Weather warning - keep the faith

from Helen

In the last week I have ended up talking a number of times about one of the most important parts of life. Yes, I have been talking about the weather. The weather has been very strange so far this summer. I remember, with all my lack of knowledge about such things, making a prediction about the weather that has proved right. Last summer I commented that we had such a lovely summer we would be bound to find fault with it. We are never completely content with the weather. This summer we are not happy about the weather but we have completely managed to forget what a wonderful summer we had last year.

Now, in case we assume this is a very British pastime in 1839 in America a man called James Espy decided that he had found a way to provide rain. He said that all you needed to do was to heat the air. He wanted rain so that all the land around him could produce a good harvest. He decided that he should have lots and lots of fires – strangely the idea didn’t gain support and the fires were never built. The problem of a need for rain didn’t go away and so later that century a man called Robert Dyenforth decided that loud noises would bring rain. So, he got lots of munitions to attack the sky. He set off all these guns and munitions aiming at the sky and the result was ? Nothing changed there was no rain.

I could have found a solution for them, move to Wales !! Anyway, weather. We can usually roughly guess how the weather is going to turn out.  You may look at grey clouds and think, I might need my umbrella today. Or you might see a cloudless sky and think, well I probably don’t need a coat today. 

In our gospel reading (Luke 12:49-56) this morning we heard about Jesus telling the people that they had got so obsessed with predicting the weather, that they missed what was happening right in front of them.

Jesus pointed out that when people saw a cloud  they would say that it was going to rain. When there was a south wind blowing they knew that it was going to be a hot day. Jesus said that they could predict the weather and make judgments on what was going to happen. Yet they couldn’t interpret what was going on around them.

The people of Israel had been waiting for a prediction, a prophecy to come true. That prophecy was that the Messiah was going to come. They hadn’t all realised that as they stood with Jesus they were stood with the one for whom they had been waiting. The Messiah, that is the one who would save them and bring them closer to God - was right there with them and they hadn’t even noticed.

It sounds almost laughable to us but if you think about it they followed Jesus and they wanted to hear more of what He had to say. They may have thought, well clearly this man is special, maybe He is the one who will save us but they didn’t realise what saving meant. 

They could guess, usually rather correctly, how the weather would turn out. They missed out on what was happening right in front of them. I wonder how often we miss what God is doing right in front of us. We spend our time keeping things going in Church, we want to be seen in the community, we always show love but do we always remember why ? We never want to end up being our own private club, we want to be people who reach out with the love of God and do we do that ? 

I am sure that we all reach out and love, God has changed our lives to be more like Him but we need to continue to be changed. We pray for growth every Sunday in this Church, but are we prepared to invite people to join us ? You see if we look around the community today, there are people hurting, right in front of us there are people who need to know God’s love and we need to share that love with them and we need to pray for them. As I said a number of weeks ago, we need to pray, pray, pray and if we think we have had enough – well we just need to pray some more.

Anyway, back to the weather. The rest of the gospel sounds quite harsh. Jesus talks about division and how things will turn out in the end. Jesus, the prince of peace said that He had not come to bring peace. This is really confusing but what He was saying was that there will be times when people disagree on what they believe. He was explaining how we as believers will stand out as different. The difference Jesus makes in our lives when we feel as if we are totally separate to the rest of the world.

Jesus was showing that following Him does make us different but that is ok as after all we need to notice what is right in front of us, what we have.

In our epistle reading (Hebrews 11:29-12:) we heard about the heroes of the faith. The people who have gone before us. The people whom we read about in the Bible, people like Gideon, Samuel, Samson and David to name a few. Not one of them was perfect, and after all one of the people mentioned, Rahab was a prostitute. These were all people who suffered because they had faith, a faith that meant that they would risk things knowing that God was with them and He had called them. 

God is with us and He calls us all, He calls us to follow Him, to give our lives to Him completely and He is calling us to make a difference. A difference as we try to be more like Him, a difference as we want to tell people all about Him and His love and a difference as we ask Him to show us what is right in front of us. We don’t want to miss out.

The weather – well who knows ? In our walk of faith ?  Well, as we heard in the epistle we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. These witnesses are those who have gone before us, those who have kept the faith. May we always keep the faith, come rain or shine. AMEN