Here am I, send me!

A sermon for Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

4 June 2023

Image: Mark Newton. Used under creative commons. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Isaiah 6.1-8

A few years ago now,
            Liz and I went to visit the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust
                        at Slimbridge in Gloucestershire,
and whilst we were there, we came across a sculpture by Kathleen Scott,
            which had originally been made as a war memorial
                        for her son’s school at the end of the 1914-18 world war.
 
The sculpture is of a young boy,
            standing on tiptoe with his arm raised, as if volunteering,
            and the text at the base of the sculpture reads:
                        ‘Here am I, send me’.
 
The implication is clear, he is volunteering to go to war.
            Underneath the text is a list of thirty-eight names,
            recording those from The Downs School who died in the first world war.
 
Whilst the sculpture brilliantly captures the tragedy of war,
            evoking the innocence of childhood
                        on the verge of abruptly giving way
                        to the irrevocable tragedy of the trenches,
as a piece of biblical exegesis
            I think it is somewhat wide of the mark.
 
The quote itself actually comes from the book of Isaiah,
            where the prophet hears the voice of the Lord saying
                        ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’,
            and responds,
                        ‘Here am I, send me!’.
 
And to take these words of the commissioning of the prophet Isaiah,
            and use them in the context of sending young men
                        in their tens of thousands
                        to their horrific deaths in the trenches,
            is, I think, to take them a long way from their original context;
 
and I baulk at the implication
            that those who go to fight for their country
            do so in response to God’s summons and call,
                        – not for ‘King and Country’, but for God –
            and that they are therefore fighting on God’s behalf.
 
There’s something I need to make very clear at this point.
            I have nothing but respect for the courage shown, and cost paid,
                        by those who have given their lives fighting for their country,
            and I treasure the story of my own grandfather
                        who died in the second world war
            as a Navigator in a Lockheed Hudson that was hit and downed
                        whilst guarding the transatlantic convoys.
 
But when texts like, ‘Here am I, send me’
            are used to add divine justification
to the sending of men and women either to their own deaths
                        or to inflict death on others,
            then I think we have something of a problem.
 
Scripture has all too often been used
            to justify the moral or ethical position of those in power,
to sweeten the bitter pill
            that the population are then asked to swallow,
or to defend the status quo
            against those radical voices who might question the necessity
            of whatever course of action is being proposed in the first place.
 
The propaganda machine which appropriates biblical passages such as this,
            is an essential part of the functioning of the state,
and it seeks by any means necessary
            to bring as many people as possible
            into line with the proposed course of action.
 
And our passage for this morning from Isaiah is not the only text used in this way,
            just think of Jesus’ prophetic words about the cross:
‘No one has greater love than this,
            to lay down one’s life for one’s friends’.
 
This saying, usually in its King James and very masculine form of
            ‘Greater love hath no man than this,
            that a man lay down his life for his friends’
appears on war memorials the length and breadth of the country,
            with the names of those who have perished listed beneath it,
and again the implication is clear:
            the sacrifice of life given
                        by those who have died fighting for their country,
            is a sacrifice to be compared with nothing less
                        than the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross.
 
Again, the death, destruction, and desolation of warfare
            is sanitised by the comforting thought
            that those who have fought and died
                        have done so at the instigation of Jesus
            and in fulfilment of nothing less than his personal command.
 
Sometimes, as Christians, we are too easily manipulated
            into thinking that ‘our people’ are God’s people,
            and that what ‘our’ people do
                        is what God wants them to do.
 
Tom Wright puts it rather well. He says,
 
‘The easy identification of ‘our’ side with God’s side
            has been a major problem
ever since Christianity became the official religion
            of the Roman state in the fourth century.
Ironically, as Western Europe has become less and less Christian
            in terms of its practice,
its leaders seem to have made this identification more and more,
            so that both sides in the major world wars of the twentieth century
            were staffed… by Christian chaplains praying for victory.’
(John for Everyone, Part 2, p. 73)
 
So this morning, as we hear the biblical account of the call of Isaiah,
            I wonder what we can discover about the nature of God,
            and about what it is that God calls us to.
 
The golden rule for avoiding misuse of biblical texts
            is to begin by putting them in context.
 
It’s been said before, and I’ll say it again,
            that a text without a context is a con.
 
So we need to know that the part of Isaiah we’re reading today,
            was written in the latter part of the eight century BC.
 
For many decades there had been a period of relative peace for Israel,
            which had split some centuries earlier
            into a Northern Kingdom and a Southern Kingdom.
 
But by the mid 8^th Century it was clear that the Assyrians were on the rise,
            and by the time of Isaiah the Southern Kingdom, based in Jerusalem,
                        had become a vassal state of Assyria;
            while the Northern Kingdom was conquered by the Assyrians in 722 BCE
 
We’re still more than a century before the Babylonians destroy the Southern Kingdom
            taking the people of Jerusalem into exile in Babylon,
and although the later parts of the book of Isaiah cover that period,
            we need to remember that this early story of the call of Isaiah,
            is taking place in the midst of the political turmoil
                        caused by the threat of the Assyrians.
 
This text from Isaiah is one of the earliest examples
            of the genre of ancient writing known as Jewish apocalyptic literature.
 
We meet this in other Old Testament texts such as Ezekiel and Daniel,
            and of course in New Testament texts like Mark 13 or the Book of Revelation.
 
And the thing to understand about apocalyptic material such as this
            is that the vision it describes
                        always unveils a deeper spiritual reality
                        that lies behind the observable reality.
 
When the ancient Israelites pictured God,
            they commonly imagined him as a male figure,
                        seated on a throne in heaven,
            surrounded by seraphim and cherubim
                        holding court over the affairs of the earth.
 
In other words, they imagined that God
            looked like a heavenly version of an earthly king,
                        surrounded by courtiers and attendants,
            ready to dispense justice, and fight for his people if needed.
 
The Israelites also had a firm belief that God was holy:
            so holy that his glory could not be seen by sinful human eyes.
 
We see this in places such as Moses on Mount Sinai,
            coming down the mountain with a veiled face
            so the reflected glory of God would not terrify the people.
 
And within the Jewish apocalyptic tradition,
            there emerged stories of visions of heaven,
where the person receiving the vision
            was shown round by a kind of heavenly tour guide,
            who could mediate between them and God.
 
We see this in, for example, the Jewish Enoch tradition,     
            where the biblical character Enoch,
                        a bit-part player in the early chapters of Genesis,
            gets a whole new role showing people around heaven in their visions,
                        on the basis that scripture doesn’t say that he died,
                        but rather than he was ‘taken’ by God (Gen 5.21-24).
 
But with Isaiah it’s different -
            he’s not shown around by anyone;
rather he just suddenly finds himself in the heavenly throne room,
            unexpectedly face to face with God.
 
And it’s immediately clear that God’s just as holy as ever,
            with the creatures around the throne singing their ‘holy, holy, holy’ song
            to make the point that God’s holiness is not in any way in doubt.
 
So how, wonders Isaiah, can it be
            that he, a man of unclean lips,
            can be looking directly at God?
 
And the first thing Isaiah has to learn
            is that despite him seeing himself as unclean,
            God sees him as clean.
 
His personal sense of unrighteousness,
            does not extend to God’s opinion of him.
 
And I wonder, how many of us need to hear that too?
 
How often do we cast judgment on ourselves,
            ruling ourselves out of God’s presence or favour,
when in fact God is longing for us to see ourselves as heaven sees us,
            and to realise that we are, in God’s eyes,
            entirely worthy of love and acceptance?
 
But Isaiah’s call is not simply to be in God’s presence,
            it is a call to prophecy, to speak for God,
            and for this he needs a commissioning.
 
In a liturgical act that echoes the mouth purification rituals
            of other ancient Mesapotamian religions,
Isaiah’s mouth is touched with a burning coal
            from the brazier before God’s throne,
            on which the incense burns.
 
In the book of Revelation, the incense arising from the heavenly altar
            is described the prayers of the faithful rising before God,
and it may be that something similar is intended here,
            as Isaiah is commissioned to speak and pray.
 
And the people to whom he is called to speak
            are a nation who will have to learn lessons
            about righteousness the hard way.
 
If Isaiah thought he was unclean,
            but heard God declaring him purified,
ancient Israel had it the other way around:
            they believed they are righteous,
but they needed to hear God’s declaration that
            they were actually living under judgment and on their way to exile.
 
And the book of Isaiah will track their journey
            through judgment and exile,
            to forgiveness and restoration,
and along the way they will discover that the nature of God
            is to draw alongside those who suffer.
 
And I find myself wondering
            how often do religious institutions in our world
believe that they are righteous,
            when actually they stand under judgement?
 
I’m thinking, for example,
            of those national churches through the twentieth century
            that supported the oppressive regimes of communism or fascism.
 
Or, more recently, what about the evangelical church’s zeal for Trump.
            Or, even closer to home, our own religious obsessions in this country
                        with moral superiority and judgment on sin,
            and in some cases a misplaced desire to drum up
                        feelings of persecution and victimhood
            rather than proclaiming loving inclusion and forgiveness.
 
Too often the churches of our nation spend more time
            proclaiming themselves righteous and others unclean,
than they do helping people discover deeper spiritual reality
            that they too are acceptable to and loved by God.
 
As churches we should be putting others first, and ourselves last,
            and always seeking to act in the public good,
            rather than complaining about supposed infringements of our rights.
 
Similarly, I might mention the frequent justification churches offer for war,
            such as just war theory,
and I might conclude that whilst one can always make a case
            for staying the hand of an aggressor,
there are nonetheless far, far too many examples of Christian collusion with violence,
            which brings me back to the examples of biblical exegesis
            with which we started.
 
Isaiah’s call is two-fold,
            firstly it is a call to enter the presence of God
                        and discover something about how God sees him;
            and secondly it is a call to speak that truth
                        to proclaim God’s word to his time, his place, and his people.
 
And I wonder if we can share Isaiah’s calling:
            can we discover for ourselves something new this morning
                        about how the God of holiness and love sees us?
            Can we hear the good news that we are pure, holy, and beloved,
                        and that none of us are unacceptable to God?
 
But also, can we hear the call to action:
            not to take up arms against God’s enemies,
but to be those who faithfully proclaim God’s love,
            especially to those who are themselves currently unable
                        to perceive the awesome truth
            that God is for us, that God loves us,
                        and that God has blotted our sins away
                        and released us from our guilt?
 

Do not be overcome by evil

Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

21 May 2023

Romans 12.9-21

Amos 5.14-15; Proverbs 10.11-12; 12.15-20; 25.21-22

Do you have a motto for life?

            You know, one of those phrases or mantras

                        that you find yourself repeating, over and over,

                        despite the fact that you already know it?

 

Winston Churchill’s was famously abbreviated to ‘KBO’,

            which I’ll leave you to look up for yourself

            because I don’t want to get into trouble on a Sunday morning. Again.

 

But there are lots of other options to choose from.

 

When I was at school, I was frequently told that,

            ‘You can’t win if you don’t play the game’,

which as a Rugby-hating pupil I swiftly amended,

            to the much more pragmatic and enduring personal mantra

            of ‘If you can’t win, don’t play the game’.

 

And then there’s the calls to perseverance, such as,

            ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again’;

which sits nicely alongside,

            ‘Don’t let the whatsits grind you down’;

which you’ll notice I’m modifying,

            in accordance with that other personal favourite motto of mine:

            ‘Don’t get into trouble on a Sunday morning. Again.’

 

And so I could go on with any number of further mottos

            that inspire us to ‘keep putting one foot in front of another’,

            as the saying goes.

 

But there’s a downside to this as well:

            some of us here will have taken deep into ourselves

                        far more destructive messages,

            which surface in our psyches with monotonous regularity.

                        ‘I’m not good enough’; ‘I’m so useless’;

                        ‘They don’t like me’; ‘Nobody loves me’; ‘Everybody hates me’.

 

Sometimes, the voice in our head does us no favours,

            dressing up lies as truth and tormenting us from within.

 

Well, one of the most destructive mantras of our society,

            which permeates all of our lives one way or another,

is the assertion that we have an absolute right to revenge.

 

Often dressed up as talk of justice,

            the deep desire to have our wrongs righted

            lies at the heart of so much of our communal narrative.

 

We live for, we long for,

            the outworking of what seems like a universal and unquestionable truth:

            that ‘Someone, somewhere, must be made to pay’.

 

From the criminal justice system,

            to the witch hunt and the lynch mob,

the mantra that, ‘someone must be made to pay’,

            has become the bedrock of so much that we hold dear.

 

And it is against this that I want to draw our attention

            to Paul’s words in the last verse of our reading this morning

                        from his letter to the Romans.

            ‘Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good’ (v.21).

 

Interestingly, for a passage which doesn’t actually mention Jesus,

            these few verses from Romans 12 are one of the closest places Paul gets

            to referencing the words of Jesus as we know them from the Gospels.

The parallels with the sermon on the mount are striking,

            and this final verse could pretty much stand alone

            as a one-sentence summary of the life and teaching of Jesus.

 

‘Do not be overcome by evil,

            but overcome evil with good.’

 

This is radical stuff,

            and it was every bit as counter-cultural in the first century

                        as it is in the twenty-first.

Humans are well practiced at trying to overcome evil with evil,

            and we are very good at convincing ourselves that,

                        contrary to the popular saying,

                        two wrongs do indeed make a right.

 

The ideology of, ‘You’ve hurt me, so you must pay’, is very compelling,

            and determines everything from our interpersonal relationships

                        to our international politics.

Meeting evil with good is perceived as weakness and foolishness.

 

At school, we’re told that,

            ‘The bullies only understand one language: their own’,

and so in self-defence we learn to speak their language well,

            but then we carry that conviction into our adult lives,

                        and so we vote for a nuclear deterrent,

                        and for a strong defensive military capability,

                        and for proactive strikes on rogue nations

                                    who rattle their sabres a bit too loudly.

 

Well, if we are to listen to Paul on this one,

            we might need a re-think.

‘Do not be overcome by evil,

            but overcome evil with good’.

 

Of course, Paul isn’t speaking in a vacuum here,

            and neither was Jesus, when he suggested to his disciples

                        that those who are merciful peacemakers

                        are those blessed by God (Mt 5.7,9).

 

The Jewish wisdom tradition had a long history

            of wrestling with the futility of violence,

            and of trying to work out

                        what the appropriate response to aggression should be;

and Paul, highly educated Pharisee that he was,

            consciously echoes that Jewish tradition

            in the way he shapes the passage we’re looking at this morning.

 

The little miscellany of verses we heard earlier from Amos and Proverbs

            give us an example of the kind of thing I’m talking about,

and so we hear the precursors to Paul’s own motto,

            in statements like: ‘Seek good and not evil, that you may live’ (Amos 5.14);

                        ‘Hate evil and love good’ (Amos 5.15);

            ‘Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses’ (Prov. 10.12);

                        ‘Fools show their anger at once,

                        but the prudent ignore an insult’ (Prov. 12.16);

            ‘Deceit is in the mind of those who plan evil,

                        but those who counsel peace have joy’ (Prov. 12.20).

 

These proverbs present us with an ancient call to another way of living,

            where the narratives of retributive violence are challenged and rejected,

                        where the right to revenge is forgone,

                        and where payment for wrongdoing is released.

 

So my challenge for us this morning is deceptively simple,

            because it is incredibly demanding.

 

It is for us to commit ourselves, individually and communally,

            to living our lives by Paul’s series of statements, mottos, and aphorisms;

and to allow the Spirit of Christ

            to bring those words of life to life in our lives.

 

So let’s spend a few minutes now with Paul’s wisdom,

            and it starts, of course, with love.

            ‘Let love be genuine… love one another with mutual affection’ (12.9-10)

 

Paul begins his great call to a new way of living

            by grounding himself in the one force on earth

            capable of instigating the kind of transformation he has in mind:

                        Genuine love which extends beyond the self to embrace the other.

 

Just as Jesus paired love of God with love of neighbour,

            so Paul pairs the genuineness of love,

                        with genuine affection and honour for the other.

 

It isn’t until we internalize the truth that God loves all God’s children equally

            that we begin to loosen our grip on the inner conviction

                        that there is something unique or special

                        about our own personal place in the heart of the divine;

            but once we dispel the myth that God loves ‘us’ more than ‘them’,

                        the path is opened for the radical reorientation of behaviour that is to come.

 

But Paul knows that, even with genuine love in our hearts,

            this will not be an easy path,

so in a biblical precursor to Churchill’s famous injunction

            to ‘Keep Buggering On’ (oops!),

Paul tells his readers to be zealous, ardent, patient, and perseverant.

 

This is the task we are called to,

            but as my father often says to me,

            ‘Simon, no-one said it was going to be easy!’

 

Remaining hopeful in the face of suffering;

            being zealous in serving others,

            and persevering in ardent prayer…

                        these are not easy tasks.

 

And neither is the topic Paul addresses next: financial generosity.

            It takes a conscious decision

                        to review our giving to the community of God’s people,

            but Paul is clear that we have a responsibility before God

                        to contribute to, as he calls it, ‘the needs of the saints’.

 

Let’s not be squeamish about thinking about money,

            but rather let us be generous as we are able

            in support of the mission of the church to which we have been called.

 

But of course, it’s not just about money,

            because Paul pairs money with hospitality.

If money is the mechanism, hospitality is the method.

 

Whether personally or corporately,

            our commitment to hospitality is a spiritual discipline

                        and a sacrificial calling every bit as demanding

                        as the call to ardent prayer or financial giving;

which means extending a loving welcome even to those we find difficult.

            As Paul says, ‘do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly’ (v.16)

 

But Paul then goes even further than this:

            Loving the other means loving those

                        who we would perhaps more naturally think of as our enemies.

            ‘Bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse’ (v.14),

                        ‘live in harmony with one another’ (v.16),

            ‘do not repay anyone evil for evil’ (v.18),

                        ‘live peaceably with all’ (v.19).

 

This is where we start to find ourselves

            at that most difficult of Paul’s challenges in this passage:

            the call to nonviolence.

 

Sometimes people characterize nonviolence

            as the easy, passive, or even cowardly response to conflict.

But nothing could be further from the truth.

            Choosing to not ‘bite back’ is one of the most difficult choices we can make.

It is so utterly counter-intuitive

            to all that we think we know about how to live in human society.

 

We can only get to the point of proactive nonviolence

            once we have fully internalized all that has gone before.

 

We have to follow this passage through

            to get to the end with conviction.

 

Only once we have learned to love the other as we love ourselves,

            and learned to persevere in prayerful service of the other

                        through persecution and opposition,

            and learned to hold lightly to our money, time, and status;

only then are we ready to hear the command:

            ‘Beloved, never avenge yourselves,

                        but leave room for the wrath of God,

            for it is written,

                        “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”’ (v.19)

 

And here I have my big problem, and it’s this:

            the vengeance of God

                        doesn't look much like vengeance as I understand it

            or as I want to see it.

 

Leaving room for the wrath of God is intensely problematic

            because God's wrath is not like my wrath,

            and God is not angry at the same things that attract my personal fury.

 

I want to take my revenge,

            but God takes the liberty of forgiveness.

 

I want to hate those who do evil,

            but God hates the effect that evil has,

                        not only on those to whom it is done,

            but also on those who do it.

 

The great scandal of God's wrath and vengeance

            is that they end up looking a lot like forgiveness.

 

But nonetheless, Paul tells his readers very clearly,

            that revenge is not theirs to take.

 

This short passage is a one paragraph summons

            to an entirely alternative way of being human.

 

I find it very interesting that this is primarily a passage

            that emphasises orthopraxy, rather than orthodoxy.

 

For those whose Greek is a bit sketchy,

            orthopraxy is about right action,

            whereas orthodoxy is about right belief.

 

And the central message of this passage is not, ‘believe in Christ’;

            it is more practical than that, it is ‘live like Christ’

 

So as we close, I want to come back to the observation I made earlier

            that our passage from Romans doesn't actually mention Jesus.

 

I have a kind of personal motto for preaching,

            which is that a church sermon really ought to mention Jesus

                        at least somewhere along the line,

            which is probably why I feel the need to return to this again at the end.

 

I think that Jesus, both his life, and his teaching,

            firmly lie behind Paul's re-invention of the Jewish wisdom tradition.

 

There are echoes here of the sermon on the mount,

            and the life that Paul is calling his readers to

            is one firmly patterned after the life of Jesus.

 

But he doesn't need to spell this out.

            Here is a call to living Christianly,

                        which is accessible to all,

            including those who don't consider themselves to be disciples of Jesus.

 

It's as if the person and example of Jesus

            has opened, for Paul, a doorway to a better way of being human

            which then transcends cultic and cultural boundaries.

 

So here's the thing, and don’t take this the wrong way:

            I don't really care what you believe.

Rather, it's what you do that matters.

 

As Jesus himself said in the sermon on the mount,

            a good tree will bear good fruit,

                        and a bad tree will bear bad fruit,

            and a good tree cannot bear bad fruit,

                        nor can a bad tree bear good fruit,

            and by your fruit you shall be known.

 

Little Christianity has spent far too long

            defending what people think and believe about the guy who started it all,

                        to the point where we have all too frequently lost sight

                        of the message he left us,

            which is that the door is now open to a different way of living,

                        to a new way of being,

            which is good news for those who hear it

                        because it releases us from those ultimately destructive

                                    mantras, mottos, compulsions, and convictions

                        that drive us into patterns of violence and retribution.

 

The call is very clear, it is to live like Jesus,

            it is to not be overcome by evil,

            but to overcome evil with good.