CHRIST CHURCH CATHEDRAL DUBLIN
THE SECOND SUNDAY BEFORE ADVENT, 2009

The next few weeks in this country are going to be difficult weeks. Public sector workers will be going on strike for a day, with further strikes promised. Our government, (which for so long seemed to have lost the will to govern,) has finally woken up to the fact that this country is bankrupt and is suggesting to public sector workers that if things go on as they are at present there will be no money to pay them. As it is we are borrowing money at a rate that cannot be sustained. Private sector workers have been losing jobs, taking pay cuts of 10%, or 20%, or in one case I have come across, 40%, and that from a relatively poor starting point, they point to public sector workers job security, pay and pensions. Those of us involved in schools are only too well aware that public sector jobs have been lost, and levies on income are having an effect.

Our current economic crisis, for that is what it is, a crisis, is no longer simply a matter of economics. It clearly has social consequences. There are those, for whatever reason, who seek to set public and private workers against each other. The truth lies somewhere in between, and is not as black and white as some would suggest. I, for one, became frustrated with politicians who blamed the international financial crisis for our current difficulties. The reality is a failure to properly regulate the property market, and to regulate financial institutions, and a failure to offer leadership in facing reality. But so long as the party continued, and we all enjoyed the party, we continued to vote to continue it despite the warning signs. So we all have a share in the responsibility to put it right. All our concerns were centred on keeping the economy going. To do so we placed our faith in the ‘markets.’ They have been shown to have feet of clay.

The Bible speaks to us about times of crisis, times when decisions have to be made. In such times there grew up a literature that has come to be called ‘apocalyptic.’ We have heard two readings from such literature this morning. The first was from Daniel. It was written in a time of crisis and unrest in Jewish history. It is set in the time of the Exile, but shows a knowledge of a later period when Judah was ruled by the Seleucids. One of those rulers, Antiochus Epiphanes tried to ban Jewish practices, desecrated the Temple, and provoked an uprising that led to much bloodshed.

Daniel was written to offer encouragement and hope to a people who were rapidly losing it. So we have the story of the faithful Daniel and his friends surviving the fiery furnace, and Daniel surviving the lion’s den. Such trials were visited on them because they openly kept faith with God. The conflict faced by Daniel and his friends was set within the wider cosmic conflict in which God overcomes all opposition. The message to the readers of Daniel is one of hope. In times of conflict and crisis put your trust in God.

We have heard a similar message in the psalm (16) we have used this morning. “Preserve me, O God, for in you I have taken refuge....” While the psalmist sees others chasing after idols, his resolve is to maintain is trust in God. Why? “You will show me the path of life; in your presence is the fullness of joy, and in your right hand are pleasures for evermore.” His faith in God gives him the confidence that he will not be abandoned, even in death.

Jesus, in his time, had come into conflict in the Temple in Jerusalem, and with the religious authorities that ran it. He had disrupted its rituals when he drove out the traders and money changers. It was, he said, to be a place of prayer, a place where people could listen to, and speak to God. Again the gospel reading that we have heard this morning from Mark 13, is a chapter that reflects the church’s situation after the year 70. In that year the Roman authorities destroyed the Temple, and both Jews and Christians had to flee for their lives in a time of terrible unrest. The early church could find consolation and hope in words Jesus himself had expressed about the destruction of the Temple, and the false leaders who would lead the people astray.

If I had a euro for every time someone spoke to me about the end of the world with its ‘wars and rumours of wars’ I would be a rich man. But it is not about the end of the world. It is about keeping faith with Jesus, being alert for false teachers and leaders who would lead us astray. In a time of crisis Mark tells us to keep the faith, and be alert, a message we shall hear again in Advent.

So we come to our own time. What of us? Recently the Chief Rabbi in England, Jonathan Sachs, gave a lecture in which he argued that only those cultures that respect faith survive. This is how he began: “Religion’s survival in the 21st. century cuts across some of our most basic intellectual assumptions. After all, how can anyone need religion if to explain the universe we have science; to control the universe we have technology; to negotiate power we have politics; to achieve prosperity we have economics. If you’re ill you go to a doctor, not a priest. If you feel guilty, you go to a psychotherapist, not to confession. If you are depressed you take Prozac and not the Book of Psalms. And if you seek salvation you go to our new cathedrals, namely shopping centres, where you can buy happiness at extremely competitive prices.” (quoted in The Tablet, 12/11/09. p. 12.)

He went on to ask, in the light of what he had just suggested, why has religion survived. His answer was this: “Home sapiens is a meaning seeking animal. Alone among life forms we ask the big questions, Who am I? Why am I here? How then shall I live?” He suggested to his listeners that to understand why these are religious questions to consider the 4 alternatives that recent centuries have produced: the market, the state, science, philosophy. He suggested that “There has been a principled abdication of the search for meaning by these 4 great institutions of modernity that has created the space which religion has returned to fill, and which indeed it always did fill.”

In all of our speaking of our economic crisis we have yet to begin to ask the kind of fundamental questions our faith leads us to ask. For example: What kind of society might we become if we took seriously those commands of God we hear Sunday by Sunday to love Him, and to love our neighbours as ourselves? As we consider such fundamental issues let us not forget our reading from Hebrews, and be encouraged to meet together, and encourage one another in our worship and our living.

Neil McEndoo