Sermon Sunday 7 August, 2016
LessonsGenesis 15: 1 – 6St Luke 12: 32 - 40
71 years ago yesterday, from the cruiser, USS Augusta, in the mid-Atlantic President Harry S Truman announced that the first atomic bomb had been dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. He said that the device was 2,000 times more powerful than the largest bomb used to date. Dropped from the B-29 bomber, known as Enola Gay, Truman declared that the bomb harnessed the basic power of the universe. The bomb was known as ‘Little Boy’ after President Roosevelt, while the bomb dropped on Nagasaki on 9 August was known as ‘Fat Man’, after Winston Churchill. Over 200,000 people were killed on those two days. By the close of World War II, over 60 million people had been killed.
In May, President Obama became the first sitting president to visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, laying a wreath at the cenotaph. He met a number of the survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The New York Times carried some of the personal stories of survivors. Mr Tsuboi told of the burns all over his body. Mr Tanaka, now 75, still remembers the smell of burning flesh. Mr Fukahoi described how a woman had held on to his leg for help. He reached down to grab her arm but her skin came off in strips. The New York Times quoted historians who argue that, without the bombs, a far greater number of people would have been killed had the US and its allies had to mount a land invasion. This week: 71 years ago.
If we turn for a moment to the domestic scene, in 1987 this weekend marked the resignation of David Owen as leader of the SDP. It came after his party voted to merge with the Liberals. Owen said, ‘We, the SDP, are now deeply and predictably split.’ David Steel said that the new united party was now able to present ‘a clear alternative to Thatcherism and Socialism.’ In our time, Liberals at Westminster are greatly reduced, the Labour Party is in disarray, nationalism is on the increase, and the government and central bank do what they can to steady the ship. Alongside this, we are told that tens of thousands of people have joined political parties of all colours. And, if we think our political turmoil is scary, what about across the pond?
Taken from the Book of Genesis, our first lesson describes an intimate spiritual encounter between God and Abraham. One of the three patriarchs of Judaism, alongside Isaac and Jacob, Abraham plays a prominent role in the religious traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Almost certainly not centred on an historical character, a man who lived in a specific place, at a given time, nevertheless, through Abraham’s story the Hebrew people expressed their beliefs and described their journey with God. In the Bible, Abraham is called by God to leave Ur, the land of his birth, and leave his family and father, Terah.
Let us think for a moment about Abraham. Within Judaism, there is more to that religion than what is written in the canon, the Tanakh, our Old Testament. Judaism has the richness of the rabbinic tradition; the stories told by the rabbis for over two thousand years. Some of those stories appear in a collection of writings known as the Talmud. There is also the Kabbalah, the wisdom of the mystical tradition within Judaism. If we turn to these writings, including those of the Hasidic movement, many of them written later than the Gospels, we discover stories about the birth of Abraham.
At the time Abram was born, the king of Ur was Nimrod. It is said that the night before Abram was born, looking into the night sky, Nimrod’s astrologers read in the constellation of the stars that the newly born child was to become the chief and the father of a mighty nation. Fearing for his kingdom, Nimrod called for the child to be brought to him; his intension was to kill the child. In the event, the child of a slave was handed to Nimrod, who killed the child with his bare hands. Does the story of a brutal, paranoid ruler, astrologers and a child born for all nations sound familiar in anyway?
The child Abram was hidden in a cave, a place of safety and darkness, for ten years. It was there, in that sacred solitude, that Abram ‘saw’ God. The child noticed that the sun, moon and stars come and go according to their own time. He reasoned that, beyond all that he could see, beyond the forces that moved the sun, moon and stars, there was a Power beyond the visible forces of nature, One beyond time, beyond existence.
Later in his life, Abram is seized by Nimrod and thrown into a furnace. In a story not dissimilar to that in the Book of Daniel, Abram, once in the fire, stands with God and the fire does not touch him. Only the rope by which Abram was bound burned. For three days, (there’s a good biblical number), Abram walked in the midst of the flames. Finally, he was released. It is at this point that he leaves his home land, becomes a pilgrim, and journeys to a new, promised land.
What is interesting about the birth stories of Abraham and Jesus is that these two great spiritual figures are born into a world of violence, turmoil, hatred, division, instability and uncertainty. Bombs in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Iraq, Syria, Brussels and Paris, together with political unrest in the UK, Scotland, Europe and the United States are, in some sense, captured in our Scriptures and in the writings of other world faiths. Whether in the story of Abraham or that of Jesus, there is a striving to speak of the Sacred in the midst of the mess and suffering of human life. At no point do Abraham or Jesus give in or resign themselves to the way things often are. Instead, the stories told are of encountering the Holy and how to live a holy life in such a world.
In our Old Testament lesson today, Abraham encounters God in a vision, in the darkness of night. It is there that he ‘hears’ the voice of God. Remember this is theology through story. Such stories are a memorable and insightful way of portraying the Mystery for whom we have no words. It was in the night, in a moment of great distress, just like that of Abraham, the Civil Rights Leader, Dr Martin Luther King, broke down on his kitchen floor. Like Abraham, King had reached a moment of despair and hopelessness. With his head in his hands, in prayer, King told God he was finished; he had nothing left. King said:
At that moment I experienced the presence of the Divine as I
had never before experienced him. It seemed as though I
could hear the quiet assurance of an inner voice, saying, ‘Stand
upfor righteousness, stand up for truth. God will be at your
side forever.
Three nights later, King’s home was bombed but he said he faced it calmly. ‘My experience with God,’ he said, ‘had given me a new strength and trust.’
With God at our side, what does it mean to live a holy life? It is not pretentious to speak in such terms: we are called to live our life in union with God: a holy life. Jesus promised His disciples the kingdom, that union with the Divine was possible now. It is at hand. In what appears to be a piece of fanciful, idealistic thinking, Jesus told His followers to sell their possessions. Taken literally, the instruction would be impractical. At that time, the rabbis encouraged people to give alms, not give away their possessions. Anyone who gave away their possessions would immediately become a burden on the community: it was not be to be done.
Rather, Jesus says, ‘Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out.’ This is a spiritual instruction, a call to treasure life with the Transcendent. We are to be self-forgetful, self-emptying, giving of ourselves for God, for others. In other words, in the midst of the mess and muddle of life, we are called to live like God, incarnate love, to be self-giving, self-emptying so that life around us and within us may flourish. It is as we spend ourselves that we find our fulfillment.
There has always been suffering in the world, suffering in the whole of creation. The message of Abraham, Jesus and Martin Luther King is that, mysteriously, God can be found there. In the nineteenth century, the theologian, Horace Bushnell, said, ‘There is a cross in God before the wood is seen upon Calvary’. Suffering and self-giving somehow lie at the centre of reality, and so too does God.
Amen.
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