I’ve had to write a sermon this week. On Sunday I’m leading worship in the Fens Circuit and having the farewell we never had nearly two years ago. This week my thoughts use my delving into Exodus and the sacred spaces we’ve visited over the last few days.
Where has God been in all of the turmoil about, in times we’d rather not inhabit? If we believe in a God who is involved in the world, we need to find him in tough stuff.
Some people say the Bible has nothing to say about today. Well, those people haven’t read Exodus. In the book of Exodus we have the grab for power by a unhinged leader, a nation on the move and a God who offers a new direction through a prophet who just about sticks with him. Let’s hear what God’s people faced many many centuries ago. Egypt used to be great. But now, it had become life threatening…
“I have observed the misery of my people.” “I have heard their cry.”
I’m just over half way through this three month sabbatical. I am enjoying receiving worship rather than leading it. It’s been very interesting seeing how worship leaders have dealt with the situation in Ukraine since it all kicked off there a few weeks ago.
The first Sunday after the invasion we were at St Mary Magdalen hospital chapel in Ripon, a place that was built to look after those seeking sanctuary and healing many years ago. The priest told us there would be no sermon and we would sit and pray in silence instead.
The second Sunday we were at a choral evensong in Harrogate. The priest there told us he had no words and so again there was to be no sermon and that we were to enjoy choral evensong more than we’d ever enjoyed it before so that the noise of angel song might drown out the noise he has to turn off on the television news.
Last Sunday we were in a Methodist service at Elvet in Durham. The preacher did preach! He began his sermon like this: Pestilence, war, famine, death. Following the news, one might be forgiven for wondering if the four horsemen of the apocalypse have entered the home straight and are charging full speed for the finishing line. He called us to lament and he ended like this: “Lament is holy and appropriate. God hears those fleeing for their lives, he hears us when we feel helpless, and he is among his people – humiliated on the cross and glorified in heaven. Therefore, sisters and brothers, in our prayer, our giving, and our actions in solidarity with all in need, let us stand firm. Stand firm in the Lord.”
I was really pleased to be in Durham last Sunday again. Martin Clarke, the preacher, was excellent. He used two hymns from the Justice and Peace section of the hymn book I have never used. We were made very welcome. It was good afterwards to get some space on Prebends Bridge. We’d hoped to do cathedral Evensong but it was busy with a university service so we gave it a miss.
What to say this week in worship? I’m struggling watching horrific images in Ukraine of indescribable suffering. I’m also struggling that Covid is still very much in my life. I hate being clinically extremely vulnerable. I hate face coverings. I keep telling my largest church I wasn’t trained to lead a church through a pandemic! It’s easy to avoid thinking how to interpret the times.
Let’s take courage from the Exodus. Suddenly the people of God became other, them, the stranger, a threat.
Suddenly a leader sets out to mistreat them, to enslave them and to kill their children. Soon they have no choice but to get out. But they do not get out alone. They will spend years, generations as refugees, but God has a plan. Thank God!
So how does God work? Through a man called Moses and a burning bush at the side of the road. You ever seen a burning bush where you live?
Burning bushes are those circumstances or events that interrupt life and grab our attention. They are not part of our plans. They take us by surprise. They stop us in our tracks and cause us to turn aside. We take a second look. Sometimes we are brought up short, speechless, at a loss for words. We cannot but look at them.
Regardless of how it comes to us the burning bush shatters the horizon of our expectation. Moses never thought it possible for a bush to be on fire but not be burned up. He never expected or planned on being the one to bring God’s people out of Egypt. Those were beyond his horizon of expectation.
God says to Moses “I have observed the misery of my people.” “I have heard their cry.” “I know their suffering, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians.” Now it sounds like we’re getting somewhere. God is coming to rescue God’s people. But listen to what God next says to Moses. “So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of the land of Egypt.”
“I have come down to deliver them,” God says. “So come, I will send you,” God says to Moses.
God is going to deliver God’s people by sending Moses. Moses is to give existence to God’s call for deliverance. Moses is to make real and enact God’s desire for the people. What if that’s how God is working in our lives too? I wonder when you and I have not turned aside. When have we failed or refused to respond to the call on our lives?
The burning bush story is one of call and response. Something is being called for in the name of God. And I can’t help but believe that call and response is also the story of our lives. Something is being asked of us in the name of God. On Sunday afternoon, I visited St Hilda’s Church in Hartlepool. Hilda set up a priory there before the one in Whitby. It now stands on the headland serving what I perceived might be an impoverished community.
So here’s where the church comes in.
The more positive images coming out of the Ukrainian suffering are the kindness of those making sacrifices for the good of others, the generosity of people in other countries providing sanctuary, the solidarity in tying bits of yellow and blue ribbon on church gates as I’ve seen a lot or hold prayer vigils or rallies. People taking others into their homes. Shelter offered. Compassion shared. Prayers offered, goods sent, money raised. The more positive images that have come out of Covid have been neighbourliness I think. I worry now we have been told personal responsibility some will forget the more vulnerable.
Are we prepared in a time of uncertainty to look aside and see what God might want of us? Do we hear the cry of those around us?
Sometimes we just need to see that God hasn’t finished with us yet. We can like the Israelites come to believe in suffering that God has stopped working so we get depressed and disillusioned. A burning bush – a sign of confidence, of divine activity, of beckoning to a new future. A word from the new minister – a beckoning we might still matter and have a task.
People are searching for something. Are we burning on the road or keeping the fire inside which is slowly going out? What is there exciting for people to stop and take notice of in churches today? On Wednesday morning, I went to the church at Leake, just off the A19. I’d noticed it floodlit while whizzing past before. Leake is a deserted medieval village. But the church is still there and it is playing the tourist and pilgrim card very well. I found it peaceful and gently Spirit filled.
Are we open to God working in new ways? Are we ready to respond?
You see both with Ukraine and with Covid, they’ve needed people who don’t give up, who embrace what’s round them, who see a new possibility, stepping up and being the people God expects them to be. If God is incarnate in Jesus, he is in the desolation of Ukrainian bombing, displacement and uncertainty, he is with those still worried about Covid and all the other pressures of life in 2022. If God is crucified as Jesus is broken on a cross and bleeds for the world, we might need to be broken and bleed too. If God is on the road manifested in power and possibility, we need to be alive and noticed with a message that is worth noticing.
I also visited St John’s in Sharow on Wednesday. That felt a warm and contemporary place. It has been refurbished and is well used. I liked it.
The worship leaders of the past three weeks for me have it right…
We need to be silent in prayer.
We need to be confident in what we know to be true.
We need to stand firm.
Let me add another preacher to them:
Dr W E Sangster was the senior minister at Westminster Central Hall at the outbreak of World War Two.
The sanctuary, seating 3000, was full morning and evening for the next 16 years as Sangster customarily preached 30 to 45 minutes. As deep and sturdy below ground as Central Hall was capacious above, its basement became an air-raid shelter as soon as the German assault began.
The first night was indescribable as thousands squeezed in, high-born and low, adult and infant, sober and drunk, clean and lousy. Equally adept at administration and preaching, Sangster quickly laid out the cavernous cellar in sandbagged "streets" so as to afford minimal privacy to those who particularly needed it. Sunday services continued upstairs in the sanctuary. A red light in the pulpit warned that an air-raid was imminent. Usually he chose to ignore it. If it were drawn to his attention he would pause and say quietly, "Those of a nervous disposition may leave now" -- and resume the service.
While his wife sought to feed the hordes who appeared nightly, he assisted and comforted them until midnight, then "retired" to work until 2:00 a.m. on his Ph.D thesis for London University. As space in the below-ground shelter was scarce, he and his family lived at great risk for five years on the hazardous ground floor. They slept nightly in the men's washroom amidst the sound of incessant drips and the malodorous smells. By war's end, 450,000 people had found refuge in the church-basement.
I’ve mentioned the church as refuge a lot on this journey so far. On Friday we had a lovely day in the countryside of County Durham and Northumberland. Our first stop was to the little Saxon church at Escomb. I love the fact you get the key from off a hook at a house on a 1960’s housing estate which surrounds the church which wasn’t there when it was built!
The little church was plain but I sensed the story of God’s people through the years in it.
I’m ending my sermon like this to the good people of the Fens Circuit who were so kind to us during our short time there. They made a difference at a time I just needed the church to be a good, caring place.
The burning bush experience does not happen apart from or in spite of every day life but in the midst of life, in the keeping of our flocks. That’s what Moses was doing when this happened. He was keeping the flock of his father in law. He was doing the ordinary routine things of his life, the same things he did the day before, the week before, and the month before. Burning bushes show up as we keep our flocks of routine and every day life.
How does Moses know if he’ll get it right? He doesn’t. He doesn’t know any more than we do. There will, however, be a sign. The sign, God says, will come after the people have been delivered, not before. It’s as if God is saying you’ll look back on all this and see I was there all along. And isn’t that a pretty accurate description of life? We live life forward, uncertain and not knowing, but we only begin to understand and make sense of it in retrospect.
What if there are no guarantees and the best, the most, we can do is to respond hoping against hope, loving and “faithing” our way forward? What if that’s how we approached every burning bush in our life? And what if we saw “every common bush afire with God?” Sacred spots are worth looking aside to ponder.
Three other visits happened on Friday. We found Blanchland, and the abbey there. The abbey didn’t feel very warm to me and raising money seems to be the reason it’s open. An ancient church and a table of crappy DVDs for sale grated on me a bit. The village felt quite strange too. We returned to Hexham Abbey as I wanted to get into Wilfrid’s crypt. As I arrived too near closing time, a rather officious steward refused to let me go down to it. We will need a third visit it seems! I did get some pictures of the lovely stained glass though.
Then finally we discovered Corbridge. I discovered a fabulous bookshop in the old Wesleyan chapel and opposite it by the church a vicar’s pele. This was a fortified vicarage to protect the incumbent from the Scots! It now is a wedding venue and a micro gin bar. I’m discovering what closed churches can be turned into as I pass so many of them. I was interested to read the Methodist community in Corbridge are leaving their building on Easter Sunday and sharing the Anglican building.
At the moment, we offer Ukraine, Russia, Covid, growing poverty in this country and other challenges to God whose love in Jesus we cannot be separated from. He has heard the misery of his people.
We go on just being his church. He will bless that. Keep your eyes open. What we see may be him calling us, using us and changing us forever.
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