One day, when I was a young man, my frustrations boiled over. A combination of the pressures of work, the pressures of being a parent of very small children, lack of sleep, money worries and the casual rudeness of strangers, all combined and I shouted out very loudly, ‘Why am I surrounded by idiots?!’
If I had been in the privacy of my own home … but actually I wasn’t. I was in a very public place with crowds of people around me, so, of course a number of idiots turned to look at me. Fortunately Marian was with me and she did what she does so well; she laughed. And then I laughed. And the idiots turned away again and continued with their idiocy.
Do you ever get the feeling that you are surrounded by idiots? If so, this sermon is for you.
A Facebook friend of mine put a post on his facebook page about BREXIT. And one of his other Facebook friends, an American, wrote, I don’t understand this, can you explain for the non-Brits what is happening with BREXIT? And my Facebook friend said, ‘It’s very simple. Our Prime Minister is an idiot. And the leader of our opposition is an idiot’.
I think this language about being surrounded by idiots is being used more and more. How can people be so stupid as to vote for Trump? How can people be so stupid as to vote for BREXIT? How can people be so stupid as to vote for Corbyn? How can people be so stupid as to want another referendum? How can people be so stupid as to deny climate change? How can people be so stupid as to allow that jihadi bride back into this country? How can people be so stupid as to not vaccinate their children? There, that should have insulted everybody here! More and more of us seem to have the feeling that we are surrounded by idiots.
Even God, sometimes feels he is surrounded by idiots. When he finally lost his patience with the people of Israel whom he had led into the wilderness, God said, ‘Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; but I will not go up among you, or I would consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people’. Make your own way to the land of milk and honey. See if I care. Stiff-necked people! Idiots!
Looking back, it is easy for us to see that the people of Israel were being idiots. God had sent plagues upon Egypt forcing the Pharaoh’s’ hand, thus bringing them out of slavery. God had parted the waters of the Red Sea and then consumed the Pharaoh’s army in the waves. God had made manna fall from heaven when the people were hungry and had split the rock so that the people would have water to drink. After they had witnessed all that and had benefitted from all that you might think that the people of Israel would trust in God and follow his commands. We would, wouldn’t we? But they were a stiff-necked people. They were idiots.
In their defence, it isn’t easy living in a wilderness; travelling; destination unknown. It isn’t easy and it’s very stressful. And stress can make an idiot of anybody. I think the concept of wilderness is helpful in understanding what is happening in our nation and many other nations today.
In the elections of 2010 and 2015, our party leaders were mainly fighting over the same political space. David Cameron, Gordon Brown, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg all assumed that elections were won by commanding the centre ground in British politics and so they battled over who would express that consensus most effectively. The exception to this in 2015 was Scotland, where the sweeping victory of the SNP should have alerted these leaders to the fact the something very different was about to happen.
But they ignored those signs. Ed Miliband was so confident that consensus politics was here to stay that he gave each Labour Party member a vote in future leadership elections. And David Cameron was so confident that consensus politics would triumph that he risked holding the EU referendum.
But by 2015 things had changed. People were feeling the effects of having to pay off the debts of the banks that crashed in 2008. More and more of our lives were becoming more uncertain. A system we thought was working for us was starting to look like a system that was oppressing us economically. How would we survive? Where should we go? Whom should we follow? The questions we are asking are the questions of a people lost in a wilderness. That is, I believe, why, as a nation, we are shouting at each other, calling each other idiots.
Coming back to my Facebook friend, who thinks that Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn are idiots; in one respect he is dead wrong. Jeremy Corbyn got 40% of the popular vote at the last election. This is a remarkable percentage given that only two years previously his party had only managed 29%. 40% would normally be enough to form a majority government but Theresa May, the other idiot remember, did even better; she got 42%. Normally 42% would be enough for a very handsome majority in the House of Commons, but Theresa May hasn’t got a majority precisely because Corbyn did so well. So I don’t think it helps our understanding to think of Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn as idiots. Let us think of them instead as our wilderness leaders.
And, of course, there is a wilderness leader in the Bible: Moses. What did Moses do when God said to his people, ‘You are a stiff-necked people. I am surrounded by idiots!’?
Moses went to the tent of meeting to see God. He prayed to God. He bargained with God. He negotiated on behalf of his stiff-necked people. He says to God, ‘Look these stiff-necked people are your people. If you do not stick by them you are a God without a people.’ And God relents. ‘My presence shall go with you,’ he says. God will, after all, travel with his people to the Promised Land. Moses then goes up the mountain. God reveals his glory to him but not his face. And God gives Moses the commandments on tablets of stone to bring down to his people.
And then two things happen. First of all, because Moses has seen the glory of God his face is shining and the people of Israel cannot look at his face and so Moses has to wear a veil when he is among the people, a veil he takes off when he is in the presence of God. And secondly, God says he will inhabit the tabernacle and so be with the people, but the tabernacle remains outside the camp of the people so there is still distance between them. God is with his people but not among them.
And that’s how things were all the way to the Promised Land and for generations afterwards. The people were led by God but they were a stiff-necked people and so they could not see God. But God did not leave it there. That was not and is not his intention. He has made his intention clear through the prophets.
We have a verse from the prophet Ezekiel written on our church website and in our introductory leaflet. It’s the verse that reads, ‘A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh’.
What is being said here is that we have hearts like idiots, hearts made of stone, like the stone you use for writing commandments on, but God is giving us a new spirit and new hearts, hearts of flesh, so the ways of God will become our ways because we understand them, They will no longer be rules we follow by rote, like idiots have to be given rules to follow by rote. We will take ownership of God’s rules and make them ours.
And the prophet Jeremiah said, ‘The days are surely coming when I will make a new covenant … I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God and they shall be my people’. This is a prophecy of a total transformation of human nature based on a new relationship between people and God.
And Paul, writing to the Corinthians, is saying that this new relationship with God, this total transformation of human nature is brought about through Jesus Christ.
Because in Jesus Christ, we have seen God. And so we have hope. And because we have hope we can act with great boldness. We don’t have to wear a veil over our face like Moses had to. We can look into each other’s faces because the Spirit lives in all of us. God is with us, among us and inside us. When we see each other’s faces we are seeing the glory of God reflected back at us because the Spirit is in each one of us. And just as Moses face shone because he had seen the glory of God up on the mountain, so our faces shine when we see the glory of God reflected in each other’s faces. And as we look at each other more and more so we ourselves will shine more and more and we become transformed from one degree of glory into another.
Look around you. You are not surrounded by idiots. This is not a stiff-necked people. You are looking at the faces of people with a new spirit inside them, the spirit of God and the glory of God shines from their face into yours.
Let’s take a short moment to consider the story of the Transfiguration. The disciples who accompanied Jesus up the mountain saw Jesus shining with the glory of God. They saw the faces of Moses and Elijah unveiled and also shining. They gazed at the glory of God. The transformation of humanity had begun. The new covenant between God and humanity was taking shape.
We will finish our worship this morning by singing the hymn Love divine, all loves excelling. One of the verses includes the line ‘Changed from glory into glory, till in heav'n we take our place’, which references this transformation of humanity that is taking place, the transformation of which we are part, the transformation in which we participate.
This is one of the many fine hymns that are given to us by the Methodist tradition in the church, a tradition that has always emphasised this theology of transformation, the idea that together we can become better and better, changing from glory to glory. It is a theology that is very positive about humanity; very positive about humanity because of the transformation taking place within us in the light of a new relationship with God.
Just as an aside; we must take care to honour this tradition in our community, which is why in two Sunday’s time Susan Swires the Methodist Minister in Alderley Edge and myself have arranged a pulpit swap so that I will preach at the Methodist church and she will preach here from this pulpit.
To this day, when I become short-tempered and irritable, Marian sometimes asks me if I think I am surrounded by idiots. It is a comment that makes me smile and also reminds me that, no, I am not surrounded by idiots.
None of us are surrounded by idiots. Granted, we move among a stiff-necked people who are lost in a wilderness. They need God’s love and guidance and God has not given up on them. And when we gather together as God’s people, each and every one of us has a new Spirit within us, and when we look into each other’s faces we see the glory of God shining; shining and also reflecting the glory of God which illumines us all. Let us give thanks for that. Amen.