Responding to God’s Call

A sermon preached at All Hallows by Jan Betts on 17 February 2008
(the second Sunday in Lent)

• Audio (listen to this sermon online)

Readings:

Genesis 12:1—4a, Psalm 121, Romans 4:1—5, 13—17, John 3:1—17

In the name of God, life-giver, pain-bearer, love-maker. Amen.

When I read the readings for today I was silenced. There seemed to be just so much in them. I was reading an Asterix book at the time and I felt like I could be called Notmuchtothinx, or even Toomuchtothinx. So what follows is what caught me as I read and prayed.

The four readings are firstly about the call of childless Abraham from his secure place, and Paul’s reflection on the faith of that move. Secondly there is one of the most lyrical songs of God’s protective love, and thirdly a call to Nicodemus, a clever, thoughtful, rational, spiritually hungry man. They are all about a call to stepping out in faith, about God’s place and our place in that call.

I want to start by homing in on something Paul says. Work takes up lots of my time and all my teaching is about work relationships. I’m passionate about looking at the way organisations operate and so when I read what Paul wrote about work contracts, I looked at it hard. Paul says, in his comments on Abraham’s faith, that if we are employed, if we receive wages for doing a job, then that’s only what we expect. We give something, we receive something. It’s a contract. It has terms and conditions. I know about that. I do what’s expected of me at work, but I don’t expect to receive thanks for it, only my agreed wage. Nor do I expect my employer to let me off the hook, if I don’t do what I have contracted to do. I don’t expect them to have any particular interest in protecting me, apart from what they do legally, or to be interested in me outside the contractual relationship. I do, they pay. If I do and they don’t pay, I can complain, and vice versa. Work buys something of me and I can keep the rest. And most importantly I can say, of some bits of my life ‘you haven’t bought that, that’s mine’. My time outside work is mine and what I do with it is mine.

What it seems to me Paul is saying here is that faith is something quite different from this. So different that we can’t even think of it in the same frame. Faith isn’t to do with someone we work for, it’s a relationship with God which we work at. Faith is trusting God to justify us, the ungodly, not to give us what we have earned in a contract. I think why this struck me — apart from the fact that I spend my time encouraging students to be thoughtful about what work buys of them, and what they can hang on to of themselves, — is because I so often do, in practice, seem to think of my relationship with God as being one of a contract. I think God wants me to do x y and z and if I don’t, oh shit, I need to feel really guilty because I’ve broken the terms and conditions of my salvation. I behave as though I won’t get my reward unless I do what is required. And in a similar way, I hold things back — I say that in return for my church attendance, my prayers, etc I can keep this bit of me … I’ve done what is required, surely my spiritual employer is pleased with me? Can’t I reserve this or that bit of me?

This difference, between faith as a relationship and faith as a contract, was underlined for me by realising that these readings are primarily about what God does, not about what we do. Faith is about believing God loves us.

God tells Abraham that he will bless him and make of him a great nation in the new place to which he is taking him, away from the place of his tribe, in a new relationship with God.

The psalmist says the Lord will not let your foot be moved, the Lord who keeps you will not slumber, will be your shade, will keep you from evil, will keep your life, will keep you for ever.

Jesus tells Nicodemus that God gives us a new birth, that God loved the world (including Nicodemus) enough to give his son to save him from the way he is, to save the world.

God promises all this. In return for what? In return for nothing more than believing and accepting this love is real. This is no employer talking. This isn’t someone asking me to turn up on Monday—Friday in return for eternal life. This is someone saying they love me, they simply want me to walk with them. I can’t put this as well as I want to, or say how much it has really spoken to me this week. But it seems to me that because Jesus is with us at all times, it is about believing that love, walking with that love, sharing that love. The deal isn’t a deal at all. We have to bring nothing except acceptance. God does, we accept. And nothing, nothing, nothing separates us from the love of God. But of course — and this is where it gets hard — we also have to obey the imperative to love in return. Why wouldn’t we, if this love is what it says it is?

Paul said Abraham trusted this love. But I want to think about a number of things which do get in the way of accepting this love, in our lives and in these stories.

Firstly I think for me there is something about simply not understanding being loved in this way. Because we are fallen human beings, all our relationships need to be negotiated between our own selfishnesses, our own needs. After the initial falling in love, the great interest and commitment to the other, we fall back into — ‘but I want …’ and I know I can resent having to do what feels like giving up something of me to meet someone else’s expectations. Sometimes I think I negotiate in the same way with God, thinking that God has selfishnesses which butt up against mine and I argue and say ‘but if I do this for you, then you have to do this for me..’ God says no, it’s about you knowing that I never ask you to give up anything because I am selfish, only because that’s best for you. I can’t imagine what this love is like, so I find it hard to believe it. Faith is about believing that love.

I think there is comfort to be had in today’s readings in relation to this weakness in ourselves. Abraham left the place of his birth, the place where he had a name and was promised a new life and a family. But at the end of the reading today about Abraham, it says ‘and Lot came too’. Maybe this is just how the story was divided up in the verses, but I was curious about that. What is Lot about? Lot was Abraham’s nephew, protected and looked after by Abraham in Egypt nearly as rich as Abraham. Lot and Abraham parted company when there wasn’t enough grazing to go round for both their flocks. When Lot got into trouble in Sodom, Abraham fought God very hard indeed to protect Lot. This may be a bit fanciful, but I wonder if Abraham secretly thought that Lot could be his heir, in contrast to what God promised? Abraham at one point says bitterly to God ‘of what use are your promises, since I go on my way childless?’ It’s a reflection perhaps of the serpent’s ‘did God say …’ in the garden of Eden. Did God promise an heir? ‘And Lot came too …’ Was Abraham providing an escape clause in case God didn’t provide? Wanting an heir wasn’t wrong — believing it might be Lot was just unfaithful to God’s promise. But Abraham does go on doing what God tells him, as the story unfolds. This is the faith — not knowing, but going on being obedient to God, trusting that God is God, and loves us. This circling around, this obeying a call and then our doubts but always a desire to return to the call, a slow and never straightforward way of having faith, is so much in all of us. What do we take along with us in case God isn’t God? Money? Friends? Our intelligence? A relationship? None of them bad things, but how far are we saying ‘God might not be able to sustain me in this, so I’d better make some kind of plan’? ‘And Lot came too …’

Then Nicodemus, an intelligent, thoughtful, man who sought Jesus out. Nicodemus says to Jesus, ‘no one can do these things except he came from God.’ I can see and argue this logically, he is saying. This, my reason says, is what you are. Jesus says drop the human logic, it’s like this — you can’t see, you have to trust in what I can see, in my logic, not yours. Leave yours behind. And Nicodemus says ‘how can these things be? ‘ He was told the answer but he used his rationality, his questioning, his intellect, the thing which is important to him and gives him status with others, to ask to not be committed, or not yet. How could he give up his intellect to be part of this wind blowing, this thing he couldn’t see or argue with? To live by faith in a God who loved him enough to send his son to save him? That was hard.

‘Lot came too’, and Nicodemus said ‘how can these things be?’

What’s important to us that stops us accepting that God loves and we believe?

‘Lot came too’. And Nicodemus said ‘How can these things be?’

I want to say that I have been challenged by an awful lot of ‘Lots’ in my life this week, things I take along in case God can’t deliver. I have a nice house, I love shoes, I want respect and status, I have a ludicrously unnecessary car which I really enjoy and many other ‘Lots’ I won’t even confess to here … Being of a practical turn of mind, I want to know how to work it out.

I do know that there are others in this church who know much more about all this than I do. But at the moment, and maybe this is why I have read these stories as I have, I feel I am being called to become a companion of the Franciscans and I have written a rule of life which isn’t much compared to what the brothers do, but it certainly scares me. I’m rubbish at discipline — it’s always gym tomorrow, cake today, tax return tomorrow, reading a novel today — but I do feel that this is a call which I have to do however much it scares me, and it will happen formally later this month. I think it must be faith which takes us into such unknowns and holds us there. We do so need to pray for each other as we step out on these journeys- into ordination, into new relationships, into new jobs, and even into new sorrows.

Finally it’s not just about individuals. — communities are called too. We have experienced that in many ways over the years at All Hallows and we know how hard it is sometimes to distinguish the way forward in trusting God’s loving call to faith. I think we hear it when we focus on listening to and honouring each other, as well as God. So we too need to be mindful of what our Lot and Nicodemus bits might be as a church. How do we walk in the knowledge that God loves us and walks with us and our faith is just — just!! — a response to that loving support?

God will not suffer your foot to be moved; he that keeps you will not slumber. The Lord is your keeper, the Lord is your shade at your right hand. The sun shall not smite you by day nor the moon by night. The Lord shall preserve you from all evil; he shall preserve your soul. The Lord shall preserve your going out and your coming in from this time forth and for ever. (Psalm 121)

Amen.

Copyright © 2008 Jan Betts

Audio

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*Notes on the audio formats

• MP4 format
  MP4 format is a multimedia container format standard. Audio MP4 files can combine high compression with very high quality. Many media players can play MP4 files, including RealPlayer, QuickTime, iTunes, and recent versions of Windows Media Player (you may need to download a codec from www.free-codecs.com/download/3ivx.htm).
• Windows Media Player format
  Windows Media Player is installed as part of Windows. If you have an earlier version, you can download version 9 (for Windows 98SE, Millennium and 2000) or version 10 or later (for Windows XP and Vista) from www.microsoft.com/downloads/Browse.aspx?categoryid=4. These are quite large downloads [~ 10 MB or larger], so if you have a dial-up connection you may prefer to ask Phil for a copy of the installation program on CD.
• RealAudio format
  This requires RealPlayer (or the older RealOne Player) to be installed. A free version of RealPlayer can be downloaded from http://uk.real.com/player/ (choose the free player on the left of the page) — but again it’s a large download [~ 13 MB], so if you have a dial-up connection you may prefer to ask Phil for a copy of the installation program on CD.
  
  Alternatively, you can install Real Alternative, which will allow you to play RealMedia files without having to install RealPlayer/RealOne Player. Real Alternative is free, and works well with all major browsers; it is also a much smaller download (5.7 MB). Get it from http://www.free-codecs.com/Real_Alternative_download.htm.

This page was last updated on Wednesday, 20 February 2008

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