Sermon Preached on Saturday 12 November 2022 during Evensong and Installation of the Very Reverend Dominic Barrington as 77th Dean of York

Preacher: Very Revd Dean Dominic Barrington

Title: Strive first for the Kingdom of God

Date: 12/11/22 3pm 

 Five or six years ago, when my elder son Benedict was around nine or ten, and he and his younger brother Linus were too young to walk to school on their own, Alison and I would accompany them on the fifteen-minute journey through our neighbourhood in Chicago. Benedict had realized that polite, intelligent conversation was a sign of maturity and adulthood, something good to which he aspired – but he hadn’t fully learned how to make this happen easily. And so, pretty much every morning, he’d turn to his mother or me as we left the house, and, with youthful eagerness demand, “So, Mum… so Dad, what do you want to talk about?”

Not being a great morning person, and having usually had only the one cup of coffee at that point in the day, it was often quite hard to find an answer that would satisfy him, and my usual response was to turn the question around by 180 degrees, and say, “So, Benedict – what do you want to talk about?” Good conversation is vital to healthy relationships, is vital to a flourishing society, is vital to the life of prayer, and of mission and ministry. But we have to know what we should be talking about.

Benedict would have got on well with the prophet Isaiah, from whom we heard just now. For he knew exactly what he wanted to talk about, and it did not always make for comfortable listening.

The world as he knew it was not in a good place. The neighbouring states were behaving foolishly and making very unwise political and military decisions. The regional super-power of Assyria was growing ever the more threatening and demanding, and the kingdom of Judah, in which Isaiah lived, was led by a king who was both stupid and evil, whose choices were predicated on bad decisions – on godless decisions – which the prophet could see would end in disaster. “So, Isaiah,” said God – “what do you want to talk about?”

And Isaiah’s response was to get people to focus on, to strive, for what Jesus would call the ‘kingdom of God’. The section of prophecy that was our first reading is the culmination of three chapters in which Isaiah is critiquing the fact that King Ahaz would rather trust a foreign king of highly dubious intentions that trust in the one God. And although the prophet could see that eventually all would be put right, he was crystal clear that in the short term, things were going to get worse – seriously worse.

We often read from Isaiah in Advent and Christmas, let alone hear some of these passages set to music by Handel in Messiah. But we should not forget that while Christians hear a great pre-echo of the coming of the Christ in his words, Isaiah’s own vocation was not trying to predict the long-term future. That is not, in this context, what prophetic means at all. Isaiah, and the other Hebrew prophets, their vocation was to talk about the present, and ask – no, demand – that people (and especially those in authority) paid heed to what God was calling God’s people to do in the world.

Of course, the great prophet wasn’t the only person who had something to say just now. “So, Jesus,” says God – “what do you want to talk about?”

And this afternoon, we find Jesus in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, talking to us about how best we can seek out and serve the kingdom of God. Just as Isaiah was challenging the king, the religious leaders, and the peoples of Judah and Jerusalem – challenging them about their priorities, their choices and their behaviour, so Jesus is challenging the crowds who have begun to follow him – challenging them about just the same issues: priorities, choices, behaviour. Asking the crowds if they know what they should be talking about.

Telling them that it isn’t good enough to be talking about earthly treasures; telling them that talking about self-interest just does not cut it with God. Telling them that the only conversation worth having is talking about – and helping build – God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness.

At this relatively early point in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus’ audience is a local, rural audience from the communities dotted around the Sea of Galilee. But, as the gospel narrative makes plain, striving for the kingdom of God would lead Jesus into conflict with religious and secular leadership, until, on an ugly hillside outside a city wall, he ends up arms outstretched, dying on a wooden cross.

Dying, because he would not compromise in proclaiming the Good News of a love uniquely strong and uniquely universal. Dying, because he would not – could not – stop striving for the kingdom of God.

And here we are, 2000 years later, sitting in this breathtaking building, enjoying the pomp and circumstance, the tradition, the history, the legality which is deemed necessary to make a new dean. But I hope, in amongst all this ‘stuff’ – I hope that none of this is distracting us from the fact that God is saying to you and to me this afternoon just what God said to Isaiah and to Jesus: “So – what do you want to talk about?”

Because there’s just as much to talk about as there was when Isaiah and when Jesus were preaching. In the country from which I have just returned from living for seven years, many worry that democracy itself is under genuine threat, and that violence is becoming the normative way to engage in political debate. For most of this year, Ukraine has been despoiled by an evil and senseless war. The imminent World Cup is set to take place in a gulf state mired in human rights abuses. Israel has just returned to power the scandal-ridden Netanyahu whose re-election has only been made possible by an alliance with a party of unashamed racist and supremacist values.

In our own country, we have just lived through a period of unique political instability set in the context of significant inflation, a recession which might be the most severe on record, and rampant industrial unrest, even in sectors not normally given to strikes and the like. And even here, in this very country of North Yorkshire, food banks have, apparently, seen a 58% rise in demand this year, and nearly 16,000 children are thought to be living in poverty as we approach Christmas.

All of which suggests to me – and, I hope, to you – all of which suggests that there’s quite a bit more striving still to do if we are going to get anywhere near the Kingdom of God.

But, as Isaiah and as Jesus both knew very clearly, ultimately the news is Good News, because, ultimately, God has no other kind of news to offer the world. And that’s because the God whom we are gathered here to worship is not a God who wants to offer a superficial ‘quick fix’ to the challenges and problems which confront us, and which confronted Isaiah and which confronted Jesus.

As Sam Wells said in a recent Thought for the Day, “The God Christians see in Jesus is not a simplistic fixer but one who deeply shares our human predicament…”

Or, as Bill Vanstone said in the greatest hymn to be written last century, this is the God whose love is revealed in ‘nails and thorns’ – the God, ‘whose arms of love aching, spent, the world sustain’.

The great joy of becoming the 77^th Dean of York is that I – and you – all of us – we have this great building on our side. York Minster has already been talking to the world about this God for hundreds of years and it will continue to do so for many hundreds more. This building is probably more eloquent than you or I can ever be about the God in whose honour and to whose praise it was built. But it needs us – it needs you and me – to work in partnership with it, if it is to talk properly and fully about the Kingdom of God to the many overlapping communities that it and that we are called to serve.

They tell me that now I’ve arrived – now – incredibly – that I am your Dean, they tell me that many people will want to come and talk to me about all sorts of things. About money, about buildings, about tourism, about church politics, about the service times on a Sunday morning, and doubtless about a whole host of other things that I am yet to discover.

And I guess that we can talk about all that. But let’s make sure – let’s make really really sure – that none of that gets in the way of what God is hoping that we will talk about. So, let’s strive first for the kingdom of God. And then – and actually, it will only be then – that all these other things will be given to us as well. Amen.