Rev’d Dr. Leander Harding

Homily for the Morning Office, January 17, 2009

Mere Anglicanism, Charleston SC

By the Chaplain, The Rev. Dr. Leander S. Harding

The Old Testament lesson this morning is from the beginning of Chapter 43 of Isaiah. Chapter 42 has been a chapter of God’s judgment upon the idols and upon Israel for following the idols. The purpose of judgment in the Bible is never simply condemnation. The purpose of judgment is that the people might turn and be saved. Eugene Peterson, the great spiritual writer and interpreter of the Bible, paraphrases the end of Chapter 42 thus; “Their whole world collapsed but they still did not get it, their life is in ruins but they didn’t take it to heart.”

So we come to the reading this morning, “But now thus says the Lord. . .Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name and you are mine.” There then comes a description of how God is gathering His people who have been divided and scattered. Peterson puts it, “Don’t be afraid. I will round up all your scattered children.”

God then sets up a tribunal. This is my paraphrase, “Bring the doubters and idolaters, the people who doubt that God lives and that He intervenes in the lives of His people. Let them assemble and let them explain both the judgment and the redemption, both the exile and the return. Let them give their witness. But you Israel whose world has collapsed because you have abandoned me and yet whom I have not abandoned, whom I rescue and whom I redeem, you are my witnesses. I am the Lord and beside me is no savior.”

The church is always in the process of retracing the history and experience of Israel. Certainly Peterson’s paraphrase of Isaiah seems an apt description of much of the church life in the old Christendom and apt to our corner of the Anglican world. “Their whole world collapsed and they didn’t take it to heart.” The story of a great deal of the church is the story of fracturing, division and scattering. Taken case by case, congregation by congregation, diocese by diocese, these divisions involve difficult and even agonizing decisions of witness and conscience. But from another perspective it is Israel divided and persecuted and exiled on account of her faithlessness. What is this except God’s doing? What is this except the hand of His judgment upon us?

What I said yesterday, I repeat again this morning. Hidden within the word of God’s judgment is a word of grace, mercy and salvation. The Lord casts down and He raises up that we might know and trust Him and witness that He alone saves.

The Church is broken and scattered. Even where there is unity in a congregation or a diocese it is a unity that is poignantly in the face of great loss. Yet we hear this morning that God gathers again those who have been scattered. He counts them as of great price and He seeks them out to bring them home. As we are knowing the breakup of the church, we are also seeing a new gathering of the church appear. God is bringing together His people in new ways. Something is happening of which this conference with its representation from all the pieces of divided Anglicanism in North America is perhaps a witness. Something is happening which moves in advance of institutional structures of the church and in advance of denominational frontiers, something fueled by the longing of a chastened people to turn back and to turn home.

God chastens His church and He restores it and the chastening no less than the restoration is the work of His love and part of the process whereby He makes us His witnesses and brings us to the point where we can confess that He alone is Holy, He alone is the Lord and that there is salvation in no other. So let this be. Amen.

Homily for the Morning Office at Mere Anglicanism

Charleston, South Carolina, January 16, 2009

By the Chaplain, The Rev. Dr. Leander S. Harding

Text: Isaiah 42: 10-17. “They shall be turned back, they shall be greatly ashamed, that trust in graven images, that say to the molten images, Ye are our gods.”

    The Bible records the history of the people of Israel as a contest between the one true and living God and the idols, the false gods, for the love and worship of God’s people. Will they remember Him who is the God their fathers, of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who delivered them with a mighty and outstretched hand and who is long-suffering and abounding in love, steadfast in mercy? Will they render him worship and obedience? Or will they be unfaithful to God and go whoring after the idols, in particular the fertility gods of the land? Inevitably they do forget the Lord their God and go after the idols. Then the drama is will they return or will they be destroyed.

    Their drama is our drama. The drama of the Old Israel is the drama of the new Israel as well. God is ever calling His people away from their idols and calling them home. If for no other reason than this the church must be simper reformandi, always reforming.

    In the light of the teaching of the Bible I define the idols in this way; the idols are gods we make with our own hands to serve our own purposes. It is characteristic of idols that they promise much and deliver little, that they require more and more and return less and less, that they always in the end demand human blood and starting with the blood of children.

    We must as faithful witnesses of Jesus Christ seek ways to communicate the good news of the Gospel in a language understood of the people. We must seek to connect in a winsome way with our times and our culture. It is always tempting therefore to succumb to the sin of Aaron and give the people the god they crave, the particular form of the golden calf demanded at the moment, a god who approves what they approve and cherishes what they cherish. Thereby we collude with them in their self-destruction and are at the front of the lemming like line marching to oblivion.

    Theology which makes as an explicit principle that god must be re-imagined for each new generation makes of idolatry a positive principle. But having orthodoxy as a theological principle is only protection against the crudest forms of the temptation to idolatry. There are idolatries enough to go around.

    Here this morning the prophet speaks God judgment on His people in their idol worship. “They shall be greatly ashamed.” Our idols will be shown to be the vain work of our own hands that lead us and our children to ruin and as always in the Bible because it is the Word of God and thus always a Word of love there is hidden in this word of judgment a word of grace, hope and salvation. “They shall be turned back.”

    Let us pray. Lord give us the grace to see how and where we are trading your revelation for an idol of our own making. Lift the scales from our eyes that we might see clearly the destruction of self and the corruption of others that idol making entails. Let us be ashamed. Turn us back that we might be saved. Bring us home at last. Amen.