Readings: Isaiah 60; John 6: 51 – 69
I’ve told this story before – but the choir have sung Wesley’s Blessed be the God and Father… before – and I think both are worth repeating! It’s said that the lovely anthem we just heard was composed for Easter Sunday 1834 and for Hereford Cathedral. It’s rumoured that only four trebles and one bass were available to sing on that day – and that the lone bass was the Dean’s butler. Small forces! Well, we’re very glad today to welcome our full choir back after their summer break. But as we do so, to paraphrase the prophet Zechariah, let us not despise the day of small things. Because from small things, and small beginnings, great things can come.
I’ve been thinking about small things, and small beginnings this week as I’ve been preparing for the Hampstead Parochial School Service on Friday which marked the beginning of the new school year earlier in the week. There’s Arundhati Roy’s Booker Prize winning novel, ‘The God of small things’, which is an exploration of the way in which small, apparently insignificant things can affect peoples’ behaviour and lives in big ways – sometimes with tragic consequences. To make the point to the school, I told the story of the Bramley apple – complete with my apple-green apron and a bowl of Bramleys! It’s a remarkable story. In brief, in 1809 a young woman called Mary Ann Brailsford was helping her mother make an apple pie in Southwell, Nottinghamshire. She decided to plant some of the pips, and they germinated and grew into an apple tree in the garden of the cottage. In 1846 a local butcher, Matthew Bramley, bought the cottage, and ten years later a local nurseryman, Henry Merryweather, asked if he could take cuttings from the tree and begin to sell them commercially. Bramley agreed provided that the trees bore his name. We know the rest. It’s become the standard ‘cooking apple’ for all of us in the UK. Way beyond anything Mary Ann could have imagined when she planted those pips.
For a more contemporary example of the same small beginnings, I saw on the news the other day that a 16 year old girl in the UK has made £48,000 from a website she designed to help Chinese parents to give their babies appropriate English names – at 60p a time! The idea arose when she was asked by a Chinese family to choose an English name for their baby and realised that people needed help. £48,000 at 60p a time – that’s a lot of babies – and I’m sure a most unexpected success from a small start.
God also does small beginnings. Abraham, setting out on a journey from his home city of Ur in response to the call of God. Trusting God, against the odds that he would become the Father of a great nation, as numerous as the stars in the sky. He didn’t live to see it all, but perhaps in his heart he held a vision not unlike that of Isaiah Chapter 60, our first reading. It’s thought that this chapter may have been written in around 538 BC, not long after the arrival back in Israel of the first wave of exiles from Babylon. Despite the hope of restoration of the kingdom, despite the prophecies, despite the edict of King Cyrus of Persia giving permission for the exiles to return, things were not easy. The journey itself was dangerous. Only some of the exiled community chose to return. They carried with them plans for rebuilding the Temple and restoring their customs and institutions, but the situation began to deteriorate. There was drought, crop failure, hunger and inflation and later civil and religious leaders seeking personal gain and a court system riddled with corruption. The prophet Haggai attributes the peoples’ troubles – at least initially – to the fact that they did not put first the rebuilding of the Temple.
So the wonderful and uplifting vision of Isaiah Chapter 60 which we just heard was written to encourage those returners in dark times when things were not going well. It holds up to them the vision of what could be. Of what they were called to be – a holy nation demonstrating the light of God. Not just a great nation, but the central nation, to whom others come. A nation of peace and righteousness where all the people will be righteous. A place where the light of the sun and the moon are replaced by the light of God. This is a part earthly, part heavenly vision and is taken up and reflected in the New Testament at the beginning of John’s Gospel in the imagery of light and darkness and in the description of the new Jerusalem in the Book of Revelation. So – what does this say to us?
Here we are at the beginning of a new academic year, a time of new beginnings for some of us at least. And against a background of bleak world events – not least the fifteenth anniversary of 9/11 which falls today – and then there’s our continued uncertainty about our status in Europe. At the same time we are now into our fifth month of interregnum since Father Stephen left us. We can’t do any of the big things until our new Vicar arrives. We can’t make any big changes. We can’t, for example, recruit a Children’s and Youth Worker to support our many families because our new Vicar will want to make that appointment. We must keep going as we are. But we can perhaps be encouraged that the small things that we can do may be more significant than we could ever think or imagine. Those things are still important. Do not despise the small things! And we too, like the people for whom Isaiah Chapter 60 was written, do have a vision. It’s summarised in our Parish Profile. If you haven’t yet seen the finished document you will find it on the parish website under Vacancies. Many have contributed their thoughts to this document, which gives a picture of how we see ourselves and of some of our hopes for the future.
Let us not despise the small things, and let us hold to the vision.
Amen