Sermon Tone Analysis

Last Sunday I had the interesting experience of sitting in church and listening to a sermon that went in one ear and out the other.

No doubt you are more familiar with the experience than I am.

I have to say that at the end of the service I was left feeling somewhat disappointed and frustrated.

I hoped that religious and theological issues might be raised, that some aspect of the nature of God explored, that the truth of God be allowed to enliven and enrich my soul, that the preacher might speak, as Mark wrote of Jesus last Sunday, as one with authority.

Yet preaching is not so simple as it seems.

Speaking as one whose calling is to preach, we can only preach to the extent of our vision; and tiredness and preoccupation may often empty the sermon of any spark of life.

I remember how my Presbyterian colleague in Gisborne always used to tell the congregation on the First Sunday after the Holidays about the books he’d read.

The first time it might have had some interest and a modicum of energy.

After the sixth time I imagine it lost its appeal.

What I’m saying to you is part of a train of thought that developed from mulling over the lectionary readings for this Sunday.

I found that I was connected with an important theological truth that I must have always known about, but in the abstract.

My congregations might have been a good deal better off if I’d come to it earlier.

So what can I do: with the great theological truth firmly in my sight, what can I do but preach it to you.

And if it goes in one ear and out the other, so be it.

The theological truth I want to talk about is found in the Isaiah reading with its familiar words we recall in hard times: those that wait for the Lord will renew their strength, they shall mount up, they shall run, they shall walk and not faint.

Be careful, though, for this is the ending, this is the bit where Isaiah comes to a pause and we are expected to break in with loud Amens.

The beginning is two or three verses earlier, a question: Have you not known?

Have you not heard?

The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.

In the ten verses of our reading there is a movement from the God of Creation to what theologians call the God of history.

Or, if I put it another way, the God who acted in bringing life, bringing the universe into being acts right now, in your life and mine.

God who acted in time gone by starting things up, still acts by pointing everything in the right direction so that especially in times of hardship and difficulty, we might renew our strength, and walk and not be faint.

You see, what Isaiah found was a connection between the God of the past and the God of the present; they are not two separate Gods but one; or more accurately, the God who put the whole wide world around us is the same God who seeks to build a new world within us.

We label the fifteen chapters of Isaiah from chapter 40 onwards Second Isaiah because they were written by an unknown prophet in Babylon towards the end of the captivity of the leaders of Judah.

His vision, which permeates all these chapters, is that God who in creation established heaven and earth, and who once long ago called Abraham, is still working, still acting, and he will bring to nothing the great rulers, so that God’s people can return home.

God who acted in creation with great power and wisdom and skill is even now acting to change the course of history, and bring freedom and hope and renewal to his people.

So when Second Isaiah says God who stretches out the heaven like a curtain brings princes to naught, and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing, he is setting the scene for the overthrow of Babylon and the liberation of the Jews by the Persians.

This is the setting in which these words and their theological vision were formed.

Oddly enough, what sparked my engagement with this idea and Isaiah’s vision was the credit crunch.

It seems we will need all the strength we can muster if we are to walk through a global depression and not be faint.

I’ve heard various financial analysts agree that the basic cause of the economic crisis has been greed and the misuse of power.

Thinking of this there was born in my mind a cliché: the God of cash and the God of character.

Character has been disregarded and ignored; cash, money, success, bonuses, prosperity have been our shrines, and their high priests money traders!

In time perhaps, just like Babylonian powers and rulers, greedy bankers and business people will be overthrown and the captives will be freed.

Second Isaiah began with the God of creation, the God who acted at the beginning, then he joined up with the God of history, the God who acts now.

Over the last hundred years there has been a tendency not only to allow financial people to get away with greed, not only to approve and endorse that greed but to limit our world to creation, material things.

In Canaanite and Babylonian religion the God of creation was vital, he was Ba’al the enormous bull-god of success, prosperity, and wealth.

I sometimes think that Ba’al is alive and well in our time, lacking the image of the bull, a bit more sophisticated perhaps but nonetheless busy in turning our minds to gaining and getting and doing well.

Ba’al is immensely relevant, he is the god of cash.

We have celebrated the sun and stars, extolled nature’s great gifts of sea and water, we have rejoiced in trees and green growth, worshipped the summer and play at the beach.

We have bowed down to sport and pleasure, and helped athletes become some of our richest citizens.

We have elevated the physical and the material as these have never been elevated before.

That’s why I have summarized this well known and popular God as the God of cash, for a God in creation makes a physical, material world which we can see and touch and manipulate; creation produces everything that is real and important and immediately necessary for daily living.

All this Second Isaiah realised.

On the other hand the God of character is mostly overlooked.

How little people concern themselves with the quality of their actions and life.

The Australian wicket-keeper Haddin goes and hides rather than acknowledge his mistake.

We have stopped caring about the way that people are; character is not a value any more - it is a nuisance, a remnant from the Victorians.

The Pope or some Vatican authority in the last couple of weeks lamented that there is now no sense of sin or wrong-doing.

The God of character is missing; so in our haste and bustle we do not wait for the Lord to renew our strength, and thus we fail to mount up like eagles, we run and are weary, we walk and are faint.

Of course, it’s not an either/or so much as it’s a both/and.

Both the God of creation who acted in making the world we live in and all the furniture of life; both the God of history who is acting now to develop our character, our insight and our vision.

For if it is the God of creation who gives sustenance for our bodies, it is the God of present-day activity who gives sustenance to our souls.

And it is only as we live out of a strong character that we can be trusted to care responsibly for the creation.

There are several puzzles in the gospel reading, but one of them is particularly relevant.

The disciples hunt Jesus down in his quiet corner and urge him to return to the city in order to heal the people.

Ah, they say, Jesus will be worth a couple of million denarii to the town’s economy.

But Jesus doesn’t buy it.

He said, Let’s go on to the neighbouring towns so that I may proclaim the message there also.

You would think Jesus would go for the bird in the hand, for helping the town’s economy, for fixing the sick people; instead he goes off so that he can preach!

Madness!

It’s a puzzle until you realise that Jesus is balancing the God of creation, the God who fixes our bodies, with the God of character who heals and redeems our souls.

It’s not only the outside that makes us strong enough to walk and not faint, it’s the inside as well.

It’s not only the gymn, it’s the church.

And so Jesus goes off preaching the Kingdom, to change the hearts and minds of Galilee.

Here’s a theological issue that is always before us: the God of cash or the God of character.

Or if you want to put it another way: would you rather have Jesus save your body or your soul?