Rethink religion

stjohnstmarkchurchburySunday, July 19, 2020

Bible Text: Isaiah 44:6-8 | Preacher: Keith Trivasse | Series: Trinity | Once upon a time, a time long, long ago, the people of Israel believed in their God, Yahweh. But they also believed that the other peoples had their own gods. So if Israel believed in Yahweh, the Ammonites believed in Baal, their master. The people of Israel lived in a polytheistic universe, a universe with many gods.

Then there came the religious and political crisis. The Babylonians, coming from the Middle East, conquered Palestine. The Babylonians took into exile the Israelite royal family and all the leading citizens of Israel, and all of the artisans and craftsmen. Jerusalem was laid waste. In exile, the priests and prophets led a root and branch examination of what Israel had done and why this calamity had happened and prepared for the next stage in the story.
Revolution
And our reading from Isaiah comes from this time of exile, comes from a prophet known as Isaiah who prophesied beside the river Euphrates, the Great River. And what he prophesied was revolution. ‘I am the first and I am last, there is no god but me’. This is a radical change of perspective. Suddenly there is no Yahweh and Baal, for Baal is not. ‘There is no god but me’, says Yahweh. This is a religious revolution, it is as striking as the Reformation. Suddenly there is no polytheistic universe, rather the universe is monotheistic. There is one God, who is the God of Israel and the God of the nations.

Isaiah invents monotheism, and we are the children of Isaiah, believing in the one true God. We share this God with the other great monotheistic religions: Judaism and Islam. There are even thinkers who believe that the religions of the Far East, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism are also essentially monotheistic. These thinkers make out a good case.
A radical rethinking
Now Isaiah was proclaiming something new. He spoke out for a new idea, that of monotheism. His vision was part of that radical rethinking of religion that the exile in Babylon provoked.

We are faced with a situation which should call on us to rethink religion. Coronavirus should be causing us to face up to life and death and illness in a way we have not since the second world war. We are already having to rethink our worship as we try and workout how to worship with social distancing. It feels very odd having you spaced as you are, let alone the lack of hymns.

I wonder how the Gospel will be reshaped by Coronavirus? I suspect that more shall be done on the passion of God. This comes from thinkers working on a religious understanding of Auschwitz. Some thinkers have emphasised the God who dies on the Cross with the people of God. We might reinforce the idea that Jesus dies out of love of all, including the victims of Coronavirus.
Working with nature
Maybe we need to rethink how we work with the natural world. In the outbreak in Wuhan, a market selling bat meat has been implicated. The bats were infected with this new disease. But the bats are immune to such diseases. By eating bat meat, people ate the disease. We need to learn not to exploit the natural world, both for our sake and the sake of nature. This should be a moment of revolution. So far we have treated the natural world as something to be exploited. It is time learn the radical message of working with nature.

We face a religious crisis as deep as the exile in Babylon. It is time to rethink, almost from the beginning, our religious response to our lives. We need to remember that this rethinking can be truly revolutionary, as the shift from polytheism to monotheism. We should do this with confidence in the God the God of all creation. Amen.