Sermon by Rev Sydney Maitland for Sunday 7 August 2022.
Sodom and Gomorrah afire by Jacob de Wet II, 1680 (Source)
• First Reading: Isaiah 1: 1, 10-20 (Address to Sodom and Gomorrah. Your incense is detestable to Me, cannot bear your worthless assemblies)
• Psalm 50: 1-8, 23-24
• Epistle: Hebrews 11: 1-3, 8-16 (Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see)
• Gospel: Luke 12: 32-40 (You also must be ready because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect Him)
A good part of my professional life was about looking into the future and preparing for it. The whole process of town and country planning was about preparing and implementing policies and proposals for the use and development of land.
When people wanted to develop land the question was not only whether this would comply with the Council’s local planning policies but what effect it would have on the physical environment – and any other material considerations. It was about looking into the future and making reasoned assessments on their impact.
And in our lessons there are three different ways of looking at the future.
First of all there is the solemn call by Isaiah to the people to repent. They were called to turn away from dead works and dead worship. They were to let go of abusive relationships and transactions and to get real with God.
The warnings of judgment were dire and were not to be trifled with. And the people of Israel and Judah were being addressed as if they were the people of Sodom and Gomorrah.
And no, this was not just about failure to offer hospitality. It was about the corruption of almost every aspect of life in which the cult of worship was used as a screen of respectability.
It just made God want to throw up in disgust at the pretence and insincerity of it all.
And yet in all this there was the promise of forgiveness for genuine repentance. God would indeed forgive and would entirely separate Himself from the memory of the sins of His people.
This was a looking forward to a new life founded on genuine and sincere repentance.
Then there is the call to faith by the writer to the Hebrews. This is the faith that comes out of a full and honest relationship with God. It believes and trusts in Him and in the promises that He makes – even when those receiving the promises do not receive them in this life.
Abraham never lived to see the settlement of the promised land by his descendants and yet he put his whole trust in God to make it so. And God honoured this trust by recognizing Abraham as righteous before Him.
He was wholly accepted before God on the strength of his faith and faithfulness as he trod out his life on his journey from Ur of the Chaldees to Canaan.
This was the kind of faith that God was looking for – a faith that did not falter in the face of discouragement or apparent delay.
Whatever blandishments the towns and cities of the Jordan valley had, they did not attract Abraham, even if they were alluring to Lot.
Abraham’s steadfastness became the foundation of Israel and hence of the church.
In this we have the faith that leads to repentance of sins and the faith that follows where God is leading, even when the way is unclear and even dark.
But Jesus has more to say about faith as He speaks about His coming again and the end times.
He given no timetables and every generation of the church is called upon to watch the times and to be attentive to His word.
And while it is true that every generation has increased its power to destroy, our times are also unique in their possibilities.
It is not just that we have unparalleled potential to blow up the surface of the planet, but we can do it by industrial pollution as well as by military hardware.
More than that, the further we depart from the things of God then the easier it is to rationalize what we are doing so that the realities of repentance are set aside.
And more than that, it is as the community and culture are most inclined to dismiss any kind of moral and spiritual judgment from God that we are all most vulnerable to being taken unawares.
Hence Jesus’ command to His church – in every generation – to be alert and to watch the signs of the times. It is when people are most indolent in their faith and most inclined to use the church as a vehicle for their political and cultural agendas that is most likely to be caught out and found to be at fault.
If our times seem to be threatening, we may be sure that the church has seen more threatening times in the past.
If we delude ourselves with a false peace then we also open ourselves to the judgments of Isaiah, and of Sodom and Gomorrah.
To be real, that peace starts with God and His call to repent and believe: strangely enough, these are the opening thoughts of the Gospel of Mark.
And yes, we should take it all very seriously.
