1 Corinthians 1: Matthew 4: Sermon

Transcription

1 1 Corinthians 1: Matthew 4: Sermon The story of the Christian faith begins simply and quietly when something stirs in the life of a young man, leading him to believe that the time is right for him to leave home and begin his adventure. Matthew records the moment in very few words: Now when Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee. He left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by the sea. We are left to imagine what must lie behind that simple description, the kind of human story that always surrounds a person s decision to leave the security of home to do something new, changing not only his own life, but the lives of those he will leave behind. So the story of Jesus life and work begins when he makes the decision to step out and follow his faith, even though he probably has no idea where that would lead. And the story continues as something very similar immediately happens again. Walking along the shoreline of the Sea of Galilee, he sees two brothers, Peter and Andrew, two young men working at their fishing boats. Follow me, Jesus says, and they left their nets and followed him. And then two more, James and John, in their boat with their father: Follow me, and immediately they follow. Again life changing decisions are covered by a few bare words, and if we didn't know better we might imagine that they were easy decisions to make, but we do know better. For most of us, decisions about what we are going to do with our lives are the result of a long process during which we consider and weigh up all the options, a process that may drag on over several years. Perhaps we re still doing it, trying to decide what we will do with the rest of our lives, what we should do next. For most of us, at least, it is a little more complicated than Follow me and they left and followed. But at some point we all have to decide that the time is right to get up from what we were doing and move and start doing something else, something different, something new, otherwise we would all be living in our parents houses and very few

2 of us would be in Geneva! 2 The bible is full of stories of people who do that, people who make new starts, often in big and dramatic ways, and almost invariably their decision to make such a change in their lives it is connected with their faith. You might remember, for example, how the whole story of the Old Testament begins with the tale of an elderly couple, Abraham and Sarah. As far as we can tell they were comfortable, wealthy and settled, until they hear a voice which unsettles them. Go from your country, the voice says. Leave your family, your land and your comfort. So how does the book of Genesis record for us the torment that they must have gone through as they calculated their options and worked out their response? It tells us And Abraham went. He went without knowing why he should go, or where he would go, or how he would get there. He went simply because he believed this what God wanted of him, he went because he had faith, and what an adventure that turned out to be. Centuries later, Paul will still be talking about Abraham as an example of what faith is, because he was willing to change, ready to follow a call. That is what faith is. It is capable of making us change how we live, without waiting for the results of a cost-benefit analysis. It is capable of making us do things which don't make sense on any scale of logic. And it can lead us to the most wonderful and life enhancing experiences that we would never find otherwise. That is what it did for Abraham and Sarah. That is what it did for Jesus, as it did for Andrew and Simon Peter, for James and John, and for so many ever since. When we hear the voice of God, when we sense the call of Christ, faith does not ask where it will end, or how long it will take, or what it might cost, faith just follows and we find out the rest as we go. Now I feel the need to be a little cautious here. I read an article by William Willimon, a Methodist Minister who for years was the chaplain at Duke University in the States. He explained that in his more than twenty years as Duke s chaplain he had received perhaps twenty angry telephone calls from parents. He wrote These were not complaints like, Help. I sent my

3 3 child to the university and he got addicted to alcohol, or Help. I sent my child to college and she became sexually promiscuous. No, the calls I got were, Help. I sent my child to Duke and she became a religious fanatic. Religious fanatic defined (he wrote) as she s going on a two-year mission to Haiti with the Catholics (Thank God It s Friday, p. 30). I don t particularly want angry phone calls from parents next week blaming me for the fact that their son or daughter has announced they are leaving school or giving up university to go and do Mission Work among the poor and needy. I d be very happy to get the calls just not the blame! But I cannot encourage you to have faith in the God of the bible faith in the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and assume that such faith may not lead you into new things, or take you down unexpected paths. For faith leads us to believe in things we cannot yet see, and to trust in things we don't yet know, and of course to those who don't have faith it looks like utter foolishness, it's wisdom hidden in the mystery of the God of the cross. I offer the reminder this morning that this is what faith does, firstly because it is what our bible text seems to be saying, but also because we can all too easily forget it. You see many of us have grown up with the idea that faith is an intellectual thing that we give our agreement to, that it is a list of ideas we believe to be true. But of course when we get back to the bible, we find that faith doesn t really look like that at all. Far more often it looks like Abraham and Sarah leaving home when they didn t know where they were going, like Jesus saying goodbye to his mother and telling her he probably wouldn t be home for dinner, like fishermen leaving their nets to follow a wandering teacher. In a recent interview, the influential American preacher Barbara Brown Taylor explains that she had been brought up with a definition of faith as adherence to a set of beliefs but now she says, she is redefining faith as openness to truth whatever truth turns out to be. Of course we can understand the attraction of limiting faith to adherence to a set of beliefs. That means we remain in control, we are the ones with the power to decide what we will do and what we will not do. It also means

4 4 that we can draw a line between those who are in and those who are not, those who believe and those who do not, those who are like us and those who are different. And it allows us to live under the comforting illusion that we are right and everyone else is wrong. The history of the church demonstrates that people have done that for 2,000 years so why stop now? But we do need to remember that it all begins not with a list of beliefs to adhere to, not with a creed to be accepted, but with a voice saying, Follow me. A voice which invites us to do things we would not otherwise do, because we trust in Christ. That doesn t mean we will always be called to quit our jobs and leave our home. But neither does it mean that should assume that there is nothing more for us to do that what we are doing at the moment, nothing more for us in life that what we have discovered so far. It does not mean that what we do at the moment is not important or worthy of our faith. But neither does it mean that there cannot be some new purpose that we have yet to discover. Naturally I would not dare to suggest what that calling may be for you, what Christ might call you to leave behind, or what he might call you to take up, that is for you to discern. Though I would dare to say this. The way of Jesus was always about reaching out to help and to heal those who were broken and outcast, and it usually involves a good deal of self sacrifice. So if we can t identify much in our current activities which fit that description then perhaps there is something new that we are invited to step up to. Because that is the work of God and that is the mission that we are called to and there will never be anything more glorious and more deeply satisfying in life that knowing that we are participating in the work of God. That s the way it was Jesus and Simon Peter, for Andrew, James, and John. And if we are people of faith then that is the way it will be for us. We don t have to have it all worked out intellectually, we don t have to have ready answers to all of life s difficult. But we do have to be open to the call to the invitation to follow him, to the possibility that there might be

5 some new adventure that our faith will lead us into. 5 As he walked by the sea, he saw two brothers, Simon Peter and Andrew, casting a net into the sea. Follow me, he said, and I will make you fish for people. Immediately they left their nets and followed him. So may the question linger and echo around our thoughts. What might we be called to leave behind, and where might we be called to follow?