I write my sermons in funny places. This one was started on the 36 bus from Ripon to Leeds yesterday on my way to the opening of the representative session of the Methodist Conference and it was finished on the bus back!
I want to think about three c s. Come, call and commitment.
First, come. God is into inviting us to come and experience his love and his grace – every day. There is always more of his nature to discover. Psalm 130 is one of the Songs of Ascent. These were sung by Jewish pilgrims as they travelled up to Jerusalem for the great feasts. Underpinning these psalms are expressions of the oppression of the people during their exile in Babylon, their yearning for a return to their homeland, and for the future peace and prosperity for their nation. Psalm 130 is real, and it is honest, for it permits the people to call out to God from the depths of human suffering, all the while hoping for, expecting, indeed insisting on, God's hearing. There is confidence in the prayer that God will hear and respond to every cry of pain, because that is God's promise. The focus of the psalm, therefore, is waiting with hope. This is a psalm of trust, echoing Isaiah's words: "Those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up on wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint" – and of course Jesus builds on this: come unto me all ye that are weary and carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest.”
We are invited to come on a journey of discovery. The trouble is we don’t really want to go anywhere because it is comfortable here. Or there’s too much hassle to start anything. I got on the bus at lunchtime yesterday. We sat on it for 20 minutes listening to the driver try in vain to get the bus to start. It wouldn’t start. It had broken down. We were going nowhere.
We all had to get on the bus that was meant to leave half an hour after us so it had double the number of passengers on it.
I sat in the front of the bus upstairs, and I watched all the angry faces of people waiting at every bus stop between Killinghall and Harrogate as the bus didn’t stop at any of them as it was already dangerously full. Then when I arrived in Leeds, I got my usual I’m in Leeds panic because I don’t do cities. Where on earth was the Royal Armouries Museum? At least I wasn’t driving. When I visit at Jimmys or the LGI I always get in the wrong lane! It’s safer to stay at home.
And we can be like that with Jesus. But if we won’t come then we miss his urging of us to experience life and hope and joy and blessings. Don’t we? I love what he says when he’s asked can anything good come out of Nazareth? His reply is “come and see.” Come. Will you come and follow me if I but call your name?
Then call… let’s think briefly about Abram. Abram left everything he knew because of a call. His God came to him at the age of 75 and said “leave your country and your kindred and your father’s house, and go to a land that I will show you.” And we are told Abram went as the Lord told him. No hesitation or discussion not even with Sarai his wife. Well maybe some! Have you ever been so sure you had to do something you just did it? Or have there been times we’ve had to do something but we’ve had to wrestle with it because we didn’t know how it might be. I love how the King James Version of the Bible translates the letter to the Hebrews:
By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.
We are called to look for that city. We are called to make a difference. God knows the destination. His sat nav unlike mine on my phone yesterday won’t lead to a dead end. Call. This afternoon some of us will be at Sarah Caddell’s ordination in Harrogate. Part of what she will be told will be three important words: Remember your call. Last Thursday was the 25th anniversary of my ordination at the Southport Methodist Conference in 1999.
25 years and 7 Circuits, when it’s tough and it can be I need to remember my call. But you don’t need a bit of plastic round your neck to be called. We are all called as Christians to be the best we can be to build that city here. In the week of a General Election I dare to suggest that most – not all – of the candidates standing for Parliament see serving as a call, because they want to make a difference. We should pray for all of them this week. Here’s John Wesley on October 6, 1774:
“I met those of our society who had votes in the ensuing election, and advised them tovote, without fee or reward, for the person they judged most worthy. To speak no evil of the person they voted against, and to take care their spirits were not sharpened against those that voted on the other side.”
Wesley was then age 71, a venerated figure at the height of his celebrity. His Methodist renewal movement had touched and reformed much of British society, especially among the poor who had been less engaged with the church. He strongly affirmed loyalty to his monarch and belief in the British Constitution as the world’s best. I think this week after seeing that debate in America he might be right!
Call. We sang at Conference yesterday these words: We will walk with God, my brothers; we will walk with God. We will walk with God, my sisters; We will walk with God. We will go rejoicing till the kingdom has come. We will go rejoicing till the kingdom has come.
Then finally commitment. Commitment to be the Church. The new President of the Conference Helen Cameron is going to be a bit radical this year. She suggested the Methodist Church might be dead if we wait for people to come to us. We need to go to where need is and where good news can transform. Jesus was committed to the world. The Gospel for today begins with a vivid portrayal of the real world in which Jesus, God incarnate, is placed.
This is a world of need, of clamour and distress. And the cries of this needy world are epitomised by the pain and devastation of the leader of the Synagogue. Then an ‘ordinary' woman who clamours for understanding. Both honest, both distressed, both at the end of their tether, both seeing Jesus as the "sufferer's last hope", as William Barclay describes it. Here, in these two people, you have the whole of humanity crying out in their needs.
Through all of this, you have the reality of despair and hope, both of them seen as real and honest parts of the human condition. And Jesus meets them where they are.
I noticed a post on Facebook yesterday after the history morning in the village of a poster advertising the opening of the new Connexion chapel in May 1861. There was a talk after the service on the pilgrim fathers! We are still here in a different form having joined other local churches having let go of our building and now we need to work out together how we meet together in the village. The Church is different from what it was in 1861 and even 1999 when I was ordained. But Jesus still invites us to come, he still calls us, and he invites us to be committed to be his people wherever that leads. So come, call and commitment.
Let me end with a prayer the President ended her sermon with yesterday to help us move on:
Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love. That prayer is for God’s Church and the few of us here. May God bless us and inspire us.
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