A sermon for Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church
11 June 2023
11 June 2023
Isaiah 9.1-7
Matthew 4.12-25
Just this last week I was contacted by the London
Baptists,
as
it is time for the 5-yearly renewal of my DBS Safeguarding form.
I’m very glad that our Baptist family take such
things so seriously,
as of
course do we here at Bloomsbury:
we make every effort to ensure
that
all those who work and volunteer in our church communities
are
not unsuitable for the roles they fill.
But of course, a prior criminal conviction isn’t
the whole story,
and
a few years ago now,
the Baptist Union were trying to get
to grips with the fact
that
some of their accredited Baptist Ministers
were simply not up to the task.
Research had revealed that there were a disturbing
minority of ministers
who,
over several decades, moved from church to church
wreaking havoc and destruction in each successive
community,
before
moving on to the next one.
Most of these people never did anything
that
warranted their dismissal from ministry,
nothing
that would ever show up on a DBS form;
rather they were just the wrong person for that
role.
In an attempt to address this,
the
Baptist Union published a document
defining what core competencies for ministry should
look like.
It included things like preaching, pastoral
visiting, administration,
leading
meetings, leading public worship, using IT, and the like.
I have the list somewhere.
And clearly, if a minister is incompetent in such
things,
they
probably should get some training or find another career.
But the problem was that this list didn’t really
address
the
deep-seated personality traits and flaws
that
characterised the serial-church-destroyers.
It didn’t address the subtle tendency to bullying,
often
disguised as pastoral care;
it didn’t address the empire-building mind-set
fuelled
by macho conversations in ministers’ meetings,
where mostly male ministers boast
about
who has the largest… church!
Against this, Ruth Gouldbourne, formerly of this parish,
gave
a lecture at the Baptist Assembly,
which she provocatively entitled,
‘In Praise of Incompetence’.
She starts by making it very clear that she isn’t
arguing
that
ministers should be incompetent in the essentials.
But rather, that competence in these things
does
not equate with competence for ministry.
So she asks: What is a minister? What is a minister
for?
Let me read a paragraph for you:
Being skilled and competent
matters.
Skills and competences will
sustain us
through significant parts of our daily activities.
They will allow our
congregations the relaxation
of knowing they can trust us and not to worry about us or
for us.
But if skills and competences
define our ministry,
we run the risk of fearing to go beyond what we know we can
do,
what we are confident we can accomplish –
and our activity and service
become what we can do
rather than our openness to what the Spirit is doing
through us.
It is in our incompetence, our
unskilledness –
beyond who we think we are and what we think we can safely
do –
it is there I suggest that we
discover the country of the Spirit’s ministry
and the transformational activity of the everlasting Love.
- Ruth Gouldbourne, In Praise of Incompetence
Well, things have moved on,
and
to an extent Ruth won the argument.
These days, whilst competence still matters,
there
is also a recognition that there are other qualities of leadership
that
matter equally if not more,
and
which cannot be measured in the same way.
So those of us who serve churches through offering
leadership and ministry
are
invited by the Baptist Union to engage in a process
of Continuous
Ministerial Development.
This is not unlike what many of you will have
experienced
as
CPD in a professional context,
and it engages with the intangibles as well as the
tangibles.
For example, it encourages us to have a Spiritual
Director,
a
Mentor, or a Pastoral Supervisor;
it encourages us to read and think, to take further
training,
to
engage in regular processes of review and consideration.
And this is all to the good, and I welcome it.
But just as Ruth pushed back in 2008
against
the definition of ministry as competency,
so I want to ask a question of the process
of
Continuous Ministerial Development.
And my question relates to a truism,
which
whilst not always true,
is
true often enough for there to be truth in it.
The truism is this:
‘Churches
get the ministers that they deserve’. [1]
Not always, of course.
And
we can immediately think of exceptions.
But I do think we need to pay attention to the role
of the church,
to the
actions and influence of those in the congregation,
if we are to have any chance of assessing the
significance
of
an individual minister’s contribution.
In large parts of the US, there is now a
hire-and-fire approach to ministry,
with
growth targets and short-term contracts.
If you’re the minister of a church such as that,
it
will certainly shape the way you lead!
But even here in the UK, in less obvious and more
subtle ways,
congregations
shape their ministers.
Sometimes this is a glorious process of mutual
growth,
but
sometimes it can be a process of destructive dysfunction,
as a minority of congregations
grind
down successive ministers until they leave.
Now, you may wonder why I’ve started
with
these reflections on the nature of leadership,
as we come to our text today from Isaiah?
And the reason is this:
Isaiah,
in our passage for this morning,
creates a culture of messianic
expectation
around
the leadership of Israel.
He sets up a situation which leaves the people
longing for the perfect leader,
waiting
desperately for God’s messiah
to
come and sort out their mess.
And yet their experience was that for leader after
leader,
from
prophets to judges to kings,
the nation found itself disappointed,
as
leader after leader failed to deliver.
No-one ever lived up to the idealised standards
of
the great king David of old.
We’re going to take a dive into this passage and
its context now,
and
as we do so I invite us to think
about
what it is that we expect from our leaders:
whether
in church life, political life,
in
your workplace, your family system,
wherever
those leaders may be.
Do we compare them against the great leaders of
old,
against
whose standards they will never measure up?
Do we constantly hope that the next leader
will
be ‘the one’ to fulfil our dreams?
And let us hold in our minds the possibility that, sometimes,
unrealistic
expectations might be a factor
in
that person’s failure to live up to their promise.
And so, to Isaiah.
In last week’s sermon we were introduced to the
context of the book of Isaiah,
and
we heard how he is a prophet to the Southern Kingdom
at a
time when the Northern Kingdom has been invaded by the Assyrians.
The historical backdrop here
is
that the Northern Kingdom had recently been laid waste
and
occupied by the Assyrians.
The twelve tribes of Israel had been reduced
to
just the southern land allocated to the tribe of Judah,
with
Jerusalem as its capital.
David’s city and Solomon’s temple still stood,
but
most of the land they had ruled was now lost;
and Isaiah was prophesying to the people of
Jerusalem
at a
time where they must have been wondering
if
it was their turn next for invasion and destruction.
Would the Assyrians keep pushing south to take
Jerusalem and Judah,
or
would some other power swoop in and swallow them up?
Isaiah’s time was certainly a time of gloom in
Jerusalem,
with
the dark clouds of war gathering on the horizon;
a time of threat and anguish,
of
oppressive empires and frightening armies.
And Isaiah can see that the writing is on the wall
for the South.
Much
of his prophecy is taken up
with
warning Jerusalem of a coming disaster.
But then, here in chapter 9,
we
have this fascinating, compelling, surprising message of hope.
‘One is coming…’, Isaiah said,
coming
to this people who are now walking in darkness.
‘A child will be born…’, he said,
who
will be a true son of David.
And so Isaiah created a hope
that
this coming king would re-establish David’s throne,
would succeed where all the previous kings since
Solomon had failed,
by overthrowing
Israel’s occupying enemies,
by restoring
the nation’s borders to their fullest extent,
by ushering
in a new golden age of peace and prosperity
over
which he would reign with justice and righteousness
as
a kingdom of endless peace.
Well: news flash, it didn’t happen that way.
It wasn’t long before the Babylonians
were
the new ascendant power in the region, displacing the Assyrians,
and they were the ones who invaded Judah,
sacking
Jerusalem, destroying the temple,
and
carrying off many Israelites into exile in Babylon.
But Isaiah’s words of hope for a coming messiah
endured.
This hope went with the Israelites into exile,
it
took deep root in their psyche,
and it
became a part of their hope for God’s future for their people.
The people of Israel clung to Isaiah’s hope for an
idealised king,
a
new ‘son of David’ who would do again in Israel
what
David of old had achieved in the distant past.
You may remember that I’ve sometimes drawn a
parallel
between
the way King David functioned for Israel,
and
the way King Arthur functioned for England in the Middle Ages.
Both are kings from the mythic histories of their two
respective nations,
and
the stories told about them
functioned
to shape those national identities for centuries.
King David’s stories spoke to Israel of a dream for
a united kingdom,
stretching
from the North to the South,
from
the Mediterranean in the east
to
beyond the Jordan in the west.
And similarly, King Arthur’s stories spoke to
Medieval England
of
the importance of the values of chivalry
in
shaping the nation of the English-speaking peoples.
But there is another parallel
between
the mythologies of King Arthur and King David,
and it speaks to our passage today from Isaiah.
There is a prophesy in the Arthur legend that he
will one day return,
to
save the people of England in their hour of greatest need.
Similarly, what we find here in Isaiah
is a
prophecy about King David,
that one day a child would be born
who
would be the true ‘son of David’,
who
would take his rightful place on the throne of his ancestor David.
Messianic expectation, whether at a national or
local level,
can
be a compelling narrative to live by.
It keeps people hoping that salvation is just
around the next corner,
that
the next leader will be the one to usher in the new age.
And so we come to our second reading,
to
the story of Jesus going to live for a while in Capernaum,
in the
region known as Galilee of the Gentiles.
Did you notice that Matthew specifically mentioned
that
Capernaum is in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali?
The same two tribes mentioned by Isaiah
at
the beginning of his messianic vision.
There’s something going on here, and it’s worth
exploring.
We need to remember that in these biblical
narratives,
geography
isn’t accidental.
The relationship between the people of Israel and
the land of Israel
was
so intertwined that the land and people were inextricably linked.
So for Isaiah, the land of Zebulun and Naphtali
was
the land Israel lost to the Assyrians.
It was the land of darkness, the land of anguish,
the
land of oppression, the land of contempt.
It was to the people who suffered in Zebulun and Naphtali
that
Isaiah addressed his message of hope:
that one day there would be no more gloom,
that
they would be glorious again,
led
by a bright light that shines in their darkness,
living
with joy and rejoicing,
with
the symbols of oppression broken and burned.
So when Matthew says that Jesus goes to live there,
this
is no accident.
Matthew has Isaiah’s prophecy firmly in mind
as
he describes the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry.
He has Jesus move into the neighbourhood
of
the suffering and the outcast peoples.
He has Jesus locate himself in Gentile territory.
Even before calling his first disciples,
Matthew
shows Jesus enacting the truth
that
his ministry will be for all nations,
for
those who sit in darkness,
for
those who live under the shadow of death.
The early followers of Jesus
found
the messianic hope articulated by Isaiah
to
be helpful in understanding the life and ministry of Jesus,
and we see this as Matthew quotes directly from
Isaiah chapter 9,
locating
Jesus as the one who fulfils
the
long-awaited messianic expectation
that
had come down through Israel from the time of Isaiah,
through
the years of exile in Babylon,
through
the centuries of occupation under successive foreign powers,
to
the time of Israel under the Romans,
the
time of Jesus.
But there is a significant difference
between
the way Matthew and the other gospel writers
portray
Jesus as the fulfilment of messianic expectation,
and the way Isaiah set things up six centuries
before.
Clearly Jesus was not the political messiah
that
Isaiah had longed for.
When Jesus went to Jerusalem it was not to take
David’s throne,
overthrow
the oppressor, and re-establish the kingdom of Israel.
It was to die willingly as a martyr at the hands of
the invading army of Rome.
But nonetheless, Matthew and the other early
Christians
saw
a deeper truth in Isaiah’s words
which spoke to them of the hope that entered the
world at the birth of Jesus.
Not a nationalistic hope of restored borders and
defeated enemies,
but
a hope that reached beyond Israel, beyond the Jordan,
to
encompass all people.
A hope of sins forgiven, of broken relationships
restored,
of a
vision of humanity where all are equal, and all are equally loved,
a hope of an end to the power of death to dominate
people’s lives.
Isaiah’s vision of a son of David coming to Israel,
becomes
in the hands of the early Christians
a far more wide-ranging hope
of a
world transformed through the birth of Jesus.
Those who hailed Jesus as the Messiah
had
to learn a new way of understanding their hope for the future.
They had to let go of their unrealistic
expectations,
their
unfulfilled dreams of nationalistic restoration, and political success.
They had to realise that their messiah
would
not look like they thought he would,
and
would not act as they wanted him to.
They had to relinquish their deeply held hopes,
and
embrace instead a messiah who came to suffer, to die,
to
embody the incompetence of failure.
Because it is in that moment of ultimate
vulnerability
that
God is finally and fully encountered.
It is in Jesus that God is incarnated to humanity.
It is the birth, life, and death of Jesus
that
brings into being the definitive moment
of
God reaching out, to touch our lives
in
every area of our existence,
bringing
healing, restoration, and transformation.
God does not come in Christ to fight all our
battles,
defeat
all our enemies, and give us the gift of happily ever after.
Rather, in Christ God draws alongside us;
in
Jesus God moves into our neighbourhood,
meeting
us in our failure, our sin, and our incompetence;
forgiving
us and drawing us
into
a new relationship of acceptance and love.
And it is also in Jesus
that
we find the fulfilment of Isaiah’s hope for a reign of eternal peace,
where the justice and righteousness longed for by the
prophet Amos,
and
prophesied by Isaiah,
become a reality in the lives of those
who
find their reconciliation with God through Jesus.
And so as we think about what it means for us
to
proclaim Christ’s kingdom of peace in a world of conflict,
I wonder what does it mean for us
to
long for peace in a world of war?
What is the point of lighting our peace candle each
week?
Does that small glimmer of light really shine in
any meaningful way
on
those who live in the land of deep darkness?
The reality of history is that warfare never really
ends,
it
just moves elsewhere for a while.
But in Christ comes the gift of peace.
Peace-making is an ongoing task.
It
requires commitment, and faithfulness, and hard work.
But in Christ we are brought into a peaceful
relationship with God,
and
like the stillness at the centre of a hurricane,
the peace that we have with God
is a
still centre in the midst of a chaotic world.
We carry within us, each of us, the candle of
peace.
And
that light lightens the world,
because
it is the light of Christ within us.
As we learn to live peaceably with others,
the
light that guides us also shines on those who still walk in darkness.
It is as we follow the path of Christ,
responding
to the call of Christ on our lives,
that
the light of Christ shines in the world.
The peaceful kingdom may not yet be fully realised,
but it has begun,
and
it is with us here today, and it is within us.
The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of
deep darkness-- on them light has shined.
[1]
This is a paraphrase of the quote by Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821) that Toute nation a le gouvernement qu'elle
mérite. Every nation gets the government it deserves.
