ALL SAINTS MARGARET STREET

Second Sunday after Trinity, 21 June 2009
Sermon preached by Fr. Julian Browning at Solemn Evensong and Benediction

Readings: Jeremiah 10:1-16; Rom 11:25-36

Jeremiah 10.5 Idols are like scarecrows

I had better come clean straight away and tell you why I am preaching on the First Lesson from Jeremiah, when the Vicar did the same last week. It's not a mini series. It's because I don't understand the second lesson from St Paul. You are looking very attentive but you have probably forgotten what that was. Paul says something about God making us disobedient so that he can be merciful to us. It may have meant something to me ten years ago, it might mean a lot to me in ten years time, but right now it doesn't, so I'm going to skip it. I commend to you that way of reading the Bible. Christianity is not an exam. Christianity is a way of living and a way of dying. It is a way of living for God by dying to self. The Bible helps us do that. But if we don't understand something, or if we flatly disagree with what we are reading, that is not goint to shut us out from the Truth. We are all ignorant and foolish, as the Psalmist said this evening. God will get through to us, even though we're not always sure how to get through to him.

So with an open mind, let us take a brave stab at a bit more of Jeremiah. He's worth reading for three reasons. First, the word of God is in here somewhere if we have ears to hear. Secondly Jesus of Nazareth was seen as a fulfilment of Jeremiah's prophecies, so reading Jeremiah will help us to understand Jesus. Thirdly it's good to read Jeremiah because his world was chaotic like ours. Babylon had taken over Judah. Jeremiah's world is in ruins. When things can't get any worse, they do. Out of the book comes a terrible shout of despair, an emotional punch which hits us. Where is God, is he there or not, why does this have to happen to me. There is a picture here of a whole people falling away from the worship of the true God who has let them down and they turn instead, in their places of exile, to local idols, what Jeremiah calls "the customs of the peoples". These idols are false, indeed, says Jeremiah ,"Their idols are like scarecrows in a cucumber field and they cannot speak". I like the scarecrows in the cucumber field. In this sort of image, Jeremiah exposes the pathetic nature of so much of what we take for real. Now here's something I can understand. This book isn't just about Judah and Zion and the broken covenant with God. It is about me, and about each of us and the delusions from which we suffer. It is about the fantasy life into which I escape, because I feel myself in exile somehow, abandoned by God and hard done by in this dangerous Godless world, and I need somewhere to go. It's nothing to be ashamed about. It's what we do. And there is one stage worse than a fantasy life. That is when we don't go into exile at all, we are happy in a Godless world, our delusions and fantasies are prepared for us and controlled by the television, the internet, the mobile phone, or whatever "the customs of the peoples" happen to be this year. The result is imaginative poverty nationwide. But we've got as far as Evensong and Benediction at All Saints Margaret Street, so at least our imagination is still functioning and maybe there is some hope for us. Our starting point is Jeremiah's warning. The idols we set up are worthless, they are works of delusion. The saddest scarecrow we set up in our field is our false self, the pretend me, who does all sorts of wonderful things and everyone applauds. It's called acting out. We act out, all the time, sometimes because we're not really getting on very well in our lives, and this truth is too painful to face. Hence the fantasy world, until eventually we come to believe we really are that wonderful person who gets away with everything. I suppose it might be OK if these daydreams led to us writing a wonderful novel. But they don't, do they? The trouble with daydreams is that they are seductive. They are addictive. They take us over. Free-falling fantasy runs counter to spiritual consciousness. We are deliberately making it difficult for God to get through to us, so that we don't have to face the truth about ourselves.

In Genesis a man and a woman hide themselves when they hear the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. This imagery of hiding continues throughout the Old Testament. Human beings turn away from God to worship idols of their own making. We do the same, even when we know better. However, in the Book of Jeremiah, which sees a low point in Israel's life, reflecting the low points in our life, a life of exile, pain, fear and oppression, there is one voice of hope. In the chaos of the book, the dispersion of a people, a new unity emerges in the dominance of the divine voice. God's voice brings the disconnected chapters of the Book of Jeremiah together into a unity. God speaks. At the lowest point in human fortune there is to be heard the voice of the living God, the God who reveals his Truth, when we are forced to set aside our fantasies, our idols, and admit to the truth of ourselves. He is always there. Idols come and go, just as fantasies and addictions fade, re-emerge, and change shape in our lives. But God is always there because he is God the creator, the one who formed all things. If I think about my life, looking back and looking forward, the only consistent factor is the voice of God. I might get up to anything and probably shall: run away, misbehave, get lost, get found, try again. But God never stops communicating with His creation. The Creator God gives us life. Only the Creator God can give a community a future. As we heard in tonight's psalm, God hath delivered my soul from the place of hell: for he shall receive me. When I have set aside my idols, and faced my fears, God is there to lead me forward to my future and to an eternal life with Him. In your will, O God, is our peace.