There is something about Evensong that tells the truth about the human condition. We arrive towards the end of the day often carrying more than we can easily name. The noise of the news still echoes in our ears; conversations, worries, and unfinished business linger in our minds. We arrive with the atmosphere of our culture pressing in – relentless commentary, brittle outrage, cheap certainty, and the exhausting sense that everything is always at stake.

And yet Evensong is not simply a service of comfort. It is a service of reorientation. It meets the world as it is – with all its conflict, confusion, and cruelty – and places it within the greater reality of God. It retrains our attention and restores the centre.

And both our readings tonight also do precisely that. They do not invite us to escape the world, but to look upon it truthfully. They offer two arresting images that matter deeply for a culture like ours: Wisdom calling at the crossroads, and heaven gathered in worship around the throne.

We are living in a time marked by cynicism, distrust, and anger. Truth is now being treated not as a shared good but as a tool for leverage. Politics has become spectacle. Identity has hardened into tribe and those who feel unheard are being all too easily persuaded that their pain must have an enemy attached to it.

It is apt, therefore, that today is also the day the Church keeps Racial Justice Sunday. Racial injustice grows wherever fear hardens identity and difference becomes threat. But the gospel utterly refuses to collude with that logic. In Christ, human dignity is not earned or defended against others; it is given. The Church is called to be a community where difference is not feared but reconciled, where belonging is not secured by exclusion but received as grace.

Today’s Collect for the Second Sunday before Lent gives language to this truth:

Almighty God, you have created the heavens and the earth and made us in your own image: teach us to discern your hand in all your works and your likeness in all your children.

This Collect reminds us that identity begins not in anxiety or opposition but in gift. If we are made in God’s image, then our neighbour can never become a rival to our belonging but a vital part of the same divine intention. To discern God’s likeness in one another is already to resist the fear that fractures communities and corrodes common life.

In such a moment, Christian worship becomes more than devotion. It becomes discernment. It becomes resistance. It becomes the place where we remember what we are for, and to whom we belong.

St Augustine wrote, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” That can become a holy restlessness when shaped by faith. But restlessness shaped by fear drives us toward slogans and scapegoats. When anxiety becomes the air we breathe, it becomes all too easy to trade wisdom for simple answers, truth for certainty, and justice for victory.

We see this in particular in the present rise of populism, not simply as a political movement but as a cultural malaise. Popularism draws strength from real pain: economic insecurity, cultural dislocation, communities that feel abandoned. That pain demands urgent attention and any Church that is not willing to bear the pain of its people has ceased to listen as Christ listens.

But populism does not bear pain; it corrupts it. Popularism reshapes pain into grievance and grievance into rage. It offers belonging through exclusion and identity without compassion and this dynamic has further seeped into families, workplaces, churches, and communities, training us in suspicion and condemnation.

Racial injustice flourishes in precisely this soil, when fear seeks somewhere to land and whole groups of people are made to carry anxieties that belong to us all. The Christian response is neither denial nor moral superiority, but repentance and reorientation: learning again to see one another as bearers of God’s image rather than as problems to be solved.

That is why tonight’s readings matter. Our readings from Proverbs and Revelation do not merely inspire; they reorient us. They call us back to what is real, what deserves our allegiance, and what leads to life.

Our first reading opens with a striking question: “Does not wisdom call, and does not understanding raise her voice?”

Wisdom is not hidden away. She is encountered at crossroads, at city gates, in public places – where decisions are made and power is exercised. Wisdom is not private spirituality but public truth. She refuses easy enemies and resists simplifications that allow injustice to flourish. Wisdom calls us to listen before judging and to discern before condemning.

Populism, by contrast, thrives on speed – quick blame, quick anger, quick certainty – demanding that we decide who is at fault before understanding has begun. It tempts us to prefer the comfort of being right to the demanding work of being wise.

Then Proverbs says something astonishing. Wisdom speaks as present before creation itself, rejoicing before God always. Creation begins not in rivalry or fear, but in delight. The universe is not founded on resentment but on joy.

If creation begins in delight, then human difference – of culture, language, ability, identity and race – becomes not a problem to be solved but part of the abundance of God’s good creation. Reality belongs to God and is shaped by Wisdom, not grievance.

So discipleship in our age requires a spiritual refusal. A refusal to let resentment organise our lives. A refusal to let anger become our identity. A refusal to let tribalism teach us to see others primarily as threats. Hi We were created for something so much deeper: the joy of living in tune with Wisdom.

And if that were not enough, Revelation throws open for us a vision of the gates of heaven.

We are shown a throne – not because God is a tyrant, but because reality has a centre. The universe is not saved by the loudest voice or the strongest leader. There is a throne, and we are not on it.

Around that throne, living creatures cry, “Holy, holy, holy,” and elders cast down their crowns. This is not decorative worship but resistance. Revelation was written to communities living under empire, surrounded by the same pressure to conform. John’s vision says: look again. Worship belongs to God alone.

And that matters now. When politics becomes performance and ideology takes on religious intensity, Revelation reminds us that the throne is already occupied. It does not belong to nations, leaders, or crowds.

The throne is occupied by God.

Populism longs for a saviour who crushes enemies. Revelation calls us to worship the One who reigns in holiness. Around the throne are gathered people from every nation and language, not erased into sameness but united in worship. Heaven itself stands as a piercing rebuke to every hierarchy that measures human worth by race, power, or belonging.

But neither is the Church immune from these temptations. We too can trade depth for certainty, humility for rage, and discernment for belonging. But worship reforms us for we become like what we worship.

If we worship strength, we will become brutal. If we worship victory, we will become cruel. If we worship the nation, we will become tribal. But if we worship God, we will become free.

So, what are our readings calling us back to? Not neutrality or silence, but maturity. They call us to become communities of Wisdom: patient, discerning, compassionate, and truthful, people whose identities are rooted not in grievance but in grace; not in fear but in worship; not in nostalgia but in hope.

So let us hear Wisdom calling at the crossroads. Let us step away from the cheap thrill of outrage. Let us refuse the catechesis of contempt. Let us worship the One who alone is holy, and let that worship reorder our loves, our speech, our politics, and our compassion.

Because Wisdom is not silent and the throne is not empty. Thanks be to God.

Amen.