Doing it God's Way

 

Children's Talk: Two brothers I totally forgot to record this, sorry! Scroll down to listen to (or read) the main sermon, although you can watch it on the video - service starts about 20 minutes in, following the worship group.

Once upon a time, long, long ago in a galaxy –
well, a country, anyway –
far away, there lived a man with two sons.
Not unusual, of course –
there are lots of people who have two sons, my daughter does.
But these two boys, and their dad, feature in several of Jesus' stories.

Daddy was a wine-grower, we are told, and one morning at breakfast-time, he said to the boys, “Right, lads;
busy day today, grape harvest starting.
Either of you free to come and help?”

The younger boy shakes his head.
“Sorry, Dad;
I'm booked, I'm afraid.
Told Sammy I'd go round to his today.”

“Not a problem,” said his father.
“What about you, Joe?” to the older boy.

“Yes, I can come!” says Joe.
“What time do you want me?”

“Oh, make it about 09:30, we'll be able to use you then.
Great.
See you later!”

All very well and normal, you might think.
But then what happens?
Joe, in the hour or so between the end of breakfast and 09:30, when he said he'd be at the field, begins to have second thoughts.
It's a horribly hot day, he could go swimming with his friends;
Dad wouldn't really mind, there were plenty of other helpers.... and eventually, his brother sees him heading off with his trunks and a towel under one arm, obviously not heading for the harvest-fields.

So the brother does a bit of thinking himself.
Yes, Sammy was half-expecting him, but harvest was harvest, and it was pretty sure he'd be wanted to help his Dad, too.
So he grabs a passing servant and sends him round to Sammy's with a message that he couldn't come, after all, and heads off down to the field.

Well, that's the story Jesus told.
And one of the reasons he told it was to tell us that it's never, ever too late to change your mind, not in this life.
If you've not been quite sure about God, about being Jesus' person, you can still change your mind.... it isn't too late!

Main Sermon: Doing it God's Way

You know, I feel very sorry for Moses.
There he is, doing his best to lead his people to the Promised Land,
and what happens?
They do nothing but grumble!
They keep telling him they'd rather be back in slavery in Egypt, thank you very much,
quite ignoring the fact that when they were in slavery, they hated it!
But first of all they didn't have anything to eat,
and then, when God provided manna for them –
and nobody knows what manna was, exactly, only that it was edible and tasted good –
they got bored of it, and wanted meat, so God sent quails for them.
And now here they are grumbling because tonight's camping place doesn't have any fresh water for them.
Moses is very fed up, and also slightly afraid of a riot and stoning,
so God intervenes and tells Moses to hit a certain rock with his staff
and water gushes out.
And the people of Israel stopped grumbling, until the next time!

They were never contented.
And nor, in many ways, were the Pharisees from our Gospel reading.
They were not bad people, of course;
they really did want to follow God,
but they had misunderstood what was wanted, and thought that in order to be God's person, you simply had to follow the law absolutely exactly.
To help them do that, they had added some incredibly detailed “what ifs” and “in this case yous” to the Law.
The Law, as interpreted by the Pharisees, provided for every single detail of life,
and if you failed to keep it absolutely perfectly, then, they thought, God wouldn’t want to know you.

Well, that was all very well.
The Pharisees meant well, of course, but they were, quite without realising it, imposing impossible burdens on people.
It was quite impossible to keep the Law in their way.
And the Pharisees themselves made one very big mistake
they rated keeping the Law more highly than human relationships.
They were more concerned about the way people obeyed, or did not obey, the Law
than they were about who people were, and how they were hurting, and why.
And, of course, somewhat inevitably, they tended to be rather proud if they managed to live as they thought right,
and then they looked down on those who didn't live as they did, believing God would exclude them.

And they find Jesus' teachings very unsettling,
especially when he starts telling them they're being totally hypocritical, fussing about how many mint leaves to tithe but ignoring people who are in need.
Unsettling and disturbing.
So they ask Jesus by whose authority he is speaking.

Now this was a trick question, of course.
If he claimed a human source for his authority, they could and would discredit it.
If he said it was just his own thoughts, or, worse, if he claimed it came from God, they could, and almost definitely would, stone him for a heretic.
It could be that some of them genuinely wanted to know, but many would have hoped he'd blunder.
But he didn't.
He turned it back on them –
okay, who gave John the authority to baptise?
And that, too, was a trick question.
If they said John's authority was from God,
Jesus could legitimately ask why they hadn't believed him,
and if they said it was merely human, well, what would the people think –
they believed John was a prophet sent from God,
and weren't going to stand for the Pharisees telling them different!

And then Jesus tells them the lovely little story to show how it's not always the obvious people who are first in line for the kingdom of God.
The two sons, one seemingly more than willing to help his father in the vineyard, the other with some excuse or other not to.
And then the role reversal, the first son failing to go, despite having said he would;
the second son finding he was free after all and going to help.
And he was the one who found favour with his father that day.
“For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him.”

And if you didn't believe John, Jesus implied, you aren’t going to believe me, either!

So what do these readings have to say to us this morning?

I think it's very much about our expectations.
What do we expect from God?
The people of Israel expected God, through Moses, to provide for their every want.
Not just their every need –
which he manifestly did –
but their every whim.
They wanted leeks and onions and all the delicious food they'd left behind in Egypt.
They wanted to be free, but they didn't want to pay the price of that freedom!
They wanted to be in the Promised Land already, without having to travel there, if that makes sense.
And whenever things got slightly uncomfortable for them,
they grumbled and moaned and whined –
on one occasion, you may remember, they even went so far as to worship another god in the shape of a golden calf.
They wanted God to do things their way.

And the Pharisees also wanted God to do it their way.
They wanted God to say they were doing it right, their tithes and their keeping the law in infinite detail would make things all right.
God would, they hoped, accept them because they kept the Law.
Which was all very well, but not when it turned into that they hoped God would reject those who didn't keep the Law!
They definitely wanted God to do it their way!

I have a horrid nasty feeling that we are all too apt to do this, too.
I know I do.
It would be nice to be able to manipulate God, to make God do things our way.
In many ways, it would be nice to be able to take responsibility for our own salvation.
We can't, of course, any more than the Pharisees could.
They tried to be saved by keeping God's law exactly perfectly,
just as we try to assume we are saved because we have committed ourselves to be Jesus' person.
But they weren't, and we aren't.
We are saved by God's grace alone, and we can do nothing to change that.

That sounds as though I'm preaching about predestination and stuff like that.
I'm not.
As Methodists, we believe that everybody needs to be saved,
and that everybody can be saved,
can know they are saved,
and can be saved to the uttermost.
But the point is, while I know that God has saved me, whatever I might mean by that –
and I don't always know, so don't go asking me –
I know that God has saved me,
but I have no way of knowing about you.
You know, yes.
You know, and you will doubtless tell me, that God has indeed saved you,
but I have no way of knowing unless you tell me.
And you have no way of knowing about anybody else, and nor do I.

We can't make God do things our way.
We'd like it if people were only saved if they prayed the sinners' prayer, or whatever, and then expressed their faith exactly like we do.
Human nature, that is.
The Israelites wanted God to do things their way,
to provide all sorts of delicious food for them whenever they wanted it, not just camp rations.
They wanted to have arrived in the Promised Land without having to journey there.

We have to remember that it was the son who worked in the vineyard who did what his father wanted.
The father still loved the son who changed his mind and didn't go –
that was never the issue.
He still loved him, but he wasn't best pleased about it, all the same.


So what is it God wants us to do?
Obviously to believe, to have faith.
And to stop trying to manipulate him!
It really isn't easy.
When they first told us King's Acre might close, all those years ago,
I remember that I found myself praying, “Lord, if you do that, I'll never speak to you again!”
What I should have been praying,
and what God gave me the grace, eventually, to be able to pray, was
“Lord, if you want to do that, you're going to have to change me to enable me to accept it, because I certainly can't right now!”
I dare say God could manage very happily if I never spoke to him again –
but I'm not sure I could!

Seriously, though, it can get like that, can't it?
Another rather silly example –
someone on Facebook, some years ago now, posted a comment that I considered judgemental,
and I was going to post “Judge not, that ye be not judged” on his status, when I realised –
or God pointed out to me, whichever –
that if I did that, I'd be being just as judgemental as I was planning to accuse him of being!
Oops!

It isn't easy to do things God's way,
rather than to try to make God do things our way.
That is always the temptation –
I know it's one of my persistent temptations,
and I shouldn't wonder if some of you share it.
We want our own way;
we think we know how the world should be run,
and we think God is very silly not to see it the same way as we do.
Okay, when I put it like that, it sounds ridiculous –
but isn't that exactly what the Israelites were doing?
What did God think he was doing, they wondered,
making them camp here where there wasn't any fresh water?
Isn't it exactly what the Pharisees were doing?
What did God think he was doing, they wondered,
sending this laughing young man to tell them they'd got totally the wrong idea about God?

And we wonder what God thinks he is doing allowing a small boy to wander off and drown, as sadly happened last week;
we wonder what God thinks he is doing allowing such dreadful floods in Nepal, or earthquakes in South America, or whatever.
We think – at least I do – that if we were God, we’d do things very differently!
And we’d like God to do things our way.

The good news is, of course, that we can catch ourselves doing it, and repent.
I don't mean having to grovel and tell God how awful we are –
often, it is enough just to laugh at ourselves.
“Oops, I did it again!” as the song says...
And if we can and do commit ourselves to doing things God's way,
then next time we try and do it the other way round,
we might catch ourselves just that wee bit earlier.

And yes, sometimes it isn't at all easy.
If things look as though they might be going in a direction we would hate –
illness, a threatened job loss, whatever it might be –
it's not at all easy to say to God, “do it your way.
Thy will be done!”
Often we know God's going to have to change us before we can accept it.

But we do, in the end, have to say “Thy will be done!” to God.
If we keep on and on saying “Do it my way!” eventually God might just take us at our word –
and leave us to get on with it.
And, as I said, I don't know about you, but I don't think I could cope with a universe without God, could you?
Amen.

God provides

 

Today’s readings are about how God provides for his people, and how ungracious our response usually is!

Our Old Testament reading is set shortly after the Israelites have been set free from Egypt.
You remember how God sent various plagues on the Egyptians,
and then parted the waters of the Red Sea,
or more probably one of the lakes that’s now part of the Suez Canal,
to allow the Israelites to escape from Pharoah’s armies, which drowned if they didn’t get out of the way in time.
So now they are wandering about in the desert,
waiting to be shown the way to the Promised Land.
And they are fed up and hungry.
Wouldn’t they have done better to have stayed in Egypt,
where at least they had delicious food to eat?
Forgetting, of course, all the nasty things about having been in Egypt.

But God provides for them –
quails in the evening, so they can have a hot meal, and manna for the rest of the day.
Nobody seems to know quite what manna was –
the Bible tells us that it looked a bit like white coriander seeds,
and tasted a bit like a wafer with honey, but that doesn’t really help.
Nor, of course, does it matter; it’s not about what manna was, after all!
I’m sure that those of you who are interested can research further into the whys and wherefores of it;
scholars have argued about it over the years, and they have some very weird and wonderful ideas!
But for now, suffice it to say that God provided enough food for his people while they were wandering in the desert.

I am always interested when I read the rather longer version of this story, since it’s made quite clear that every family was only able to collect enough manna for its own needs.
You couldn’t store it.
You couldn’t hoard it.
If you gathered too much,
and didn’t give it to someone who wasn’t as able to gather it as you were,
then it went rotten on you and had to be thrown away.
The only exception to this was on a Friday –
you were allowed to gather enough to last you for the whole Sabbath day,
so that you didn’t have to gather it on the Sabbath,
but that was the only time you could gather more than needed for immediate use.
Strictly enforced socialism!

All the same, the people were still not satisfied, so we are told,
and went on and on grumbling and muttering and being generally miserable.
As you probably remember, it came to a head on several occasions –
for instance, when they thought Moses and Aaron, their leaders, had been gone up Mount Sinai for too long,
so they decided God must have abandoned them, and built a golden calf to worship, instead.
And so it went on, grumble, grumble, moan, moan, never satisfied.....

Actually, are the Israelis ever satisfied?
Seems like it’s going on still – there are, of course faults on both sides in this conflict between Israel and Gaza, and I don’t want to get into it now, but strikes me that Israel would like to increase its borders, largely at the expense of the Palestinians.

Anyway, never mind that now. Let’s turn to our Gospel reading. Jesus is telling a story of what the Kingdom of Heaven – God’s country, if you like. We, like Jesus’ first hearers, want to think of God’s country as the most wonderful place there is, and, indeed, Jesus does tell us that it’s worth giving up everything else for. But –
oh dear –
it’s not at all what we thought!
Weeds everywhere, attracting masses of birds which could and did eat all the crops!
And the food, far from gourmet, is rotten bread made by women!

And then there’s this story. It’s harvest time, and so many labourers are needed. These days, of course, the harvest is usually done by machines as it is, sadly, more economical. A winemaker of my acquaintance told me that, although he would have preferred to continue using seasonal labour, his mechanical harvester paid for itself in under two years!

But back in the day, machines weren’t available, so you used seasonal workers or nobody. So the winemaker goes to the market, where the unskilled workers were waiting to be hired, and negotiates with them for a fair day’s pay. But he found he hadn’t taken on enough people, so he goes back mid-morning, at lunchtime, and then again mid-afternoon, and finally just an hour before knocking-off time. And then he gives everybody the same wage that he’d negotiated with those who worked a full day. And they, of course, were livid. Wouldn’t you be? These layabouts only worked for an hour, and we’ve done the whole shift! How come they get the same money as us. It’s Not Fair!

But the winemaker says, “No, listen, I paid you exactly what we agreed I would, and if I choose to pay those who came later the same, how is that your business? You be thankful for what you have and don’t tell me what to do!”

I think most of us would sympathise with those workers! It really does seem unfair, and probably most of them would have hired on with someone else next day. But let’s twist it round a second, and look at those who came late. Perhaps some had family responsibilities to deal with and couldn’t get there for a six am start. Some might have hired on elsewhere, but been let go early, as their employer had overestimated the amount of work there was.
Some might have worked almost a full shift but taken on an extra hour’s work because they needed the extra pay for – oh, I don’t know, shoes for their children, or something. Some might have been different, not “people like us”, perhaps they had some kind of disability and employers were reluctant to take them on in case they didn’t give value for money.

But this is God’s country, and God knew everybody’s needs, and provided for them. The employer – God if you like – was not being unfair to the ones who worked all day; they got what was agreed. It was God’s immense generosity which gave more to those who had worked less, and who, arguably, needed the full amount. God’s country is very much not what we think it’s going to be. After all, if we are honest, we probably all secretly think we deserve more!

I expect the Israelites would have liked an occasional change from manna and quail! But they had what they needed. They couldn’t take more than they needed, unless they were gathering it for someone who wasn’t able to get their own for whatever reason. But they had sufficient. The workers who worked a full day’s shift were paid the agreed amount – a very fair day’s wage, back in the day. And those who came later were paid the same amount, which in God’s eyes is very fair, even if it isn’t in ours!

We are taught to believe, and these stories show us, God’s provision for us as His people. But what of those he doesn’t appear to provide for? What of those who desperately need to use the food banks or they’d not be able to feed themselves or, worse, their children, by the end of the week? What of those in Nepal, trying to recover from those terrible mudslides? What of those in Gaza or Yemen that we know are starving? And there is so often famine in Africa, too? Has God forgotten these people? Why do they not have enough?

You hear of people who say these people brought it on themselves. They don’t work hard enough. They spend what they have on luxuries. And so on, you’ve heard it all before.

But you know what? It almost never is their fault! In this country, our systems are cursed by those years of austerity – still going on – which makes it incredibly difficult to climb out of poverty, especially if you don’t have the qualifications for a well-paid job, or you are trying to bring up young children single-handed, or you are disabled and can’t work. The powers that be have been known to refuse – refuse, I tell you – to give these people the benefits to which they are entitled. Not all of them, and not all of the time, but enough so that people still rely on the food banks and soup kitchens. And the food banks and soup kitchens rely on our generosity – yours and mine – to keep going and provide the service they do.

And abroad – well, they say the Nepal mudslides were caused, primarily, by climate change. And again, that is very largely down to us. We have turned a blind eye to the reality of global warming, until it hits us in the face as it has this summer. As individuals, we can’t stop global warming single-handed, but we can do our own bit – using refillable water-bottles, reusing supermarket carrier bags, being scrupulous about recycling properly, minimising food waste, and, while we are at it, minimising food miles. That sort of thing. If we all did it, it might make a difference, and we mustn’t think that just because not everybody does it, we needn’t bother either! We should, and we should encourage our friends to do so, too.

And so many of the famines we see are caused by war. Certainly in Gaza and Yemen, in Sudan, in so many countries whose wars we don’t really hear about. I think there are people going hungry in Ukraine now, too.

The thing is, God can, and God will, provide for all these people – but almost always that provision will be through us. It’s so easy to get what they call “compassion fatigue”, fed up with the nightly sight of suffering on our television screens. You know and I know that if we gave three pounds a month to all who beg us to, we’d soon go broke! But we can and should sit down with God and work out where our own personal giving should go – to the church, of course, but what other cause yells at you? Don’t forget, that if you’ve committed to being God’s person, as I’m sure most of us here has, that should be all of us, including our personal finances!

Now you might, of course, be thinking “But I can’t afford to give anything – I can barely feed my children as it is!”, and if that’s you, then rest assured, I’m totally not getting at you! All I can say is that I’m sorry the Social Security are such arses on occasion! And there are the food banks and there are the soup kitchens!

Meanwhile for the rest of us, there are ways to make our giving relatively painless. Perhaps you buy a coffee on the way to work – could you bear to take one with you, just one day a week? That would be around a fiver you could give to your chosen charity. Or perhaps you buy your lunchtime sandwich? Could you bear to take one from home, not necessarily every day, but perhaps once a week? Again, that bit of lunch money could go towards your charity.

You’ll have your own ideas, I’m sure. But I want to close by reminding you that you can’t outgive God! Jesus is recorded as saying, in several places, that God rewards us: “Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” This doesn’t necessarily mean material blessings, of course – in fact, it very probably doesn’t. The Israelites were given plenty of manna, but not too much. But it does mean enormous spiritual blessings, and love, and awareness of God’s love for us, both as individuals and as churches. Amen.