I am confused

From Wellington Cathedral of St Paul

I am confused: 30th October 2011: pm: The Very Revd Frank Nelson

• Psalm 150
• Isaiah 65: 17 - 25
• Hebrews 11: 32 – 12: 2

I am confused. Following weeks of pseudo-religious advertising, inviting us to enter Rugby Heaven and read the Gospel according to the All Blacks, we now have Wellington’s Museum of City and Sea inviting the public to “honour a loved one by contributing items such as photographs and poems to the community altar at the museum”. There are a few more lines on the Museum’s website explaining that “These altars are built with the cultural belief that spirits briefly return to earth in order to maintain a connection with the living and re-experience the sensory world.” Further reading informs us that we can listen to a talk by Claudia Arozqueta, curator of Enjoy Public Art Gallery, speaking about death and Mexican culture. I might have been tempted to go along to the lecture, had it not clashed with the service in this cathedral marking the Feast of All Souls’ on Wednesday night. But I do wonder about the “community altar” at a museum, and the motivation behind it?

At least part of my sense of being so intrigued with the way secular culture is using religious terminology, is that for centuries Christians have done the same – taken secular and pagan culture and language and made it Christian. Think of the way in which Christmas trees and Easter eggs became part of Christian culture. Some have called this a process of baptising paganism, a phrase I find particularly helpful. So over the next few days not only will we have the accustomed ‘trick or treating’ and the absurd sight of office workers exchanging their sombre Wellington-black suits for those of ghosts and ghouls and making their way along the waterfront to one or other favourite drinking hole, we now also have a community altar in a museum. I suppose it is not that different really to a cathedral hosting an art exhibition, pop concert or rugby icon!

When we look at the passages selected from the Bible to be read at All Saints and All Souls a very different picture emerges. Tonight’s reading from Isaiah 65 has to offer one of the most beautiful and profound visions of the future. It comes as part of several chapters at the end of a long book. Scholars have long separated Isaiah into three sections – roughly coinciding with a period in the life of Jerusalem well before the Babylonian Exile, beginning in 587BC; the excitement at the end of the Exile when Cyrus, head of the newly emerging Persian empire, allowed exiles to return to their homes; and a period some decades after all that excitement, when the initial rebuild had been done. Chapter 65 is part of this last part of the book, known as Trito, third, Isaiah.

If ever there was a passage that suited the ideals of the so-called 99 percenters, presently camping out in the world’s major cities, and causing such headaches for the Dean and his colleagues at St Paul’s Cathedral in London, this is it. Here is a vision of society where exploitation is a thing of the past; where fairness, equity and justice are concepts that reign supreme. This is a vision of the kingdom of God on earth as it can only be dreamt about. Surely any political leader who dared to use these verses from Isaiah 65 as his or her manifesto would be laughed out of parliament! But they are wonderful words. Listen to some of them again. It is God who is speaking. “I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and delight in my people; no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it … no more shall there be an infant that lives but a few days old …they shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. They shall not build and another inhabit …. The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox … they shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain.”

A thousand years before these words were written, the old prophet priest Samuel had warned the people what the king they asked for would bring. “He will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots … he will appoint for himself commanders … some to plow his land and some to reap his harvest … he will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers … he will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards … he will take one-tenth of your grain … he will take … he will take …. And in that day you will cry out … but the Lord will not hear you.” God had warned Israel of the outcome of their choice to be like other nations and have a king, a warning that went unheeded and ended in disaster for all of them. Isaiah 65 offers a restoration to an earlier time of happiness and fulfilment.

Tonight’s reading from Isaiah has echoes too of the Garden of Eden, that mythical place of harmony, beauty and peace from which Adam and Eve were expelled. It is interesting though that, having given us the lovely picture of the wolf and lamb, the lion and the ox – so reminiscent of a poem in an earlier chapter in Isaiah – we are left with a reminder of the end of the Garden of Eden story in the after-thought of “the serpent – its food shall be dust!”

If Isaiah 65 contains the promise of the glorious life offered in God’s new creation, the New Testament reading from Hebrews reminds us that, far from enjoying this new life, most people had held on to the vision in order to get through the terrible sufferings inflicted on them. Hebrews 11 begins by taking us back to the beginning, and tracing the story of faith in God through the well-known names of the past: Abel, Noah, Abraham and Sarah, Moses and Rahab. The pace picks up where our reading began and the author gets somewhat carried away as he refers to people who “through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, shut the mouths of lions, quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword… suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment, were stoned to death, sawn in two, went about in skins… destitute, persecuted, tormented….” None of them lost faith in God! Nor should you, says the writer of Hebrews. We have something better – “surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses (what a lovely descriptive phrase), let us lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.”

Here is the point of All Saints. The saints are those who, trusting in God, believing in Jesus Christ, have gone before us. They are an example to us. They serve to inspire, encourage, cajole. They are worthy of remembrance and celebration. A few are known, their deeds, thinking, even writings, documented and passed on down the generations; some even have a particular date on which we remember them. But the vast majority of God’s faithful people – all the saints of every generation, are known only to God and perhaps the generation immediately after them. Those who have influenced us, mentored us, been the role models in our life, are part of that cloud of witnesses for which we give thanks at this time.

How different is a truly Christian celebration of All Saints and Halloween (the eve of All Hallows, All Saints) to the trite trick or treating, and somewhat childish dressing up by adults using a concept so wonderful and glorious as yet another excuse for binge drinking and general excess.

As I prepared to preach tonight an email came through to tell me that one of my mentors had died. I dedicate this sermon to the Very Revd Roy Barker, mentor, friend, faithful priest, saint of God. May he rest in peace and rise in glory.