Thought for the Week

22 June 2008 – Fifth Sunday after Trinity

Collect:	Almighty and everlasting God, by your Spirit the whole body of the Church is governed and sanctified: hear our prayer, which we offer for all your faithful people that in their vocation and ministry each may serve You in holiness and truth to the glory of your name: through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Readings:	Jeremiah 20, 7 – 13
	Psalm 69, 8 – 11 & 18 – 20
	Romans 6, 1b – 11
	Matthew 10, 24 – 39

The Question that the readings set before us today is this, how, and to what extent, is God involved in the world? Is He involved in the great flux of human history, waves of migration, and the titanic struggle of empires for supremacy, or is He just involved in the heart and mind of every believing individual?

The prophet Jeremiah has a great deal to say about this. Old Testament prophets always had a twin-track calling. They were, like clergy today, charged with encouraging, challenging, affirming, helping and caring for individuals as they struggled to live out their faith in their every-day lives. At the same time, they were charged with advising the ruler, and if necessary, challenging him and reminding of his unique duties and responsibilities. In this role, they acted rather as a good Newspaper Leader-writer, or a Television Interviewer such as David Frost or Trevor McDonald might today. They didn’t foretell, they forth-told. They weren’t predicting the future, by gazing into some Godly crystal ball, to which the rest of us have no access; but they were saying to rulers, and to the whole nation, “if you go on like that, then this will happen”. And they were basing it on the scriptures and their own prayer life, things to which all of us have access.

Jeremiah was working from about 620 – 580 BC, at a time of disaster, when the little Kingdom of Judah was caught in the crossfire as two great Empires, Egypt and Babylon, struggled to control the world. The Northern Kingdom, Israel, had disappeared a century before, swallowed up by the Assyrians in 721 BC. But the glory and greatness of Assyria was waning, leaving the field clear for the old Empire of Egypt, and the emerging new Babylonian Empire to fight for supremacy. God’s covenant people, the Children of Israel, only survived in the tiny Kingdom of Judah, which, being at a main trading crossroads, and mostly fertile, temperate land, was coveted by both empires. In 605 BC, Egypt was soundly defeated by the Babylonians at the battle of Carchemish. It may not have been obvious at the time, but the battle Carchemish shaped the future. Over the next few years, Babylon became the sole world super-power.

For Jeremiah, and his fellow Jews, since the time of Moses and the Exodus, when they left Egypt in about 1240 BC, their faith had been territorial. They understood their covenant relationship with God to be based on the Promised Land. God had given them Canaan. Trying to keep his kingdom united, King David fixed the heart of the Faith of Israel at Jerusalem, and this was literally set in stone in 966, when David’s son, Solomon, built the Temple there. Inside the Jerusalem Temple, in the Holy of Holies, dwelt the Shikainah, the glory of God, seated in majesty on the Ark of the Covenant, with worshipping cherubim on either side. For six centuries then, the Jews had believed that their faith was centred on the land of Israel, and for the last two hundred and fifty years, they had understood his presence to be living among them in Jerusalem. It is not surprising that it was so difficult for them to form a new understanding of their covenant with God, not based on territory.

The nation of Israel was not just proof of God’s love and favour, it was also the way in which God related to the world. So how could the covenant of the children of Israel with the living God, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Joseph, survive without the promised land? How could there be forgiveness without the Temple at Jerusalem? Had God, who gave them the Promised Land abandoned them? Had He abandoned the whole world? Or was God simply powerless to intervene in the affairs of the world? The greatness of Jeremiah lies in his struggle to find answers to these fundamental questions against a backdrop of suffering and turmoil.

It is not surprising that the fabric of the Kingdom of Judah began to fall apart under these strains. Some insisted that Judah could, and should “go it alone”, whatever the consequences. Others had invested heavily in a relationship with Egypt, and it was not clear to all of them that the battle of Carchemish had ended Egypt’s power. Yet others wanted to come to terms with the vigorous new Babylonian Empire, before it was too late, and be a vassal state, rather than risk being conquered and completely destroyed.

As the cohesiveness of Judah’s political scene disintegrated, so did the morality of the people, and their religion.

Poor Jeremiah! He was called by God not just to live in these turbulent times, but to prophecy, to recall the Children of Israel to the faith, and the morality of their fathers. Naturally, he had to start at the top, and challenging tyrannical rulers never makes for a quiet life. Jeremiah spent a fair proportion of his time in prison, quite a lot of it thrown into a cess pit.

Less than ten years after the Battle of Carchemish, Judah revolted against Babylonian rule. The Babylonians invaded Judah, and attacked Jerusalem. King Jehoiachin and the leaders of Judah were deported, and a puppet ruler, Zedekiah was installed. Ten years later, Judah revolted again, and this time there was a terrible siege of Jerusalem, at the end of which, in 597, the walls were breached, the palace burned and the Temple destroyed. Anybody who was anybody was deported to Babylon. More unrest provoked a third invasion in 582. A small number of the pro-Egypt party chose to flee into exile in Egypt, forcibly taking Jeremiah with them. All seemed to be lost, and God’s chosen people seemed to be chosen no more – the Covenant seemed to have come to an end.

But actually, Jeremiah stresses the constant love of God throughout his book. Man may be unfaithful, and society may be in chaos, but the love of God is unchanging. For Jeremiah, God is the God of the whole world, not just of the Jews, and so He is in some sense present in every nation, and every empire. Jeremiah goes as far as to say that Babylon is God’s chosen instrument to discipline the unfaithful Children of Israel, and bring them back to their faith again.

Empires come and Empires go. The Greek, Roman, Spanish, Napoleonic, Austro-Hungarian, Nazi, Japanese, British and Soviet Empires have all gone. Perhaps the American Empire is declining too. Who knows what new Empires might arise? Could it be Europe? China? India?

Where is God in all this? Some Empires are more benign than others, and under some of them, his worship and his Church flourish, under others, worship is illegal, and the Church is persecuted. That is the same today as it was in the time of Jeremiah. The Babylonian Empire was repressive, but the Persian Empire that followed it was much more enlightened.

Contrarily, the faith seems to flourish under repression. It was against the backdrop of the exile to Babylon that the Jewish religion became hammered out and honed with an amazing flourishing of literature and theology. Similarly, it was amidst the brutal persecutions of the Roman Empire that Christianity flourished.

But Jeremiah’s point is that no Empire, not even the little kingdom of Judah, is a perfect Divine Institution. All Empires, all states and all worldly powers are flawed and fallen. God is to be found in every part of every Empire, but no human institution however powerful it might seem, can contain Him.

This is what today’s Gospel reading is about. God’s Kingdom is not of this world, and therefore will always conflict with the kingdoms of this world. God lives by a different set of standards, and his rule has to do with love, justice, mercy and truth. Even the most enlightened worldly regime has to deal with the realities; it has to treat with less enlightened regimes, and, in order to stay in business, it has to use a broad-brush approach and sometimes cut moral corners.

The creation of the myth of benign “Uncle Joe Stalin” and the heroic people of Russia may enable a war-winning alliance to be forged, but do not reflect Jesus’ saying “By their fruits you will know them”.

“A far-off people of whom we know little” may turn public attention away from an atrocity going on somewhere, in which our government is unwilling, or unable, to intervene, but it hardly fits with the idea that we are children of the one heavenly Father.

Being “economical with the truth” may be a an effective way of doing political business, but it does not sit well with Jesus saying. “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life”.

So, does God only work in the hearts and minds of believers? Is He only to be found in Holy places, such as, (as we be hope), the Church? Absolutely not! Jeremiah understands God to be at work in the swords of the pagan Babylonians, chastising Israel for her unfaithfulness. It may at times be hidden from us, but still today many people go into politics to serve God and other people.

Without the touch of God, there can be no doubt that repressive regimes would be worse. Even in the Nazi death camps, the faith and self-giving love of people like Father Maximilian Kolbe, and Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer shone as beacons in the darkness. At a lower level, many concentration camp victims owed their lives to slave-prostitutes, who, being fed enough themselves to remain attractive, would throw through the bars of their cells, the crusts of bread brought as presents by their clients.

I would like to finish with today’s Post-Communion Prayer: Grant, O Lord, we beseech You, that the course of this world may be so peaceably ordered by your governance that your Church may joyfully serve You in all godly quietness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

Father Charles Howard: Anglican Chaplaincy of Midi-Pyrénées & Aude

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