Sermon for Morning Prayer at Holy Nativity, Cogan, Penarth, preached on Bible Sunday, 26th October 2025

Isaiah 45.22-25, Luke 4.16-24, (see https://tinyurl.com/2nhd5rdf)

On Friday morning, when I started to write this sermon, everywhere I turned, whether on the wireless or in the pages of the newspaper or on social media, the airwaves were full of statistics: who was up, who was down, who had a future, and who was completely washed up.

It put me in mind of all the gloomy statistics that people have come up with in recent years concerning the church. How, particularly after Covid, attendances have been declining, and people have been beginning to speculate whether there would be any churches, or at least, churches with any congregations, in 50 years’ time.

But in amongst all this challenging and pessimistic statistical stuff, I experienced some much better numbers, which cheered me up a lot. That was when I went to Llandaff Cathedral on the Wednesday before last, for a presentation by the Bible Society called ‘Wales and the Word’, where, in preparation for today, which is Bible Sunday, they were introducing their work and their Bible Course – which some of the faith groups at All Saints are already following – and among all the various items, they reported that they had commissioned research by the pollsters YouGov, first in 2018 and then again in 2024, to ask a large sample of people in England and Wales about their perception of faith, the church and the Bible. The shift in attitudes noticed in the survey was remarkable.

The 2018 research reflected that ‘[t]he church is getting older and young people don’t go. But [the] Bible Society’s survey in 2024 revealed a turnaround. 16% of young adults are now saying that they go to church at least once a month. That was 4% in 2018. And if you poll just young men it’s gone up to 21%. 45% of people in England and Wales now believe there is probably or definitely a God or a higher power. 37% say they pray at least monthly. One in three people would like to go to church if only they were invited. And one in four are interested in learning more about the Bible.’ (Quoted from the Bible Society website on 25th October 2025, https://tinyurl.com/3rk2xczm).

The Bible Society has called their research ‘The Quiet Revival’. It would be interesting to see to what extent those numbers are reflected here in Cogan. It’s certainly true that, for example as I saw when I led a funeral here at Holy Nativity, this church is very much valued as being the parish church for Cogan and for that service the people of Cogan did come, in all their varieties and in numbers.

I suspect that quite a number of them do come at Christmas and Easter as well, and generally feel comfortable that their parish church is ticking over in the meantime. The Church is showing visible signs of life outside, with its beautiful new railings, and, looking inside, I think we must all be excited about the prospect of having a new vicar, (which is not to say anything negative about Father Mark’s work and the affection with which he was regarded here and in the other churches in the Ministry Area).

Will there be a quiet, or indeed quite possibly a noisy, revival here in Cogan, and the rest of Penarth? It’s interesting to look at what we are reading in our lessons today in that connection. Isaiah is prophesying the ultimate triumph of God, the true God as against false gods, human creations: the God to whom every knee shall bow and every tongue shall swear.

And then we have this fascinating story about Jesus, in St Luke’s Gospel, going to the synagogue and reading the lesson, (another bit of Isaiah), and then preaching on it. And although this lesson is supposed to be all about the punchline, about a prophet being without honour in his own town, it is interesting to see what he was reading and preaching about.

Good news to the poor; release to the captives; recovery of sight to the blind; freedom to the oppressed, and a proclamation of a ‘year of the Lord’s favour’, which is a reference to the idea of Jubilee, a year when debts are forgiven and people are allowed to start all over again without the burden of debt. In other words, all the key features of social mission. They are almost things that could go into one or other of today’s political parties’ manifestos.

Just think, if any of those standing for the Senedd in Caerphilly had offered good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind and freedom for the oppressed, and then ultimately to cancel all debts; I hesitate to identify which of the candidates or which of the parties could come closest to that. Not but what those are all great things to put forward if you are going to build a caring society.

‘Good news to the poor’ presumably includes the news that they will no longer be poor. Is ‘growth’ the answer? Or do we have enough – but need to distribute it more fairly?

‘Release to the captives’ – why is it that we lock up more people than anyone else in Europe? Does it do them any good and does it protect society? Probably not. What about all the people who are locked up in prison really because of mental illness rather than anything really blameworthy, what we used to say was mad, not bad?

‘Recovery of sight to the blind’ must be a supreme piece of medical achievement, but it must also stand for all the other good works that the health service can now do. For example, if you have been following the TV programme ‘Saving Lives in Cardiff’, I commend to you the episode about the Ear, Nose and Throat team led by the surgeon Stuart Quine [https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0jq4m9j].

They are not necessarily bringing sight to the blind, but are able to use an amazing robot which you will see on the TV programme, of which Cardiff has the first example in the UK, which enables the surgeons to remove cancers located in places which previously could not be reached without damage to the patients’ brains or their eyes. So ‘recovery of sight to the blind’ stands for all healing and wholeness.

‘Letting the oppressed go free’. It’s still true in 2025 that there are what are called modern slaves, modern slavery situations. The church was at one stage promoting an app on your phone which was called the Safe Car Wash app, where you could assess the hand car wash which you were using to see whether there was any evidence that the people working there were in fact the victims of modern slavery, and, if you found any, it gave you ways to summon help for them. I’m not sure whether it is still going but we can have a look on my phone after the service. [https://clewer.org.uk/campaigns/safe-car-wash] Modern slavery is unfortunately still with us and any social mission should surely include its eradication as a key objective.

And finally the ‘Year of the Lord’s favour’, the idea of debt release, Jubilee. To some extent, that has been done in the past, most recently under Gordon Brown’s government, but surely the time is coming when, as between nations and perhaps even within nations, there should be a release from debts, so that people can start their lives again.

That certainly applies to the countries, in Africa predominantly, who have become indebted to the International Monetary Fund, which has required them to cut public benefits and public investment, simply in order to pay back the loans made to them, so the bit in Isaiah which Jesus was reading still speaks to us today. Poor countries, and poor people, need a Jubilee.

But then Jesus goes on to say that ‘this scripture has been fulfilled’; not surprisingly, the rest of the people in the synagogue were sceptical, because it looked as though the problems which he had listed still existed, (and indeed they still exist today). But what Jesus was driving at was that this was all to do with the coming of the Messiah, the chosen one of God, who was going to do the work of healing and social reconstruction – and he was it. Well, that was the bit they couldn’t take. If you read on, you’ll see that they were going to chuck Jesus off a cliff and stone him to death – but he managed to escape.

So what? What’s the message for today? If there really is a quiet revival going on, what will the quiet revivalists do? Will we be like the people in the synagogue who couldn’t take Jesus’s message, or will we pick it up and follow him? That’s the challenge. I wonder who you think is going to win that one. Let’s pray that it is us, the people of Jesus in the church, and that the Bible is there to guide us.

Amen.