Come, trust, just as you are

When I was quite young I was playing football in the garden – it was quite a nice garden with lots of nice flowers – even now I’m not too good at names of flowers so I don’t know what they were but they were colourful anyway ! But whilst I was playing football and kicking it against a wall of the house it went astray a little and beautifully took off the heads of lots of the flowers. I was young but I was old enough to know that my mother would not be pleased !

And so I had a marvelous idea – I would sellotape the heads back on and make the flowers look nice and colourful again – and so I did, and this worked really well right up until the following day when my mum noticed something strange about the flowers and decided to ask me about it !

I’m sure she admired my initiative but she didn’t tell me and I was not too popular.

Very often when we do wrong in our lives we can’t just sellotape things back together again – we can’t just put it right as simply as that, because ultimately it will look wrong – it will come over as a patch up job and what looks restored will actually simply just be something that is cut off from real life.

And when Paul wrote to the Romans (10:5-15) he saw some people who had faith and he saw some who wanted faith, but he also saw that people were trying to get salvation on their own – they were trying to patch up the relationship with God that had been broken through doing good works – in other words by their own efforts.

And so in the part of his letter that we heard this morning Paul outlines again to them how to gain salvation – and it’s a lot easier than they thought. He tells them that the ‘word is near’ – in other words the message of salvation is near and all they have to do is ‘confess with their lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead and they would be saved.’

God has already made the invitation to come to Him – all they have to do is respond, but it is that response that they and we sometimes find difficult to make, because if we do those things it raises all kinds of issues – firstly we recognise that we probably don’t deserve for it to be that easy – Jesus died on the cross for me is a powerful statement. It is personal, and it challenges us to respond. And secondly doing those things changes our whole lives – we don’t simply proclaim Jesus is Lord and then carry on in our lives as if it makes no difference – it changes us completely…

Martin Luther once said that anyone can say Jesus is a Saviour but it is another thing altogether to say Jesus is MY Saviour and MY Lord. That is the invitation to us.

We can live each day being good people, trying our best for others, looking after our church and we’ll be recognised as good and nice people hopefully – or we can live each day knowing that Jesus is our Saviour and living out that message in all we do and say.

It is an invitation to listen to God. In the Old Testament reading from the 1st Book of Kings (19:9-18) we hear about Elijah being obedient to God. He hears the voice of the Lord telling him to go out and stand on the mountain top and when he is there is a great wind but God wasn’t in that wind. And there follows an earthquake and then a fire, but God wasn’t in the earthquake or the fire, and then there was silence and it was in the silence that God spoke to Elijah.

Our invitation to come to God can come in all kinds of ways – there may be an initial moment we can point to when we suddenly realise God is real or it may be a process, or it may be something we’ve always known, but God continues to speak to us wherever we are in our journey of faith.

He speaks in the dramatic events like the wind – perhaps through great church services or listening to great preachers or speakers, or at a Christian rally or festival. He speaksthrough the earthquakes and fire which may represent the times of challenge in our lives whether good or bad… but he speaks…

And he speaks when we make time for Him, when we truly focus our lives on Him. And that is what is clear in the gospel reading (Matthew 14:22-33). Jesus had fed the 5000 showing his power in miracles, and showing his compassion with the practical distribution of food, and he wanted time to be alone. He wanted quiet – he wanted peace to reflect.

And then there was more drama though – his boat had gone off course and he showed another incredible display of power as he walked on the water, and the disciples were amazed – who wouldn’t be ?

Peter then asked if he could do it too – in that one moment he showed enormous faith. He focused on Jesus and trusted him completely, and Jesus offered a simple word, ‘Come’. And with that Peter got out of the boat and he walked on the water towards Jesus…

And it was all going so well ! And then Peter noticed the strong wind and he became frightened and began to sink… He had taken his focus away from Jesus…

Once again Jesus is offering a simple invitation – ‘Come’ is all he said to Peter, and Jesus gave him the power to do it. ‘Come’ is all he says to us as well – and he says it day by day… There may have been that moment when we took an initial step of faith, we may have done it without even thinking, but the invitation to grow closer to Jesus is there day by day…

We listen and we learn – we look for God in the great and powerful events of life and we look for God to in the quiet times, the times when we seek his will for us, the times when he challenges us to respond to his love by doing something for Him.

All of us will be at different points in our Christian journey – some may not even have started that journey but Christ continues to offer that invitation to ‘Come’. And like Peter we can take up that invitation – we can move closer to God and he will guide us and support us and strengthen us and love us. But we also need to stay focused on Him – Peter lost that focus and he sank.

I wonder how many churches have lost that focus and have begun to wonder how they can save their buildings or how they can raise money to pay the bills or how they can help the poor and needy without even remembering why we might want to do that.

And how many of us occasionally or even constantly lose that focus on God. How many of us trust our own judgement and strength rather than the guidance and power of the Holy Spirit ? God builds churches using people – people never build churches alone.

And God builds lives – we can’t do it by ourselves. Elijah listened and realized he wasn’t alone. Paul preached that message that people needed to stop thinking salvation was earned but recognise it was a gift, and Jesus simply said ‘Come’ and he provided all that was ever needed…

That’s what he continues to do – to offer an invitation to come to him and know that in accepting that invitation our lives have been transformed.

A businessman well known for his ruthlessness once announced to the writer MarkTwain, "Before I die I mean to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. I will climb Mount Sinai and read the 10 Commandments aloud at the top." "I have a better idea," repliedTwain. "You could stay in Boston and keep them."

We can pay lip service to God by being good, by trying to do the right thing and even by looking after his church. We can even try and sellotape the bits that are falling apart like I did with those flowers, but it will never be enough – Jesus wants us. He wants us simply to respond to that invitation to come – to come and truly enjoy the gifts he has promised for us, to come and know that we are accepted with all of our weaknesses and imperfections, to come and know that we are loved whoever we are…

And as we come and as we focus on Jesus, may we know our lives have been transformed and may we share that transformation with others as we continue to build the kingdom of God here in this place, and in our community, and in our country and in the world.

Michelangelo said, ‘The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.’ When we think of simply maintaining our churches without a view to growing them, when we satisfy the people we have here rather than seeking new people we are aiming too low.

And in our lives when we think we’re not good enough or faithful enough then we’re ignoring what God has already done for us… Seek his power, pray to be filled with His Spirit and Come and be part of God’s plan for us and for his world. AMEN