Called........

There’s a story going back to the 11th century about King Henry III of Bavaria. Apparently he got fed up of life as the king and he decided to join a monastery. The Prior who met him there explained that one of the main pledges he would make would be one of obedience. The King said he was happy with this. 

And then the Prior dropped a bit of a bombshell and told the king to go back to the role that God had given him. He did and when King Henry died a statement was written: "The King learned to rule by being obedient." 

Calling can be a really strange thing – there’s another story about a small boyreturning from church one Sunday who said to his mother, ‘I’ve decided that when I grow up I’m going to be a Vicar’. The mother replied that that was very nice, and asked him why he had decided that. The boy replied, ‘Well I have to go to Church on a Sunday anyway, and I think it would be a lot more fun to stand up and talk than to sit down and listen’ !

And a couple of our readings this morning really concentrate on the theme of calling. In the Old Testament reading from Hosea (2:14-20) we actually just have a clip of what the whole book is about - a parable about calling and about God’s incredible grace and compassion. 

Hosea is a good man who listens to God and receives a strange calling. It is to marry a woman who will be unfaithful to him – and so he marries Gomer and sure enough she is unfaithful and goes off and lives a life filled with immorality to the point where things got so bad Hosea, her husband, had to step in and rescue her. 

Many husbands would have stayed well away I’m sure, probably rightly so, but Hosea was working with God and God’s plan was that Hosea would be the one to go and save her from her tragic life. 

What a message this is for us – Hosea is a living parable of God’s love for his people who, time after time turn away from him, living lives that are a long way from God. Hosea took Gomer back and even worked to get her back when all the natural instincts must surely have been to walk away. 

I wonder how often God has looked at us and thought ‘I’m going to walk away ?’ I think the answer is never ! God doesn’t give up on any one of us. He sees us at our best but he also sees us at our worst and his love for us remains unchanged. 

The Book of Hosea is a wonderful example of how God calls people and never gives up on them... 

And then of course we think today of that gospel reading (Mark 2:13-22) where we are introduced to Levi who is better known to us as Matthew – Jesus calls him from his work and goes to dinner with him. 

Jesus, a supposedly good man, eating with a tax collector – someone working for the Romans, someone who would regularly take their cut over and above what they were due, someone who was pretty much hated by a lot of people. 

We know the path that Matthew’s life was to take but at this stage people looked on amazed that Jesus would spend time with someone like this and his friends as well. 

But that was and is Jesus – calling the unlikely, calling those who seem lost in all kinds of problems, calling those who others simply didn’t even want to know... And whatever our lives are like or have been like, good or bad, or a mixture of both, GHod calls each one of us. 

This week I went to a funeral of a lovely man who was Church Warden when I was Vicar in Pyle, and his name is Ian Rees – for those that don’t know that’s my name as well ! And it’s a little bit strange taking part in a service like that as it’s rather difficult not to hear the words and think I’m hearing them from another place so to speak !

It is another reminder of our mortality as we reflect on the shortness of life, and yet when we allow ourselves to think of things like that, perhaps we also look a little more clearly at the bigger picture – what is really important in our lives ?

For Hosea it was the woman that he loved in spite of her many imperfections. For Matthew it wasn’t the money that he gained from his work but actually the knowledge that he was being called. But for both of these people the common factor was God – a reliance on him and a sense that with God, whatever life may throw at them, life would be better. 

And that is the promise to us – it’s not a promise to walk around with strange grins on our faces all the time. It’s not a promise that we will be continually happy but it’s a promise that we can know that God is with us every moment of every day in every place... 

In the third of our readings (2 Cor. 3:1-6) Paul is writing to a church where some false teaching had started to creep in, sending letters to show they were authentic, but the test Paul used was one of authenticity as well. 

He said it wasn’t in letters that people proved their authenticity but in their lives – lives transformed by God. Paul and Matthew and Hosea didn’t know God from reading some sort of manual – they knew him because he changed their lives. 

There’s a story about an actor who is asked to read Psalm 23 in a special service and he does it, and it’s incredible with all the right tone and emphasis, and later on it’s read by a member of the congregation who doesn’t read well, but whose reading leaves the congregation in tears – the actor knew the words but the member of the congregation knew Jesus and the reality of the words. 

When God calls us he calls us by name – he calls us individually and he doesn’t miss anyone out... I love the reading from Paul’s 1st letter to the Corinthians chapter 12 where he writes about the various gifts that God gives to his people – all kinds of gifts, different gifts, none more important than another. 

It’s a great picture of the church and how God calls us all to all kinds of different things at the front of the church, at the back of the church, outside the church and that list goes on and on... All of us are blessed by God with gifts that we can use for his glory... 

And Paul finishes 1 Corinthians 12 by saying that there was one thing that most important of all – we can have all the gifts, we can look good, we can preach well, we can lead bible studies and pray and we can do all kinds of good works, but Paul ends that chapter 12 by saying, ‘I want to lay out a far better way for you...’

And do you know what chapter comes next ?? It is the most incredible passage about love that has ever been written by anyone. It begins, ‘If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal...’ You’ll know the words I’m sure, ‘If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing...’

And a little later, ‘Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends...’

God offers to us, his children, all kinds of gifts that we are to use but the greatest amongst them is love as we try to live out something of God’s love for us – the love that called Hosea and even his wife, the love that called Matthew, the love that called Paul and the love that continues to call each one of us... AMEN