Sermon Archive
Not to have
Sermon preached by Clephane Hume at Matins on 22 February 2004
Genesis 12.1-9 ; 1 Peter 4.12-5.14
This is Unemployment Sunday
According to a news report I heard earlier in the week, we currently have the lowest level of unemployment for several years. I doubt if that is much consolation to those currently facing the situation, or those who know they are shortly to be made redundant. For many people these days, the continual threat of loss of employment is a highly stressful day to day reality.
The information advertising this specially designated Sunday asks various questions, and raises not unfamiliar issues - among them how to make sense of the persistence of poverty and unemployment alongside increasing prosperity. An imbalance, a polarisation between wealth and poverty. Britain is apparently the fifth wealthiest nation on the planet, yet one in three children is still being brought up in poverty. A hidden problem because such circumstances limit the mobility of those concerned. Making life's journey difficult.
The Old Testament lesson retells for us the Call of Abram, to move from Haran to Canaan. A difficult journey and a fairly drastic step to take. To uproot yourself and your household, and go to another land - even if there is the promise of great rewards at the end of it.
Another journey that must have been difficult was undertaken by Terry Waite, who earlier in the week returned to Lebanon for the first time since he was held captive there. Although the political situation is different now, the Middle East is not entirely a safe place. Whatever he was reported as having said, I think it would have been a challenging situation in which to find himself. The memories must have flooded back. Returning is not always an easy thing to do, and these were not every day circumstances.
In his role as president of the development branch of the YMCA, Terry Waite has found a positive reason to return and in the photographs I saw, he appeared to be enjoying himself, surrounded by groups of children. He would also enjoy the experience of being a free man in Beirut and being reunited with some of the people he worked with. This was a happy outcome but maybe you could class his earlier experiences as an example of what the apostle Peter describes as sufferings for being a Christian.
The epistle mentions attitudes: 'young men be submissive to elders'. I understand that hostages are advised to be non-resistant to their captors, in the hope that by being co-operative they will win over those who are guarding them. Such compliance cannot be easy, but it may serve to establish communication at a person to person level - to come to regard each other as human beings, despite the circumstances. In certain situations assertion trainers recommend co-operation as a way of dealing with controlling people. When folk agree with you it is difficult to lay down the law - there is no need to do so.
Communication can take unexpected forms. 'How God will get his text messages' was the headline of another article I read. This is not a skill I have yet mastered. Apparently God receives thousands of letters, real, written ones, usually bearing the address 'God, Western Wall, Jerusalem', the remaining wall of the Temple. The place we may still think of as the Wailing Wall, to which people make pilgrimages. Some of you may have seen folk tucking messages and prayers into the crevices in the wall as they stand rocking to and fro.
According to the article, the continuing development of technology has translated many of these letters into faxes, which are gathered up and taken to the wall and now it will be possible to use email. With similar treatment for printouts. A far cry from the sort of messages transmitted between God and Abram.
Difficult journeys, unemployment and poverty, the temple in Jerusalem. All these things were features of our recent travels in Ethiopia, where the story of the Ark of the Covenant being taken from the Temple is an everyday topic. As are lack of paid employment and difficult journeys over the mountains. And many people are hostages of fortune, living in refugee camps or as illegal immigrants.
I'm not going to say more about this amazing and spectacularly beautiful country - you can hear that on another occasion. But it did give some reality to what our readings, and my newspapers are saying. And for moving towards Lent - for example, people fast regularly in Ethiopia, for religious reasons, not because of famine.
As we go on our own journeys, living through the deserts in our own lives, we experience what it means 'not to have', because we lose someone, or something, of value to us, or deny ourselves something. But Lent affords the opportunity for deeper reflection.
The literature for Unemployment Sunday makes reference to two awareness raising exercises: 'Just Bread' where you share a simple meal together - those on the poverty line and those who have plenty - and reflect upon the experience. And 'Just Lent' where you follow the example of our Primus and discover what it is like to live on the minimum wage.
The epistle refers to the devil prowling about like a roaring lion. In everyday life we need - as one of my teachers put it to 'resist the devil that is tempting you to look out of the window' - her classes did sometimes cause the mind to wander. But temptation is out there, a reality that is all around us, so that possibilities for Lenten self denial are equally available, be it cigarettes, chocolate, the new blouse, or a longer lie in bed.
I firmly maintain that taking up something like more reading, sending your own form of messages to God - prayer or meditation - or using part of our free time to make a difference to others is a worthwhile alternative.
You have two days to think about it!