Sermon: 4th Sunday before Advent | 2 November 2025

Preacher:

Bob Cooper

Date:

Sunday 2nd November 2025

Venue:

Guildford Cathedral

Service:

9.45 Cathedral Eucharist

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

In 2018, Dan Price, CEO of a Seattle company, cut his million-dollar salary to raise his workers' minimum wage to $70,000 a year.

What led to that decision? A lawsuit from his brother forced Price to confront something devastating: one of his employees was sleeping in her car because she couldn't afford rent. Another was rationing insulin. His business practices were keeping them in poverty while he prospered.

The encounter with reality changed everything. It cost him friendships, relationships, money. But he doesn't regret it. Because once you've seen the truth, you can't unsee it.

Let's be brutally honest about Luke 19. Jesus deliberately seeks out Zacchaeus and invites himself to dinner with a man whose wealth is built on suffering.

Let's call this what it is: Zacchaeus was a collaborator, a traitor who grew fat while his neighbours starved under Roman occupation. Every coin was extracted from poor farmers who could barely feed their children. Every garment was purchased with taxes squeezed from widows.

And Jesus sits down to eat with him.

The crowd's anger is righteous. It's the anger we should feel when we learn that clothes in British shops are sewn by women and children in Bangladesh working sixteen-hour days for poverty wages. When our coffee comes from farms where children labour instead of going to school. When families in one of the wealthiest nations on earth are having to choose between heating and eating.

Where is our rage?

Isaiah 1: says this

"Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow."

But hear what comes before this. God tells his people: "Stop bringing meaningless offerings! When you spread out your hands in prayer, I hide my eyes from you; even when you offer many prayers, I am not listening. Your hands are full of blood!"

This is God speaking to religious people. People who went to the temple. People who knew the Scriptures. People who prayed. Dare I say it; People like us.

And God says: I'm not listening to your prayers.

Because while we pray, children are sleeping rough on our streets. While we sing hymns, refugees are drowning in the Channel. While we take communion, elderly people are dying alone in understaffed care homes. While we talk about loving our neighbour, our economic system grinds the poor and helpless into the dust.

God isn't interested in our worship if our hands are stained with complicity in injustice.

Notice the verbs in Isaiah: defend, take up, plead. These aren't gentle suggestions. These are commands. Legal language. God is calling us to stand in the dock and defend those who have no one to defend them. To use whatever power we have—and make no mistake, as we sit in Guildford Cathedral this Sunday morning, we have power—power to restructure society so the vulnerable are protected.

This isn't charity. This is justice.

When Zacchaeus encounters Jesus, something breaks open in him. His response is immediate and concrete: "Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount."

Four times. That's the Old Testament penalty for deliberate, wilful theft. Zacchaeus is acknowledging that he didn't just make poor business decisions—he stole. And he's willing to impoverish himself to make it right.

This is what repentance looks like. Not feeling sorry. Not promising to do better. But concrete, costly, radical change.

And here's the uncomfortable question for us: when was the last time our faith cost us anything?

I can already hear the objections. "But the economy is complex. We can't just opt out. What can one person do?"

I am afraid that argument does not hold true.

Zacchaeus was embedded in a system too—the entire Roman imperial tax structure. He couldn't topple Rome. But he could stop collaborating with it. He could restructure his own life. He could make restitution to those he'd harmed.

We hide behind complexity because it absolves us from action. But the call to justice isn't nullified by the complexity of modern economics.

Where do our investments go? Our pension. Are we funding companies that exploit labour, destroy the environment, evade taxes? We can find out. We can divest.

Where do you shop? I know—"everything's from China," "ethical products are expensive," "I'm just one person." But that's exactly what everyone says, and it's how nothing ever changes.

Who have you written to this year? Your MP? Your councillor? About housing policy? About refugee resettlement? About cuts to children's services?

Here's what makes me uncomfortable about this passage: the religious people are the villains. Not Zacchaeus—he repents, he changes, he acts. But the crowd? The respectable people who know their Scripture and attend their worship? They grumble. They judge. They maintain the status quo.

We are that crowd.

We are the ones who protect our comfort and call it prudence. We are the ones who confuse middle-class respectability with righteousness.

Isaiah tells us to take up the cause of the fatherless. Do you know how many children are in care in Surrey? Over 600. How many of us have done anything about it? Fostering, mentoring, advocating for better funding, simply showing up in their lives?

Isaiah tells us to plead the case of the widow. The elderly, the isolated, the vulnerable. How many lonely people live within a mile of this cathedral? How many die without anyone noticing?

Isaiah tells us to defend the oppressed. Asylum seekers held indefinitely in detention centres. Workers on zero-hour contracts with no security. People with disabilities being assessed as "fit for work" when they're clearly not. Where is the church in all this?

Zacchaeus's transformation cost him. It cost him money—half his possessions. It cost him status—he became a laughingstock. It cost him relationships—you don't collaborate with Rome one day and stand against it the next without making enemies.

If our faith isn't costing us anything, we need to ask whether we've actually encountered Jesus or just a comfortable version we've invented.

Working for justice will cost us. It will cost us time—showing up at council meetings, volunteering with local charities, building relationships with people who aren't like us. It will cost us money—giving generously, buying ethically. It will cost us comfort—being willing to be unpopular, to be called naive or radical or political.

But Jesus says to Zacchaeus: "Today salvation has come to this house."

Not when he died. Not when he got to heaven. Today. In the concrete reality of changed life, restructured economics, commitment to justice.

Brothers and sisters, God is not impressed with our worship. Our prayers bounce off the ceiling if our hands are full of complicity.

God demands justice. Not eventually. Not when it's convenient. Not when we've figured out all the complex ethical implications. Now.

Seek justice. That's not passive. That's active pursuit.

Defend the oppressed. Get between them and those who would harm them.

Take up the cause of the fatherless. Make their cause your cause. Use your voice, your vote, your wealth, your influence for them.

Plead the case of the widow. Stand in the courts—literal and metaphorical—and fight for those who cannot fight for themselves.

This is not optional. This is not for particularly political Christians. This is the Gospel. This is what it means to follow Jesus.

Jesus is calling us down from our comfortable trees. He wants to stay at our house today. And if we say yes—really yes—everything must change.

Not just our feelings. Not just our prayers. Everything.

The question is not whether God cares about justice. The question is whether we will answer the call.

Will we?

Amen