Almost But Not Yet

RCL Proper 19C
8 August 2010

Saint Francis in the Wood Anglican Church
West Vancouver BC

Propers: Isaiah 1.1, 10-20; Psalm 50.1-8, 22-23; Hebrews 11.1-3, 8-16; Luke 12.32-40


Collect of the Day

Almighty God, you sent your Holy Spirit to be the life and light of your Church. Open our hearts to the riches of your grace, that we may bring forth the fruit of the Spirit in love, joy, and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. [The Book of Alternative Services]

Almighty God, you sent your Holy Spirit to be the life and light of your church. Open our hearts to the riches of your grace, that we may be ready to receive you wherever you appear, through Jesus Christ, our Saviour and Lord. Amen. [ Evangelical Lutheran Worship]

God of judgement and grace, you ask not for sacrifices, but lives of trusting faith that acknowledge your power and mercy. Give us faith as deep and strong as Abraham’s and Sarah’s, that we may follow you through all our days as did Jesus Christ our Saviour. Amen. [ Revised Common Lectionary Prayers]

Focus Text: Isaiah 1.1, 10-20 1 The vision of Isaiah son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.

10 Hear the word of the LORD, you rulers of Sodom! Listen to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah! 11 What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the LORD; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats.  12 When you come to appear before me, who asked this from your hand? Trample my courts no more; 13 bringing offerings is futile; incense in an abomination to me. New moon and Sabbath and calling of convocation --- I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity. 14 Your new moons and your appointed festivals my soul hates; they have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them. 15 When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. 16 Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, 17 learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.  18 Come now, let us argue it out, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. 19 If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; 20 but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword; for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.

Sermon Text

When I was in secondary school, I fell in love with algebra. In algebra there is an unknown which can be discovered if one follows the right processes and pursues a course of mathematical logic. I experienced a sensation of pure satisfaction when I could finally say, “The unknown factor ‘x’ equals 23.” Of all the things that I learned, algebra provided me with a means of reaching ‘the right answer’.

Early in my undergraduate years I learned that I was required to take an additional course in mathematics. I cheerfully enrolled in Calculus 100. Armed with my algebraic skills, I launched into the study of calculus assuming that I would be learning even more about the exact science of mathematics. To my chagrin I learned that calculus was the science of the ‘almost but not yet’. Our professor illustrated the art of calculus by demonstrating the familiar parlour riddle: 

• Walk to one side of a room.
• Put your back to the wall.
• Walk halfway across the room.
• Then walk halfway across the remaining distance. Then walk halfway again.
• When do you reach the other wall?


Our senses, perhaps even our nose as it bumps against the wall, tell us that we reach the other wall fairly quickly. But a quick examination of the actual mathematics tells us that, if we keep halving the distance, then we will never really reach the other wall.


Calculus, unlike algebra, is not about getting ‘the right answer’. It’s about coming so close to the right answer that the difference does not matter. In some ways calculus is a more humble form of mathematics, a discipline willing to admit that it does not always reach its goal.  But it keeps trying nevertheless.


The Christian life, when lived in genuine faith, has more in common with calculus than with algebra. For some Christians an algebraic church, a church with ‘the right answers’, is more desirable than a church that claims to be ‘almost but not yet right’. But if the sin of the ‘almost but not yet right’ church is an uncomfortable ambiguity, then the sin of the algebraic church is arrogance.  And it is arrogance that stirred up the prophets of Israel.


For the past few Sundays we have heard the words of the prophets of ancient Israel who wrote, for the most part, during the 8th century before our present era. This was a critical time in the life of the people whom God had brought out of Egypt. The land had come to be divided into two kingdoms: Israel in the north and Judah in the south. The prophet Hosea whose words we heard for the last two Sundays proclaimed God’s word to the people of the Northern Kingdom for a period of thirty years. He began his prophetic ministry at the end of “a century of political stability and economic prosperity in the Northern Kingdom”. (The New Oxford Annotated Bible)   To the east, however, a new imperial power was rising, Assyria. The emergence of Assyria brought a prolonged national crisis which would end with the destruction of the Northern Kingdom in 722 BCE.

In the Northern Kingdom the social inequities between rich and poor that had been present before the rise of Assyria became worse as Assyria grew in its imperial ambitions and its political pressure upon the Northern Kingdom. (The New Interpreter's Bible) Armed conflict with Assyria and with the Southern Kingdom of Judah depleted the economic resources of the North. (The New Interpreter's Bible)   “The richer classes intensified their exploitation of the peasants in order to pay these debts. Many resorted to fraud and cheating.” (The New Interpreter's Bible)  For Hosea all this was a sign that the people had abandoned their loyalty to the God who had brought them out of Egypt and that the eventual destruction of the Northern Kingdom was inevitable.


Today we hear the voice of the prophet Isaiah, perhaps a member of a priestly family in Jerusalem, most certainly a member of Judah’s social elite. Like his northern colleague, Isaiah had a lengthy career, stretching for at least three, if not four, decades. Like his northern colleague, Isaiah saw “the growth of large estates owned by aristocrats and the consequent impoverishment of the peasantry.” (The Jewish Study Bible)The rich were accumulating great wealth and growing in haughtiness while the poor descended into greater poverty and desperation. (The Jewish Study Bible)


Isaiah believed that the Northern Kingdom had chosen badly and had reaped the consequences of its failure to be faithful to the covenant God made with all the people. As he looked around at the state of affairs in the south, Isaiah was equally convinced that Kingdom of Judah was following the same course and would also reap the consequences of its faithlessness. We can almost hear his voice saying, “Choosing the right political answer may win you time, but it will cost you your soul and, eventually, your life.” Political and economic algebra was coming face to face with theological and prophetic calculus.


At such a time as this, shall we choose a path that seems more certain or a path that may seem more risky? Isaiah warns the people that claiming security in familiar forms of religious practice may not, in fact, be what God expects: “What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the LORD; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats.” (Isaiah 1.11) With these words God is not condemning the ritual itself, but the failure of the community to understand that the ritual was an expression of what they were called to do in their daily lives: “Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.” (Isaiah 1.16-17)


What God expects is that we choose the difficult path of faithfulness to our baptismal covenant rather than certainty. God calls us to join in the mission that God began in creation. This mission involves bringing all creation into fullness of life and into right relationship. It is a difficult course because it always requires the recognition that all our efforts are ‘almost but not yet’. It requires the humility of calculus rather than the arrogance of algebra. But this more humble way has been our way from the beginning of the Christian movement.


When the earliest Christian communities sought a word to describe themselves, they quickly latched on to a word with long usage among their non-Christian Greek neighbours. The word they chose was ekklēsia, a word drawn from politics rather than religion. The word itself means ‘a public assembly of free citizens summoned from their daily pursuits in order to take counsel and to act on behalf of the common good’. Quite a burden from one word with four syllables to bear, isn’t it?


Over the centuries since the earliest days of the Christian movement it has been easy for the ekklēsia to forget the meaning of our assembly. We are here not as members of a club, not as members of a fraternal society, not even as members of a social agency. Christians gather Sunday after Sunday as ‘a public assembly of free citizens summoned from their daily pursuits in order to take counsel and to act on behalf of the common good’.


What we have been summoned to do is to participate in leitourgia. Leitourgia is another word our ancestors in the faith borrowed from the non-Christian Greco-Roman culture. We are perhaps accustomed to using the word ‘liturgy’ to mean ‘a ritual act’ or even ‘the work of the people’, but the word is richer than either of those meanings. Leitourgia is ‘a public work voluntarily undertaken for the common good’. Our sacred assemblies are summoned by God to participate in God’s public work voluntarily undertaken for the good of the whole kosmos, the entire creation.


When the ekklēsia gathers to participate in leitourgia, what God expects is what God has always expected. We are gathered to take counsel and to act on behalf of the common good. When we are gathered here, we are not entering some airtight bubble which isolates us from the world. On the contrary, when the Christian people gather to pray and to worship, we do so not for ourselves alone, but for every living creature, human and non-human, for every human being, Christian and non-Christian. We take counsel so that we might discern what is the common good and to commit ourselves to work for that common good --- even if it means giving our very lives, whether physically or socially.


Several years ago I heard a bishop of our church express his concern that we had been talking too much about justice and not enough about theology. I remembered that Archbishop Desmond Tutu once said that, whenever he hears people say that politics and justice are not the church’s business, he wonders what Bible they are reading. Throughout the prophets, especially those of the 8th century among whom Isaiah is numbered, justice is the central issue. For the prophets injustice is a sure sign of infidelity to God. When religious people divide their lives into sacred and secular, public and private, they have begun to walk a path that will lead them away from faithfulness to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God who raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead, the God who quickens through the Holy Spirit this varied and fractious people who call themselves ‘Christians’.


Justice, in the Hebrew scriptures, means treating every human being as an ends in herself or himself rather than as a means to achieve my purposes. Justice, in the Hebrew scriptures, means treating every human being as one in whom the ruach ha kodesh, the living Spirit of God, dwells. Justice, in the Hebrew scriptures, means that every human being is a member of a community which has obligations and responsibilities to ensure every person’s dignity.


I spoke of the difference between algebra, the mathematics of ‘the right answer’, and calculus, the mathematics of ‘the almost but not yet’. We Anglicans are committed to ‘the almost but not yet’ of God’s reign of justice. We see God’s reign on the horizon and we move half-way towards it. Then we move half-way again. Then half-way again. We can see the destination and we know we are coming closer. But we cannot ultimately close the gap ourselves; there will always been space between where we are and where God is calling us to go.


Time will tell whether we halved the distance between where we are and where God would have us be. But God knows that we came in the response to God’s summons to “seek justice, (to) rescue the oppressed, (to) defend the orphan, (to) plead for the widow.” (Isaiah 1.16-17)


My sisters and brothers, you and I have been summoned here because God knows that we are committed to the common good of this community, Christian and non-Christian alike. We know the challenges that are faced by the people who live here, young and old, rich and poor, powerful and weak. We know what God expects of those who have been marked with the sign of the cross. Let us not be afraid to act. May our assemblies for worship never become a formality unconnected from the community in which we live. May our prayers never become merely texts to be recited rather than pledges of what we will do when this assembly is over. May we always remember that just as Christ offers himself to us in the bread and the wine, so are we called to offer ourselves to others.


The prophet Isaiah condemned the people of Israel and Judah because they thought that they had ‘the right answer’. They believed that their rituals insulated them from the demands of the covenant. What God wanted of them and wants of us is that we commit ourselves to the path of ‘the almost but not yet’, being humble enough to acknowledge that we do not yet have ‘the answer’ but being courageous enough to halve the distance again and again and again if it will bring us closer to God’s promised reign of justice and peace. Amen.