A wandering Aramean was my father…
Preacher: Revd Dr Donald MacEwan
Readings: Deuteronomy 26:1-11; Luke 4:1-13
There can be only one starting-place for a sermon today: Ukraine. The news has been relentless all week. Shelling of cities and towns, destroying buildings and causing casualties. Fighting between armies, with the loss of life. People huddled underground in bunkers, or a fearful exodus, slow and uncertain, towards borders with Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Moldova. People telling the truth in Russia, risking arrest, beating and imprisonment. Fear of nuclear explosions at power stations, or nuclear war engulfing the world.
And this has affected this University, our students, staff, graduates and friends. Many here have been almost unbearably fearful for their family and friends over there. And I’ve encountered many colleagues and students, not directly connected, who are still affected by anxiety, unable to tear eyes and ears from the news, struggling to concentrate on anything else. You may know such people – or I may have described your own response.
And you may also have wondered, since coming into chapel today, what am I doing here? What is the point of worship? How can our words and music speak to the families desperately getting out for basic foods and medicines in a brief break in the curfew?
Let me begin to answer that from our reading from Deuteronomy from the lectionary. Moses has led his people for 40 years in the wilderness, largely in the Sinai peninsula between Egypt and the Holy Land. They left as refugees from Egypt, and haven’t settled down. Generations have been born on the move. They’re heading to the land promised them by God but they’re not there yet. But in the final months of their journey, Moses, now an old man, tells his people their story. He recounts their history, their flawed heroes and the laws that have been their guide – and this is the book of Deuteronomy.
In chapter 26, Moses looks forward to that next step, across the Jordan into the promised land, from east to west, to find their new home. And he says that when they get there and they have their first harvest, they will gather at a holy place, and give an offering from their first year. And then they’ll say, A wandering Aramean was my father… And they re-tell the rest of their story, of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and his wife Rebekah who came from Aram, of Jacob and his wife Rachel who also came from Aram, of famine and suffering and Jacob and his children finding refuge in Egypt, but in time more suffering, being mistreated and oppressed as outsiders; of exodus, escaping Pharaoh crossing the Red Sea, of wanderings and confusion before settling in a land flowing with milk and honey.
Scholars say that the ancient Hebrew expression which begins the story probably refers to Jacob. Arammi oved avi – A wandering Aramean was my father. But the actual meaning seems less important than its repeated use. It’s thought to be an old phrase used long before this text was written down. It’s been repeated over and over, passed down from generation to generation, almost an incantation, familiar, comforting, consoling in the midst of trauma.
Thousands of years later it’s still said, in synagogues, at Passover meals, in churches and chapels. As we say it or hear it today, we join this ancient tradition of remembering, of re-telling, of recalling the story of God’s faithfulness in the midst of struggle, of making an offering in our day, of giving thanks in our time.
Of course we don’t use these words every week in chapel. But we have our own words, actions, music and silence which we repeat over and over, traditions and rituals, incantations even, in our own troubles. The actual content matters less perhaps than the rhythm and ritual, the comfort found in consistency. There’s the Academic Procession, the words of welcome. There are hymns we sing: today we’ll sing words which congregations have sung respectively since 1708, 1860, 1889 (or perhaps in Irish from the Ninth Century), and since 1847. Our collect has been said more or less in these words on the first Sunday of Lent since the first Book of Common Prayer in 1549. The choir sang a psalm used in worship for 3000 years, and later will sing a Kyrie, a Greek expression used in prayer at least since the Second Century. We’ll join in together in saying the Lord’s Prayer, the Our Father, found in Jesus’ own teaching in the New Testament. And we do this in a sacred space consecrated in 1460, where countless students, scholars, masters and doctors have prayed in their troubles, and found comfort, and received communion.
For many, patterns of worship offer comfort, familiarity, and meaning; fixed points like the constellations of stars above to help us navigate the often bewildering experience we call life, including events in Ukraine. Whatever else is happening, arammi oved avi – a wandering Aramean was my father…
And not only here of course. The image on the order of service is of pilgrims in Ethiopia walking to the city of Lalibela to spend Christmas there, the night of 6 January. Maya, my wife, and I were privileged to join them one year, as they repeated ancient Ethiopian rituals, walking in their thousands across the country, camping outdoors, crowding into churches hewn from the rock, and singing with joy to celebrate the birth of the Saviour. [But I have to tell you that Lalibela has been caught up in the war between Ethiopia and the Tigre People’s Liberation Front, in a terrible civil war there, and as recently as December changed hands in fighting.]
Within the University, the need for ritual is broader than those who attend chapel, or other places of worship. On Monday I had the privilege of leading a Vigil for Ukraine. About 600 people gathered in the Quad. There were speeches, chanting of slogans, the holding up of posters, lighting of candles, and we heard a Ukrainian setting of the Kyrie. We feel so powerless, yet we took comfort and hope in the pattern of these rituals.
Indeed, one of the hardest things of the pandemic has been the loss of comforting rituals, the patterns which sustain us in the week and the year. Not going to funerals has been hard for many. But in the university, missing Raisin and May Dip, soakings and graduations, cheese and wines and Carol Services has left many students feeling untethered. Even missing taking exams together in Lower College Hall has been a loss – albeit a strange one.
It’s not only the weekly cycle of worship which involves remembering, offering and giving thanks. There is the annual cycle of the church year. Today is the first Sunday of Lent, the 40 days not counting Sundays between Ash Wednesday and Easter. The period recalls the 40 years the Hebrews wandered in the wilderness, and the 40 days Jesus fasted before being tempted in the desert. It’s a time of different music – often slower, darker, more penitent. Our focus is on suffering, loss and fear. It’s a season of self-examination, of the mistakes we make, the wrong paths we follow. It’s somehow so apt for what we are going through as a world right now, a self-examination of humanity. Many students and staff members have said to me over the past ten days, What has the human race come to? Why have we not learnt? Why are we still so awful? It’s hard to hold on to the possibility of goodness.
The traditional story for this Sunday every year is the temptation of Jesus. Again it seems sharply relevant. The devil showed Jesus all the kingdoms of the world. They’ll all be yours if you only worship me. Putin’s desire is very old, for power, glory and authority over kingdoms. But Jesus resists this false god, this tawdry idol. Only God deserves our worship.
A wandering Aramean was my father… We are part of something very old, well-worn, even if taking part via our computer screen or smartphone. In the midst of suffering and struggle, from the Hebrews in Egypt to Ukrainians and ordinary Russians today, we gather around ancient words and music, feeling and space; we find our lives are part of all human life, from long before; we inherit their longing, their gratitude, their hope; we make our commitments, and we develop new rituals beside the old.
But fundamentally, in joining the cycle of faith and ritual, we trust in the faithfulness of God. He has seen all that humanity can do, and continues faithfully to love this messed-up world, and shows us how to resist the worst the world can do. That’s the journey Lent takes us on, through suffering, to the cross and beyond.
Arammi oved avi – A wandering Aramean was my father…
Let us now tell the story of our faith in God, who as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, has committed himself to love this precious creation, and every life from Kyiv to McIntosh Hall of Residence. And we do that in singing the great hymn attributed to St Patrick – I bind unto myself today.