Sermon given by Revd Maggie Hindley Sunday 10th November 2024
To mend the world. Tikkun Olam is a Jewish concept. God created the world good, but ft became flawed, and it’s the job of the faithful to fix the flaws, to bring the world to the beauty the Creator intends for it. For us Christians, Jesus is the supreme and decisive repairer of the breach. And tikkun olam is a useful idea for us, too, as we seek to work with Christ to reconcile all things to Godself.
What does a mended world look like? We sang it in our first hymn, based on Psalm 142. The oppressed are saved. The poor are fed. The blind see. The fainting mind and the labouring conscience are at peace. The distressed stranger is helped. Those without means of support too. And prisoners are released. No surprises; a mended world is a world of justice, of healing, and of enough for everyone. The story of the bible is a story of how God moves us to re-create it, stitch by stitch.
A mended world is not only for our own time and our own generation; it’s oriented to the future, our children and the world’s children. We don’t need to have lots of children, as Psalm 127 might seems to suggest, but we do need to build a world in which those who come after can thrive. That’s certainly a great motivator for our action on climate change above all.
What does a mender of the world look like? The lectionary gives us three stories today to illustrate that. They’re all women, refreshingly!
I’m so glad the book of Ruth is in our bible; it’s a story, of course, of loyalty across the divide of nationality, tribe and religion, but it’s also hugely entertaining, told with wit and innuendo and, in the Hebrew, lots of word play. Ruth is faithful to the mother in law she could have left in favour of going back to her parents. She accompanies her selflesly. And she takes an incredible risk on Naomi’s advice, lying down late at night next to the man Naomi has identified as a possible husband. What if he’d rejected her? What if he’d humiliated her in public? (And exactly what did happen between them on that threshing floor? – the text is quite suggestive!). Mending the world, it seems, takes chutzpah!
We didn’t have time to read the story of the widow of Zaraphath, about to die of starvation in a time of famine, who at the prophet’s request shared her last meal with him and was rewarded with a flour jar that never ran empty and a jug of oil that always had something in it. Give, the story seems to say, and it will be given to you. That’s exactly what Jesus says later in Luke’s gospel:
Give, and it will be given to you.
A good measure, pressed down,
shaken together, running over,
will be put into your lap.
Menders of the world are generous. I think of the stories that Christian Aid brings us of people in dire poverty whose generous hearts move and astonish us.
That same generosity in poverty is the point of the story of the widow’s mite, her last little bit of money, that she gives to God; and Mark contrasts it with the calculated generosity of her wealthy fellow worshippers. Mending the world takes everything we have. It holds nothing back.
We‘ve remembered just now those young men who went off to fight to mend the world and didn’t come back. Some went with chutzpah; some with a sense of fidelity to their country or king; some with generous hearts; some because they had to. All faced appalling conditions and incredible risk; and all those whose names we read lost their lives, leaving grieving families and sweethearts at home. It is essential to recognise the cost and to value the contribution they have made to our common search for the paths that lead to peace. Generous love, indeed.
There are many others whose generosity has contributed to the mending of the world. I think of those who came home damaged physically or emotionally; those who believed that mending the world could never involve the use of violence and who served, often riskily, as Conscientious Objectors. I think of dissidents the world over who have been murdered, imprisoned, tortured. And the freedom fighters, that so often the world has called terrorists and destroyed.
And journalists. Especially, this year, here in St Andrew’s Ealing, I think of the risks journalists take to bring us the truth on which our healing depends and give thanks.
How shall we ourselves begin to heal the world? – a world that desperately needs mending, and that for most of us here has become sunstantially more torn than it was this time last week?
We do have an answer. We have an answer in Jesus, who faced the worst that Empire and its collaborators could throw at him, who was executed, with exquisite cruelty and ugliness, and whose joyful proclamation of the peaceful kingdom was silenced. Except that it wasn’t, and that though he died life reasserted itself in the hearts and lives of his friends, and that his life continues, in us and beyond. We can take that personally; it means that all the negative, death dealing things in my life and in the world as I expereince it don’t have the last word.
As we remember those who died in the wars, we can remember too the life that can’t die, that animates the universe, that calls out wonder and reverence, that brings joy even in the midst of grief, hope in the midst of fear. That’s what prayer is about; remembering and remembering and remembering until that life – and not the trivial anxieties and greeds it’s so easy to latch on to – fills us and motivates us and become the hallmark of our time in this world.
Then, as we turn outwards, we live as though our one life has been given to us, not for our own satisfaction, but to mend the world. We discover in ourselves some of the chutzpah, and loyalty, and generosity and self-giving we saw in some of the biblical women and the boys who died in the wars. We live in wonder, and wonder gives us courage to engage.
How we engage depends on our age and interest and capacity. It’s good that this church is so engaged with the local community, and with adapting the building against climate change. Individually, by the profession we choose to and the way we do it; by our hands on volunteer work and our protesting; our letter writing and use of social media and our giving we create stitches where the world has been torn.
I’d like to stress today, especially for those of us who are getting out and about less as we get older, how important what we say is. We can choose to speak positively, and give hope, or to share our passive despair. Choose to give hope! We can choose to speak with contempt , with judgement, even hate, about those who are doing wrong – don’t do that! – or we can speak in a way that encourages curiosity, understanding, respect for the other’s humanity and finding ways through what’s gone wrong. We can choose to dwell on what divides, or about what unites, We can choose to switch off from what’s too difficult, or we can listen and read and learn. We can speak words that encourage those who are able to be more active. All these things help to mend, or make the tear longer and deeper.
We can make all the damage to the world of which we are aware our own business, and bring it, with all our distress about it, to what traditionalitss call the foot of the cross; we can bring it to the place where Jesus suffered all the pain of the world; we can let the light that shines from him enlighten us and illuminate the world with the sense that, under all the suffering, God lives and is working his purpose out in ways that we can barely even glimpse, but that are full of the most generous love.
