Evensong 2 before Lent Year A 2023
Readings: Proverbs 8.22-31 Revelation 4
Full of ‘Victorian Pessimism’!
for his new wife as they set off on honeymoon,
Matthew Arnold wrote his famous poem: On Dover Beach:
“Ah, love, let us be true To one another!
for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams,So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love,
nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;And we are here as on a darkling plainSwept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,Where ignorant armies clash by night”.
If Matthew Arnold and his wife were in the end unduly pessimistic,
his words feel strangely apt once more today.
A widening gap between extreme wealth and gruelling poverty.
A surging authoritarianism in institutions of all varieties.
A plethora of deeply damaging conspiracy theories.
A repeat in miniature of our World Wars played out once again
in the reach for power by a psychopathic dictator –
one with the patience of a Christian! Played out once more in Europe.
A major part of Arnold’s pessimism rose out of a loss of faith in God.
Loss of faith in the authority of Scripture brought about through
new discoveries and ideas:
Charles Lyall and his challenge of the Genesis account of creation;
Charles Darwin and evolution, with a new understanding
that homo sapiens is not a supra-species
created as centrepiece of all that God has made,
but rather shares an evolving identity with all other creatures.
And with such thinking, grew the insidious fear that human beings,
rather than evolve, may devolve into the primitivism
always lurking just beneath the civilised persona.
Gone, the certainty of the advancement of history in steady progress.
The only hope left: ‘Ah, love, let us be true To one another!’
Today again, our world wrestles with the dangerous desire for certainty.
Last week on Tuesday morning,
Jim Al-Khalili in his radio programme The Life Scientific,
interviewed the statistician Adrian Smith.
Early in his career Smith was accused
of ‘trying to destroy the processes of science’ as he promoted
a branch of mathematics invented in 1764 by the Reverend Thomas Bayes: Statistics! No sir! Science is about mathematical proof – not probabilities!
Yet Smith has been able to show that Bayesian statistics
can be applied to resolve all sorts of real world problems!
Indeed it is statistics that has been instrumental in the development of AI, Artificial Intelligence.
We now know that certainties in life are not the answer to many things –
and yet we continue to cling to ‘certainty’
as offering us secure foundations.
Maybe Adrian Smith has fallen upon, as his clergyman mentor
250 years ago, maybe he has fallen upon that deep wisdom of God
present before the foundation of the world!
That Wisdom of which the Book of Proverbs speaks: that the universe
is more wonderful and mysterious than ever we can imagine!
We may discover windows into its majesty and tenderness.
That capable as we are of immense cruelty,
we are also capable of extraordinary feats of love and courage.
Two extraordinary Russian opposition activists spring to mind:
men who willingly returned to Russia from the safety of exile
in Germany and the United States,
returned to be with their people, in order to challenge righteousness,
even as they yet knew, precisely what would befall them:
prison, and worse. The astonishing figures of Alexey Navalny,
and the lesser known, Vladamir Kara-Murza.
In the wisdom of God, life is indeed, boundless, mysterious, astonishing!
That exotic picture drawn for us by John of Patmos,
this picture of the throne of God from the Book of Revelations,
challenges our imagination to conjure with some of this complexity!
Of course it is not, and was never intended, to be understood
as a literal account of the court of heaven!
An apocalyptic vision of the end of time,
it owes much to both earlier Jewish apocalypses, the Book of Daniel,
and parts of Isaiah and Ezra, also to Greek and Roman
imagery and symbolism found in the wider culture of the time.
As he lies imprisoned for his faith on the island of Patmos,
an angel takes the visionary John on a journey
into the very corridors of heaven, looking forward to a time
when cataclysmic events will herald the coming of a new order,
a time when truly, the Son of Man, the Lion of the tribe of Judah,
the Lamb of God who was slain, very God, will reign over all.
John writes at a time of persecution to encourage those followers of Christ undergoing severe test of their faith, not to give up.
Thus the symbolism so strange to us
is a veiled account of their lived contemporary experience,
an account understood by those with eyes to see, ears to hear!
The Lamb who died as man on earth is addressed as God,
to whom the inhabitants of heaven offer their new song!
He is bridegroom of his bride, the Church –
and here, at the Wedding Banquet, we shall be too!
And God shall wipe away every tear! (Chapter 5.)
But deeper into the text are conjured disturbing images: Ch 14.19-20:
So the angel swung his sickle and gathered the vintage of the earth …
and threw it into the great wine press of the wrath of God.
And blood flowed from the wine press, as high as a horse’s bridle,
for a distance of about two hundred miles.
In chapter 17, we read of the destruction of the great whore.
And the delight of the saints at the punishment of the wicked! Chapter 18.
Not the great Christian virtues we read of in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount!
In this divergence of themes within the New Testament itself,
we may see reflected, the complexity of our own lives.
We see that there is no single master answer
to how the world is made and functions – as some scientists suppose!
The Revd Thomas Bayes and Professor Sir Adrian Smith
look likely to be right after all –
and that despite all the doubting of their scientific credentials!
We discover the truth as we open our minds
to an array of possibilities over a range of experiments –
or more likely for us, a range of experiences.
Wisdom is to be found in keeping an open mind.
Approaching life with compassion.
Our reading this evening from the Book of Proverbs
tells the story of Wisdom, the first of God’s creation,
before the beginning of the earth, before the formation of the heavens,
rejoicing in God’s inhabited world, delighting in the human race.
We need to listen carefully for that still small voice of wisdom
guiding our way.
Matthew Arnold and the Victorians were losing faith in God
as supposed scientific certainty appeared to destroy
traditional beliefs about the universe, presented in the Bible.
The grating roar of wave on pebble epitomised this loss.
Today, approaching a century and a half later,
science no longer embraces that certainty of its own inexorable ability
to explain God, the universe and everything else!
Mystery is returned, and with it hope.
Matthew Arnold did not allow his pessimism about the world
stay his hand in working to build a better society.
As we know, he went on to become a renowned reformer in education.
We too have the privilege of discovering the wisdom of God
leading us forward, our lives filled with purpose – and joy in one another! Amen.
Intercessions 2 before Lent Year A 2023
Almighty God we thank you for the Wisdom with which you created the universe.
We pray for your Wisdom in our lives, in each circumstance,
Wisdom for the leaders of our church, and especially our wardens, Martin and Sheena,
as we set out into a new era; we ask your blessing on our vicar Jeremy, and Julia
as we thank you for the love which enfolds both them and us; we pray for peace of heart,
especially for our children, for all who are perplexed and troubled by recent events;
We pray for the Church worldwide, as we give thanks for the meeting of General Synod
last week, the decisions made to enable the blessing of same-sex marriage,
and the recognition that the love of gay partners is of God and holy;
in this enormous step towards equality, we pray also for those for whom
this is a difficult move forward, especially among those churches of the global south; praying for both their gay members, and for those unable to accept these new perspectives; we pray for those who live in communities where extreme religious views
lead to violence and death among those who differ from the majority,
remembering especially all those accused of blasphemy;
raise up leaders of the nations who embrace integrity and a passion for the well-being of all, give them authority and power to guide their people;
We lift before God the many thousands of victims of earthquake in Turkey and Syria;
for the injured as they await help in extreme weather conditions with little shelter;
we remember those who have died, and those who grieve their death,
for children who are now orphaned; for all who continue to seek for survivors,
all who seek to bring relief for those who survive;
give us compassionate and generous hearts as we support those in need’
We pray for places of conflict and war, for the people of Ukraine who endure invasion
and the devastation of their cities and their homes, for President Zelensky,
for wisdom in his leadership of his people, and his search for military support;
we pray for a just resolution to this war, for autonomy and freedom for all peoples,
and for steadfast courage to pursue our support of those who fight on our behalf
as well as their own, for democracy and liberal values;
For all who struggle with life at this time: refugees, the homeless, the unemployed,
those on strike; the sick and those approaching death, those who mourn,
make them to know your love which always surrounds them,
give them loving support, and courage in all their troubles:
Almighty God, from whom all thought of truth and peace proceed:
kindle, we pray, in the hearts of all, the true love of justice
and guide with your pure and peaceable wisdom
those who take counsel for the nations of the earth;
let not the needy be forgotten, nor the hope of the poor be taken away.
Make us instruments of your peace that joy might fill the earth,
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.