Sermon by Rev Sydney Maitland for Sunday 17 November 2024.
• First Reading: 1 Samuel 1: 4-20 (Hannah was barren, but conceived and bore a son, Samuel)
• Epistle: Hebrews 10: 11-25 (A call to persevere in faith)
• Gospel: Mark 13: 1-8 (The destruction of the temple and signs of the end times)
I am sure that you have seen how much advertising is directed at making us feel inadequate: whether in looks and dress, or prowess in sport or socially or at work.
The product being promoted will remedy your perceived inadequacies and you will succeed in your endeavours. Needless to say to say the loser who does not buy the product will continue to lose – and you do not want to be like him.
Now look at the anguish of Hannah, wife of Elkanah, at her childlessness: taunted and bullied by her rival in the household. If only, if only … And so the tears flowed and the grieving and the sense of failure went on and on.
And so she took her anguish to the Lord, eventually vowing to dedicate any son that was born to her, to be a Nazirite, dedicated to the service of God in the temple.
Just let the child be born and that would be enough. She would release him to the temple at the right time.
And so it was: and Samuel would hear the voice of God early in his life in the temple and he would obey it and proclaim it faithfully throughout his life.
He would see Saul anointed as King in Israel and then his fall. Samuel would anoint David to be the coming king and so he would have a hand in all that followed in the name and line of David.
And yet it was Hannah who had also taken God seriously – making an open-ended promise about any son born and seeing it through to its fulfilment.
This was a radical and dedicated faith in action.
But then look at Jesus’ prediction of the fall of the Temple in Jerusalem. The temple might fall but God was not going to be defeated. The gospel would not stop.
The visual centre of Judaism might be reduced to rubble and a retaining wall while the temple mount was occupied by other powers and religions. The temple rites and sacrifices might cease and the people dispersed, facing the charge of being Christ-killers long after that particular generation had fallen to the Roman general Titus and had passed into history.
And Jesus issued a solemn warning to His disciples to hold to the things of their faith, in every generation, but especially when there were rival creeds and belief systems offering ever more beguiling forms of worship.
Many would come claiming to be Jesus returned to lead the church, but having no spiritual power and only the power of self-projection.
They might be attractive figures, persuasive and beguiling. They might trade on peoples’ sense of inadequacy and grievance. They might have simple and attractive solutions – rarely involving personal repentance and faith. Often enough finding a useful set of scapegoats, people with poor presentation skills and unable to defend themselves.
And this is set in a time of global disruption: wars near at hand and far away; environmental destruction, political and moral disintegration. Social and economic and cultural chaos.
And Jesus says: this is only the beginning of sorrows.
But this is the very situation where the letter to the Hebrews comes into focus.
Whereas the temple worship had its rituals and sacrifices, these all had to be repeated, regularly. No single sacrifice in the temple would ever be enough before the total holiness of God.
But then there was indeed a Great High Priest whose sacrifice was for all time, never having to be repeated.
He had offered Himself, priest and victim, body broken and blood shed in the manner most cursed under the law.
But in making Himself a curse under the law, Jesus had acted in full obedience to God the Father to whom He had entrusted His personal resurrection. And yes, God raised Him from the dead.
That is why all were called on to continue in the faith, and to go on encouraging one another.
It was why they should approach the Throne of Grace, not relying on their own works but on the blood of Jesus. There was none other and certainly none better.
This was and is the hope to which the disciples in every land and generation are called. Their confidence is not in anything that the church can contrive: not its liturgies, or social initiatives or works of charity and campaigns for a better world.
These things may be useful but they can never be a substitute for the atoning sacrifice of Jesus. And if they are being so used then it is because of the shallowness and dilution of its faith.
And so we are also called into that great tradition of faith in Jesus Christ and trust in His atonement.
There is nothing else and certainly nothing better on offer. We are called to hold to it when times are uncertain, and institutions totter, and the faith of people on their self-contrived secular deities fail.
This is when the lights grow dim and the world grows cold and angry. But then this is nothing like the cold, darkness and fury that Jesus endured on the cross. Our Great High Priest indeed.
