Evensong At Westminster Abbey

I preached this afternoon at Westminster Abbey. I never quite say what I have in the text in front of me, for a sermon is a living thing, open one prays to the Spirit even in the process of delivery. So, though this was not quite what I said, this is the text I took with me. 

The readings were: Job 13:13-14:6 and Hebrews 2:5-end

A few months ago one of my sons was walking down the corridor in his regional university when a couple of lads and will up to him and asked him in the patois of the London gangs, “what is your Ns mate?” Having been brought up in North London he gave the right postcode and a sticky moment passed off safely. Part of the terrible attraction of the gangs which are causing so much grief and fear in so many parts of London is the search which is summed up in our text this evening: what is man that there are mindful of him? Young people search to know who they are and in a perverse way membership of the gang gives the security, structure and familiarity that is missing for so many in our atomised and disparate society.

If the problem is particular, the question is perennial: what is man that thou art mindful of him? Who am I, what am I, what is my place and meaning and purpose?

And the answer which we reach for is usually one of power. The burden of Job’s speech is that his powerlessness and weakness is a sign that his life is futile. No power no purpose. And he castigates God for bothering even to judge such a wretched creature:

Man that is born of a woman is of few days and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down: he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not. And doth thou open thine eyes upon such an one, and bringest me into judgment with thee?

This is the despair out of which the violence of the postcode gangs is born on our streets and the global struggles between our nations. Beguiled by the devil the father of lies there is a search for meaning in the exercise of power, which Job correctly discerns is ephemeral, no foundation for meaning in life: The waters wear the stones: thou washest away the things which grow out of the dust of the earth; and thou destroyest the hope of man. 

One is reminded of Shelley’s poem describing the massive monument to Ozymandius King of Kings, whose statue lies broken in the desert, a symbol of the meaninglessness of all human power and status.  

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

What is man? To know the answer to this question is to know the purpose of human life, and thus to see how hope can be offered to those who are caught up in the gangs on our streets and to the souls who despair in the daily grind of the offices and factories of our cities and to understand how we should approach the geopolitics of our age. Surely the answer is not simply that there is nothing beyond a doomed attempt to grasp at power and always to face in the end defeat and death.

Last week one of the members of staff at the diocesan office brought her new baby in to meet everyone at the summer staff bbq. He was adorable and everyone gathered round the centre of attention. He was much more powerful than the General Secretary and much more powerful than the archdeacon. Because he was weak.

In the letter to the Hebrews we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man

Jesus who was a baby for us, and who was emptied for us on the cross and who died for us. God could have come in power to redeem the world and save us from our futility, but even the most benign of powerful rulers lack the power which lies at the heart of weakness.

What is man that thou art mindful of him? asks Job. Humanity is made important because God is mindful of us in our weakness. Because God came to us in the power of weakness it is by eschewing power and open ourselves in the weakness and vulnerability of love that we come to him. In the Book of Job, it is as Job acknowledges his utter hopelessness and inability to have power that he at last begins to get an answer to his questions. His suffering is not a punishment for some hidden sin he has committed nor simply a misfortune, but a tool by which he is able to learn how to find salvation.

All the beguiling temptations to look for salvation or purpose in power or wealth or status – even the status of the righteous man and leader in religion – are useless. It is when all those false hopes are stripped away that the Lord answers Job out to the whirlwind, and for four amazing chapters tells Job in no uncertain terms that he is tiny and nothing compared with the majesty and might of the creator who laid the foundations of the earth and created the stars and the heavens, and the seas and all leviathan who takes his pastime in the deeps.

But it is this God, so infinitely more than we are, who has come to us in Jesus Christ, who is tempted as we are,but without sin, so that we who are tempted might not despair, who was an unborn child for us; who was born for us; who matured and lived like us, and who died as we die. God who in short is mindful of us – of us, of me and of you. And that is what makes us significant and gives us meaning.

We are told, and it is true, that lives can be changed and saved, whether it is those who are dragged despairing to drugs or sucked into gangs or tempted into abusive relationships or fall into lethargy and cynicism, if only they can be given purpose. But none of the purposes of this world have any eternal meaning, and so they are all in the end simply distractions from the abyss. With Job we can look into the abyss and see there that Christ gives genuine empowerment.

Which is why in this great church where we see the tombs of Queens and Kings and the memorials of the great and the good and the powerful and the strong, we have nothing greater or better to put at the centre of our worship than the cross, the sign of weakness and defeat and death. For in this is life.

If we would heal the world of its ills, we do not look to offer false hope in earthy powers, but true hope in the fact that we are eternally significant. God is mindful of us. This is purpose in this world and life and peace in the next.