Ahead, and to the side
Sermon for Holy Trinity Church, Llandudno; 27 October 2019
The churches of the Ministry Area of Llandudno are spending a year following the lectionary and themes of Brian McLaren’s We Make the Road by Walking. This sermon is the ninth of the first season, “Alive in the Story of Creation”.
Exodus 1:1–14; 3:1–15; Galatians 5:1, 13–15; St John 8:1–11
+ In nomine
Hold these two things together: know the way ahead, and look to the side.
Eleven days ago, an articulated truck drove along the A55, past Llandudno Junction, on its way from the port at Holyhead to one of the Channel ports in the south-east of England, and from there on to the continent. Six days ago, as it made its final journey from Zeebrugge in Belgium to the port of Purfleet in Kent, 39 men and women were hidden in the refrigerated container trailer at the back of that same truck. And there, at the mercy of people traffickers, and carrying little more than their dreams of a better, freer, life — a life like ours — there, at the back of that articulated truck, they suffocated to death in the dark.
Thousands of years ago, in the times of the Book of Exodus, the people of Israel were held, enslaved, suffering and oppressed, at the mercy of their Egyptian taskmasters. And Moses is called and sent to bring God’s people, the Israelites, out of Egypt — to set God’s people free — “to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey.”
In the days of Jesus Christ, a woman is brought to him, caught in the very act of committing adultery — only the woman, you understand. “The law commands that we stone her to death,” they say to Jesus. “Now what do you say?” And the God who heard the cry of the oppressed in Egypt, the God who called Moses, the God who led the Israelites through the Red Sea, replies “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her;” and the woman’s persecutors, weighed down with shame, melt away.
The way ahead, the way we ought to take, the divine path ordained by God, is clear for us in Scripture and in conscience. It runs, luminously, brightly, from captivity in Egypt through the Red Sea; in runs past that encounter in the Jerusalem street where the woman stands in fear of her life; it hangs like a shadow over that articulated truck we have seen on the news. The way ahead, the way we ought to take, the divine path ordained by God, is the path of freedom and justice and compassion. Amid the complexity of life, amid all our doubts and anxieties, that way ahead is breathtakingly simple and clear.
When we are heedless of the needs of others, when we are selfish or angry, when we are careless in our words and deeds, we can be in no doubt that we are out of that way — sinfully so. Be it in our own very personal lives, as we live with family and friends and colleagues; or be it in the decisions we make about politics and climate change and national identity — the way ahead, the way we ought to take, the path of freedom and justice and compassion, is almost always there for us, luminous and bright.
Where in your life have you been veering off that way recently? And how can you walk more surely along that way this coming week?
Hold these two things together: know the way ahead, and look to the side.
Look to the side:
There is also, of course, a great danger in being so very sure that we know the way ahead, the way we ought to take, the divine path ordained by God.
If we’re convicted that we know the way, and brook no doubt or dissent in that conviction, then that way also lies self-righteousness, and the obnoxiousness that belongs to somebody who never stops to question whether, perhaps, they are wrong. As Pope Francis preached in Rome this very morning, “To consider ourselves righteous is to leave God, the only righteous one, out in the cold.”
And that is why the Christian life demands that we hold these two things together: we are called to know the way ahead, to be clear that God’s path for us is that of freedom and justice and compassion; but we are also called to look to the side, to question, to humble ourselves, to check.
Notice how Moses turns aside to notice the burning bush — and it is only in that turning aside, in that paying attention, that he realizes the holiness of the moment and the importance of his call.
Notice how Jesus, confronted by the persecutors thrusting the condemned woman at him, stops and bends down and writes with his finger in the sand — and it is only in that silence, in that odd moment of stillness and calm, that the crowd’s consciences begin to burn with shame and self-realization.
Here as we make our Communion, or at home in silent prayer, or on the Orme amid the shafts of sunlight and the sharp breeze, where do you find your moment to turn aside in humility and right self-doubt to hold your path before God?
Hold these two things together: know the way ahead, and look to the side.
On the A55 on the way over this morning, I see that the electronic billboards are warning hauliers about the customs changes that may be coming on the first of November — a side-effect of that existential political questioning that’s currently debilitating our national life; a reminder of the state of things and the constant need for righteous, self-reflective wisdom.
So let us pray this week, for ourselves, for our communities, and above all for the least, the last and the lost of our world — that the way of freedom and justice and compassion may better known, and that visions of God may humble and sustain us on the way.
