Sermon by Rev Sydney Maitland for Sunday 24 August 2025.
• First Reading: Jeremiah 1: 4-10 (The call of Jeremiah)
• Second Reading: Hebrews 12: 18-29 (The mountain of fear and the mountain of joy)
• Gospel: Luke 13: 10-17 (Jesus heals a crippled woman on the Sabbath)
One of the pitfalls of our information age is how exposed we are to ever greater flows of information, from the most innocent advertising to the most insidious and destructive messages about culture and values.
Part of the difficulty is finding the space to separate the real information and commentary from throw-away opinion, campaign slogans, pure trivia and worse.
And this flow can so easily overwhelm us, leading us into a blind conformity with its assumptions and values. And then how do we compare all this with that the gospels teach us and where they lead us?
Not always easy when there are slick, even beguiling campaigns to attract out attention and commitment.
So looking at the call of Jeremiah, we have a call from God to him to follow the agenda of God. God would lead him, teach him, inspire him and give Jeremiah His own words – which would be quite different from those of the usual opinion-formers and arbiters of good taste.
Whatever Jeremiah’s inclinations, God was going to lead him differently to new perspectives and values. Jeremiah would no longer just repeat, parrot-fashion, the easy cliches of fashionable people.
Instead he would speak out with a passion and a directness, asserting the priorities of God. And it would not always be welcome. While Isaiah had brought encouragement to Jerusalem and urged repentance and faith, Jeremiah would speak of the judgment of God. This time the leaders of the land would not escape the chastising of God and they would be led away from their land and homes. This generation would never return.
Jeremiah would be radical all right, but not in the way preferred by the so-called and self-appointed progressives of the land. The easy solutions of the opinion-formers would no longer be enough.
It is easy to be aware of Jeremiah from the comfort of the welfare state of the 21st century. Less easy when faced with national bankruptcy and having to re-arm and re-mobilize.
God’s call to Jeremiah was no easy option. It would be sacrificial and demand all that Jeremiah had and was.
But then there is the gospel lesson in which Jesus had the temerity to heal a woman on the Sabbath and in the face of objections from the synagogue leader.
Yet here Jesus had a quick contrast to offer between a woman bound by Satan for 18 years, and the ease with which people would lead their own livestock to water on the Sabbath. Surely all would recognize that the woman was of greater importance than an animal, no matter how much valued or even loved.
A simple application of a fortiori logic rapidly demolished the objections of the hyper-religious and the hyper-critical.
Again they had been captured by the received wisdom of their leaders and had never stood back to think about it. But it was clear enough when pointed out.
But the misleading demands of the super-observant had become overwhelming and nobody had taken the opportunity to look at them.
Law – with justice, but tempered by mercy. Generosity without guilt, or self-promotion or self-exhibition. Goodness without virtue-signalling. Peace but not always surrender; kindness without sentiment; love without self-gratification. The real, self-giving kind which is about the needs of the other person above all else.
If anything, Jesus was just asking the people to get real, and come off their moral and emotional fantasies. This would be the source of a genuine spiritual life in action.
The letter to the Hebrews also urges people to raise their game. Again it is not about a blind conformity with whatever passes for fashion.
If the children of Israel were forbidden to even touch Mount Sinai, the people of God were being urged to see and live their membership of and proximity to Mount Zion, the mountain of the Lord, where He is worshipped in spirit and in truth.
God is a consuming fire and will indeed burn up any false religiosity, any self-promotion, or misleading doctrines to lead people away from their lives of faith in God.
And yes, there were plenty to choose from – then as now.
So yes, there are new agendas to be settled upon. This letter says that ‘Our God is a consuming fire’, having said a couple of chapters before, ‘It is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God.’ (10: 31)
For us it is a matter of reasserting our sense of reality and of direction. Taking a second look at where opinion-formers are leading us.
It means letting God inform us, lead us, guide us and teach us. It means allowing His correction and re-direction.
For yes, He will lead us into letting go of what holds us back and holding the more firmly to what edifies, teaches, strengthens and indeed glorifies us.
For the burning bush indeed burned – but was not destroyed.
