Sermon at the Sung Eucharist on the Sixth Sunday after Trinity 2017

‘All rise!’, the voice shouts across the room; and the judge with wig and gown moves to her chair behind the bench. Lawyers adjust their papers, the members of the jury look carefully around the room. The press fiddle with recording devices on their phones. And then everyone sits, and turns to face the accused. God is standing in the dock, alert, upright, ready to make his defence.

We do not know the charge for which God is being tried. Has he been incompetent in his work as creator of all things?  Or has he behaved badly, forgetting his promises, and letting his people be carted off to exile in Babylon?  Or is there some other secret charge which has been laid against him?  We do not know.  But God is quietly confident. ‘I am the first and the last’, he says, ‘besides me there is no god… who has announced from of old the things to come? Let them tell us what is yet to be.’  God looks around defiantly.  But there is only silence from the team of prosecution lawyers.

We are witnessing a moment of high literary drama in this morning’s Old Testament reading from the book of the prophet Isaiah.

The courtroom scene is set, as it were, in Babylon, 530 years or so before the birth of Christ.  The people of Israel have been forced into exile in Babylon about 45 or 50 years ago.  Many have married Babylonians, and are now well settled with children and grandchildren – enjoying the opportunities and pleasures of a sophisticated, cosmopolitan city at the heart of a powerful empire. But some of those exiles, or their descendants at least, have not forgotten their roots. They still keep faith in the ancient God of Israel, they sing the hymns, light the candles and observe the festivals of their forebears. But they are resigned to their fate. For them, Babylon is their past, present and future. Jerusalem is a distant dream, a place that their grandparents knew in their youth, nothing more. Babylon is too powerful, too all-encompassing, too present. Nothing can change; they must simply hang on, and keep the faith of their ancestors privately within their families. They have lost their sense of purpose, energy and hope.

Yet it is among these people that a poet of imagination decides to speak out, boldly, thrillingly.  “Thus says the LORD, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer, the LORD of hosts: I am the first and the last; besides me there is no god.”

At the heart of imperial Babylon, with its armies and civil service, with its numerous gods and cultic priests, with its immense wealth and lands stretching for hundreds of miles – here at the heart of the empire, a poet stands, as it were in a market place, and invites those who have ears and eyes to use their imaginations.

Imagine a court room.  And imagine the God of the exiled Israelites is standing in the dock.  After all, he has landed us in this city, among these foreign so-called gods.  Now, imagine, what does God have to say to us today – God, who stands accused among us?  God says, ‘There is no other god but me.’  And those Babylonian gods?  They don’t even exist – they are a puff of smoke, an illusion. They are fake gods, fake news. I am the only true God. 

Who else can do the things that I do? Who else has announced in the past what things are yet to come? Come on, show the evidence that you have to disprove me. You can’t!

Because, you see, I have witnesses to back me up, who can tell the truth.

And at this point the poet turns to the Israelites in exile.  Listen to what God is saying to you.  ‘You!  You can be my witnesses!  You know what I have done for you in the past – I have told you. You have heard it from me of old.’  In the midst of imperial Babylon, you exiles have got to speak up for your God. You need to say that the Babylonian gods are fake, and that only the God of Israel can be relied on – he is your rock. Does the thought terrify you?  Of course, but you don’t need to be afraid. You can speak up for the God of Israel. He may not have a witness protection programme, but he is unique – the only God.  And he is your God and you are his people.

The poet is seeking to embolden those who are listening: to give them grounds to see that a different future is possible, to begin to imagine that, far from giving up on them, God has a purpose and a future for them. 

So what of us, gathered here in the heart of Westminster?  The British empire is long gone. But the seat of our national government and its administration is here. We may not literally be living in exile, but our Christian faith certainly marks us out as different from many of those among whom we live. How does our faith shape our thinking about our future? Our future as a community of Christians, as well as our future individually? If God is really with us in Christ, what can we say confidently about what he does for us? What might it mean for us to be witnesses in God’s defence today?

Being a witness to the love and truth of God in our society today is not an easy task for any of us.  But it is what we are asked to do.  We are asked by God to be truthful, to name the fake gods of commercialism and materialism, of self-centredness and fear; to speak the truth where misinformation abounds on social media, in the press. We are asked to question cultural expectations about feting celebrity, or seeking, maybe unconsciously, our own well-being at the expense of others more vulnerable and less well-off than ourselves.  Our Christian faith gives us a different basis for living: a dependence on God as our sure rock, which frees us to be and to act truthfully; and which opens for us an utterly new and hope-filled future.

In the face of the fake gods, the temptation to conform to social norms, the pressures to deny our faith that bear down upon us today, remember the words of the poet:  God is our sure rock. There is no other god like him. Do not fear, and do not be afraid.