Sermon 24th January 2016

Today, our Assistant Minister, Gill Tayleur, continues our study of faith heroes of the Bible. The reading is from Luke 1 verses 46 to 55. 

Today’s heroine of faith is Mary, the mother of Jesus. What was she like?

Mary is often depicted in art, in statues, paintings or icons, looking serene, submissive, passive even. Is that what she was like?

Mary, as venerated in Catholicism, prayed to, perfect, Is that what she was like?

Mary, the mother, agonised by seeing her son tortured and killed on a cross, depicted very graphically in the film The Passion of the Christ. Is that what she was like?!

This morning, I’d like us to look at what the Bible actually says about Mary. In fact we’ll take a whistlestop tour of ALL the events where she is featured. There aren’t many of them, only 6 occasions, or events, in all.

Six. First is when Mary appears at Jesus’ birth story, obviously.

Second is at a scene when Jesus was aged 12.

Third, Mary plays a part at the wedding at Cana, when adult Jesus turned water into wine.

Then there are accounts of when Mary and other members of the family went to see Jesus, busy in public ministry, and he talked about who really is what he called his true family.

The fifth occasion is when Mary was present at the cross when Jesus died.

Finally Mary is specifically named as being present with the disciples after Jesus’ death, resurrection and ascension, as they waited for the Holy Spirit.

So that’s the Mary of the Bible. It’s not very much is it, for someone with such an important task as bearing and bringing up the baby and child Jesus, from birth to adulthood.

6 different contexts to learn about Mary, and to learn from Mary. Let’s look at each in turn.

First, the most we hear about Mary, is of course in the gospel passages about Jesus’ birth.

In chapter 1 of Matthew, Mary is introduced like this:

“This is how the birth of JC took place: his mother Mary was engaged to Joseph, but before they were married, she found out that she was going to have a baby by the Holy Spirit.”

and so on into the nativity story, through to when the magi visited the baby Jesus.

The other gospel with the birth or nativity story, is Luke’s, where we have a fuller story starting with the angel appearance to Mary to tell her she would have God’s son. We’ll look at that encounter in a bit more detail in a moment. Luke tells us about Mary’s visit to Elizabeth, the trip to Bethlehem, the birth and the subsequent visit from shepherds.

Then Luke describes Mary and Joseph taking Jesus to the temple at 8 days old, and what Simeon and Anna prophesied about baby Jesus there. This included Simeon’s words to Mary that her son would be rejected and a figure of controversy, and that Mary would suffer deeply, as he said:

“sorrow will break your own heart.”

I wonder what Mary made of that, with Jesus just 8 days old.

……………………………………

It’s perhaps easier to imagine what Mary might have made

of what the angel Gabriel said to her, back at the beginning of the story.

It seems the angel’s visit came out of the blue:

God sent the angel Gabriel to a town in Galilee to a girl promised in marriage to a man named Joseph, who was a descendant of King David. The angel said, “Peace be with you! The Lord is with you and has greatly blessed you!”

Gabriel went on to tell Mary

“God has been gracious to you. You will become pregnant and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High God. The Lord God will make him a king, as his ancestor David was, and he will be king of the descendants of Jacob for ever; his kingdom will never end!”

Wow! This message from Gabriel was perhaps the news that every woman in Israel hoped to hear, that her child would be the long promised Saviour-king. But that she’d have a baby before she was married to Joseph, before she was sleeping with him?! No wonder she asked, how can this be, since I am a virgin?

Gabriel’s answer was simply that God’s Holy Spirit & his power will come upon her – for “there is nothing that God cannot do. “

In order to understand what might have been going through Mary’s thoughts at that point, we need to know how marriage worked in those days.

Mary was probably about 13 years old, young, but a normal age to be engaged in those days. At that time, engagement meant that the man and woman were legally husband and wife, in all aspects apart from having sexual relations. So Joseph and Mary were considered husband and wife. But they weren’t sleeping together - and Gabriel told her she’s going to have a baby!

How would it look? Imagine what it would have been like for Mary to tell Joseph, her family, her friends and the village, her version of how she got pregnant: there was no man, it was God. ??!!

There would be scandal, gossip, wagging tongues. Everyone would assume the baby was Joseph’s; but of course Joseph knew for a fact that it wasn’t. So it would seem there must have been another man, hence the accusation of adultery.

In Matthew’s gospel, it says an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream to reassure him that the baby really was from God, from the Holy Spirit.

Phew! But Mary didn’t know that’s what would happen, when she heard what Gabriel said about her becoming pregnant.

The Old Testament Law, in Deuteronomy 22, gave the punishment for adultery: stoning to death.

But before such a stoning, they had to be sure of the woman’s guilt. She might claim to have been raped, or that it was her engaged husband’s baby and it was he who was lying. So there was a procedure for determining whether or not a woman was guilty of adultery. It’s given in Numbers chapter 5; it’s the Law of Bitter Waters. The woman accused of adultery is brought before the priest in the temple, and under oath she drinks bitter waters, a mix of dust, holy water and the ink of the priest’s written curse. If the woman was guilty, she would become very sick. If she didn’t get sick, she was acquitted.

So when Mary heard the angel Gabriel say you’re going to have a baby, she would have known straight away, the private and public humiliation, the bitter waters test, and the possibility of being stoned to death. How terrifying!

What would Joseph say? And do? Would she be stranded with her baby with no father and no means of support?

When Gabriel spoke those words, Mary would have known that her life would never be the same again.

How extraordinary then, that Mary’s response was

“I am the Lord’s servant. May it happen to me as you have said.”

How could she have said that?

“I am the Lord’s servant. May it happen to me as you have said.”

These words must have been borne out of a long standing, deep faith and trust in God. Mary must have known what God was like, known the old faith stories of her people’s history and how God was faithful. She would have known the stories of other women who were threatened in Jewish history who had been protected by God, like Ruth and Esther. Mary was able to say “may it happen to me as you have said” because she knew God, and trusted him.

Truly Mary is a hero/heroine of faith! She didn’t know what the future held, apart from most likely some very scary and painful prospects, but nevertheless she consented to God’s plan, in faith.

Saying “may it happen to me as you have said”, saying yes to God, is a huge important lesson we can learn from Mary.

………………………………………………………….

After the angel’s visit, Luke tells us, Mary hurries off to visit her cousin Elizabeth who’s also unexpectedly pregnant. And with her, Mary bursts into a song of praise, that Bible reading we just heard. Some of us may be familiar with this song as the choral piece, the Magnificat, so called because of the Latin translation, as it starts My soul magnifies the Lord.

But it’s actually quite a revolutionary, political song, as it’s all about the downfall of the rich, proud and mighty, of kings and rulers, and the lifting up of the poor, the hungry and the humble.

It is said that the Magnificat was banned from being sung in India under British rule, and banned in Guatemala in the 1980s, as it was too politically subversive. It might encourage the poor to try and rise up!

Mary’s words, “he has brought down mighty kings from their thrones” would have made people think of Herod and Rome, and their tyrannical occupation of Israel.

When she said “he has sent the rich away with empty hands” they would have thought of Herod benefiting from unjust crippling taxation.

And he has lifted up the lowly and filled the hungry with good things - well surely that was ordinary, poor people like Mary herself?!

This protest against unjust rulers was very brave! If made public, it would certainly be heard as a tirade against Herod and Rome, and would get Mary into (more) big trouble!

So why did Mary bubble up with such a strong, brave, radical song?!

Because Gabriel had told her that the miracle son growing inside her, would become king and establish a new Davidic dynasty in Jerusalem that would last forever. Mary’s exclamations in the Magnificat are saying how wonderful, that God has already begun to do this! The time has come!

The Magnificat is full of ideas and phrases from the Old Testament, from prophets like Isaiah, and from Hannah’s song of praise in 1 Samuel 2.

So, what we might learn from Mary’s words in the Magnificat is that she was brave, she was passionate about justice, and she knew her Scriptures.

…………………………………………………..

The narratives of Jesus birth in Matthew and Luke, then, are where we learn most about Mary.

Much more briefly then, the other 5 occasions:

The second is only in Luke’s gospel, and he fast forwards 12 years. To the time when Jesus stayed in Jerusalem and taught in the temple after his parents had started their journey home to Nazareth. They thought they’d lost Jesus, and Luke describes Mary’s concern when they couldn’t find him. And then: “Jesus was obedient to [his parents]. But his mother treasured all these things in her heart.”

The third occasion we hear about Mary, is at the wedding in Cana. The wine has run out at the reception, putting the family’s honour at risk, and Mary seemed to nudge, or nag, Jesus into doing something about it, saying to him, “They have no more wine.” Jesus responded

“you must not tell me what to do. My time has not yet come.”

And then Mary told the servants to do whatever Jesus tells them. He turned huge jars of water into wine. There’s no time to go into this story in detail, but perhaps the most obvious thing here about Mary is that she has to start doing things Jesus’ way, and obeying him, rather than him obeying her, as a boy.

There’s more of this lesson, of learning to be a follower of Jesus even though she’s his mother, in the 4^th setting in which we see Mary.

In Matthew, Mark and Luke’s gospels there are accounts of an occasion when Mary and Jesus’ family went to see Jesus because they were worried about him.

Mark chapter 3. Early in Jesus’ ministry, just after he had chosen the 12 disciples, an enormous crowd gathered around Jesus so that it wasn’t possible for him even to go get food. So Mary and Jesus’ brothers went to see him, worried that “He’s gone mad.”

But they didn’t get near him, and when Jesus was told his mother and brothers were outside asking for him, he replied, looking at those around him, “Who are my mother and brothers? Here are my mother and brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”

This was a very difficult message for Mary to understand: she no longer understood her son better than anyone else did. She had to struggle with what sort of Messiah he was, just as everyone else did. He didn’t seem to be heading for the throne as she expected. Jesus was calling for a different following, a different obedience, and Mary had to become a follower of Jesus, just like everyone else. How difficult for her.

There are just 2 more occasions when Mary features in the Bible. The 5th is at the cross. Of course she was there. What mother would not want to be as close as possible to her son, her own flesh and blood, in his indescribable agony? We have no record of anything Mary might have said, I imagine she was beyond speaking, but John’s gospel tells us that on the cross, Jesus gave Mary into his friend John’s care, so she would be looked after.

The final encounter we have with Mary is when she is named in Acts chapter 1, as being with the disciples and followers of the ascended Jesus, praying together and waiting for the Holy Spirit to come.

So, having skimmed through what the Bible tells us about Mary, what can we learn from her today?

……………………………………………………..

“I am the Lord’s servant. “May it happen to me as you have said.”

Mary said this at the beginning of the story, when Gabriel told her she was going to have God’s baby. But she had to keep the same attitude, or keep coming back to it, over the years. Mary’s understanding of who Jesus was, of what sort of king and saviour he was, of how she had to follow him, changed and grew over time. And ours does too. Our YES to God, needs to be ongoing, repeated, daily!

I keep coming back to that, to Mary saying yes to God. That’s why I chose her as my heroine of faith. I chose her because I think she is sometimes under-recognised in our churches today. I chose her because I relate – a bit - to her painful journey as a mother. But I find her yes to God pulls me in, it’s so attractive – I find I want to say YES to God more than anything else! Even though moment by moment in daily life, I find myself going off on my own way and not God’s!

So, what might saying yes to God mean for you, for me, for us, today?

What might God be calling you to, wanting you to do, or be?

It might be a new job, or task? At work? At home? Here in church?

It might be a change in a relationship, someone you need to forgive, or to ask forgiveness from.

It might be to really get to grips with something you know is wrong in your life, to take responsibility for it, to do something about it.

“I am the Lord’s servant. “May it happen to me as you have said.”

Although I find Mary’s example a tremendous challenge, it’s also a tremendous encouragement. Mary wasn’t anyone special, at the start of the story. She was a young, poor, village girl.

As Cameron said in his introductory sermon on this series of Heroes of Faith, the Bible is full of people with faith in a great God. Not great people with faith. Not people with great faith. But ordinary people with faith in a great God. Mary was one of those for sure, and God took her faith and her trust and accomplished his extraordinary purpose for humanity through her special son.

Mary said yes to God – so will we?

Sermon 17th January 2016

One of our Lay Readers, Trevor Tayleur, continues our study of some heroes of faith. This week, we look at Esther. 

Last Sunday, in introducing the sermon series on heroes of faith, Cameron made an important point. In these sermons we’re not going to be talking about great people with great faith, but people with faith in a great God. Many biblical heroes were flawed characters, and indeed Esther was a very unlikely hero.

Chapters 1 and 2 of the book of Esther describe how Esther came to be Queen. It’s the 5^th century BC, many Jews were living in dispersion in the Persian Empire, and the Persian king, Xerxes, had deposed his queen, Vashti, because she had been too bold. She had stood up to his tyranny, so he had got rid of her and then looked for a replacement.  After holding a beauty contest of sorts he was more attracted to Esther, a beautiful young Jewish woman, than to any of the young beautiful women offered to him. So he chose Esther to be his new queen.

Esther’s rise to the top was certainly remarkable. She had been orphaned at a young age in a foreign country, and she had become queen. Sounds a bit like a fairy tale, doesn’t it? But it wasn’t a fairy tale. Following the guidance of her uncle Mordecai, who had raised her after the death of her parents, she had kept very quiet about her faith and her Jewish identity. Many religious Jews, when hearing this story, would have compared Esther unfavourably with Daniel. Daniel had served Babylonian and Persian kings while in exile, but had not compromised his faith, and had been willing to go to his death in the lions’ den. In contrast Esther kept her faith quiet, slept with a man to whom she wasn’t married and broke many of the Jewish laws in the process. Her path to the top was certainly morally compromised. And the man she married, King Xerxes, probably had more in common with a frog than a fairy-tale prince!

Also from a modern 21^st century perspective, Esther isn’t at first sight a shining example. To many people the example of Queen Vashti would be the one to follow. She had stood up to her tyrannical husband and has been banished from the palace as a result. In contrast Esther had been able to take Vashti’s place through being compliant and pleasing the King. But although Esther’s path to the palace might have been morally, culturally and spiritually dubious, God was still able to use her in a dramatic way.

It’s unlikely that any of us will get as close to the seat of power as Esther. None of us here work in Number 10 Downing Street as far as I know, but still there’s a lot we call all learn from Esther’s story – and two things in particular:

·      The importance of using the authority and influence that we may have in a Godly way, and

·      How to face the risks involved in using that authority and influence in a Godly way.

So, firstly, the importance of using the authority and influence that we may have in a Godly way. At the start of chapter 4, our reading, we see Mordecai, Esther’s uncle, at the gates of the palace, in sackcloth. The palace was the centre of power. It was from there that all the laws that shaped people’s lives emanated. Esther had reached that place, the seat of power. And Mordecai was trying to get her attention.

Powerful forces had got together in the Persian empire to destroy the Jews. These powerful forces had persuaded the King to make a decree ordering the massacre of all the Jewish people, and the decree had set a date for the massacre. And so Mordecai had come to the palace to say to Esther “You have to do something. You’ve got to use your place in the palace, your royal position to prevent this massacre. You’ve got to do something.”

Now, none of us will ever be the in the same position as Esther. It’s unlikely that we’ll ever have the ear of the Prime Minister. Yet many of us are in positions that carry with them some responsibility and authority.  We may not literally be in the palace or at Number 10, but that doesn’t mean we have no influence over the lives of others. We may have important roles where we work; law firms, the civil service, local government. We may have important roles in community groups and we may have important roles in our families.  

It may be the case that we have got into positions of responsibility in ways we’re not entirely proud of. We may feel, that although we’ve got some clout now, we’ve compromised to get there. We may feel that our consciences are not perfectly clear. But Esther had got to where she was through compromise. I expect she had some qualms about how she had got to her position as queen to the Persian king. But God was able to use Esther in a very dramatic way. It’s never too late to be used by God.

It is important to use the authority and influence that we may have in a Godly way. Esther was in a position to help Mordecai and the Jewish people, but there may be risks, even danger involved in using our authority and influence in a Godly way. So how do we face up to those risks? Esther was certainly going to be at risk if she did what Mordecai asked her. Note her initial response to Mordecai’s request for her to go to the king and beg for mercy. She replied, in verse 11, “If anyone, man or woman, goes to the inner courtyard and sees the king without being summoned, that person must die. That is the law; everyone, from the king's advisers to the people in the provinces, knows that. There is only one way to get around this law: if the king holds out his gold sceptre to someone, then that person's life is spared.”

It was an offence punishable by death for someone to approach the king without being summoned unless the king extended the gold sceptre to them.  Esther was saying to Mordecai, “Do you realise what you are asking? You are asking me to risk my life, to throw away everything that I have.”

And it was 30 days since the king had last called for her. The king hadn’t slept alone for those past 30 days. No doubt some other beautiful women had kept him company. Esther may well have been falling out of favour. She was far from sure that she would get the gold sceptre. Esther was saying to Mordecai; “You don’t know what you are asking. I could lose everything, including my life.” Esther was also probably mindful of the fact that the previous queen, Vashti, had been banished for being too bold.

Mordecai replied that he did know what he was asking. Basically he said to Esther, “If you don’t risk losing your place in the palace, you will lose everything. Don’t think that if you keep quiet, you will be safe. You will be sniffed out. If all the Jews are killed, sooner or later someone will realise you are one, and you will be sniffed out. And if the Jews aren’t killed, you will be sniffed out as a traitor.”

Mordecai was pretty brutal. He didn’t pull his punches.  The choice that Esther had was either to use her position of influence to benefit other people or to try to cling on to her privilege. And this went to the root of her identity. Did she get her identity, her self-worth from her position in the palace, or did she get it from God? There are perils of having a high place in society, of having lots of money and status. You can get your self-worth and identity from your place in the world and not from God. If we have money, or a nice house, or a good job, or a well-respected position in the community, then there is the risk that that is where we find our identity. There is a great risk that we find our identity in the things of this world. And it becomes very tempting to cling on to them. We may know that we shouldn’t do certain things, but we are worried that if we refuse, then it might make it harder for us to climb up the ladder, or it might jeopardise our place in society.

So, how do we find our identity in something other than in the things of this world? The answer is hinted at in Esther – GRACE.   The last thing that Mordecai said to Esther is: “Yet who knows - maybe it was for a time like this that you were made queen!” (verse 14). Esther had been brought to her royal position for a purpose. Esther hadn’t earned her position as queen. Her beauty wasn’t something she had earned; it had been given to her. The door of opportunity had been given to her, and she had walked through it.

Esther didn’t reply by saying what we might say if we were in a high position. If someone says; “You are in your position simply because of grace,” we might reply, “You don’t know how hard I’ve had to work to get here. I’ve really had to struggle.”

Well, we may well have worked hard, but if we have done well in life it’s because we’ve used the talents that were given to us, and we’ve been able to walk through the doors that have opened for us. We have so many more chances in life than someone born in, say, a refugee camp or a war zone. Everything we have is a matter of grace. Yes, we may well have worked hard for it, life may have been a struggle at times, but if we have achieved success and prosperity, that is a result of grace and not because we deserve it, or are better than other people.

And Esther responded to what Mordecai said. The Esther from chapters 1 and 2, the compliant Esther whose aim in life was to please the king, started to give orders. She resolved to see the king, saying; “If I must die for doing it, I will die.”

Looking ahead to the following chapters, Esther did indeed take her life into her hands. She approached the king who extended his sceptre to her and spared her life, and then listened to her pleas on behalf of the Jewish people. As a result, the Jews were saved and their great enemy defeated. Through courage and determination, Esther saved the day.

Esther provides an example of someone who stood up to be counted when the crunch came. And it’s an example from which we can take inspiration. But I don’t think I can end the sermon there. Some of us might be inspired to follow her example. We might say we’re not going to cling on to our skills, our position and money in a way that simply helps us to move ahead in life. We’re going to use our skills to serve others; we’re going to take more risks, strive harder for justice and speak more openly about our faith. That would be great, but the risk is that our new enthusiasm won’t last. If we are simply impressed by Esther’s example, it will wear off. If our motivation is guilt, it won’t last. The guilt won’t change us; it’s negative. An example, even a particularly great example, sets an inaccessible standard. It will crush us. So what can we learn from Esther that will help us to change? Esther isn’t just an example, but also a signpost.

Esther saved her people in two ways. Firstly, she identified with her people. Her people were condemned and she identified with them and came under condemnation herself. “If I must die for doing it, I will die”, she was willing to say. But because she identified she could mediate and go before the throne of power. No one else could mediate. And because she received favour from the throne of power that favour was imputed to her people. She saved her people through identification and mediation. Does that remind you of anyone?

Jesus Christ lived in the ultimate palace, and he had the ultimate glory as the Son of God. Human beings had turned away from God, and yet he left his palace to come and live amongst us. No one had to persuade him or pressurise him. He didn’t do this at the risk of his life, but at the cost of his life. He didn’t say, “If I must …”, but “When I die”. And he went to the Cross, and there he died for atonement of our sins.

And the Bible tells us, Jesus stands before the throne of the universe, and the favour he has gained is ours. If we believe in him, it is ours. If we see Esther as an example and try through our efforts to live up to her, we’ll fail. But if we see Jesus as our Saviour, not as an example of someone doing things for other people, but as our Saviour, then we can find our value in him. If we know that we are valuable to him, that our future whatever it may be is secure in him, that changes our identity.

One commentator on Esther makes the point that 14 times in the book Esther is called “Queen Esther”. 13 of those times are after she said, “If I must die for doing it, I will die”. She became a person of greatness not by trying to become one, but by serving, by putting others first. If we are confident of our identity in God and Jesus, then we too may be able to stand firm in times of crisis.

Let’s pray: Thank you for the story of Esther, for the way it acts as a signpost to your amazing grace. Help us to root our identity in our Saviour, Jesus, so that we can stand firm in times of crisis. Amen.

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[i] 17 January 2016

Sermon 10th January 2016

Today, our Vicar, Cameron Barker, begins our study of some Bible faith-heroes. The reading is from Hebrews 11:1-12.

“Stories are powerful things. They give us a framework and a context to understanding our situations and challenges. Fairy tales tell us that good triumphs over evil. Fables teach us that actions have consequences. Legends inspire us to reach beyond our limitations and aim for more.” Those words from a Bible Society devotional last week challenged me to come up with a really memorable story for the start of this new series. So here it is … about a man who stumbled across the desert home of a preacher after being lost in a sand-storm for 5 days. After the preacher had nursed him back to health, the man asked for directions to the nearest town. The preacher offered to lend him his horse to take him there. But, the preacher warned him that his was a very special horse. To make it go the man had to say, “Thank God”; and, to make it stop, he had to say, “Amen”.

Climbing up on the horse the man said, “Thank God”, and off it went. After a while he said loudly, “Thank God”, and the horse started trotting. When he was feeling brave, he shouted, “Thank God!” and the horse began galloping. Suddenly he realized that he was heading straight for a cliff. He yelled “Whoa!”’, and hauled back on the reins. But the horse didn’t even slow! Nothing he tried worked; until, finally, he remembered, and shouted: “AMEN!!” The horse skidded to a halt right at the cliff’s edge. Heart racing, the man slumped in the saddle, and gasped: “Thank God”!

Stories are indeed powerful things; and teach us all sorts! They do give us a framework and context to understand our situations and challenges. And the best stories to do that in life-changing ways, I’d suggest, are true stories. Fairy tales, fables, and legends (not to mention stories about special horses) are wonderful. But how much more inspiring are stories about ordinary people whose lives are impacted in ways that our own life could easily be? That, above all, is the story of the Bible, from start to finish. Apart from 1 major exception (yes, of course: Jesus!) it’s overwhelmingly stories of, or material written by ordinary people, like any one of us, who met with God in the ordinariness of their everyday life, and became caught up in His story.

We’re starting this year with a short series about just these sorts of people, who we might call ‘heroes of faith’. I’ve chosen Hebrews chapter 11 as the passage to frame it, for a very obvious reason. If you read on to the end of it you’ll see why New Living Translation heads this chapter “Great examples of faith” – because that’s exactly what it is. It’s full of stories of these ordinary people who chose to become involved in God’s story – specifically by having faith in Him. Faith is at the centre of it, as those verses that we’ve just heard make very clear. But, to repeat what’s regularly said here, this is not about great people who had faith; or even about people who had great faith; but rather about ordinary people who had faith in a great God!

Over the next few weeks, before this year’s very early start of Lent, we’ll look at just some of these individual’s stories. The preachers have chosen their own person, for reasons that each we’ll explain. That’s also important, because, as that Bible Society devotional also pointed out, “The stories we share about ourselves are just as powerful. The memories we affirm and retell reveal something about how we see ourselves and what we think is important”. Of course all of us preachers are ordinary people who have faith in a great God. We have also become involved in His story, in the same way that all believers have. This series is about how we can help, and encourage, each other to take more steps along the road of faith in God this year, then.

So we’re beginning at what in many ways is the beginning of the faith-story; with the story of Abraham; or, accurately Abram! That was his name when he entered the story; God changed it along the way, as a sign of what was going on. First then, to say that I’ve singled Abram out partly because the beginning is always a very good place to start; but also because his story plays an important part in my own faith story. Now this brief summary in Hebrew 11 is much easier to read than the full 15 chapters that this story runs for in Genesis. It’s also a fine example of another ordinary person (whoever wrote this letter) taking a story and making points from it that others could then learn from. And that’s an invitation which God extends to us all, of course: here are the stories – what will we make of them for our own lives with God?

So, Abram: he was an ordinary person, living his ordinary life, thousands of years ago in modern-day Turkey; when God spoke to him – out of the blue, as far as we can tell. That’s how we meet Abram, in Genesis chapter 12 – in other words, very near the start of the Bible; with God telling him to leave everything, and everyone he knew; for some unnamed and unknown destination! That instruction came first; so we can’t be sure how much of what followed Abram absorbed first time round! It was pretty amazing, though, according to the detail in Genesis; and that’s well worth reading in full, of course. It wasn’t just a new home, we read: “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great … and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you”, God said to Abram.

“So Abram went, as the Lord had told him” is what we read in the next verse in Genesis 12: no if’s, no but’s, no question asked. Well, as Martin Luther King once put it: “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase” – even if you are 75 years old, as Abram was; even if you don’t have a clue where you’re going; and even if you don’t have any children, as he didn’t. And all of that spoke very powerfully to me at a key time in my life. I had already made the choice to do full-time Christian work; I was living in a community, a group home, and spending my days and nights with homeless people; and I could hear God saying that He wanted something different, something more. Well, it made no sense to me – but when a close friend told me that I should get ordained, I knew that was it. The thing was, I couldn’t imagine anything that I wanted to do less! My father had been ordained before I was even born: I knew Vicarage life from the inside, and had no desire to return to it. And how could this possibly fit with my skills, life experiences, or personality? But it was as clear as a bell that this was God’s plan; and the more that I fought, and refused, the louder it got; until finally after reading these very verses from Hebrews 11, I realised that I didn’t have to understand: I just had to obey; and then I took the next step.

I should also say now that it was another 7 years before I was actually ordained; and that it involved a veritable theme-park full of twists and turns just getting there; let alone all that has happened in the 20 years since then. But that too is fully in keeping with the story of Abram. As I say, it’s a good read so do fill in the detail of what’s summarised here – and be prepared for the many ups and downs that Abram and Sarai experienced. It wasn’t until he was in his mid-80’s that God specifically promised Abram a son; after 10 years of moving about here, there and everywhere! And the closest that he came in the end to receiving God’s promised inheritance was when he bought a cave in a field in the land of Canaan to bury Sarah in, by the way. And Sarah and Abraham, as they had become by then, didn’t have their one child, Isaac, until Abraham was 99, and she was 90!

It’s easy to romanticise stories such as these when we read them in the Bible. Of course we always read them with the benefit of hindsight. So we, centuries later, know that Abraham’s descendants through Isaac really were that numerous – and that’s even if we count them only biologically. The trouble for us is that we live our own lives forwards. When we’re in the middle of waiting for God’s way to become clear, or to actually happen, we often can’t make sense of the waiting, or the pain of it. But that is when it’s so Godly-helpful to have such examples of faith-heroes, who held on and trusted God; even in the hardest, and quietest, of times. What we mustn’t ever do, though, is minimise the struggle in that waiting. We might not read about it in the story itself; but it’s just as real as the final Godly outcome: 24 years of waiting for just that one promise to become real is beyond-words hard!

Fascinatingly, what many probably think of as Abraham's greatest faith-test doesn’t appear in this summary. Again you’ll have to read the detail of this in Genesis (chapter 22), to see just how deeply Abraham trusted God. When told to sacrifice this only son, the one on whom God’s whole promise rested, Abraham showed his willingness to do even that. If you don’t know the story, at what seemed the very last minute, God told Abraham to stop. A careful reading of this story shows that Abraham never doubted that his son would be coming back with him from the place of sacrifice – though not how he thought that could happen.

Of course there are – many! – parts of the story that aren’t told; at all; let alone in any detail. Just imagine how long the Bible would have to be to include everything that we’d possibly want to know in each and every story! What matters though, is that there is always more than enough there to tell us what we need to know in order to work out how to live as God’s people in our own circumstances. That, after all, is what it’s about, in the final analysis: it was for Abraham; it was for Sarah; for all the others in this long Hebrews 11 list; for those in this series – and now it is for us today too. It’s about how we come to believe that God is who He says He is; and that He will do what He says He will – even if and when there’s no evidence.

The name that’s most often given to that process is ‘faith’. As Hebrew 11:1 is put in New Living Translation: “Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see.  Through their faith the people in days of old earned a good reputation”. There can be no doubt that we all need trustworthy examples of faith-at-work to hold onto when we need to, as life inevitably means that we all will; at least sometimes. Well they are abundantly present in the Bible: ordinary people, living ordinary lives, having that kind of faith and trust in this great God. Here are just a few of them; ordinary people that we hope God will speak to you through, whatever your circumstance may be. These are stories of the many men and women of the Bible who have left us a record of spiritual greatness born out of a will firmly set to do the will of God. May they be the context and the framework through which we experience our lives and understand our circumstances, then. And may that help us to tell, and to live, our own stories that follow their Godly, faith-filled examples. So let’s now pray that it will indeed be so …