Sermon for Mattins on 11th January 2026, at All Saints Church, Penarth

The Feast of the  Baptism of Jesus

Isaiah 42:1-9

Acts 10:34-43

Why are we here? Don’t worry I’m not going to pick on you. I’m not going to ask you for a description, in scintillating detail, of your religious observance. But seriously, we have sung hymns, we will say prayers, we will make peace with each other – and I have to apologise to everyone who saw that it was a service of the word rather than Holy Communion and thought that, as one of the faithful at a church which I used to attend back in Surrey used to say, ‘I really like coming to Mattins and Evensong, because there’s none of that kissing nonsense’. 

Well, today we have kept the kissing nonsense, although being British we have watered it down into a handshake or even less intimately into a regal wave, to share peace with each other. But what are we doing? What are we doing when we say that we worship? At the heart of it must be God, and we think of God as having three aspects, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. 

In our first Bible reading from the book of the prophet Isaiah, God is speaking through the prophet and telling us about someone who represents him, ‘my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights’. And in the second reading from the Acts of the Apostles, in the first Christian sermon, St Peter sets out the story of that servant, who was Jesus. ‘God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, and he went about doing good and healing…’ He rose from the dead, which proved that he was divine, he was the one ordained by God. 

So we come to worship God, mainly the visible God, the human God, Jesus Christ. If we step back a bit, and imagine that we haven’t read those Bible lessons, or any other part of the Bible, what would we expect God to be like? Probably the only things that we could agree on would be that God is the ultimate creator, that without God there would be no world, and in the light of that, we could reasonably infer that God is all-powerful and all-knowing. 

But then go back to what we have read in the Bible; and as they used to say at school, compare and contrast: this God and his servant whom he upholds ‘will not cry or lift up his voice’; he will not ‘break a bruised reed’; he will not stub out a ‘dimly burning wick’, and he will faithfully bring forth justice. He will do everything to bring about a world where there will be light to ‘open the eyes that are blind’, where the prisoners are led out of the dungeon, where God has a covenant, a solemn agreement, to protect and support his people. It’s not naked power. It’s not unrestrained might.

When we look at how Saint Peter described him, again we are struck by how different Jesus looks from what you might expect God to look like. He wasn’t mighty; he preached peace; he went about doing good and healing all those who were oppressed by the devil. 

Incidentally I don’t think that this meant that there was somebody with horns and a trident wandering about. It simply reflects that at the time of Jesus they believed that, if you were ill, it was because you had done something bad and were being punished for it. (This of course may still hold good for heavy smokers and other people like me who have excessive fondness for steak and kidney pies and Côtes du Rhone). 

But compare and contrast. How do we square the difference – on the one hand the God of the Bible and the chosen one of God whom John the Baptist baptised, and whom at his baptism a voice from heaven explicitly identified: “This is my son, the beloved, in whom I am well pleased”? Compare and contrast with the situation today. How realistic is it today, that there is a God, gentle and peaceful, committed to justice, like the one that we have seen described in Isaiah and in St Peter’s sermon? 

Russia has invaded Ukraine; America has invaded Venezuela, killed dozens of people and kidnapped its president. America, in one case helped by us, has seized ships on the high seas. ICE agents shot an innocent lady in the same city where George Floyd was murdered by a racist policeman. All these cases challenge the God whom Isaiah says ‘…will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth’. 

They’re a challenge to the one who went about doing good and healing. Maybe that kind of challenge is even what resulted in his being put to death, and the kind of behaviour among nations which ignores law and justice and simply says that might is right is what led to the hideous death of Jesus on the cross, and in one sense he represented in his death all those people who have died as a result of injustice and evil. 

Is there no alternative? No alternative to the politics of power, of brute strength? How can we really compare the power politics of today with ancient prophecies and legendary histories about God and his chosen son, his Messiah, 2,500 years ago? Why are we here? Are we just going through a picturesque ritual, which really has no relation at all to our lives today? Where is God at the courts of Vladimir Putin or Donald Trump? 

But you mustn’t say things like that, at least from the pulpit, you will say. You mustn’t bring politics into our worship. But what are we saying, if that’s what we believe? Are we saying that God is all powerful, the creator and sustainer of life, omnipotent, omniscient, but still, somehow not relevant to today’s power politics? I would suggest that’s wrong, and if Jesus is our king, if we worship him as king and saviour, then indeed we do need to start to compare and contrast with what we are seeing in our world outside. 

Think about the context when Isaiah was prophesying. The people of Israel had been conquered, over and over; first by the Egyptians, then by the Babylonians, then by the Syrians; and then at the time of Jesus, by the Romans. ‘By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept’, they sang. And the Romans were not nice either. People who took delight in gladiatorial combat, with other gladiators and with wild animals, and whose method of execution was as brutal as crucifixion certainly was, were not particularly benign – even if there were great thinkers among them.

In Russia and America today there are plenty of people who write poetry and make beautiful music, who are learned scientists and talented physicians; but still, it’s all done against a background of overwhelming force, that might is right. But is it? Is might right? Just rehearsing the names of the different empires since the time of Isaiah, who exercised the rule of force rather than the rule of law, the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Romans, the Greek colonisers, the Syrians; and then in the more recent era of colonisation, all the colonial powers including our own country, just naming them all, you realise they have one thing in common; and that is, however mighty, they have not survived. So let’s look again at ‘my servant whom I uphold, my chosen in whom my soul delights.’ Isaiah says,

He will bring forth justice to the nations.

He will not cry or lift up his voice,

or make it heard in the street;

a bruised reed he will not break,

and a dimly burning wick he will not quench;

he will faithfully bring forth justice.’

This is soft power, not military might; but he will ‘faithfully bring forth justice’. And when we hear what St Peter had to say after he was put to death by hanging on the tree, that God raised him on the third day, it gives us hope. We have the Christian hope, that the Hobbesian vision, of a life which is nasty and brutish, where might is right, is not a vision of the ultimate reality, of the divine. 

St Peter said it another way, that ‘He sent his word to the Israelites and gave the good news of peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all. (Acts 10:36, NEB, https://ref.ly/Ac10.36;neb)’. And that’s why we’re here. It’s because of Him. He, gentle Jesus, is Lord of all, not Trump, or Putin, or any other so-called great leader today.  Lord, we believe. Amen.