Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, August 28 2016
Jeremiah 2.4-13; Hebrews 13.1-8, 15-16; Luke 14.1, 7-14
St Andrew’s Scots Memorial Church, Jerusalem
My sermon today is a tale of two hymns, one that we shall sing before communion, the other composed as a poem in 1897 by the British writer Rudyard Kipling.
In that year, Queen Victoria celebrated her diamond jubilee.
“Not since Rome,” writes the American Jewish historian Barbara Tuchman, “had imperial dominion been flung as wide as Britain’s now. It extended over a quarter of the land surface of the world, and on June 22 … its living evidence marched in splendid ranks to the Thanksgiving service at St. Paul’s. … In the parade rode cavalry from every quarter of the globe … Dark-skinned infantry regiments, ‘terrible and beautiful to behold’, in the words of a rhapsodic press, swung down the streets in a fantasy of variegated uniforms … company after company passed before a dazzled people, awestruck at the testimony of their own might. … The sun shone, bright banners rippled in the breeze, lampposts were decked in flowers and along six miles of streets millions of happy people cheered and waved in an ecstasy of love and pride.”
For months there had been an aura of self-congratulation in the air that, says Tuchman, scared Rudyard Kipling.
It scared him and moved him to write, and on the morning after the parade the stern warning of “Recessional” appeared in The Times. This is how it goes.
God of our fathers, known of old,
Lord of our far-flung battle-line,
Beneath whose awful Hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine –
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget – lest we forget!
The tumult and the shouting dies;
The Captains and the Kings depart:
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget – lest we forget!
Far-called, our navies melt away;
On dune and headland sinks the fire:
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget – lest we forget!
If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,
Such boastings as the Gentiles use,
Or lesser breeds without the Law –
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget – lest we forget!
For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard,
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And guarding, calls not Thee to guard,
For frantic boast and foolish word –
Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord!
*
Noteworthy in this poem is the unselfconscious fashion in which Kipling appropriates for the British empire, then at its height, the language of the Old Testament.
Britain then, like the United States today, saw itself as the new Israel, God’s chosen people, full of manifest destiny. But Kipling’s poem speaks to that self-image and understanding in terms that Jeremiah this morning would surely approve.
For what Kipling says to imperial Britain more than a century ago is precisely what Jeremiah says to a recklessly self-confident Judah many centuries before:
Do not forget God. Do not forsake God.
*
Jeremiah’s time was a period of storm and stress, when the smaller states of western Asia were often pawns in the power plays of such imperial giants as Egypt, Assyria and Babylon and the doom of entire nations – including Judah itself – was being sealed.
At the end of the 7th century, Egypt marched north to the aid of Assyria against the rising power of Babylon. King Josiah of Judah made the mistake of trying to stop the Egyptian advance and died near Megiddo in 609 at the hands of Pharaoh Necho II.
Later kings were little more than Babylonian puppets, and less than a decade later, Nebuchadnezzar conquered Judah, leading its great men into an exile that lasted half a century.
Jeremiah this morning is warning the people and princes of Judah not to trust in themselves, but to trust only in God.
He reminds them of their national story, their foundation myth. He reminds them of a God who brought their ancestors up from the land of Egypt, who led them in the wilderness, in a land of deserts and pits, a land of drought and deep darkness, a land that no one passes through, where no one lives. And he reminds them how recklessly their ancestors turned away from God, and went after worthless things, and became worthless themselves.
As then, so now, says Jeremiah. Your ancestors did not ask “Where is the Lord?” and neither do you. God brought you into a plentiful land to eat lush fruit, but you defile the land. Your rulers defy God; those who know the law do not know God; your prophets chase after empty god-dreams.
This people has walked out on God, the source of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves, cisterns that leak, cisterns that are no better than sieves.
Jeremiah here as so often is railing against idolatry. It’s a temptation to which the powerful or the rich are particularly prone, but it’s a common human failing to which we easily succumb.
The tricky thing about idolatry is that often we don’t know we’re doing it. It doesn’t seem like we’re worshipping a false god. It seems like we are pursuing good ends, ordained by a true god. Or it seems like we are pursuing our own survival, and surely this is what God wants for us.
This is why we need poets like Kipling and prophets like Jeremiah, who challenge us to ask what we really are doing.
When we exchange God for an idol, says Jeremiah, we become like what we pursue. If we pursue what is empty, we become empty. If we pursue vanity, we become vain. If we pursue darkness, we go over to the dark side.
Where then is the Lord? Where is the Lord who liberates the oppressed? Where is the Lord who lights up the darkness and leads slaves through the wilderness into freedom?
*
About our communion hymn, I can be briefer.
Down through the centuries, Christians have celebrated the Lord’s supper. We take bread and wine. We put them at the centre of a prayer of thanksgiving. We share them. We eat and drink.
We do all this at Christ’s command – “Do this in memory of me.”
But down through the centuries, we have argued fiercely about what doing this means. Men and women of every tradition have gone to the stake because they understood the Lord’s supper in terms that were unacceptable to those with the power to burn them.
In fact, it’s not all that difficult.
Like Cleopas and his wife, the two disciples who walked home to Emmaus, we just need to have our eyes opened.
When we celebrate the Lord’s supper, it is the risen Christ who takes bread and wine, who gives thanks to God, and who gives them to us to share. It is the risen Christ who, in giving us food and drink, gives us his own risen life and feeds us as part of the new humanity – God’s new humanity – that begins with him.
Come, risen Lord, and deign to be our guest;
Nay, let us be thy guests; the feast is thine.
It’s as simple as that. In the sacrament of holy communion, the risen Christ is the host, and we are his guests. In accepting his hospitality, Sunday by Sunday, we are remade in his image.
*
As in the sacrament, so in the world.
Last week, I read a story about an IDF unit who back in April commandeered a house in the West Bank town of Sinjil to use as a temporary outpost.
The IDF often does that, according to Rabbis for Human Rights. Every year it uses dozens of unoccupied Palestinian homes as outposts. It doesn’t always leave them in the condition in which these soldiers left this one.
When they left, all of the windows were shattered, doors and furniture smashed, mattresses ripped up, piles of garbage scattered throughout the house, and the bathrooms broken, as was every sink in the house. Household objects had evidently been used as toilets.
Imagine how you would feel if this happened to your home.
The house belongs to Ahmad Alwan, who lives with his family in the United States.
The army has promised him compensation but has yet to name a sum. That is just the quantifiable, physical damage, he told Haaretz. “But the emotional damage is more important, and no price can be put on that.” On the floor of his wrecked home, he found a torn Qur’an.
*
I tell this story not to make a political point – you can do that for yourselves – but to make a human point.
The land in which we live, the earth on which we stand, are God’s home. “The land is mine!” says God in Leviticus 25. “The earth is the Lord’s, and all that is in it,” says Psalm 24.
“Where is the Lord?”
Here he is. Everywhere.
This is God’s home, and we are God’s guests. In accepting his hospitality, we are remade in God’s image.
Imagine how different things would be, not just in Sinjil, but in every corner of our broken world, if we lived as if we really believed that this were true.
Hymns
Come and find the quiet centre in the crowded life we lead (CH4 716)
God of hosts, you chose a vine (CH4 51: Psalm 80, 7-10, 14-15)
Here to the house of God we come (CH4 195)
Come, risen Lord, and deign to be our guest (CH3 572: Song 24, CH4 40)
You are called to tell the story (CH4 680)
Sources
Yotam Berger, “Israeli soldiers leave Palestinian’s home in shambles after seizing it as an outpost”, Haaretz, August 19 2016
Michael D Coogan, Marc Z Brettler, Carol Newsom, Pheme Perkins, The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha (New York: OUP, 2010)
Norman C Habel, The Land is Mine: Six Biblical Land Ideologies (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, 1995)
Rudyard Kipling, “Recessional”, 1897
Nicholas Lash, His Presence in the World: A Study of Eucharistic Worship and Theology (London: Sheed & Ward, 1968)
Eugene H Peterson, The Message Remix: The Bible in Contemporary Language (Colorado Springs, CO: Navpress, 2003)
Barbara W Tuchman, The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World before the War, 1890-1914 (New York: Macmillan, 1966)
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