ALL SAINTS MARGARET STREET
Third Sunday of Lent, 2007
High Mass
Fr Alan Moses
A few days ago I was a guest at an "Introduction to Christianity". I'm not sure whether I was there to be introduced to Christianity, or simply to a means of introducing others to Christianity. My host, who is of a sternly Calvinist bent, asked me during our conversation over the supper which was part of the event, how often I preached on judgement. I replied that I preached on it when it appeared in the readings provided by the Church. In addition to that, the liturgy itself contains regular calls to repentance. Lent is a time when they are especially prominent and today's readings all speak of judgement and repentance in one way or another.
The prophet who speaks in Isaiah 55 is usually called Second Isaiah. He prophesies, that is he speaks on behalf of God, to a people in exile, a people who have seen their land fall to foreign invasion. They are a people who must be questioning the very promises of God on which the nation's life had been built - now that it was in ruins along with the Temple which had been the centre of their spiritual life. They were tempted to give up on it all, to lapse into despair and hopelessness. They yearn, they thirst, for home as exiles often do, but wonder whether they will ever return. Why not settle down where they are, abandon the God who seemed to have failed them and place themselves under the protection of the more obviously successful deities of their masters?
He calls upon them to return to their original allegiance
"Seek the Lord while he may be found,
call upon him while he is near;
let the wicked forsake their way,
and the unrighteous their thoughts;
let them return to the Lord,
that he may have mercy on them,
and to our God,
for he will abundantly pardon."
Their present state is due to the sins of the people. The prophets see it as God's judgement on the unfaithfulness of the nation and especially that of its leaders.
But Isaiah's message is one of hope too. He speaks of God's desire to form with them a new covenant, a new relationship, in which God will give them the things that they need.
Their sin does not have the last word. God does. God is not only the one who convicts us of sin, he is also the one who is ready to forgive and he is the one who does more than simply wipe the slate clean.
He is the one who provides the spiritual resources to live in a true relationship with him and with our neighbours. Water, wine, milk and honey, the bread which satisfies, all speak of the Promised Land for which they yearned. They speak too of the spiritual food which God provides for his people.
Paul writes to the Church in Corinth - a mixed group of convert Jews and Gentiles, trying - not always very successfully - to live out their faith in the midst of a great, confusing and tempting city - much as we do today. They are divided over various issues - much as we are. There are issues of church order and of morality. Some of them think and act as if the final resurrection has already come, so that their moral behaviour does not matter.
Like Isaiah, Paul speaks to them from the history of Israel. "These things occurred as examples for us, so that we might not desire veil as they did."
He takes them back to the story of the desert wanderings of Israel; that long period of 40 years in the desert when through the leadership of Moses, God forms a people from himself out of the nation of slaves. This was the people who had been liberated in the Exodus, but they find the challenges of freedom; the moral demands of their holy and liberating God, rather too much for them.
They prefer idolatry and immorality, partying and grumbling. They yearn for the fleshpots of Egypt. Slavery might have been hard but it was at least predictable - the tough decisions were taken for you and you knew where the next meal was coming from.
What has the situation of people wandering in the desert or languishing in exile got to do with us?
Well just as Paul used the experience of the Israelites to speak to the Corinthian Christians in their situation in the midst of a world of competing faiths and philosophies; just as Second Isaiah spoke to a people driven far from the things that they had placed their hope in, so we too can find in their stories something of our own situation and we can find hope too. Their story is our story. We are drawn into it. It judges us, yes, but it also heals us and strengthens us.
We are not a people who have made it. Even in a lively and active congregation such as this one, with its beautiful temple, we sense, if we are honest, that things are not as they once were. In what was once a Christian nation, we feel in a sort of internal exile; that Christianity in western Europe is slipping quietly away before our eyes - and certainly in the eyes of the secular media.
Like the Corinthian Christians, we are a fractious lot - much given to quarrels and splits; the quality of our common life leaves a good deal to be desired. Like them we live in a city with manifold temptations to abandon or at least compromise our Christian faith. We are conscious of how our behaviour; our lifestyle, our example, sometimes less than Christian, impacts on others.
Paul warns us, as he warned them: "So, if you think your are standing, watch out that you do not fall. No testing has overcome you that is not common to everyone."
But that is not the last word:
"God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it."
Paul speaks of baptism, and of the spiritual food and drink, manna and water from the rock for the Israelite, the spiritual food and drink of the Eucharist for the Christians. God provides us with the means of grace by which we can not only find forgiveness
Jesus too has been speaking of judgement and repentance. In the way that people still do, some of his hearers want to discuss philosophical issues like the relation of suffering to sin. They cite a case of a massacre carried out by the occupying Roman forces: the kind of thing we are used to hearing about in the news. They shared the widespread view of the time that this must have been a consequence of the victims' sins. Jesus cites another incident - a building collapse which had taken 18 lives. He says to them that none of these were any greater sinners than any of them, so they must all repent.
The belief that there was a direct causal and measurable connection between sin and suffering was common in Judaism on the time - it was based on the Book of Deuteronomy and to a certain degree on human experience - we all know cases when people have got themselves into a mess because of their behaviour. This is an idea which does not die easily.
Some people have even argued against acts of charity towards those who suffer because this would be to interfere with God's punishment. Not many of us would say this out loud, but I can recall it being not far below the surface during the moral panic about AIDS twenty years or so ago. These people had brought it on themselves.
But Jesus announced God's favour to the poor, the maimed, the blind and the crippled - all people who, on this view, would be seen as suffering because of their sin.
That alone should have broke the insistence that one's financial, social or physical condition is always a direct reflection of one's spiritual state. The common observation that the evil sometimes prosper and the saints suffer should have shattered the ancient belief. That Jesus suffered on the cross at the hands of cruel men should have buried the connection for ever.
But it has not.
Jesus then speaks of the barren fig tree. The owner had expected it to bear fruit but had found none. He orders that it be cut down. As on a number of occasions in the Old Testament, someone intercedes - in this case the vinedresser. He asks for one more year to give the tree extra feeding to see what will happen. The tree is given another chance - another chance not an unlimited reprieve. Manure may not be language we usually associate with word and sacrament and prayer; but in a nation which loves garden - or at least gardening programmes - we should get the message. These means of grace are provided that we might grow and bear fruit. They are part of what the reformed slave trader and hymn writer John Newton called "the Double Cure" of sins: to strengthen us against temptation. We should use them.