Sermon: Delight in the Lord

 

Sermon:  Sung Eucharist, 22 August 2010, Trinity 12.

 

May the words of my lips and the meditations of our hearts be now and always acceptable in your sight, O Lord our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

 

Very often, the Bible confronts us with the gulf between hope and reality; of how things might be and how things actually are. The reason often given for this is the perversity of our human nature, individually and corporately.

 

The point is illustrated in this morning’s Old Testament lesson (Isaiah 58:9b-14). It comes from that part of the Book of Isaiah that reflects the time after the return to Jerusalem and Judah from exile in Babylon.  That return had precipitated great hopes and great expectations. God would lead his people in a triumphant procession across the wilderness – every valley would be lifted and every mountain levelled to make a straight and level processional highway from Babylon to Judah (Isaiah 40. 3,4). Jerusalem, its temple and its cult, would be restored, and there would be prosperity and peace. But if you read the post-exilic books such as Ezra-Nehemiah, Isaiah 56-66, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi, well, there was still great hope but also, there were huge problems. There was real economic hardship, the struggle to re-establish a viable and prosperous economy. The land seemed parched, and there was a poor yield from the harvest. There were political struggles concerning the governance of the nation and doubtless there was political corruption among the leaders. There was still opposition from enemies, which meant that energy had to go into security rather than rebuilding. There was a kind of survival of the fittest or perhaps wealthiest mentality, so labourers were denied their wages, and the poor, the orphans, widows and the resident aliens were mistreated. And there was clearly a spiritual malaise, a malaise that included both people and priests; sham religion, lip-service to what the Lord required. It is almost as if none of the lessons of the exile had been learnt. And of course, behind this was the reality, as Bishop Tom has shown so eloquently, that although the people had returned to the land, in reality they were still in exile; an exile that would only be completed when the Lord came in glory to Zion in the person of Jesus Christ. 

 

So, in this morning’s Old Testament lesson, there are strong words of hope. We heard of the rebuilding of ancient ruins, the restoration of a shattered infra-structure. We read of the promise of health and prosperity. We read of a conviction that God would be among his people, guiding them, sustaining them, exalting them.

 

But these promises were not yet true in the experience of the people.  Why?  Because of this malaise, this perversity of our human condition. The passage includes a serious ‘ifs’:

 

If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil;

If you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted

If you refrain from trampling the Sabbath, from pursuing your own interests on my holy day….

 

Only then, God says, can these promises ever come to pass.

 

What you sense here are a people who are obsessed with themselves. A ‘look after number one’ mentality, and shame about the rest. A mindset that says, it doesn’t really matter if there is injustice and false accusation, and the spreading of malicious gossip and lies, so long as I’m doing all right, Jack. So long as the fall-out is not landing in my back yard. And what about time off, the Sabbath day – well, that just for pursuing one’s own interests and pleasing one’s self. It seems that the issue here is that the Sabbath was seen as just another working day, a chance for the people to make more money for themselves.

 

And for our author, this is the heart of it, because these attitudes say something about how the people view God.  Such attitudes treat God with contempt.  They take what is holy – the Sabbath – and profane it, just as Malachi will show how they profane God’s holy place, the Temple, by offering defiled sacrifices (Malachi 1.6-8).

 

You see, removing the yoke, refraining from speaking evil, caring for the poor, keeping God’s holy day, are the outward signs of an inward honouring of God.  The author says, it is about ‘taking delight in the Lord’ rather than being obsessed with self.

 

In the light of this, I want to make three observations. The first is about prayer. This morning’s reading illustrates the gulf between how things might be and how things actually are. It’s about the tension between hope and realism. So often in our world what is humanly, morally and materially desirable, we know it is, is not politically expedient. On Friday, I found myself passing a Mosque at the time of Friday Prayers; many men were entering its doors and I stopped opposite and prayed, I trust in solidarity with them, for the stricken people of Pakistan. When we see a humanitarian need that transcends race, faith, history, we see Kingdom of God moments. What if India’s response multiplies into a new relationship of mutual inter-dependence and friendship? What if the sheer outpouring of aid and help and care from the world community confounds a minority who seek to bring terror and crushing fundamentalism?  What if, as talks between Israel and Palestine begin again, someone has the vision to enable a break-through that confounds extremism? We can simply pray and pray hard that when we, as individuals, as a nation, as a world community, are enabled to cast aside self-interest, to cross boundaries, and be delivered from self-interest, because that is what the Lord requires of us, then indeed ancient ruins can then be rebuilt and we shall be called the repairer of the breach.

 

Second, how can we move away from self-interest, which plagues us as much as Third Isaiah’s community? If I have understood the Government correctly, something of the vision of the Big Society is that local people should become empowered to make real change a possibility in local areas. I like the vision, but I fear that unless we are able to re-learn what it means to be a truly corporate society, then the response will be patchy and too much will depend on local levels of affluence. We used to be a bigger society than we are now, I fear; because an affluent, getting and spending, selfish generation, has replaced a generation that knew great self-sacrifice and so had to stand together. People of faith, who are motivated by a God who calls human beings together in community have much to contribute. But we too are victims of self-interest, so where will the moral formation come from when the Church and Christian values are now so marginalised and so many simply serve their own interests?

 

And my final point is this.  This morning’s lesson reminds us that at the heart of our faith is simply taking delight in the Lord (Isaiah 58.14). Think of Jesus – his joy was in obeying the Father’s will and can you think of a more joyful person. And think of the joy in our Gospel reading as that poor woman was liberated, set free, as a sign of Sabbath release (Luke 13.10-17). Jesus’ joy was to see God’s Kingdom come in the lives of people.  My plea is for us not so much to enjoy Church or enjoy religion, but to enjoy God, to enjoy him through our liturgy and common life, and to see that his commandments are for our flourishing, for our happiness. The times of spiritual renewal in my life have come when I have re-discovered this sense of enjoying God, of taking delight in the Lord. And that then overspills into generosity, generosity of spirit, of attitude, of substance. The Sabbath becomes a delight, gloom becomes as the noonday, and whatever our outward circumstances, we are able to transcend them, as today’s passage concludes,

 

            I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth (Isaiah 58.14).

 

There is a verse in Nehemiah – ‘the joy of the Lord is your strength’ (Nehemiah 8.10). This morning, may we re-capture that joy and allow it to overspill into our homes, our communities, our world.