Readings: Isaiah 9:1-4, Matthew 4:12-23
Let us pray: O God, give us the courage and the
willingness to hear your word for us today – may my words and our hearts be
open to your call. Amen
What on earth was
Simon, son of John thinking? To drop
everything and follow this, this stranger.
In fact if he had had any sense he would have seen that his brother
Andrew was hooked and realised it was his role to be the sensible voice, the
moderating influence! Instead, up he
gets and off he goes. And what was Jesus
thinking when it comes to that? Two sets
of brother – James and John as well – not fair, not showing much compassion for
the families who relied on them for their daily bread!
In our reasoned
and considered society of today it really is quite hard to relate to this
unequivocal response to Jesus call to follow him. ‘Sure but catch up with you later’ or ‘of
course but I’ll need weekends off’ or ‘do you want to leave your proposal here
and come back next week and I’ll let you know’ would more likely be our modern
day response do you think? That is
probably a bit unfair but you get the drift.
What is it that
allows Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John and all those others to drop
everything and follow? That is the
question for today.
And I am going to
suggest that the answer is preparedness.
Preparedness in
their hearts and preparedness in their understanding of their God.
What on earth do I
mean by that? Well I got to thinking, in
my somewhat unpredictable mind, what if Jesus and his family had never made it
back from Egypt. What if he had to
launch his ministry in that far land?
How fertile would the ground have been if most of the people had never
heard of or anticipated the coming of a Messiah. “We have found the Messiah”. “Who?” might well have been the answer. Simon
instantly knew who his brother was talking about because he knew of and
believed in what God had promised in the Holy Scriptures: “The people who walked in
darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness—
on them light has shined.” They all
believed that this light would come, that the words of the prophets that told
of God’s vision for the healing of the world would come. All that preparedness was leading to this
moment of decision, of acceptance, of action.
You can see a parallel in the rather momentous
occasion of January 20th five years ago when Barack Obama was
inaugurated as the first African American President of the United States. In that moment the vision of Martin Luther
King, his dream came together with startling clarity for many people. The new ‘black’ theology of an emancipated
people was heard, God’s liberation of the oppressed from bondage was on the
world’s stage in a way it had never been before.
We have a preparedness for the coming of light of
the world that reaches back through our long Christian history and theology and
our church. Each year at Christmas we
anticipate and await the coming of the Christ child – trusting God that in
Jesus the vision of a world reconciled to God is made real. We know and believe that.
Yet we still have a conundrum. There is another step we have to take. Going back to the time of Jesus, many others
also had this understanding of the Messiah coming, believed the prophecies,
waited eagerly for the moment. But when
Jesus came they turned away. Why did
some believe and others not - that this was the one? And this is where I believe we engage the
heart. In some ways for us it is like engaging
in the philosophy of being a Christian – as I once did – where I thought it was
a fairly decent way to live but I was keeping control of my life thank you very
much - as opposed to offering your heart to God and so being able to hear God’s
voice with absolute clarity when called.
There is a story shared of the elephant seals of
Argentina. Soon after she birthed her
baby, the now famished mother abandoned her pup on the shore to go feed in the
rich waters off the coast. When she
returned it was to a different part of the beach and then she began to call for
her baby. There were a whole lot of
mothers doing exactly the same thing and it seemed impossible that they could
find each other again, ever! And yet
they did – and the commentator explained that, from the moment of birth, the
sound and scent of the pup are imprinted in the mother’s memory and ditto for
the pup. Is this how it is with God –
imprinted with a memory on each other’s heart, so to speak, if we only are
listening for the call?
Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John did believe in
what was to come, but also they were eagerly waiting for the call, and maybe
that was the difference – their hearts were prepared, seeking - and so they
heard the call loud and clear and it was like coming home.
But we are not there yet. Weren’t these guys taking a bit of a
punt? Restless eager hearts they might
have been but how did they know that this was the one? We who are subject to so many seemingly valid
calls on our trust and our commitments, how are we to discern God’s voice among
the myriad of noise in our world?
Well if we go back to the gospel reading for today
maybe we get an inkling. It doesn’t
finish with Jesus saying: follow
me! It ends with action –the work and
words of Jesus ‘teaching and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and
curing sickness and disease’. And, in a
way, this takes us almost a full circle back to preparedness in our
understanding of scripture and God’s vision made known through the life and
works of Jesus. Because if we are well
versed in that, through our history, our church, our Christology, then we are
more able to discern clearly God’s call on our lives.
The things that take us away from compassionate
living, just and loving actions, kindness and mercy are the voices that we need
to reject - and all that moves us to live in the way and the teachings of
Christ are the true calls on our lives.
There was a young man who found the courage to
speak about his certainty that God was calling him to end his life, that the
world would be a better place without him in it. A very wise person told him that it was not
God’s voice he was hearing but someone else.
And when the young man asked how he could be so certain, the person
replied: In scripture, in Psalm 139, you
are described as fearfully and wonderfully made and Jesus said that he came so
that you might have life abundant, that you are made in God’s own image, that
Jesus came so that you might have life.
The voices are not from God.”
It is our responsibility to know the person of God
so well that we can discern when the voice of call is of God.
And may our preparedness in both our hearts and our
knowledge of God make us eager for the call to follow the Christ, wherever he
may take us. Thanks be to God. Amen
Margaret Garland
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