Look Closer

It was a rock like any other rock. Well it had seemed that way anyway. A small jag poking through one of the sides of Bulldog Gully was all that could be seen as John Deason and Richard Oates turned their cart through the gully on the road between Moliagul and Dunolly. Just as they were passing the rock one of their wheels scraped against it, causing the cart to tip. One of the men looked around and saw a glint beneath the mud. Perhaps this was not a rock like any other rock.

Scrub fires were common in that part of the country. The tinder dry shrub under a blazing sun and the south-westerly winds blowing in from the desert made them a regular sight for the shepherd. The fire at Horeb was a fire like any other fire, if only a bit smaller as it seemed to be confined to just the one bush. Not really worth noticing then, it wasn’t going far. But then the something twigged in the shepherd’s brain and he looked again. Perhaps this fire was not like any other fire.

In our reading on Sunday we heard from Luke 13:1-3 where a group of people came to ask Jesus about current events. It says now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. Jesus answered, "Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! Lots of stuff happens around us, and not all of it has a spiritual meaning. Sometimes the things that are significant to God aren’t the things that we expect: not all “Acts of God” are what they seem. When Elijah heard from the Lord it was not in the great wind, the earthquake, or the firestorm but in the gentle whisper. I am convinced that an act of God is not a natural disaster; rather it is what the Church does in response to one. The Act of God is not the bushfire: it is the volunteers distributing water, blankets, food, clothing, prayer, and hugs. God is seen in the everyday activities of ordinary people; sometimes in extraordinary circumstances.

Moses was minding his own business, and his father-in-law’s sheep, when God came to him. Maybe God had tried other things in the past and it took the not-so-burning bush to grab Moses’ attention, but even in that I don’t think there was anything truly spectacular in what God did. Unlike the epic cinema of the 1950s I don’t think there was an angel quire, or even a noticeable “presence of the Spirit” that the Charismatics might describe. I think Moses was just walking past, saw the bush, gave it a second glance, and then went over to have a sticky. It was then that God smiled, whispered “got him, yes!” to the pre-incarnate Jesus, and sent His Voice to speak with Moses just as His Voice had walked and talked with Adam.

Have a look at the passage, what is the first thing God says to Moses? He says Moses’ name. And Moses responds with “ye-ah...what?” Only then does God tell Moses to take his shoes off and proceed to introduce Himself. That is when Moses looks away in fear: before then he was quite happy to look at a strangely-burning-yet-not-consumed talking shrub. If we take the time to look for the wonder in the mundane we may find ourselves standing on holy ground.

I don’t know how it was with you, but with the generations that are young today, those called X and Y, (remember there is Z and now Alpha behind us), spirituality is carried in many “ordinary” things. Younger Christians, some of whom are heading for fifty, hear from God in songs on the radio, in films that aren’t specifically about Christian themes, or even in conversations with their mates. Sunsets and mountain lakes are still stunning us with God’s presence, but then sunsets happen daily, and mountain lakes have been around for as long as there have been lakes and mountains. You shouldn’t have to find the Virgin Mary in a piece of toast to know that God wants your attention: just look closer at ordinary things and you may well find that God has been trying to catch your gaze for a while.

Messers Deason and Oates were eventually paid £19,068 for their nugget, “The Welcome Stranger” which at 2283 troy ounces (70.558 kg in new money) is the largest alluvial gold nugget found anywhere in the world. It had been buried less than two inches below the soil. This was not a rock like any other rock, but it took someone to look directly at it to see that. What treasures might we find, what words might we hear if we bother to give a second glance or look just beyond the surface of the everyday?

Answering The Call

Isaiah 6:1-8 and 1 Corinthians 15:1-11

One of the big sporting events in the United Kingdom each year is the RBS Six Nations rugby championship. Each February and March the home nations of Britain, plus France and Italy, compete in a round-robin series to determine who will be champions of Europe. The British also compete for “the triple crown” and this is awarded to the team that defeats all three of the others. I have always supported England in this competition, but the reigning champions from 2009 were Ireland who won for the first time since 1984, having been runners up in 2007 and 2008. Because the Ireland team is composed of players from Eire (the independent Republic) and Northern Ireland (a province of the United Kingdom), there is no one national anthem. Instead Ireland plays under the anthem “Ireland’s Call” and it goes like this:

Come the day and come the hour,
Come the power and the glory!
We have come to answer our country’s call
From the four proud provinces of Ireland.
Ireland, Ireland!
Together standing tall.
Shoulder to shoulder,
We’ll answer Ireland’s call.

It’s a rousing song and a stirring sound when the full complement of Lansdowne Road or Croke Park stadiums in Dublin belt it out; even as an Englishman I love to hear it sung. Come the day and come the hour, come the power and the glory, we have come to answer....we’ll answer the call.

The lectionary readings for this week tell the story of people being called by God to take His message to the world. Those of you who were here on Sunday will remember Rev Rob preaching from Luke 5:1-11 which is the story of Jesus preaching from the boat, and then of Simon lowering his nets on the opposite side of his boat for a big catch. The story concludes with Jesus inviting Simon to fish for men, and with Simon and the sons of Zebedee leaving their nets and everything else to follow Jesus.

This story, along with the one we have just read from Paul and the call of Isaiah recorded in Isaiah 6:1-8 have several elements in common.
1. God always takes the initiative: Jesus appeared on the beach and climbed into Simon’s boat uninvited. Jesus appeared to Paul on the Damascus road after he returned to Heaven, and Isaiah appeared (in a dream) in the courts of Heaven. We know that the story of grace tells us that God sent Jesus to a world bound up in sin and selfishness: the gospel is always a story where God acts first.

2. The human response to a call is always the recognition of the holiness of God, followed by a sense of unworthiness in the face of the call. Simon and Isaiah both express distress at the sudden realisation that they are sinners in the presence of the Lord. God responds with grace to the reality of human insufficiency; Jesus encourages Simon not to be afraid, and the Lord on His throne sends a seraph with a burning coal to purge Isaiah’s sinful lips.

3. Those who accept the call will agree wholeheartedly to participate in God’s work. “Woe to me,” cries Isaiah, but then “here I am, send me”. Paul who described himself as “the least of the apostles because I persecuted the Church” goes on to describe how he has toiled harder than anyone else in preaching what he believes so that others will come to believe the same. Each of those to whom God issues the call understands that God is calling the people of the world to Himself, beginning with those whom He calls to share the message.

The lives of Peter, Paul and Isaiah in the decades that follow their individual stories of call demonstrate that as men and women of faith our lives are always more productive and imaginative when Jesus is with us in our activities. Simon has caught thousands of fish, but Peter has been the inspiration to billions of people over two thousand years. Saul of Tarsus had been a top scholar in the school of the leading Pharisee Gamaliel, but the Apostle Paul wrote two thirds of the New Testament, planted churches across the known world, and mentored the next generation of leaders in Timothy, Titus, and John Mark. We are at our best when we are embedded in the substance of our call: doing what God has individually called and resourced us to do.

Cafe Agape has returned to serve Port Lincoln in 2010, and we hope that even with the changes taking place in and around Unity Hill in the next year that the fellowship which has taken place here will continue. God has called all of the Church to be His representative in its local community: may we all keep on enjoying each other’s company, cooking, and testimony.
Amen.