Sermon: When the Whitewash Falls

Preacher:

Paul Thompson

Date:

Sunday 6th September 2026

Venue:

Guildford Cathedral

Service:

6pm Choral Evensong

A Sermon for Evensong

Like so many back in the 1960s my parents purchased a brick for the princely sum of two shillings and sixpence to build our lovely cathedral. Long since vanished under plaster and paint I think, but it has to be there somewhere. From here, it’s very easy to see the amount of whitewash that cover the walls. I can also be very cheeky and say I can see a few bits that the painters have missed, clearly they needed longer arms to reach to the heights!

There is something wonderfully vivid about Ezekiel’s image tonight: a wall, hastily built, covered in whitewash, looking solid and respectable — until the storm comes.

The prophets of Israel have been telling the people, “Peace, peace.” Everything is going to be all right. The future is secure. Nothing much needs to change.

And Ezekiel says, rather brutally: Look again. That wall is not sound. You have merely painted over the cracks.

It is an image that has lost none of its power.

We know about whitewash. We know how tempting it is to make something look better than it really is. A little paint before the house goes on the market. A carefully chosen photograph. A reassuring phrase in an annual report. A cheerful smile when, underneath it, things are considerably less cheerful.

There is even a famous architectural expression, “Potemkin village”: the story — probably much embroidered over time — that elaborate façades were constructed to make things look prosperous and impressive when they were not. Whether or not the original story is literally true, the phrase has survived because we recognise the temptation. We like the appearance of solidity.

And Ezekiel’s uncomfortable message is that God is not deceived by appearances.

The people say, “The days are prolonged, and every vision comes to nothing.” In other words: Nothing ever really happens. The warnings never come true. We have heard it all before.

And God replies: My word is not empty noise. My word will be fulfilled.

That is the first thing these readings have in common.

Both Ezekiel and Acts are concerned with the difference between the appearance of faith and the reality of faith.

In Ezekiel, there are prophets who claim to speak for God but are actually following “their own spirit”. They say, “Thus says the Lord,” when the Lord has not spoken.

In Acts, there are men who see what Paul is doing and think they have discovered a useful religious technique. They attempt to use the name of Jesus as a kind of spiritual formula:

“I adjure you by the Jesus whom Paul proclaims.”

And the evil spirit gives them a devastating answer:

“Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are you?”

It is almost comic — until you realise how serious it is.

They have discovered the vocabulary of Christianity without yet discovering the reality of Christ. They know the name.

They do not yet know the Lord.

And that distinction matters.

Because Christianity is not fundamentally a set of correct words, nor a respectable façade, nor even a collection of religious experiences. It is a relationship with the living God.

That is why the beginning of the passage from Acts is so important.

Paul meets some disciples at Ephesus and asks them:

“Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?”

And they reply:

“No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.”

These people are not frauds. They are not the false prophets of Ezekiel. They are sincere. They have responded to John the Baptist’s preaching. They have received his baptism of repentance.

But they have stopped short of the fullness of what God is doing.

Paul explains that John was pointing beyond himself — towards Jesus.

And then something changes.

They are baptised in the name of Jesus. Paul lays his hands upon them. The Holy Spirit comes upon them, and they speak and prophesy.

In other words, the Christian life is not simply about having the right information. It is about being opened to the presence of God.

 

That seems particularly worth hearing at Evensong.

Because Evensong is full of words.

Beautiful words. Ancient words. Carefully chosen words. Words which have been prayed and sung by generations before us.

We are surrounded by language: psalms, lessons, prayers, canticles, anthems.

And thank God for them.

But Ezekiel and Acts together ask us a rather searching question:

Are these merely words we say, or are they words through which God is speaking?

There is a difference.

A person can know the words of the Lord’s Prayer and never really pray.

A person can know the Creed and never really trust God.

A person can sing “O come, let us worship” and remain inwardly untouched.

And, equally, someone may have very little theological vocabulary and yet know with profound reality that Christ is alive.

The challenge is not to have fewer words.

It is to allow the words to become true in us.

That brings us back to Ezekiel’s wall.

The false prophets have been “smearing whitewash” over it.

The wall itself may look magnificent. But when the storm comes, the truth is revealed.

There is something almost merciful about that image.

Because the storm does not create the weakness in the wall.

It reveals it.

And perhaps some of the storms of life do something similar for us.

A disappointment. A bereavement. A failure. A change we did not want. A diagnosis. A political upheaval. A relationship that goes wrong. A plan that collapses.

We may think, “This has destroyed everything.”

But sometimes what has actually happened is that something hidden has been uncovered.

The storm has shown us what was solid and what was merely whitewash.

And the Christian hope is not that we can construct a wall which no storm will ever touch.

It is that Christ can build something in us which is real.

That is what is happening in Ephesus.

The people do not simply receive a new religious technique. They receive the Holy Spirit.

And then Luke gives us one of the strangest and most entertaining scenes in the whole of Acts.

The seven sons of Sceva try to imitate Paul’s ministry. They have seen the extraordinary things happening around them. They have apparently concluded that the name of Jesus is a powerful spiritual password.

It goes rather badly.

The possessed man overpowers all seven of them, and they run out of the house naked and wounded.

It is a wonderfully memorable story.

But underneath the humour is a serious theological point:

Jesus is not a technique.

You cannot manipulate God.

You cannot turn prayer into magic.

You cannot treat faith as a spiritual technology which guarantees the result you want.

And perhaps that is one reason the story of the burning of the magic books immediately follows.

People who become Christians in Ephesus bring out their books of magic and burn them. And Luke tells us the astonishing value of what they destroy: fifty thousand silver coins.

Whatever precise monetary equivalent we put on that, it was an enormous amount of money.

They are not merely giving up a few bad habits.

They are renouncing an entire way of trying to control the spiritual world.

And Luke concludes:

“So the word of the Lord grew mightily and prevailed.”

Notice that phrase.

Not the cleverness of Paul.

Not the spectacular miracles.

Not the reputation of the apostles.

The word of the Lord.

That takes us straight back to Ezekiel.

“I the LORD will speak the word that I speak, and it will be fulfilled.”

The word of God is not whitewash.

It is not propaganda.

It is not wishful thinking.

It is not a slogan designed to make us feel better.

It is living truth.

And sometimes living truth comforts us.

Sometimes it challenges us.

Sometimes it tells us that we are safer than we imagine.

Sometimes it tells us that the wall we have built is weaker than we thought.

But its purpose is always ultimately the same: to bring us into reality with God.

Perhaps, then, the two readings give us three simple questions to take away tonight.

First: Where might I be tempted to paint over a crack rather than repair it?

Not in somebody else’s life. In mine.

Where am I saying “peace” when there is no peace?

Where am I avoiding something God may be asking me to face?

Second: Am I treating Jesus as a technique, or trusting him as Lord?

Prayer is not magic. Churchgoing is not magic. Being a respectable Christian is not magic. The name of Jesus is not a password.

Christ calls us not merely to use his name but to belong to him.

And third: Am I open to the Holy Spirit?

The people Paul meets at Ephesus had received something genuine, but they had not yet discovered the fullness of God's gift.

Perhaps that is true of many of us.

We know something of Christianity. We know the prayers. We know the hymns. We know the seasons of the Church.

We know where to stand and when to sit.

But God is always capable of taking us further.

The Holy Spirit is not a theological footnote.

The Spirit is God's living presence among his people — the one who makes Christ real, who exposes falsehood, who gives courage, who brings repentance, who creates new life.

And perhaps that is the great contrast between the two readings.

In Ezekiel, there is a wall that looks strong but is not.

In Acts, there is a community that is becoming strong because something real has entered its life. The whitewash falls. The Spirit comes.

And the word of the Lord grows.

So perhaps this evening we need not be afraid of the storm.

Nor need we spend our lives repainting the wall.

We can ask God for something better: not merely the appearance of faith,

but faith itself; not merely the language of prayer, but prayer;

not merely the name of Jesus on our lips, but Jesus Christ alive in our hearts;

not merely a wall covered in whitewash, but a life founded upon something that will stand. For, as Ezekiel reminds us, God's word is not delayed for ever.

And as Acts reminds us, when that word takes root in human lives,

it grows mightily and prevails. Amen.