An ecological reading of Jonah

A Sermon for Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

10 November 2024

Jonah 3.10 – 4.11 
Matthew 6.25-34 

The relationship between humanity and the natural world
            has been one of hardship and toil
                        since humans first emerged from the great rift valley,
                        to go forth and multiply upon the earth.
The struggle for survival is as old as our species,
            and we have battled on many fronts over the millennia.
From early competition with other hominids,
            to struggles to adapt to hostile environments;
from diseases and disasters,
            to famine and crop failure.
 
Humans have been at war with planet earth
            in a battle for survival since the very beginning.
Our current fights about fossil fuels, global warming, and climate change
            are simply the latest skirmishes in a war that has claimed more lives,
            and done more damage, than any other conflict in the history of humanity.
 
So it is no surprise that the Old Testament,
            or the Hebrew Bible as it’s sometimes called,
            reflects this struggle for survival in many of its narratives.
Those who told these stories down the generations,
            passing the wisdom of the Israelite tradition from parent to child,
knew first hand what it was to do battle with the earth;
            and in their stories they reflected before God
            on what it might mean to be human.
 
And what we find in their traditions
            are a range of responses to the question
            of how humans might exist in relation to nature.
 
The Genesis creation narrative, for example,
            starts by affirming the goodness of all things:
                        from the heavens above, to the depths of the ocean,
                        and everything in between;
            and it locates humans as part of this God-inspired created order.
 
However, it goes on to describe
            the fracturing of the relationship between humanity and nature,
                        pointing the finger firmly at the sinfulness
                        of the representative humans of Adam and Eve
                                    as the originators of the battle for survival.
 
If we fast forward to their sons Cain and Abel,
            we meet the battle between the hunter-gatherer and agrarian lifestyles.
Agriculture first developed in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East,
            where Israel is located,
            sometime around 10,000 years ago,
and we have an echo of this in the deadly conflict
            between Cain the cultivator of land,
                        and Abel the herdsman.
 
The suggestion of this story is that God is more pleased
            with Abel’s animal
            than with Cain’s grain,
but of course it’s ultimately Abel who dies at Cain’s hand,
            and it’s Cain and his descendants who survive
            to continue planting the land and reaping the harvest.
 
And then we come to the story of Noah and the flood,
            with God washing his hands of the whole created order,
                        and ordering a total wipeout and reboot,
            with just Noah and his family and a selection of animals surviving.
 
According to the Noah story,
            human sinfulness had so spoiled nature
                        that the whole thing was ruined beyond salvation,
            and just needed to be destroyed and re-created from scratch.
 
And I could go on, and on, through the wisdom tradition and the prophets,
            through the books of history and monarchy,
                        describing the battles for land, the times of famine,
                        all the stories of plague, pestilence, and hardship that humanity has faced.
 
And in all of these, the Hebrew way
            has been to try to reflect before God
            on the relationship between humans and the natural order.
 
So we come to the book of Jonah, which is many things,
            including, I want to suggest, an ecological parable
            in the tradition of the Hebrew wisdom literature.
 
I believe that it has something profound to say to us
            about the relationship between humans and the natural order.[1]
 
The clue comes right at the end of the book:
            did you spot it??
 
Listen again to verse 11. God says:
 
“And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city,
in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons
who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?"
 
It’s always worth paying attention to the way biblical stories end,
            and this one ends with many animals.
Once we’ve spotted this, when we start to read back into the story,
            we find that the natural world
            plays an especially prominent role in the book of Jonah.
 
Bear with me a moment, and we’ll go back over it…
 
The book starts with Jonah being called to go and preach a message
            of repentance to the great city of Nineveh,
            but deciding to do a runner in the opposite direction, and jumping a ship.
 
At this point, the forces of nature start to move in against him.
            We’re told in the 4^th verse of the first chapter that
            “the LORD hurled a great wind upon the sea,
                        and such a mighty storm came upon the sea
                        that the ship threatened to break up.”
 
As soon as Jonah puts himself where he shouldn’t be,
            he finds himself at war with natural forces way beyond his control.
 
When the sailors on the boat ask Jonah what’s going on,
            he realises that there’s a link between his own disobedience to God
            and the disturbance in the natural order.
 
So he says to them that he’s a Hebrew,
            a worshipper of the God who made the sea and the dry land (1.9).
 
He goes on to tell the sailors that if they pick him up and throw him into the sea,
            the great storm will quiet down and their lives will be spared (1.12),
                        and this is, of course, what happens.
 
The link between Jonah and God and the natural order
            moves at this point from the theoretical to the practical,
            as Jonah’s actions are seen to have a clear effect on the forces of nature.
 
But then they take a turn from the practical to the surreal,
            as instead of drowning in the sea of chaos,
                        Jonah find himself in the belly of a fish,
                        and not just any fish, but a fish provided by God to rescue him.
 
The story is at pains to tell us that this isn’t some random act of luck
            – rather, God is at work in the natural world
            to bring Jonah back to where he should be in the order of things.
 
Eventually, Jonah is spewed up onto dry land,
            as he escapes the clutches of the sea,
            and makes his way to Nineveh to preach his message of repentance.
 
And the response he gets is astonishing, and actually quite funny
            – not only do the people repent, not only does the king repent,
                        but so do the animals!
 
The king even issues a decree,
            demanding that both humans and animals together must fast,
                        and put on sackcloth;
            with human and animal voices together crying to God for mercy. (3.7-8).
 
Of course, what Jonah knew would happen does happen,
            and God lets the wicked city of Nineveh off.
No judgment, no fire from heaven, no punishment,
            just mercy and compassion.
 
This doesn’t suit Jonah at all, and so in disgust that justice has not been done,
            he wanders off to sit under a shelter and sulk.
The sun beats down on him, relentlessly baking him into submission,
            but then God appoints a bush to grow up by him,
                        giving him some shade from the sun,
                        and for a little while he seems to lift out of his bad mood.
 
But then God appoints a little worm to come and destroy the tree,
            and then God sends a sultry wind and more sun,
            and Jonah decides that he’s had enough of these games and that he wants to die.
 
God has been merciful to the wretched Ninevites
            with their comedy cows in sackcloth,
but seems to be setting the whole of nature systematically against Jonah.
 
Of course, it’s all a matter of perspective,
            and so with the set-up complete, Jonah and God have their big argument.
 
Jonah said, "It is better for me to die than to live." 
⁹ But God said to Jonah,
            "Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?"
And he said, "Yes, angry enough to die." 
¹⁰ Then the LORD said, "You are concerned about the bush,
            for which you did not labor and which you did not grow;
            it came into being in a night and perished in a night. 
¹¹ Should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city,
            in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons
            who do not know their right hand from their left,
            and also many animals?" (4.8-11) The End.
 
Jonah pitied the plant, but did not want God to pity Nineveh.
            The irony is inescapable, and the inconsistency of his position becomes obvious.
 
God is not the God that Jonah thought and hoped he was.
            God does not judge as Jonah judged,
                        and Jonah had set himself above God,
                        and at odds with nature,
            in his attempt to create God in his own image.
 
And those of us reading Jonah’s story are invited to join him
            in reflecting on our own place within the natural order.
 
The recurring theme in all of this is that whilst Jonah is disobedient to God,
            the natural world acts not only in obedience to God,
            but also to bring Jonah back to a right relationship with both God and nature.
 
And here’s the parable.
            Jonah represents humanity.
            He represents all of us.
            We are Jonah.
 
And the lesson of the parable is that when we humans, like Jonah,
            put themselves at war with God and God’s world,
            the consequences are catastrophic.
 
But the hopeful message of the Book of Jonah
            is that God is also at work through the natural order
            to bring humans back to a place of repentance and restoration.
 
We humans have consistently created a philosophical and practical division
            between ourselves and the rest of the natural world.
 
I don’t think we can entirely blame Descartes,
            but his famous dictum ‘I think therefore I am’
            is probably the best summary of this approach.
 
We who ‘think’ have come to view animals as automatons incapable of consciousness,
            and so we have taken permission to treat animals as, in effect, machines,
            which exist as a means rather than for their own sake.
 
In all this, of course, we are acting entirely against the wisdom of Genesis
            which declares that all of creation is good;
but nonetheless we consistently choose to see nature as a tool to exploit,
            and animals as a means to an end.
 
We have built our civilisations on a human-centred view of the world,
            which regards nature as a commodity available exclusively for our benefit.
 
Our unfettered and rampant exploitation of nature
            is challenged by the story of Jonah,
who consistently discovers what we must also learn;
            that when we place ourselves over and against nature, there is hell to pay.
 
We are a part of the natural order, not separate to it.
            And we can no more run from our place in God’s creation
            than Jonah could run from the presence of God.
 
We humans keep placing ourselves at the centre of our own story,
            we place our own desires above our responsibility to the planet,
            and so we create a situation where we are at war with nature
                        in a struggle for survival.
 
It’s the story of Adam and Eve’s rebellion
            told over-and-over again in each generation,
            as we somehow convince ourselves that we’re right and God must be wrong.
 
Yet the story of Jonah is that in God’s world,
            it is compassion that lies at the heart of the story.
God’s mercy in Jonah’s story is extended to all creation.
            God has compassion on the just and the unjust,
                        on animals, plants and planet.
 
In the story of Jonah we find our human-centred view of creation challenged.
            We, like Jonah, have to learn that God is not just ‘our’ God,
                        but is rather the God of the entire earth,
                        from animals to plants to the elements to Nineveh itself.
 
Nature is not there to be exploited by humans,
            as if the two were somehow separable;
but rather humans are a part of the natural world,
            and all exist together and continue to co-exist because, and only because,
                        of God’s compassion.
 
Creation itself suffers because of human greed and idolatry,
            and the voices of the animals are crying out in our time for mercy,
            every bit as much as the animals in Nineveh cried out for compassion.
Humans and the natural world will rise and fall together,
            and the wilful human destruction of ecologies
            is a sin against the nature of God.
 
So, what to do…?
 
Well, there’s an interesting comparison to be drawn
            between the story of Jonah and the Whale,
            and the story of Noah and the flood.
 
Both stories begin with a threat of destruction
            against wicked people for their sinfulness.
Both stories involve a perilous sea journey.
            Both stories involve animals.
 
And, interestingly, both stories also involve a dove.
            You see, Jonah means ‘dove’,
                        and in both stories, it is the dove which flies off and eventually returns,
                        bringing the hope of salvation.
 
In Noah’s story the dove brings the olive branch
            which marks the end of the flood.
And in Jonah’s story,
            Jonah is the dove that brings the message of repentance.
 
However, there are important differences.
            In Noah’s story, God destroys the wicked people
                        along with almost all of the natural order,
                        with only Noah’s family and a few select animals
                                    surviving to repopulate the earth.
 
            In Jonah’s story, God is merciful to the wicked city;
                        and the natural world, represented by the animals of Nineveh,
                                    is spared.
 
In many ways, Jonah’s story is a reversal of Noah’s,
            and offers a hopeful glimpse of God at work in the natural world,
            calling humans to discover ways of living in peace with creation.
 
So what might this mean for us tomorrow?
            Should we re-think our addiction to meat, for example?
There is no doubt that there are far more sustainable ways
            of feeding humanity than feeding cows, pigs, and sheep
                        and then shooting them and eating them.
 
This may or may not mean that we fully embrace vegetarianism,
            but it should certainly challenge our relationship
            to the animals on which we are dependent for our ongoing existence.
 
We might want to think carefully about issues
            of animal experimentation, exploitation, and genetic modification.
 
We could well ask ourselves at what cost are we at odds
            with the natural world in our own time.
There certainly is a cost, but whether we are counting it or not is far from certain.
 
Maybe GM crops do hold the future for feeding humanity,
            but if so, where does that leave our battery chicken farms,
                        and our herdsmen industries.
 
If we are not careful, the conflict between Cain and Abel
            could easily resurface in contemporary guise
            to haunt a globally warmed world which is struggling with mass starvation.
 
These are issues that Christians cannot and should not turn away from.
            We cannot afford to hide our heads in the sand
                        and eat ostrich instead of beef.
 
Rather, we need to keep ourselves educated and informed,
            and to take informed and educated decisions together
            as to how we will partner with God in the care of this world
                        that has been entrusted to us.
 
The message of Jonah is that God has not given up on creation,
            and that neither has creation given up on humanity.
 
We are part of nature, we are part of God’s good creation,
            and we are called to repent of our wickedness,
                        of our exploitation, of our destructive patterns of living.
 
And the invitation is that if we find ways together of existing in harmony with nature,
            we are opening ourselves up, with the inhabitants of Nineveh,
            to the compassion and mercy of God.
 
We are called to repent of our acquisitiveness,
            to turn away from our obsessions with possessions,
            and to discover together what it means to live as children of this earth.
 
Or, as Jesus put it:
 
"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life,
            what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body,
            what you will wear.
Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 
²⁶ Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns,
            and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.
Are you not of more value than they? 
²⁷ And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? 
²⁸ And why do you worry about clothing?
            Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, 
²⁹ yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. 
³⁰ But if God so clothes the grass of the field,
            which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven,
            will he not much more clothe you-- you of little faith? 
³¹ Therefore do not worry, saying, 'What will we eat?' or 'What will we drink?'
            or 'What will we wear?' 
³² For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things;
            and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 
³³ But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness,
            and all these things will be given to you as well. 
³⁴ "So do not worry about tomorrow,
            for tomorrow will bring worries of its own.
Today's trouble is enough for today.

---

[1] I have been helped in the preparation of this sermon by reading Yael Shemesh, ‘“And Many Beasts” (Jonah 4:11); The Function and Status of Animals in the Book of Jonah’, Journal of Hebrew Scriptures, Volume 10, Article 6.

God's Universal Embrace

A Sermon for Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

27 October 2024

First Readings: 1 Kings 5.1-5; 8.27-30, 41-43 
Second Readings: Isaiah 2.1-3; Revelation 21.1-3, 22-26

Today’s scripture passage from 1 Kings is from our autumn lectionary series,
            as we journey through the Hebrew Bible on our way to Advent and Christmas;
and it brings us to a significant moment in the history of Israel
            as we encounter King Solomon dedicating the newly completed Temple in Jerusalem,
            as a structure meant to be the centre of worship for the people of Israel.
 
It was a (literally) monumental achievement,
            representing the fulfilment of a long-awaited promise
            that David, Solomon’s father, had yearned for.
 
However, in his prayer of dedication,
            Solomon offers a remarkable theological insight
            that stretches far beyond the walls of the Temple:
 
He says:
            “But will God indeed dwell on the earth?
            Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you,
            much less this house that I have built!” (1 Kings 8:27).
 
This acknowledgment
            —that God cannot be confined to a physical structure—
sets the tone for a conversation that transcends boundaries,
            both literal and metaphorical.
 
Solomon, standing in the newly constructed Temple in Jerusalem,
            the building envisaged as God’s house on earth,
astonishingly suggests that God’s presence is not, in fact, restricted
            to any one building, people, or nation.
 
Instead, he proclaims that the God of Israel, is also the God of all creation,
            an insight that lays the foundation for what follows in verses 41-43,
where Solomon explicitly prays for the foreigner,
            for the person who is not part of the Israelite community,
            but who seeks to worship and know the same God.
 
For a congregation like ours,
            situated in the heart of a diverse and bustling city like London,
            this message could not be more relevant.
 
In a time where divisions based on nationality, race, religion, and identity
            seem to grow deeper,
Solomon’s prayer reminds us
            that God’s love and grace extend to all people.
 
The Temple, built by Israelites and for Israelites,
            was also, according to 1 Kings,
always intended to be a house of prayer for all nations
            —a space where inclusivity and openness are central to its very purpose.
 
In Solomon’s time, the Temple stood as a symbol
            of Israel’s unique relationship with God.
 
But Solomon's prayer shifts the focus from exclusivity
            to a broader, more inclusive understanding
            of who belongs in the presence of God.
 
It’s not just the chosen people who are invited to encounter the Divine;
            it is rather anyone—any foreigner, any outsider—
            who finds themselves drawn to the worship of God.
 
This radical openness is echoed throughout the scriptures,
            and it presents a powerful challenge to us today.
 
We live in a world that increasingly seeks to define
            who is “in” and who is “out,”
            who belongs and who doesn’t.
 
Whether it’s through the lens of national borders,
            religious affiliation, or even political ideology,
the temptation to limit grace and favour to a select group is strong.
 
Yet, Solomon’s prayer speaks against this exclusivity.
            The presence of God cannot be contained by walls,
            and neither can the love of God be restricted by human categories.
 
Solomon’s vision invites us to imagine a different kind of community,
            one where everyone, regardless of background, identity, or status,
            is welcomed into the embrace of God.
 
In this moment, Solomon’s prayer
            not only dedicates the Temple as a place for Israel
            but opens the door for all humanity.
 
This inclusivity mirrors God’s universal mission,
            seen from the promise to Abraham
                        that all nations will be blessed through his descendants (Genesis 12:3)
            to the prophetic visions of a time when all nations
                        will stream to God’s holy mountain (Isaiah 2:2-4),
            to the vision of the book of Revelation,
                        that the nations will walk by the light of the New Jerusalem.
 
This thread of universality is woven throughout the biblical narrative,
            pointing us toward a future where the distinctions we sometimes hold so tightly
            fade in the light of God’s all-encompassing love.
 
For us today, the challenge is clear:
            how do we, as a community of faith,
            reflect this expansive, inclusive vision of God’s love in our own lives?
 
How do we build spaces—both physical and spiritual—
            where all people can encounter God without fear of exclusion or rejection?
 
In a world increasingly divided by nationalism, racism,
            homophobia, transphobia, and xenophobia,
we are called to be a living testament
            to the God who cannot be confined:
we are to be a people who open wide the doors of welcome.
 
Whether it’s through our acts of hospitality, or advocacy for the marginalized,
            or simply the way we greet one another on a Sunday morning,
we have the opportunity to reflect God’s universal embrace.
 
This passage calls us to more than just tolerance
            —it calls us to radical inclusivity,
to the kind of love that breaks down barriers and builds bridges.
 
Just as Solomon’s Temple was a symbol of God’s presence among the people,
            so too can we be living symbols of God’s love in the world,
extending grace and welcome to all who seek it,
            no matter where they come from or who they are.
 
It’s in this context that I want to turn to the issue of nationalism,
            and particularly the phenomena known as Christian Nationalism.
 
In the current global landscape, nationalism is on the rise in many places.
 
Donald Trump’s current campaign for the presidency
            has adopted a nationalist agenda which focuses on "America First,"
            opposing immigration, and trade deals perceived to harm U.S. interests.
 
But he’s far from an outlier, rather he’s part of a global trend,
            with leaders such as Narendra Modi in India pursuing policies
            which emphasize national pride, economic self-reliance, and social conservatism,
            particularly with regards to religious and cultural identity.
 
Or Viktor Orbán in Hungary, who takes hard-line nationalist and populist stances,
            particularly on issues such as immigration and the European Union.
 
Or Marine Le Pen in France emphasizing French identity,
            anti-immigration, and Euroscepticism.
 
All of these nationalist agendas create the possibility
            for a dangerous intersection with faith,
where Christian nationalism
            —the belief that a country’s identity is uniquely tied to Christianity—
threatens to distort the gospel’s inclusive message.
 
Christian nationalism often promotes the idea
            that a specific nation, race, or culture is divinely favoured,
                        usually at the expense of others.
 
It has its origins in the fusion of Christianity and the Roman Empire,
            which took place under the emperor Constantine in the 4^th Century;
and whilst Christendom as a defined religious and political entity may have passed,
            its legacy lingers on much of the ideology that continues to shape our world.
 
But this stands in stark opposition to the message of 1 Kings 8:41-43,
            where Solomon prays for the foreigner
            and acknowledges God’s concern for all nations.
 
Christian nationalism, as a worldview,
            blends patriotism with an exclusionary version of Christianity.
 
This leads to an “us vs. them” mentality
            that sees outsiders, whether immigrants, people of different religions,
                        or those from different backgrounds,
            as threats to a “Christian” identity.
 
By fusing a person’s religious faith with their national identity,
            it narrows the gospel’s expansive vision of love, justice, and inclusion
                        into a political agenda that seeks power and control
                        rather than service and compassion.
 
Solomon’s prayer, however, paints a different picture of God’s kingdom.
 
In his vision, the Temple, built in the heart of Israel,
            was not just for the Israelites.
 
It was meant to be a place where even those from other nations
            could come, worship, and be heard by God.
 
This universal vision directly confronts the idea
            that any one nation, people, or group
            has an exclusive claim to God’s favour.
 
God’s love knows no national borders.
 
In modern times, Christian nationalism often leads to policies and rhetoric
            that marginalize and oppress those considered “other.”
 
Whether it’s the rejection of refugees, the demonization of immigrants,
            or the insistence that certain groups must conform
            to specific national or religious identities to belong,
this ideology contradicts the gospel’s message.
 
Jesus himself consistently reached out to those on the margins
            —Samaritans, Gentiles, and other outsiders—
demonstrating that God’s kingdom is far more inclusive than we often allow.
 
Solomon’s prayer for the foreigner
            speaks powerfully against the temptations of Christian nationalism.
 
We will be exploring this topic further in our online group this week,
            and I do hope you will be able to join us for this on Weds evening.
 
In a context such as ours, where many people come
            from different countries, cultures, and faith backgrounds,
our calling is to embody the inclusivity of God’s kingdom.
 
We are called to resist the narrative
            that Christianity and national identity are intertwined,
and instead embrace a faith that welcomes all people.
 
As Christians, our primary allegiance is not to any nation or political ideology
            but to the global and inclusive kingdom of God.
 
We are called to challenge systems and ideologies
            that seek to restrict God’s grace to any one people or place.
 
Solomon’s prayer reminds us that God hears the prayers
            of the foreigner, the outsider, and the marginalized.
 
Our role is to create spaces—both in our hearts and in our churches—
            where all are welcome to encounter the love of God,
            no matter where they come from.
 
Let us be a community that resists exclusion
            and instead reflects God’s radical love for all nations and all people.
 
This means cultivating a culture where all voices are included in the conversation
            —whether that be people of different nationalities, races,
            genders, sexual orientations, or faith perspectives.
 
Our congregation can be a model of what it looks like
            to be a faith community that welcomes diversity
            not as an obstacle but as a gift.
 
In practical terms,
            this might mean ensuring that our worship
            reflects the cultural and linguistic diversity of our congregation.
 
It could involve intentional efforts to partner with organizations
            that serve marginalized communities,
            whether they be refugees, the homeless, or those who are differently-abled.
 
It also means cultivating spaces for interfaith dialogue and cooperation,
            recognizing that in our diverse city,
            we share common concerns with people of other faiths
—whether it’s caring for the environment, advocating for social justice,
            or working for peace.
 
All of these are part of who we are as a church,
            and my challenge is for more of us to become involved.
Turning up at things is the first step to being part of them,
            and we have some amazing opportunities here at Bloomsbury
            to turn our beliefs into action.
 
We also have a responsibility to engage in advocacy.
 
Solomon’s prayer for the foreigner challenges us to think
            about how we, as a community, can speak out
            against exclusionary policies and practices in society.
 
Whether it’s advocating for more just immigration policies,
            standing against racial injustice,
            or supporting the rights of LGBTQ+ individuals,
our call is to be a prophetic voice for inclusivity
            in a world that often seeks to divide.
 
Solomon’s prayer reflects a vision of God’s temple
            as a place where all people can come to experience God’s presence.
 
For us, this means creating a church
            that is not just for people who are like us,
but for everyone who seeks spiritual connection, healing, and justice.
 
It is about living out the gospel in a way that makes room
            for all people to find their place at the table.
 
In conclusion, this passage invites us to examine our own hearts
            and practices as a congregation.
 
Are we truly living out the inclusive love of God?
            Are we creating spaces where all are welcome,
or are there barriers—whether visible or invisible—
            that prevent people from fully participating in the life of our church?
 
Solomon’s prayer calls us to be a community
            that reflects the boundless love of God,
embracing all people with open arms,
            and working for justice in a world that desperately needs it.
 
 

Women Speaking Justice

A sermon for Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church, 

October 13th 2024

1 Samuel 1.9-11, 19-20; 2.1-10

Sometimes, when calling for social justice,
            the most effective voice is the most vulnerable voice.
 
Martin Luther King may have been the great orator,
            but it took Rosa Parks to strategically sit in the wrong seat
before she, and the Alabama bus boycott she triggered,
            became national symbols for change in the civil rights movement.
 
Similarly, we might ask why it is,
            that the most effective international voice in recent years
            in the fight against fossil fuels is Greta Thunburg,
                        who came to prominence as young schoolgirl in Sweden,
                        and who is incredibly still just 21 years old.
 
Similarly, one of the strongest voices calling for gender equality in education in Pakistan,
            has been Malala Yousafzai,
who was shot in the head by the Taliban as a teenager
            and recovered to win the Nobel Peace Prize at the age of 17.
 
Similarly, if we head back in time a century,
            the right for everyone to vote in elections in the UK
was won by the steadfast witness and courage of the suffragettes,
            including Emmeline Pankhurst and Emily Wilding Davison.
 
And the modern feminist movement found its origins
            in the writings of Simone de Beauvoir.
 
And I could go on, for the entirety of this sermon,
            naming people like Claudia Jones,
                        the Trinidad and Tobago-born journalist and activist
                                    deported from the USA for becoming a Black feminist leader
                                    in the American Communist Party.
 
And then of course there is Mary the mother of Jesus,
            whose song of justice in Luke’s gospel, often known as the Magnificat,
            heralded the birth of Jesus.
 
And all these women, the named and the unnamed,
            who have opened their mouths
            and sung or spoken the songs and poems of justice,
are the spiritual descendants of Hannah,
            who we meet in our Bible reading for this morning.
 
And Hannah is truly a remarkable woman,
            not least because we actually know her name.
 
You may have heard of the Bechdel Test,
            which is a simple measure to evaluate the representation of women
            in films, books, and other forms of media.
 
To pass the test, a work must meet three criteria:
1.     It features at least two named women.
2.     These women talk to each other.
3.     They discuss something other than a man.
 
Wel, it won’t surprise you to know that the Bible consistently fails the test!
 
Most of the women in the Old Testament are unnamed,
            known only as the ‘wife of’ or ‘daughter of’ a named man.
 
Additionally, it is equally rare in the Old Testament
            for a woman to be heard speaking.
 
This is where our reading for today is so unusual,
            as Hannah is both named, and speaks,
            which makes her a rarity within the biblical narrative.
 
But even more unusual is that fact that this woman,
            whose name we know and whose words we hear,
            is, in social terms, a nobody.
 
She’s not married to someone significant,
            and she’s not done anything to establish her reputation.
 
She’s just an ordinary married woman with no children,
            which in the world of the Old Testament
            was about as insignificant as you could get.
 
These days, we are used to women having some control over reproduction,
            from effective contraception to IVF treatment.
 
But there are still plenty of women in our world
            who long for children but can’t have them,
            and who hear the desires of their own hearts in Hannah’s prayer for a child.
 
And although the focus of our sermon this morning is not on issues of childlessness,
            we do well to recognise that a story where a woman prays for a child
                        and then immediately gets one
            is a difficult story for some women to hear.
 
Just as we need to remember that when we bring children to church for dedication,
            there will be those present who find such services profoundly painful.
 
So let’s return for a moment to the social world the Old Testament,
            where barrenness was often regarded as a curse from God;
and parents who got to old age without children,
            were not just at risk economically, with no-one to look after them,
            but they were also outcast socially,
                        stigmatised as having not been blessed by God.
 
Within the ancient Israelite context in which this story was written,
            motherhood was considered an essential part of a woman’s identity,
and being without children
            carried significant social and emotional consequences.
 
A woman’s worth and well-being were thus closely tied to her ability to bear children,
            and it was commonly believed that infertility was the woman’s burden,
            often overlooking other causes.
 
And it was believed that God controlled fertility,
            granting or withholding it according to the divine will.
 
Culturally therefore, in the Ancient Near East,
            the pressure to have children was overwhelming,
and Hannah’s request for a male child
            would have echoed the desire of most women.
 
Female children, at that time, were a liability that cost you money;
            whereas male children could work and bring money into the family.
If you could only have one child, you wanted a boy,
            so that was what you prayed for first.
 
Even down to our world today,
            there are still some cultures that prefer sons to daughters,
            and female infanticide is one of the tragedies of human history.
 
When we were in China recently,
            our local guide told us that he was born during the one-child policy,
            and that he was a third child, with two older sisters.
 
The one child law said that if you had a male child, you couldn’t have any more,
            but if you had a female child, to avoid the risks of infanticide,
            you could try for a second child to see if it was a boy.
 
But if you had two girls, you had to stop there.
 
However, our guide’s parents tried for a third,
            and had the son they wanted.
But his mother had to go from the city to the country to give birth in secret,
            and then brought him back a couple of years later,
            telling everyone that he was her nephew who they were caring for.
 
And so, in an ancient culture with similar desires for a male child,
            this makes what Hannah says next to the Lord so remarkable:
She says that if she is granted a male child,
            she will dedicate that child to God.
 
This child won’t be the answer to her security in old age,
            because he will have been dedicated as a Nazirite,
            offered in lifelong service to God alone.
 
And here we get our first glimpse
            that the significance of Hannah’s story
            is bigger than her personal concerns or desires.
 
She starts with her personal traumatic experience of childlessness,
            but then moves beyond this
                        to a recognition that how God responds to her,
                                    in her time of powerlessness,
                        is in fact a profound revelation of who God is;
            and that this in turn places a call on her
                        to respond to that revelation of God’s nature.
 
In other words, if God is the kind of God
            who looks with favour on a powerless, childless woman,
then God is also a God who looks with favour on all those
            who live with poverty, injustice, and oppression.
 
But Hannah also realises
            that God’s response to those afflicted
                        is not through a simplistic answering of prayer,
                        or the granting of heartfelt desires.
 
The blessings that God gives to the world
            are not to be taken individually
            nor horded personally;
they are for the common good,
            because God is working for the good of all people.
 
And so Hannah prays for a son,
            but as she does so
            she promises that son back to God.
 
Her own decisions about Samuel
            reflect her understanding of how God works in human affairs.
 
For Hannah, God is not some localised, family-centric deity;
            God is not some household-god to whom you bring your personal concerns;
God’s blessings are not for the fortunate favoured few;
            Rather, God blesses the world,
            and does so by remembering the vulnerable and the oppressed.
 
So then Hannah prays this remarkable prayer,
            and in doing so, she herself becomes a prophet of God,
            proclaiming God’s nature into being in the world.
 
Extrapolating from her own experience,
            Hannah realises that God is not on the side of the strong and the powerful,
                        but is rather on the side of the weak and the powerless.
 
            She realises that God’s blessings are not found in fine food or abundant living,
                        but in the feeding of the hungry and the care of the dispossessed.
 
            She realises that many children are not, in fact a sign of God’s favour,
                        and that life is a gift given for the blessing of many.
 
            She realises that God is not a local, tribal, or regional deity,
                        who pours goodness upon those who worship faithfully;
            but is rather the God of all people near and far,
                        and moreover a God who longs to raise up the poor and lift up the needy.
 
As Hannah puts it,
            ‘For the pillars of the earth are the LORD's,
            and on them God has set the world.’
 
Her son, of course, will be the great prophet Samuel,
            who anoints the first two kings of Israel, Saul and David.
 
But her greatest legacy was not her son,
            it was the vision of God that she articulated.
 
Hannah’s action, in defiance of religious authority,
            to make her prayer in the sanctuary
            and subsequently to dedicate Samuel to Nazirite service,
sets a powerful tone for the books of Samuel
            insofar as Samuel her son grows into a key figure in the Jewish story.
 
It will be Samuel who transitions Israel
            from the violent chaos of the period of the Judges
            to the relative stability (but still with flaws) of the monarchy under Saul and David.
 
And indeed Hannah and Samuel
            present a stark contrast as a parent/child pair
to the subsequent story of Eli and his faithless sons
            which follows in the next chapter.
 
Hannah’s prayer has often been considered a theological key
            for interpreting the books of Samuel
insofar as it introduces the themes of God bringing down the mighty (i.e. Saul)
            and raising up the lowly (i.e. David),
though the ways in which these events unfold
            are presented as complex, fraught, and full of human decisions,
            deeply flawed as they often are;
the bringing down the mighty and the raising up of those who are downtrodden
            is never a straightforward story.
 
But the theme, later echoed in the song of Mary (Luke 1:46–55),
            that God will bring down the powerful and raise up the powerless
            is not limited to the books of Samuel.
 
Rather, it can be traced throughout the whole Bible,
            including the stories of the life of Jesus and those who follow him.
 
As in Samuel, throughout the Bible God works to do this
            not by fiat, but through the messy, flawed, halting lives of human beings.
 
And so Hannah’s song echoes down the millennia,
            to the song of Mary,
who similarly proclaimed the overthrow of the dominant social order
            when she sang with joy at the imminent birth of her son Jesus.
 
Within the Christian tradition, the vision of Hannah’s song
            finds its fulfilment in the revelation of God
                        that comes into being through Mary;
            another insignificant woman
                        who dared to respond with faith.
 
And it continues to find its fulfilment in our world
            as women speak out from the truth of their experience
            to challenge oppression and highlight injustice.
 
From the courage of those
            who have told their stories as part of the #metoo movement,
to the women who have blessed our Baptist family
            through their gifts of ministry, leadership, and preaching,
            despite those voices that have tried to deny their right to do this.
 
The insights of those who have been disempowered
            by society, patriarchy, and misogyny,
can still speak truth to power
            just as Hannah’s voice three millennia ago
            revealed the bias of God towards the poor and the vulnerable.
 
This is not, however, to fetishize the voices of the abused,
            or to excuse their treatment,
as if we somehow need those who have been oppressed
            in order to hear God speak.
 
Rather, it is a recognition that when human failings
            create structural oppression,
whether on the grounds of gender,
            ethnicity, sexuality, or social status;
God is always at work with and within
            those who live with disempowerment,
and God’s nature is always
            to bring justice to those facing injustice.
 
So can we hear the gospel of Hannah?
            Can we rejoice that God raises up the poor,
                        and empowers the weak?
            And can we, with her, learn to dedicate to God
                        the deepest desires of our own hearts,
            as we catch a glimpse of God
                        as one who is above all, in all, and through all.
 
‘For the pillars of the earth are the LORD's,
            and on them God has set the world.’
 

The Golden Calf

A sermon for Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church,

October 6th 2024

Exodus 32.1-14

 

‘The people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain’…
            so our reading for this morning begins,
and this raises a question for us, as it did for the Israelites in the wilderness,
            of how to respond when the way we are used to encountering God
            is no longer available to us.
 
For the Israelites,
            Moses was their spiritual rock, their leader, their saviour.
It was Moses who had brought them up from the land of Egypt,
                        Moses who had defeated Pharaoh,
            Moses who had led them through the wilderness,
                        Moses who struck water from the rock at Horeb
                        so the people didn’t die of thirst;
and now he was gone from them.
 
He’d gone up the mountain to meet with God,
            not come back down again,
and the people down in the valley
            didn’t know what to do next.
 
The one who had been their priest and their prophet,
            the one who had represented God to them and them to God,
            was no longer with them.
 
So what are they to do?
 
When I learned this story in Sunday School,
            I was told that the people manufactured an idol at this point,
                        and that the golden calf was possibly an image of Baal,
                        the Ancient Near Eastern fertility God.
However, re-reading it now, I’m not so sure.
 
They definitely make a golden calf,
            and worship it, offering sacrifices to it;
but when Aaron presents the calf to the Israelites,
            he introduces it not as Baal, or some other god,
            but as the one who brought them up out of the land of Egypt (v.4);
                        interestingly, something they had previously ascribed to Moses (v.1).
 
The problem here, I think,
            isn’t so much that they go worshipping the false gods of other nations,
            but that they make a false image of their own God.
 
The sin of Israel here isn’t a departure from the worship of Yahweh,
            it’s the manufacturing of a false representation of the Lord.
 
And this is a far more insidious sin,
            and it is one that creeps easily upon us all.
 
That’s not to say that we’re immune from the sin of idolatry:
            humans have a remarkable capacity
                        to construct new gods after our own image
            and to then devote sacrifice and worship to them.
 
            From the sacrifices of money we make to the gods of free market consumerism,
                        to the worship we give to those images of our identity
                        that exist in our social media streams;
 
            from the sacrifices of time we offer to the gods of entertainment
                        to the worshipful pursuit of sex and pleasure;
 
            in so many ways we can construct other gods
                        and worship them with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength.
 
However, alluring though such idolatrous distractions may be,
            they are also fairly easy to identify.
 
Far harder to pin down
            are those places where we don’t so much
                        make other gods for ourselves,
            as we do construct false images of the God we know and love.
 
And we are particularly prone to such acts
            when we, like the people of Israel in the wilderness,
            find ourselves cut adrift from our certainties.
 
We are living through a time of societal change,
            one which existed before the pandemic,
            but which was certainly accelerated by it.
 
The things we used to find immovable and immutable
            are now fluid and transient.
 
From the personal certainties of gender identity and sexuality,
            to the monolithic institutions of society,
things are not as they once were,
            and people are having to find a new way
            through an unknown wilderness.
 
And the question here for us, perhaps,
            is how we can identify those times when our equivalent of Moses
            has gone up the mountain and not come back down again…
 
What are the things, the people, that have consistently in our experience
            made the invisible God seem real for us.
 
It might a friend, a mentor, maybe a minister,
            who has now left our lives.
 
It might be a style of worship that barely exists any more,
            perhaps a packed congregation singing the songs hymns of our childhood.
 
It might be a form of prayer that used to seem so meaningful,
            but which has run dry in recent years.
 
What are you missing? What do you long for?
            What is your Moses that has gone from you?
 
And, here’s the difficult question,
            what have you replaced it with?
 
Well, I’ll leave that one for us each to ponder,
            and we’ll head back to the Bible for a minute.
 
This story of the Israelites in the wilderness
            is part of the Jewish pre-history mythology.
 
It’s one of those stories that evolved and was passed down
            from generation to generation
until it got written down in the sixth century
            by the Jews in exile in Babylon.
 
And this means that in order to read it well,
            we need to have an eye on those who wrote it.
 
When we know why they shaped it the way they did,
            and if we can who its intended first readers were,
we will ourselves understand it better.
 
So, this text about Moses going up the mountain and not coming back,
            needs to be heard in the context of the Babylonian exile.
 
And for the exiles, their answer to the question
            of what it was that had gone from them,
            would have been the Temple in Jerusalem.
 
In 587 BC the Babylonians despoiled the temple,
            they desecrated the Holy of Holies,
and, despite what Indiana Jones fans may believe,
            they destroyed the ark of the covenant containing the tablets of stone
            with the ten commandments inscribed on them.
 
Everything that had given the Jews of this period stability in their religious life
            had gone from them,
and in its place they were in Babylon,
            surrounded by images of the Babylonian gods,
            which they knew to be false,
but nonetheless wondering what their God looked like for them now,
            when everything they thought they knew about God had gone…
 
And here we can find the answer
            to one of the more puzzling aspects of our reading this morning.
 
Did you notice that although there is only one golden calf,
            the people refer to it in the plural?
 
Listen to verse 4 again:
 
[Aaron] took the gold from them, formed it in a mould,
            and cast an image of a calf;
and they said, "These are your gods, O Israel,
            who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!"
 
What’s going on here?
 
The answer can be found in the book of 1 Kings,
            which tells the story of the fall of the Northern Kingdom of Israel
            to Assyrian invaders in 722BC,
                        about 130 years before the Babylonians sacked Jerusalem.
 
At that time, Israel had divided into two kingdoms,
            a Northern kingdom ruled by Jeroboam
            and a Southern kingdom based in Jerusalem,
                        ruled by Rehoboam of the house of David.
 
Jeroboam’s problem was that Rehoboam had possession of the temple,
            and so people from the Northern Kingdom kept making a pilgrimage south
            to offer sacrifices in the temple in Jerusalem.
 
His worry was that eventually, the Northern kingdom would reject him as king,
            and turn its allegiance to Rehoboam of Jerusalem
            because he had control of the temple, the centre of religious worship.
 
So now listen to this from 1 Kings 12.26-30
 
Then Jeroboam said to himself,
            "Now the kingdom may well revert to the house of David.
 ²⁷ If this people continues to go up to offer sacrifices
            in the house of the LORD at Jerusalem,
the heart of this people will turn again to their master,
            King Rehoboam of Judah;
they will kill me and return to King Rehoboam of Judah."
 
 ²⁸ So the king took counsel, and made two calves of gold.
He said to the people,
            "You have gone up to Jerusalem long enough.
            Here are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt."
 ²⁹ He set one in Bethel, and the other he put in Dan.
 ³⁰ And this thing became a sin,
            for the people went to worship before the one at Bethel
            and before the other as far as Dan.
 
Did you spot it?
            The story of Moses, Aaron and the golden calf,
                        written in exile in Babylon,
            is directly quoting from the book of 1 Kings,
                        where it describes the sin that brought down the Northern kingdom
                        over a century earlier!
 
Jeroboam’s two golden calves
            were proclaimed as ‘the gods who brought Israel up out of the land of Egypt’
as a direct challenge to the temple in Jerusalem.
 
Scholars tell us that what’s probably going on here
            is that the calves were intended as earthly pedestals
                        for the heavenly Yahweh to stand on,
            functioning in a manner similar to the ark of the Covenant in the temple,
                        as a place of earthly worship of the invisible God.
 
They aren’t idolatrous Baal gods,
            but they certainly are false representations of the true God,
brought into being as Jeroboam tries to break
            the Jerusalem temple’s monopoly on Yahweh worship.
 
And a century or more later, in exile in Babylon,
            the Jerusalemites reflected on this story
            to help them understand their own experience of losing their temple,
and they used it to frame their re-telling
            of the story of Moses, Aaron, and the people in the wilderness.
 
The experience of Israel’s wilderness wanderings
            becomes a key metaphor for understanding the Babylonian exile,
and the story of the golden calf
            functions within that as a warning of the temptation to make false images of God,
            and as a call to faithfulness even when God seems impossibly distant.
 
And so how do we hear this,
            in our own times of exile?
 
As the world changes around us,
            and we find ourselves cast off from the moorings that used to hold us;
as people pass from us,
            and we have to find new paths in the wilderness of the world;
I wonder where we will tur for sustenance and stability?
 
And I wonder how we hear the story of Moses, Aaron, and golden calf?
 
What temptations have we faced
            to construct false images of the true God?
What have we tried to put in place
            of that which has been taken from us?
 
Again, I’m not offering answers here,
            just asking questions.
 
But I do have some ‘wonderings’ that might spark our thinking…
 
I wonder if sometimes we make golden calves from our memories,
            worshipping that which used to be,
            and devoting ourselves to the task of bringing it back into being.
 
I also wonder if we might ponder the experience of the early Christians
            in the time after Jesus was taken from them.
 
For them, their prophet and priest had gone from their sight,
            they no longer had direct access to the one
                        who had represented God to them, and them to God,
            and they too had to work out how to relate to God
                        without a person or an image as an intermediary.
 
God may have been fully present and revealed in Jesus,
            but once Jesus was no longer there, what were they to do?
 
And the answer, of course, was that they had to discover
            that God was with them in a new way,
not in the worship of the rebuilt temple,
            nor in the person of Jesus,
                        nor even in the remembrance of Jesus’ words and commands,
but by the Holy Spirit.
 
God is known to us not in our memories,
            not in our place of worship,
                        not even in our holy texts,
but by the Holy Spirit,
            at work in our hearts,
            drawing us to new acts of faithful worship of the true God;
and challenging all our attempts and temptations
            to make false representations of the true God.