Sermon: God's Goodness

At the end of Alice through the Looking Glass, when Alice is at a feast in honour of becoming a queen, there is a typically bizarre episode:

‘You look a little shy; let me introduce you to that leg of mutton,’ said the Red Queen. ‘Alice – mutton. Mutton – Alice.’ The leg of mutton got up in the dish and made a little bow to Alice; and she returned the bow not knowing whether to be frightened or amused.

‘may I give you a slice?’ she said, taking up the knife and fork, and looking from one queen to the other.

‘certainly not,’ the Red Queen said, very decidedly: ‘it isn’t etiquette to cut anyone you’ve been introduced to. Remove the joint!’ and the waiters carried it off, and brought a large plum pudding in its place.

‘I won’t be introduced to the pudding, please,’ Alice said rather hastily, ‘or we shall get no dinner at all. May I give you some?’

But the Red Queen looked sulky and growled ‘ Pudding – Alice. Alice – pudding. Remove the pudding!’ and the waiters took it away before Alice could return its bow.

And then there’s the feast at the end of the Old Testament reading we heard. It’s hard to tell which story – Alice’s or 2 Kings – is a more surreal account of what got people to the banquet. We have to enter the world that accepts miracles if we are to understand it. It begins with an enormous enemy army surrounding a city in order to capture Elisha, and Elisha’s servant trapped in the middle of it is quite naturally in despair. And then visions of horses and chariots of fire that bring him reassurance, and sudden blinding of the enemy who are taken on a 10-15 miles stumbling route march by the very man they wanted to capture, who delivers them right into the hands of the King of Israel where they anticipate death but end up as guests at a banquet. And the footnote is the important bit, ‘the Arameans no longer came raiding into the land of Israel.’ Whatever we make of the story, the punch line is that the generosity of the king of Israel, guided by Elisha, ended the conflict.

That’s where we go back to Alice who couldn’t eat something she’d been introduced to. It’s the same principle because, under the etiquette of the day, the Arameans could not invade a people who had effectively treated them as friends. To eat together was to be reconciled, so attack was out of the question. They were literally disarmed by the goodness of the king of Israel, and he acted as he did because – like Elisha’s servant earlier that morning – he had seen the goodness and the glory of God.

We also see this response to God’s good ness in the story of Paul with people in Athens who do not share his faith. He is distressed by what he sees but has a history of seeing God at work and so is confident enough in God to show respect for their religion, challenge them with the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and then rather than push them into a corner he walks away from them just at the point when some want to know more. What a wasted opportunity to proclaim the gospel that seems. Instead he sets before them the spiritual feast of God’s power in raising Jesus from the dead, lets them respond and some of them do become believers.

How do we respond to the goodness of God? Does our experience of God’s generosity and care in the past free us to be generous to others whoever they are: Aramean enemies, Athenian unbelievers or the person next door? There are lessons for us in our vital engagement with people who do not share our faith, and thus in these days when we as Christians can offer friendship and a welcome in particular to our Moslem neighbours and to all others who live in fear or despair as a result of the bombings and resulting racial tensions.

But there is another question too: how did Elisha have the faith to trust in God whilst his servant panicked? What made the difference? Here Psalm 95 challenges us. Too often we omit the second half where the people are hauled over the coals by God for not trusting that God would care for them. The BCP talks about the provocation and day of temptation in the wilderness, but other translations are more specific: ‘Do not harden your hearts as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness when your ancestors tested me. For forty years I loathed that generation, and said ‘they are a people whose hearts go astray, and they do not regard my ways. Therefore I swore in my anger ‘they shall not enter my rest.’’ It is terrifyingly strong language by God about the people.

What happened at Massah and Meribah, which mean ‘test and quarrel’, to cause this outburst of anger from God? You’ll find it in Exodus 17 when Moses has got the people out of Egypt and into the desert, and they are complaining about the lack of water. Most of us in the same situation would probably not be too happy either, but this was more than a minor grumble, Moses feared they would stone him. What was at the root of the problem? It was one that is familiar to many of us, essentially it was lack of trust in God, and in God’s ability and willingness to care for them in their need. They had just been delivered miraculously from Egypt, but faced with a water shortage they forgot that, panicked and reacted in anger.

I suspect our reactions are more likely to be those of the people in the wilderness or of Elisha’s servant, looking at an impossible situation and despairing. What causes you to despair at the moment – family crisis, illness, lack of work, financial worries? They are our equivalents of lack of drinking water and being surrounded by enemies. They are real and hard situations. One thing we need when faced with despair is a renewed vision of the glory of God that will evoke and nurture our trust in God. Perhaps that is why the psalm is constructed as it is – the challenge not to harden our hearts comes after we have sung God’s praise and reminded ourselves who God is and what God has done in the past. The command to the king of Israel to feed rather than kill the enemy, and then to let them go, comes after he has seen God’s power to deliver the enemy into his hands. We can’t just manufacture trust in God, it is nurtured by recalling God’s goodness and grace, through our praise and worship of God for who he is and what he has done in the past. 

So, we are challenged to develop habits of being aware of God’s presence in our lives. Our closing hymn (Lord of all hopefulness) is a prayer for this. But also to develop a habit of recalling God’s goodness to us so that we both have resources to help us through the hard times and can live with grace and hospitality to our neighbours. This week, pay attention to God’s gentle or tumultuous presence in your life now and in the past, give thanks, and file the memory away for future use. You will need it sometime.