Sermon and Prayers


WHOM SHALL I SEND?

Isaiah 1: 10 - 20; Psalm 50: 1 - 8, 22 - 30;
Luke 12: 32 - 40; Hebrews 11: 1 - 3, 8 - 16


For the last five Sundays the Lectionary has offered selections from the classical Hebrew prophets --Amos, Hosea and Isaiah. In preaching I have skipped past them in favour of better-known readings from the New Testament, readings including the Good Samaritan and the Lord’s Prayer. Nevertheless the old prophets demand a hearing, not only for their theological insights, radical in their day, but also because in our day they still speak.

They are very strong on social justice. Isaiah, for example, walks as a social equal of the king’s high ranking officials. Isaiah, passionately convinced that he has a word from God on matters of national importance, cares not a wit about combining religion with politics.

If in our own time preaching on social justice has become a delicate matter, the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah had no doctrine of the separation of church and state. Where, today, does the preacher draw the line between a legitimate prophetic critique of society and improper “meddling in politics?” Moreover, a minister may be aware that sitting in the pews may be worshippers who play a significant role not only in national affairs but also those of the world. I well remember the Sunday in Adelaide when the Deputy Chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff (Colin Powell’s deputy in those days) came to Church.

In church there may be worshippers who are quite properly involved in party politics and fear that the minister may be wrongly, and ignorantly, favouring the other side.
Worshippers whose daily work lies in the world of business may protest that the minister can have no idea of the pressures. “Our decisions,” they say, “rarely present in terms of black and white alternatives. Sometimes it’s choosing the lesser of two evils, like. ‘Do we downsize the workforce or do we risk going out of business altogether?’”

And others may say, “It’s all very well for him up there in the pulpit to go off crook about this or that aspect of current affairs, but what can we do about it? We’re little people with no say?” Or, “Why harangue us on sexual ethics. We’re either too old or too tired for an affair. The important thing for us is relating to a generation where they do things differently.”

All that being said, the minister may respond that you never know what sins lurk beneath a congregation’s (or a minister’s) veneer of innocence. I made a mental list this week of some of the more spectacular immorality encountered over the years. There were, naturally enough, cases of sexual misconduct. In some of these the ramifications did great damage, not only to the sinners but to others as well. There were also financial sins: Someone with access to a chequebook or a credit card sneakily siphons off church funds. And covertly a bit of cheating on the tax or the GST: “I’ll quote you $1000 for that, or $900 cash.”

The most spectacular case was of a man out on bail who with a friend had been charged with kidnapping the kids in a one-teacher school. He came regularly to worship and to weekly Bible studies. He maintained steadfastly that the police had framed him. Later his co-accused wrote a book in which he claimed, rightly or wrongly, I do not know, that the other was in fact innocent of the charge. They both spent several years in prison.

The book of Amos displays a man passionate about God’s sacred law--the older traditions as known to him--and equally passionate in denouncing those who took the law lightly and whose religious observance was a pretence. He spoke out scathingly against greed for profit, sexual exploitation, bullying, idle luxury, and mixed with these, contempt of the principles underlying good order in international relations. He denounced:
[Those] who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth,
and push the afflicted out of the way;
father and son go into the same girl,
so that my holy name is profaned. (Amos 2:7) And,
Those who lie on beds of ivory,
and lounge on their couches...
who drink wine from bowls,
and anoint themselves with the finest oils
but are not grieved over the ruin of Jacob [the nation] (Amos 6: 4, 6)

God, who has put his unique love on the nation of Israel by bringing it up from the land of Egypt, says through Amos,
You only have I known
of all the families of the earth;
therefore I will punish you
for all your iniquities. (Amos 3:2) and

let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an everflowing stream. (Amos 5:24)

If Amos was passionate about Israel’s traditions of sacred law, so the prophet Hosea was passionate about the nation’s sacred history. God was like a husband to Israel--the husband of an unfaithful wife. Hosea speaks from personal experience--the pain of knowing a partner’s infidelity. Hosea knew how God felt. The nation was God’s spouse, yet kept turning to the pagan religious observances of the surrounding nations.
She shall pursue her lovers,
but not overtake them;
and she shall seek them
but shall not find them. . .
She did not know
that it was I who gave her
the grain, the wine, and the oil... (Hosea 2:7f)


In Chapter 11 Hosea turns to Israel’s experience of God’s unconditional love at the birth of the nation. The prophet looks back to the years in the wilderness as the children of Israel made their way to the promised land: The figure changes: God is no longer a spouse but a parent:
When Israel was a child, I loved him,
and out of Egypt I called my son.
The more I called them,
The more they went from me . . .

Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk,
I took them up in my arms;
but they did not know that I healed them.
I led them with cords of human kindness,
with bands of love.
I was to them like those
who lift infants to their cheeks.
I bent down to them and fed them. (Hosea 11: 1-4)

Then God says,
How can I give you up, O Ephraim?
How can I hand you over, O Israel? . . .
My heart recoils within me;
my compassion grows warm and tender.
I will not execute my fierce anger;. . .
for I am God and no mortal,
the Holy One in your midst,
and I will not come in wrath. (Hosea 11: 8f)

Then there was Isaiah, from whose prophetic oracles comes today’s reading from the first chapter. We may not be familiar with this one, rather we know and love Isaiah for the story of his call in Capter 6. It begins with a vision of God:

In the year that King Uzziah died,
I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty... (Is. 6:1)

We remember that one of the flying seraphs takes a live coal with tongs from the altar and cleanse Isaiah from sin. Then comes the Lord’s question, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” and Isaiah’s response, “Here am I; send me.”

That remarkable vision receives no mention until Chapter 6. Five whole chapters put the vision in context. The prophet’s concern is similar in vein to those of Amos and Hosea. The nation (this time the southern kingdom of Judah) has fallen away from true religion. If Amos was passionate in defence of the sanctity of God’s holy law, and Hosea passionate in recalling the sacred history from which Israel had fallen away, Isaiah is passionate about God’s choice of Jerusalem and the responsibilities before God of its people and its monarchy.

In today’s reading Isaiah berates Judah and Jerusalem for empty worship:
Trample my courts no more;
bringing offerings is futile;
Incense is an abomination to me....
I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity.
Your new moons and your appointed festivals
My soul hates;. . .
Even though you make many prayers,
I will not listen;. . .

...learn to do good;
seek justice,
Rescue the oppressed,
defend the orphan,
plead for the widow. (Isaiah 1: 12-17)


In the oracles of each of these prophets there is a sense of imminent crisis. In a vision Amos sees a basket of summer fruit (Amos 8:1). What can it mean? In Hebrew the word is qayits. The meaning becomes evident at once. The end, the qets, is at hand. People speak lightly of the day of the Lord. It will be a day of joy… No, says Amos,
Why do you want the day of the lord?
It is darkness and not light.

It will be the end, the qets, of the northern kingdom. These prophets move about amongst complacent populations. They see what others cannot see: they see nations doomed for destruction. For them history is foreshortened, seen as through a telescope.

The meaning for today--what is it? America has long considered itself to be a chosen people, a light to the nations. The idea goes back to the Pilgrim Fathers who travelled from the old world to the new, knowing themselves to be building a city on a hill giving its light to the world. The idea of planting democracy in benighted places like Iraq may be new, but the basic notion of a righteous, redeemer nation, a light to the world, is old. Those Pilgrims were as passionate for God as the old Hebrew prophets. If sometimes they made mistakes, let us remember that they came from the same Protestant religious tradition as do we.

If as Australians we question America’s self-righteousness, we cannot and ought not become cynical about God’s call. The Afrikaners of South Africa considered themselves to be a chosen people and went badly wrong in thinking that God was behind their doctrine of Apartheid.

Australia, rightly I think, values the American alliance. But listen to this: our acceptance of the alliance means that we, too, are subject to God’s call to be “a light to the nations.” That is why the Abu Ghraib revelations have been so devastating. Amos heard God say to ancient Israel.
You only have I known of all the families of the earth,
therefore I will punish you for your iniquities.

There is little value for me in labouring the point here that Australia has largely fallen away from faith. We all know that too well Our failure to pass on this pearl of great price to succeeding generations causes church people like ourselves great pain. We, of all people, have to act as a window for the world, so that in us the world might see authentic life in community.
By this shall others know that you are my disciples,
if you have love, one for another.

By demonstrating that faith, hope and love, together with ethical integrity, are possible, we are to be a sacrament of God’s holy presence in the world, a city on a hill and a light to the nations.

This is a high and at times difficult calling. Therefore it is good to remember what Isaiah commended to us:
Come now, let us argue it out,
says the Lord:
though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be like snow;
though they are red like crimson,
they shall become like wool (Isaiah 1: 18).

And how when God asked, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Isaiah responded, “Here am I; send me!” (Isaiah 6:8)

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A sermon presented by the Rev Dr Stuart Murray at St Aidan's Uniting Church North Balwyn, on 8th August, 2004.

IT MAY BE REPRODUCED WITH ACKNOWLEDGMENT.

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Page updated 10/8/04