artist unknown.

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is ‘Come, Light of the World’ by Paul Inwood. It was new to me, and not easy to sing from sight unaccompanied, so I needed to hear John playing and singing it to pick up the tune properly.

The five verses each begin with that invocation ‘Come’, which places it firmly within the spirit of Advent. The five ways in which Christ is addressed are ‘Light of the world’, ‘Strength of our days’, ‘Joy for the world’, ‘Hope of the world’ and ‘Spirit of God’ (the last not being strictly addressed to Christ, except in so far as the Spirit ‘proceeds from the Father and the Son’ – but let’s not reopen that old argument!)

Likewise, in the course of these five verses we ask him to bless us in various ways: to dispel our darkness and be our light; to fill us with courage to follow him; to bring us together with singing, laughter and warmth in our lives; to heal our sorrow and bring us peace; and for the Spirit to fill us with truth, lighten our lives and inspire all we do.

It is, as John remarked, a very positive hymn, not at all in the penitential style of many Advent hymns, yet consistent with the Advent hope of one who is coming to change things for the better. Perhaps it’s just what we need at the moment, when the world is full of fear, hatred and disaster: not another reminder that we are sinners but a reminder that Christ comes to bring fulness of life.

Let us rejoice

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is ‘Let us rejoice’ by Martin Leckebusch. John said that it was set in the book to the tune of ‘For all the saints’ but in my copy of the book sets it to a tune by Stanford – I wonder if we have different editions?

The overall theme of the hymn seems to be patience and endurance in the strength of God. The first verse speaks of peace and calm found in God’s acceptance, the second of strength to face trials found in his ‘fatherly embrace’, the third of trust in his glory and splendour, the fourth of the faith that ‘God is at work through all the griefs we share’, and finally of the love of God found deep in our hearts that prompts our praise. It would be a good one to sing on a (non-silent!) retreat.

Bless the Lord, my soul

The song for today is a chant from the French Taize community, and is (as John points out) a setting of Psalm 103. The setting in Sing Praise includes nine short chants for solo cantor, each intended to be sung over a choir singing the 4-part refrain. The refrain is often used on its own: “Bless the Lord, my soul, and bless God’s holy name. Bless the Lord, my soul, who leads me into life”.

That last phrase intrigues me – “who leads me into life”. I have also seen a version of the same song giving it as “who rescues me from death”, both of them probably deriving from verse 4 of the original Psalm, “who delivers your life from the Pit” (NRSV). I happen to have a Taize prayer book so I looked to see how the community translates the psalm for their own worship: the relevant phrase is “qui rachète à la fosse ta vie” – literally, “who buys back from the ditch your life”. The translation in this English version of the song puts that idea into one of the cantor’s verses: “The Lord is forgiveness and redeems our life from the grave”.

All these carry the same idea, not yet the full Christian concept of Jesus dying to redeem us from our sins, but a foretaste of that, a germ of the idea. Without God’s blessing we would all end up in the ‘pit’ of death or Sheol – the old Hebrew concept of the afterlife as neither heaven nor hell but an undesirable, eternal nothingness or meaninglessness. A pit is a hole that is too deep to climb out of unaided, as the biblical Joseph found. To believe in God and accept his blessing is to accept a hand up out of the pit, to find meaning where there was none, to find eternal life instead of merely existence, to receive (as Jesus would later put it) “life in all its fulness”. Which is presumably why the refrain uses the more positive interpretation: if we are bought back from death, then by implication we are indeed led into life.

Imagery like this seems pertinent at this time of Covid lockdown and isolation. Today is the tenth and last day of our isolation at home, and even though the freezing weather has not been conducive to going out walking much anyway, it will be good to get out tomorrow, if only to the shop with a mask on. I can get out of this little pit and get on with life in the limited way currently allowed, and look forward to a ‘new normal’ at a later time. For those who live alone all the time and cannot get out on their own, for those in prison or trapped in controlling relationships, or in unrelieved pain, it must be far worse. For some people, even death may seem like a positive way out, and God is the only one who can lift them up.

The Christian promise is that the reality is much better than we might dare to hope. If we give ourselves to God, then we can find peace among the troubles of this life, and know that beyond death is not mere existence in a pit but a new creation where fullness of life will be something more than we can now imagine. Bless the Lord, my Soul!

Lord, set your servant free

Today’s hymn is one of many settings of Simeon’s short song (Nunc Dimittis). What perhaps sets this one apart form others is that the author (Mary Holtby) has departed from the original words in several places.

Instead of referring to Simeon’s ‘departure’ (meaning his imminent death) she has him asking to be ‘set free’ – which could be taken to mean ‘set free from this earthly life’, but is capable of wider application. We all have things that we need to be set free from.

She also drops the last line ‘the glory of your people Israel’, instead following ‘the hope of humankind’ with a parallel phrase ‘the glory of our race’. That worldwide message appears also in verse 2 with ‘on the nations lost in light I see his dawn arise’.

The Christ here is therefore understood as having a universal ministry from the start, rather than understanding Jesus having come first to the people of Israel. Simeon had been promised he would see the hope of his own people, and finds that he has been given a whole lot more, a universal vision of hope. Such is God’s way, offering blessings greater than we had hoped for.

Advent hope

A reflection for the first Sunday in Advent – written for the online service from St Peter’s church, Bramley

Bible Reading: Romans 15:7-13 (New International Readers Version)

Christ has accepted you. So accept one another in order to bring praise to God.

I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the Jews. He teaches us that God is true. He shows us that God will keep the promises he made to the founders of our nation. Jesus became a servant of the Jews so that people who are not Jews could give glory to God for his mercy. It is written, “I will praise you among those who aren’t Jews. I will sing praises to you.” Again it says, “You non-Jews, be full of joy. Be joyful together with God’s people.” And again it says, “All you non-Jews, praise the Lord. All you nations, sing praises to him.” And Isaiah says, “The Root of Jesse will grow up quickly. He will rule over the nations. Those who aren’t Jews will put their hope in him.”

May the God who gives hope fill you with great joy. May you have perfect peace as you trust in him. May the power of the Holy Spirit fill you with hope. ____________________________________________

Today is the first day of Advent, the season when we prepare to welcome Jesus. Our parish has a one-word theme each week, and this week’s word is HOPE. Hope, in the way the way Christians use the word, is more than just wishful thinking, it’s trusting that God has a plan for our lives and that his promises of restoration and rebuilding will come true.

At the start of Advent the Church looks back to a time before Jesus, when God’s people were without hope. They were living in exile, separated from family and unable to communicate with them, grieving for those who had been killed in war, unable to do their usual jobs. Doesn’t that sound familiar, as we spend this advent still reeling from the effects of the virus?

Like them, we may feel we have nothing to hope for. But God sent prophets with a message of hope, that he would rescue his people and take them back to where they belonged, restoring relationships and building communities.

The words of the prophets did come true – God restored the Jews to their land. But there was more, a greater hope that God would one day come himself to reconcile his people – not only the Jews, but all people on earth, even those most excluded from society. That’s why in this reading St Paul tells his readers to “accept one another” or in other translations, “welcome each other”– he was talking to Jewish and non-Jewish Christians, but the same applies wherever there is division in society.

This call to welcome others is especially relevant today, when we see so much division, so much inequality, so much discrimination in our world. Never forget, Paul says, that God’s promise of hope is to all people, but most of all to the excluded.

Indian-fishermen

What does this look like in practice? Take these fishermen. They live in a village called MGR Thittu in Tamil Nadu, south India which we visited in 20o6 with Tearfund. They are Dalits, those below the bottom tier of the caste system. They were cut off from society, poor, despised, uneducated, unable to work in the towns. Then the 2004 tsunami hit them, destroyed their boats and their homes. They had no hope. But Indian Christians from an organisation called EFICOR (with financial support from Tearfund in the UK), and Christian Aid, came to their rescue with a practical message of hope. They built new homes, gave them new boats, and opened a computer teaching centre so that they could learn to use the Internet, get jobs in the city and become part of mainstream society. Above all, the Christians brought a message of God’s unconditional love. Several of the Dalits turned to Christ and now there is a local church in their village.

That’s what Advent hope looks like in India. But who are the excluded people who God is calling you to welcome? Who are the people God is calling you to bring hope to, this Advent?

[Postscript: since I drafted this earlier this week, Tearfund have asked for prayer for the Tamil Nadu region as it has been hit by a severe cyclone, with large numbers of people evacuated from the coastal areas. Pray that once again, they may be given hope for the future].

The Bible in a Year – 27 October

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

27 October. Matthew chapters 8-9

In these two chapters we see Jesus doing what he was, in his lifetime, best known for – healing people. In the course of what might have been only a few days, he heals eleven specific people from a range of conditions – leprosy, paralysis, fever, haemorrhage, blindness, dumbness, demon possession and even death (or a death-like trance). It is clear that there were many more such miracles, too many to be recounted individually. The impact he had on the towns and villages around the lake of Galilee/Capharnaum must have been tremendous. These stories of healing also provide the setting for other developments in the story of Jesus told in between them – the calling of disciples (including Matthew himself), stilling the storm on the lake with a spoken word, and at the end of chapter 9, the command to “send labourers into the harvest”, that is to share in his work of bringing good news.

What was the good news, and how did it relate to these physical and spiritual healings? I have just been reading a newsletter from one of the charities we support – CAP, Christians Against Poverty. Their work is primarily helping people trapped in unsustainable debt to get out of the hole that they have dug themselves into. Or, in many cases, which has been dug for them – domestic abuse, unemployment, mental health problems or physical handicap is frequently the trigger for a downward spiral that leaves people with not only no money and no means of paying off what they borrow, but also no hope. So CAP see their ministry as also one of bringing hope. By acting as agents to negotiating settlements with creditors on their behalf, by challenging unfair benefit decisions by government agencies, by helping people to budget what money they do have, and overall by befriending them and introducing them to the fellowship of the local church. In all these ways, they show people who have lost hope that it is possible to regain it.

Jesus also seems to have been a bringer of hope. That is why he rarely simply healed a physical illness and moved on, but engaged with people’s deeper need. The leper and the bleeding woman, outcast from Jewish society, were cleansed and reintroduced to their religious community; the centurion (Roman soldier) was told that he was ahead of the Jews in the queue to meet God; a paralysed man was assured of forgiveness for sin, before being made able to walk again.

When Jesus is criticised for eating and drinking while John the Baptist and the Pharisees were telling their followers to fast, his reply is in the form of a short parable about clothing and wineskins. He explains, “The wedding guests cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them, can they?” (9:15). His ministry was one characterised by activity, joy and hope, and it rubbed off on most of those whom he met. To those in the darkness of depression, debt or anything else that robs people of hope, Jesus comes to restore it. The call to labour in his harvest field is also a call to share in this life-changing gift of hope.

The Bible in a Year – 10 July

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this, and the introduction to the Psalms for this book of the Bible in particular.

10 July. Psalms 74-77

These psalms are part of the block from 73-83 attributed to Asaph (which may have meant the worship leader, or the choral singers). The first three (74-76) are communal songs, whereas the last (77) is a personal one.

But 74 and 76 share a common structure. At first the singer(s) is/are in despair at their situation: in one, the Temple has been severely damaged by an enemy raid, the round of Temple worship has had to cease and nor is there anyone who can prophecy; in the other, the individual is experiencing what has been called “the dark night of the soul” when all attempts at prayer seem only to find a darkness, an absence of God.

But in both cases, the remedy is to remember what God has done in the past. In the first, God is remembered by the community for his work of creation: defeating chaos, making the sun and stars, the earth and its animals. In the last, the individual recalls the Exodus, that defining moment when God achieved the impossible and saved the descendants of Jacob by leading them out of Egypt through the waters.

It is all too easy, when depression sets in because of external pressure or internal turmoil, to feel there is no way out. But for those who trust in God, remembering what he has done in the past either in our own lives or in the lives of other people, now or in the past, can be the beginning of a turning back to the light.