Cages and Trees


A Sermon for the Feast of the Hallowing of Derby Cathedral

Jeremiah 7.1-11; Luke 19.1-10

Nothing befits the solemn festivities of the feast of the Hallowing of Derby Cathedral more than a quotation from one of the foremost theologians of our age.  So let me share this as a theological gift to mark this feast: “I may not know much about God, but we built a pretty nice cage for him”.  “I may not know much about God, but we built a pretty nice cage for him”.



The theologian, for those who did not spot it, is Homer Simpson, patriarch and star of the long running animated family saga The Simpsons.  In one episode, Homer becomes a missionary in the South Pacific, and builds a chapel for the natives.  As the final piece of the chapel is put into its place, Homer says “I may not know much about God, but we built a pretty nice cage for him”.

Jeremiah would, I think, have recognised the satire behind Homer Simpson’s theology.  He stands in the gate of the Temple and proclaims to the people of God “Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.’”  The temple was the place in which God chose to dwell with his people, it truly was the house of God.  The temple was the place where God could be encountered.  But the danger that Jeremiah saw was that the people had become inward looking, seeing only the place and losing sight of the God that was to be encountered there.  All they saw was ‘the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord’.  They had ceased to encounter the Lord, the living God who was to be encountered in the temple.  In short, the temple had become a cage for God, in which he could be safely contained and from which any more challenging aspects of God could be safely ignored.  “I may not know much about God, but we built a pretty nice cage for him”.

On the roadside in Jericho there is a sycamore tree, keenly pointed out by guides to visitors and pilgrims to the Holy Land.  (When pressed as to whether it was the tree that Zacchaeus climbed, our guide simply said ‘It could have been’.)  Fenced off now (caged, you might say) it sprawls over the roadside.  As I have reflected on the second reading this evening, and its pairing with Jeremiah’s invective against the cage of the temple of the Lord, I have come to see that there is something in the story of Jesus and Zacchaeus that fulfils the same function as the temple is supposed to in Jeremiah – the tree.  It is the tree that Zacchaeus climbs to see Jesus, and from which he hears Jesus invite himself to supper.  It is the tree that enables the encounter with God that is at the heart of this story.  It is the tree that starts the whole process that leads to Zacchaeus hosting Jesus, making reparation to those he has defrauded, and encountering the salvation of God.  At the heart of this story of the Gospel is a tree.



The tree is not like Homer Simpson’s cage, or Jeremiah’s temple.  It was not built according to a plan, or a set of blueprints.  Instead it grew, making progress that seems very slow by some standards, pushing out branches in directions that are not always convenient or desirable, sprawling over the road in an uncontrolled way.  And yet it was the tree that allowed Zacchaeus to encounter God, but providing a branch from which a short-statured tax collector could see Jesus. 

And so if you want this sermon in a sentence, it is simply this: Derby Cathedral needs to be more like a tree than a cage.  Derby Cathedral needs to be more like a tree than a cage.  As we go through the various stages of appointments and development, Derby Cathedral needs to be more like a tree than a cage.  The Cathedral will not help people to encounter the living God if it is a cage in which God is put on display, so that God can be approached from a safe distance.  That is Jeremiah’s complaint about the temple.  Rather the Cathedral needs to be a tree, growing in unpredictable ways, but providing a real vantage point for encounters with God and Jesus that might change people’s lives.  Over the past few years some of these unpredictable growths have been seen in nightshelters, schools, folk festivals, and other ways.  There will be more to come, it’s just that we can’t necessarily see them all yet.  Not every new branch of the tree will be easy, or even welcome.  There will be branches that produce calls for them to be pruned, or lopped off.  There will be branches that I don’t like, and ones that you don’t like.  But the test for all of them is whether they help others to encounter God and Jesus. 

So as the Cathedral goes through this period of transition, let us remember that Derby Cathedral needs to be more like a tree than a cage.  Let us let the branches grow as they grow, and let this place seek to be a vantage point from which people can have life changing encounters with God and with Jesus.  That, after all, is what Derby Cathedral is here for.  Amen.

First given at Derby Cathedral, 30.10.16.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Theology and the Man in Black

Image
I went to hear a paper at the University this evening entitled 'The Apocalypse according to Johnny Cash: Examining the 'Effect' of the book of Revelation on a contemporary apocalyptic writer'. As well as some fine music and lots of humour from YouTube , the paper was examining how we detect the effect of the Bible on the world, and using Cash's The Man Comes Around as a means of doing this. One of the papers themes was that because Cash doesn't name Jesus as the Man (who comes around) he has a weak Christology and leaves his work open to a range of interpretations of who 'The Man' could be - from Cash himself to George W. Bush! Lots of food for thought about how what we say is then heard and repeated in our culture, which has little understanding of the Gospel. But the thing that really stood out for me was the suggestion that it was possible to tell that Cash was really reading the Bible in this song (rather than just regurgitating what his traditio
Read more

Prayers for Evensong

The BBC were at the Cathedral yesterday, recording our Choral Evensong . I wrote some new prayers for the occasion, which I share here: In the evening of the day, we come to you, O God, bringing those we have met, for your blessing, our hurts for your healing, our sins for your forgiveness, our labours as our offering and our lives as our worship; we come to you through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who became like us, that we might become like him. Amen. Lord Jesus, you call us into your church; help us to leave behind the things we cling to, coax us with the treasure of heaven, and in the age to come, when the first will be last and the last will be first, allow us simply to be found within your Kingdom, and to feast at your table, where there is abundant life for all your world, for with you all things are possible, and in your name we pray. Amen. God of all hope, may the light of your justice search out the darkness of our world; may the power of your love banish al
Read more

Taken or left?

Isaiah 2.1-5 ; Matthew 24.36-44 “O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord.” Take it or leave it.   I suspect we’ve all had offers like that. But the Gospel reading this morning asks us a harder question – taken or left, which will we be?   “Two will be in the field, one will be taken and one will be left.   Two will be grinding meal together, one will be taken and one will be left.”    If we look a little harder at the passage, it’s not even abundantly clear which I want to be, taken or left.   When the secret police come knocking, it is clear that you want to be left.   There are Christians and others in the world today who fear the knock at the door.   They desperately want to be left.   But when you live in the midst of war and poverty, you want to be taken to another, better place.   There are many in the world today, not least the many refugees, who long to be taken more than anything else.   The hope and the longing of the refugee
Read more