On the last Saturday before the General Election at least two parliamentary candidates visited the Priory’s Christmas in the Courtyard. Tonight at Evensong Canon Andrew Willie in his sermon urged us not only to be prayerful about how we cast our vote on Thursday, but also ” to love those whose views are not the same as our own. ”
Canon Willie’s Sermon in Full
Today’s lessons for Evensong reflect the fact that among the concerns of Advent is the ministry of St. John the Baptist. This ministry fitted some of the Jewish expectations of the forerunner of the Messiah. Curiously, the expectations were drawn fairly widely and not fully defined. That said, John was looked upon by many of his contemporaries as the new Elijah referred to in the book of Malachi (4:5). Hence our first lesson speaks of Elijah’s dealings with the prophets of Baal. I’m afraid that it did not give you the full story. The next verse describes how the defeated prophets of Baal were butchered. Its omission shows that because of Jesus and the love He preached our emphasis in the 21st Century is a little different.
In fact John denies that he is Elijah; he even denies that he is a prophet vaguely referred to in the book of Deuteronomy (18:18-19) who is told to speak God’s word to the Nations. Instead, John refers to himself as a ‘voice crying in the wilderness’. This is more significant than superficially seems to be the case.
The book of Isaiah witnesses to the sayings of two different prophets. The first at the time of King Heziakia writes before the exile and speaks of a Messiah as a great leader who will save the Jewish Nation. The second, sometimes called Isaiah of the Exile, speaks of the return of the Jews from Babylon and has as his key figure a Suffering Servant. John quotes from near the beginning of the work of Isaiah of the Exile (40:3) talking of ‘a voice crying in the wilderness’ and later speaks of a Suffering Servant rather than a military leader. He thus shows the sort of person that Jesus will be.
The tension between being a military leader and being a Suffering Servant was with Jesus all his ministry. It was certainly there at The Temptations when He totally rejected the idea of being a great military leader and failing to fulfil expectations, inevitably became a Suffering Servant.
For us, the expectation is that Jesus will one day return to judge a world in melt-down. When he does so, there will be no forerunner to warn the world of what is happening.
The world is constantly threatened by mismanagement by human beings, mismanagement in terms of war and of a vanity which makes us feel we can handle situations when we can’t. Currently we are threatened by the phenomenon of global warming. It is in our hands to stop it with God’s guidance and help.
This coming Thursday, we go to polling stations to elect a new parliament. We need to be very prayerful. We need also to love those whose views are not the same as our own. It was very strange, but soon after I was ordained two people independently spoke to me of politics within three days of each other. One said you cannot be a Christian and a Conservative: the other that you can’t be a Christian and a Socialist. They were both very wrong. We are meant to see that our Christian influence needs to be spread throughout society and its political parties.
That said, I am very worried about a recent statement by President Putin. What he said was this; that liberal democracy was dead and being replaced by a new populism. Populism was what led to the French and Russian Revolutions. It was also behind Hitler’s rise to power and the absolute wickedness of many of his policies. My wife and I went and looked at an exhibition of what Hitler called ‘Degenerate Art’ produced in the Weimar Republic. He used this approach to attack Jewish artists such as Hans Feibusch who escaped to this country from Germany, and so avoided the Holocaust. Feibusch went on to decorate churches and cathedrals and his one secular work is the beautiful mural in Newport Civic Centre.
The trouble with populism is that it leaves no room for meditative consideration of problems before God. It encourages people to go with the crowd. Hence when Jesus went into Jerusalem that first Palm Sunday he was seen as a Messiah in the old sense to make Israel great again. When the crowd understood that he was not going to do this, they shouted for his crucifixion. As for the authorities, those of the Temple connived at his death and the Roman Governor handled the situation badly. Instead of recognising the religious truth which Jesus embodied, all he could do was ask cynically, ‘what is truth?’
We need this Thursday as we cast our votes prayerfully to consider the teaching of Jesus, and to realise that if we wish to make our country great, we must also strive to make it morally good and with regard to the proper tolerance of a liberal democracy in which all people respect the rights of others as much as they respect their own.
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St Mary's Priory Church, Abergavenny 