This sermon was delivered to St Oswald’s, Maybole, Ayrshire, Scotland on the 6th June 2010; St Oswald’s is a Scottish Episcopal Church in the Dioceses of Glasgow and Dumfries.
The readings for today are: 1 Kings 17:8-16 (17-24) Psalm 146 Galatians 1:11-24 Luke 7:11-17
“Please join me in a short prayer from Psalms 19:14, and ” Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of our hearts, be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer. Amen.
Introduction
Sometimes without our prompting, life will alter pace and change direction. For example: the birth of a child, sickness, work problems, marriage, and divorce. All sort of things can happen to us which take us well outside our comfort zones.
Now when these events occur some of us want to withdraw completely, to try and rest, relax and reflect on what has or is about to happen; in order to get our bearings and dealt with it.
For example, a friend on mine related the experience of the death of his mother to me. He said it had been an ongoing battle with cancer which she eventually lost.
This death became the catalyst for him intensifying his work load. Basically he hid in his work, and drove himself so hard that he ignored the signs of what was actually taking place in his life. His work had become his life, to the detriment of his family and his own well-being.
The death of his mother had propelled him into an unhealthy place, while outwardly; his work seemed to be thriving. In reality, deep within he had feelings of loneliness, isolation and patheticness.
There was a current in his life that was pulling him toward a depression, and he could not find his way out. He was in unchartered waters for a first time in his life, and he realized he needed someone to help him steer a course.
Fortunately he found help in an older Christian who just so happened to be a pastoral counsellor, and with time this pastor took him out of his current despair and returned him to “normality” if you could use that word.
He had looked at himself clearly from different directions, and with help, he discovered new things about himself, and about the life that was all around him that he had not noticed before. He also viewed God differently and allowed the Holy Spirit to re-alter his thinking. The heartache which he had first felt gradually changed to a deeper and stronger hope than he had ever known before. The Holy Spirit had led him to a new place in life.
As we read the Old Testament reading and the Gospel this morning it seems that both Elijah and Jesus were led by the Holy Spirit to a compassionate place; a place that God needed for them to find. Both the women in the scriptures were in a place of despair like my friend; and were hopelessly looking for a way out.
By worldly standards their situations were hopeless, but with God’s intervention, all things are possible.
Life’s destination is not really a place, but a relationship with a person; and that person is Jesus. Jesus wants to be on life’s journey with us personally; as He is our personal saviour. Jesus wants us to get to know Him better, and He wants us to let Him guide us in all manners of life; positive and negative, good and bad. God is more interested in us, than in our life’s successes or failures.
The Bible is clear about this, and that was what Paul meant in the New Testament reading this morning where he declared that his knowledge of God was revealed to him by the Holy Spirit directly. The King James version reads,
“I want you to know, brothers and sisters that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin; for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it directly through a revelation of Jesus Christ”.
It was Paul’s relationship with Jesus through prayer, that received his mighty revelations that led to the forming the Christian church. Paul actually wrote most of the New Testament, and he did so by revelations revealed by the Holy Spirit Himself.
Now the bible as a whole is one big ‘journey’s’ story, and one of the best known is the story of the Hebrew slave’s journey from Egypt to the Promised Land. If you look at a map this trip should have taken 40 days; but … it took 40 years! God’s great interest here was not in getting the Israelites out of Egypt, but getting Egypt out of the Israelites.
The Hebrews time spent in the wilderness was not God getting to know his people, but getting His people to know God; so they could get to know of His love, His strength and His faithfulness over and over again.
This sounds strange, after all God had delivered them through the plagues, the parting of the sea, the manna from heaven, the water from rocks and so on; but we read constantly in Exodus that all they could do was whine and complain. They even pleaded with God to take them back to the land of Egypt; back to a life of slavery; but back to the familiar.
All churches go through this when new things are on the horizon. Will we just carry on as normal, our will we meet change with enthusiasm. Well we know for sure, that the world is changing, and changing faster than ever before, whether we like it or not; so the question we must ask is whether we bury our talents, or will we move with the Spirit and do the difficult but faithful things of God?
You maybe thinking God needs 40 years to nurture us into a new generation of followers fit for this new world, but you must be open to the suggestion that God has been nurturing us, long before we ever acknowledge him. We must therefore accept the fact that we are God’s people here on earth, and if we are not, then who is?
Trust is what God wants. God wants us to trust Him. The Holy Spirit will lead us to places that are uncomfortable and unknown, but God knows what he is doing. And by the way, you will notice that sometimes when God is firmly in control, we are not; and we are certainly not comfortable in our surroundings, as Ian said in one of his sermons, “God is good, but He is not safe”.
So are we eager to get through life’s challenges as quickly as possible in order to achieve our goals? No.
The spiritual journey does not work like that, as the Israelite’s experience reminds us. Like the Israelites, our ability to discern and follow God’s leading has far less to do with our wants and feelings in a chronological sense and; more to do with what God is preparing us for, and the direction he wants to take us.
In a “Time Management” book written by Steven Covey, he writes about how fixated our culture is on the clock. The clock represents our busyness, our commitments at work, our appointments, our tasks and our schedules. The clock symbolizes how we spend our lives.
The compass, on the other hand, represents our personal vision, our core values, and the principles that shape and guide our lives. Covey suggests more reliance on the compass, and less on the clock because it is the compass that determines our direction, not the clock. Our God is not a God of time but of direction; after all, he is the alpha and the omega.
Elijah and Jesus teach us today about following in a Godly way. The world said that what they did was impossible, but they listened to that Spirit deep within; and did new and mighty things in life.
God will always send in the corrective; the course adjustments that say ‘follow me and do not listen to the world”. God’s future is always filled with love, hope and charity, but there is no mention of a timetable to succeed.
God’s plan is simple. When you seek you will find. When you ask you will receive. When it is His time it will happen. Jeremiah said of God’s ways, “If you seek me with your heart, I will let you find me” God is our hope!
The spiritual journey seldom unfolds in a straight line. We go forward and backward, left and right. We make progress, and we fall behind. Sometimes it seems we are just standing still or even going backwards, but the questions we need to ask ourselves are not, how far have we come; or how much farther is there to go, as those are clock type questions.
What we need to ask is: “am I pointing myself in God’s direction”; “am I being led by the Holy Spirit”; “Am I continually orienting myself to what God desires or what I want personally? Those are compass questions? Those are life questions.
On Wednesday night’s meeting, we had the congregation asking the Holy Spirit collectively to intervene and help our cause. To me, this is the sign of a healthy church and I for one am happy to be part it; but remember with a warning; when the Holy Spirit comes; he comes with fire; and He will make us uncomfortable; but He will cleanse, and He will heal, and He will point us firmly in a direction to suit His purpose; using our skills that He has nurtured in us over the years. We pray for John Bonner for his help in putting this sermon together. Amen
