Evensong Last after Trinity, Ecclesiastes 11, 12,
2 Timothy 2.1-7

Such is the magic of the preaching rota that a year ago, less a day, I preached at exactly this time, in exactly this place, on exactly these readings. But that was getting on for three Prime Ministers, actually three Home Secretaries, and four Chancellors, ago. ‘[N]o one is crowned without competing according to the rules’, says the author of the Second Letter to Timothy. Let’s hope so - in this week’s race, we’ll have to wait and see.

One of the many disorienting things about the current political situation is that, even if we delight in throwing mud at our political overlords, we are used to having some kind of fundamental sense that they have some idea of what they’re doing. I know, for example, that I have a fairly rudimentary grasp of economics, but I’d like to think that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether I agree with their policies or not, is a notch or two up from that. It is human nature to want to put our trust in people who have a better grasp of the situation than we do. (Since we superficially share a title with the great office of state, there was some excellent banter the week before last on the Canon Chancellors’ WhatsApp group, started by one of our European colleagues: ‘A question to this group as we watch events in London open-mouthed over here,’ he said, ‘Are any other chancellors being sacked?’ After much hilarity, one of our number quipped, ‘No chancellors sacked and no canons fired!’) We want to trust our healthcare professionals, our teachers, our lawyers, and yes, even our politicians. And if for any reason we realise that we can’t, we feel a bit lost. Especially, of course, if we are going through a time of turbulence and anxiety, as we are at the moment. I know the received wisdom is that dull competence doesn’t win elections, but right now, I think most of us would take it.

Being human, with all our wonderful and infuriating foibles, means of course that this sense and taste for stability is coupled with a mistrust of rules and a distinct scepticism of authority. We don’t like being told what to do. And holding together our desire for stability on the one hand, and our mistrust of authority on the other, can make being human bewildering: I want to know who I am and where I am – but equally, I don’t want anyone telling me either of those things.

And this is where the letter writer helps us with three images – the soldier, the athlete, and the farmer. Each of them is an illustration of constraint, leading to reward. In the case of the soldier, the constraint comes from focussed obedience; for the athlete, it is rule following, and for the farmer, sheer hard work. And the discipline of being obedient, following rules, and working hard, leads, respectively, to gaining the approval of the officer, winning the race, and having the first share of the crops.

We’re no strangers to this kind of outlook in our everyday lives. After all, most of us will, to varying degrees, have toed the line, followed the rules, knuckled down, either as a one-off, or for many decades, in order to achieve something for which all that obedience and effort was worth it. The paradox of this way of living is that in all sorts of ways, it is often through submission to a person or system beyond ourselves that we gain autonomy and freedom. To take one small example, in recent years, travellers have needed to fill in reams of Covid documentation in order to have the freedom to travel abroad. On a bigger scale, the 9-5 in the office might give you the power to rent or buy your own home.

But the way in which this letter particularly helps us is by showing us the overarching system within which all these aspects of our daily lives sit. All our everyday examples give us a glimpse of the ultimate truth of constraint leading to freedom – the willing submission of Christ to suffering and death, through which he wins for us liberty and life. And because of this truth, all our constraints can be seen in a new light.

The way the world works means that we have to give over some of our autonomy to others – we have to place our trust in our fellow human-beings all the time, whether we would objectively consider them to be trustworthy or not. And that is distinctly uncomfortable. But this patchwork of constraint and freedom which goes along with being human gives us the extraordinary privilege of sharing in the way Christ himself works. In his submission to unjust authority, he shows us how it is possible to exist in an unfair world, with the grace and strength which comes from knowing that the ultimate source and end of all our trust lies beyond us all.

This is a hard message to swallow, with a 21st Century mindset. We so often assert our individualism, crave self-determination and clamour for freedom of choice. So it’s just as well that this evening, alongside the letter, we have some wisdom literature from Ecclesiastes, to help us remember our place in the scheme of things. ‘Just as you do not know how the breath comes to the bones in the mother’s womb,’ says the Teacher, ‘so you do not know the work of God, who makes everything’. We can’t understand why things are as they are – why there is so much that is painful and difficult, so much that is unjust, so much that seems, to use the Teacher’s word, to be ‘vanity’ – in other words, to be fruitless. We read and write and ponder on these things, but just as today’s news ends up as tomorrow’s chip paper, so, in a line I quoted often as an undergraduate, ‘much study is a weariness of the flesh’.

We cannot understand, says the Teacher. We cannot understand any of these things, or ageing, or infirmity, or pain. But that doesn’t mean we can’t live well. ‘In the morning sow your seed, and at evening do not let your hands be idle; for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good.’ In other words, don’t try to analyse the mystery of how we are created and sustained; that line of thought will lead you down a rabbit-hole. Instead, inhabit the freedom that comes from not being in charge, and ‘[b]anish anxiety from your mind’.

This is a hard discipline. But recognising our place in creation, and recognising that God is God, enables us to surrender ourselves to the One who surrendered himself. And then, in all we do, and through all that happens around us, we can be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. In words from our final hymn: ‘I looked to Jesus, and I found / In him my Star, my Sun; / And in that light of life I’ll walk / Till travelling days are done.

Amen.