Pay Attention! - Exodus 3:1-10

God is in the world, not just the church. And it’s there that God is waiting to be found.

That’s where we left things last week in this new sermon series which is loosely based on a book by Barbara Brown Taylor called “An Altar In The World”.

Taylor’s central argument is that we have placed too much expectation on this hour when we’re gathered for worship, and not enough expectation that God will meet us during the rest of the week.

We remembered Jacob last Sunday, that budding Patriarch, as he lay down in a patch of red earth in the middle of nowhere and had a vision of angels and ladders that changed his life. Nothing special about the place he laid his head down, nothing at all. What made it special was the encounter he had with God there.

And it’s the same for us. Most of our days are redolent with ordinariness – the work we have to do, the mundane tasks, the people we walk past in the corridor or in the shops, the routine functions of the day. Unpromising places to start looking for God, we might think. But nothing could be further from the truth because it’s in these very places that the spark of a spiritual life can begin to fan into flames.

The good news is that we don’t need to start doing a host of different things to encounter God in our ordinary world. We can find him just fine if we learn to do the same things with a different head on.

And the first practice we need to nurture – the one that underpins all the others, I think – is the practice of paying attention to the people, the places, the things around us. That involves slowing down, and spending time. In other words, it comes at a cost. It’s called PAYING attention. after all! But it’s an investment of our time that’s well worth making.

It’s no accident, I think, that when I asked folk last week to reflect on an occasion when they felt close to God, almost invariably those encounters happened when folk were slowing down and spending time.

They fell ill and were in hospital. Suddenly the merry-go-round of life ground to a halt; all the things they thought were non-negotiables became negotiable. The world didn’t stop spinning. For once they had time on their hands. Maybe too much time. And in that state of enforced slowed-down-ness, faced with illness as an uncomfortable reminder of their own mortality - thoughts of God came to the fore.

Or they were sitting with someone who was ill, or dying. Or a woman who was giving birth. Waiting. Because these things don’t happen to order. And in the long suspended hours in which all they could do was keep company with them and hold their hands and offer them whatever little comfort they could bring, somehow they knew that God was in the waiting with them. A palpable presence in the room.

Some were working, but found themselves taking time to be grateful for the graces that lay behind their work. I am fit enough to lift this heavy basket and walk outside in the fresh air to hang up these damp clothes. I am glad I have a machine that washes them for me. I have people I love and share my life with, whose clothes I am now suspending on this line. Today is a good drying day and I know that this wonderful fresh air, and this sunshine on my face will dry these clothes, and the smell of the outdoors will linger on them when I bring them back into the house and place them in the drawers and hang them in the wardrobes.

Some spoke about work, and others encountered God when they had time to spare. It was as they stepped aside from responsibility for a while and slowed down that they met God – in the hills, by the seaside, cantering through the countryside on horseback, walking along the clifftops.

For a spell, voluntarily or involuntarily, these folk all opted out of the game for a while – the game that says life is all about doing and achieving and amassing rather than being and attending and savouring.

They spent time. They paid attention to what was going on, around them and within them.

In our culture that doesn’t come naturally.

The little book “The Papalagi” published in 1920, is a fictional account of western industrial society from the point of view of a tribe of South Sea Islanders. The “papalagi” is their name for the white man whose life and activity they just can’t understand.

The chieftan, Tui-avi, describes the papalagi in this way:

“Assume the white man would like to go out into the sun, or travel in a canoe on the river, or love his girl; he mostly spoils his pleasure by fastening onto the thought: There is no time for me to be merry…. He names a thousand things that take his time, he squats grumbling and complaining about a job that he has no joy in. But then, if he suddenly sees that he does have time, that it’s there after all, or give him another time, then he gets no pleasure from it – he’s tired from work without joy. There are papalagi who claim they have never had time.. That’s why most of them run through life like a thrown stone.”

How much have we changed in a hundred years, I wonder? Not much. I’m guessing most of us recognise ourselves as papalagi to some degree. This is the culture we’ve learned. Perhaps it’s time we unlearned it.

If our stewardship of time leaves us little room to savour the experience of living, and makes us feel that we can’t afford to spend time with God, maybe we need to review our stewardship of time. Do you really want to go through life like a thrown stone?

No-one’s going to change that for you, but it can be changed. You have to make a conscious, counter-cultural choice to slow down and to spend time.

And lest you think this is self-help psychobabble, let me underscore that this is Biblical thinking.

I’ve never been a shepherd, but I’m guessing that like every job there would be busy times and quieter times.

The Bible is silent on the question of whether or not Moses had a sheepdog, but I think it’s safe to assume that the custody of the sheep and goats was down to him and his staff.

So to leave the flocks behind for a while; to leave that vantage point where you’ve been keeping a weather eye on the horizon for wild animals, and go and explore the strange sight of a bush that burns but doesn’t burn up, is no mean thing.

And on that choice, you could argue, not just Moses life, but the life of Israel and her god-daughter Christianity, hang.

Moses paid attention, slowed down, spent time.

If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have been Moses – at least, not the Moses we know and love, who squared up to Pharaoh, and parted the Red Sea, and had to get a second set of stone tablets off God because he smashed the first lot when he came down the mountain and found the Israelites behaving like a group of drunken teenagers at a house party.

It was paying attention at this particular moment, that tilted the entire balance of his life.

He could have seen the bush and said – ‘Wow – that’s interesting! I must make a point of coming back tomorrow!" But the thing is, tomorrow never comes. And who knows if the bush will still be burning 24 hours from now?

Now is the day of salvation, says Paul. “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts” says the Psalmist. "Don't miss it" they're saying.

And we find exactly the same thing in the teaching of Jesus:

“Consider the lilies of the field” said Jesus. “Consider the birds of the air”. Consider - that's a word that discourages us from hurrying.

And on one occasion, Jesus said to his friend: “Martha, Martha – you are busy with many things. But only one thing is necessary”.

Slow down. Spend time. Pay Attention.

Ok Paul – but pay attention to what?

To whatever patch of red earth you happen to be standing on today, I guess – with all its contrasts and contradictions and potential and disappointment.

In the weeks ahead we’ll be thinking more about that. How we encounter God right where we are, through our bodies, our labour, our pain, our vocation, our rest, through friend and stranger, through words of blessing, through the beauty and wildness of the natural world.

All I want to do today is leave you with this seed of a thought. More often than not, it’s those who pay attention who discover God.

Did you notice in the reading of Moses’ story this morning that God doesn’t speak to him until he goes over to see the bush? It’s almost as if God waits ‘til Moses has decided to pay attention before he speaks to him.

Remember what I said last week? I have a strong notion that God is canny. He responds to those who seek him out.

Don’t get distracted from the task. Don’t get fooled into believing that other things are more important than this. What could be more important than learning to live in tune with the God who made you, who’s saving you, and who holds the name of your becoming?

Don’t miss him because you’re in a hurry.

Barbara Taylor offers us this reflection as we close.

I’ve never been presented with a burning bush, but I did see a garden turn golden once. I must have been sixteen, earning summer spending money by keeping a neighbours cats while she was away. The first time I let myself into the house the fleas leapt on my legs like airborne pirhana. Brushing them off as I opened catfood and cleaned litter pans, I finally fled through the back door with the bag of trash. I could hear the fleas inside flinging themselves against the plastic, so that it sounded as if a light rain were falling inside the bag.

I couldn’t wait to be shed of it, which was why I was in a hurry. On my way to the cans, I passed a small garden area off to the left that was not visible from the house. Glancing at it, I got the whole dose of loveliness at once – the high arch of trees above, the mossy flagstones beneath, the cement birdbath, the cushiony bushes, the white wrought-iron chair – all lit by stacked planes of sunlight that turned the whole scene golden. It was like a door to another world. I had to go through it. I knew that if I did, then I would become golden too.

But first I had to ditch the bag. The fleas popped against the plastic as I hurried to the big aluminium garbage cans near the garage. Stuffing the bag into one of them, I turned back toward the garden, fervent to explore what I had only glimpsed in passing. When I got there, the light had changed. All that was left was a little overgrown sitting spot that no-one had sat in for years. The smell of cat litter drifted from the direction of the garbage cans. The garden was no longer on fire.

I had noticed, but I did not turn aside. I had a bag full of fleas to attend to. While I made that my first priority, the fire moved on in search of someone who would stop what she was doing, take off her shoes and say: “Here I Am”.

May God grant us the wisdom and the strength to slow down, spend time. and pay attention – that we might find him, flaring up in our little worlds – for our souls’ good, and the sake of his kingdom.

Amen

God Is In The World - Genesis 28:10-22

I want to begin this morning by showing you a few photos from a trip to Orkney I made a couple of years ago, and my apologies to the Orcadians in our midst if this stirs up a little homesickness!

These are the Stenness stones in Orkney. A Neolithic Stone Circle dating from 3000 BC, there are now just 4 uprights (of an original 12) the tallest of which is about 5 metres high.

Opposite is St Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall, Orkney. The cathedral dates from 1137 and was founded by the Viking, Earl Rognvald in honour of his uncle St Magnus. Parts of the building are over 850 years old, and it has a particular character because it was built with red a

nd yellow sandstone which are susceptible to weathering and the external of the building shows the effects of centuries of Orcadian weather!

This last image is of the Italian Chapel in Orkney. In 1942, 550 Italian POW’s were held on the island and were involved in building the Churchill Barriers which blocked access to Scapa Flow. It was agreed that they could construct a place of worship and this place was built out of two Nissan huts, and all the features you see were made from concrete metal and paint left over from the construction work. It's now an 'A' listed building and attracts over 100,000 visitors a year.

I show you these images because they neatly prove a point I want to make. Across the centuries and across cultures we feel an abiding human need to raise something, build something, in honour of God. And these places, over time, come to have a great significance in our lives.

And our story this morning, the story of Jacob’s dream and his response to it, is another example of the same phenomenon.

Jacob, if you remember, was the son of Isaac and the twin brother of Esau, and although he was smart, he was conniving. And in Genesis 28 we find him on the run from Esau because he’s robbed him blind. He’s tricked him out of his inheritance and also their father’s blessing.

So although Jacob’s destined for great things – in a few chapters he’s going to be given the name Israel and become the father of a nation – for now, he’s a greedy little shmuck who’s nearly been hoist by his own petard. No great friend of the God of Abraham and Isaac, or Grandad and Dad as Jacob would have called them.

So this strange dream comes out of nowhere. Angels ascending and descending on a ladder whose top reaches to the clouds, but whose feet rest firmly in the red earth. And then God appears, making promises to this no good brat who up until this point doesn’t really seem terribly interested in him. Promises about land and family and blessings, and God’s continuing presence with him.

And Jacob wakes up a changing, if not changed, man. He takes the stone he’d wrapped in a blanket and used as a pillow, sets it up on its end as a memorial, and anoints it with olive oil in blessing. In his 40-odd years of life so far, it’s the first worshipful thing Jacob does, as far as we know. He raises a stone. He blesses it. He thanks God.

There it is – that basic human reaction to an encounter with God that we see throughout all the ages.

Now if you raise a few large stones, and then fill the gaps between them with a few more, work out how to put a roof on it, wire in electricity, get some carpets and some windows and add a few choice pieces of furniture – what have you got?

You’ve got a temple, or a synagogue, or a mosque, or a church. A space dedicated to the worship of God that’s comfortable enough for folk to gather in week by week. Protected from the elements and maybe even the curious looks of outsiders if you forget to put windows in it and surround it with high fences and big gates.

Now buildings, built specifically for worship, are good – for a lot of reasons. They can be beautiful and inspiring and functional. I might be wrong, but I’m guessing January attendances might suffer a little if we decided to congregate in the dunes at Balmedie Beach, or in a neighbouring field.

But here’s the thing. The moment you have a building dedicated for worship, you run the risk that people will start living as though the building were all important. As though we only encounter God, or encounter him most, when we are in that building.

Perhaps unintentionally, that was drilled into many of us as kids. You dress up in your best clothes when you go to church, because it’s God’s house. You sit up straight and keep your mouths shut, because it’s God’s house.

And respect and reverence have their place in the church. But when we step over the threshold as we come and go on a Sunday morning, are we saying hello to a God who hasn’t been with us all week, or farewelling God until next Sunday?

In her book “An Altar In The World”, Barbara Brown Taylor puts it this way – “Do we build God a house so that we can choose when to go and see God? Do we build God a house in lieu of having God come and stay at our place?”.

In what sense can we speak of any one place being God’s house? In the Scriptures God laughs at the very idea, though at times he seems to play along with it, more for our sake than for his. But lest anyone get the wrong idea, he’s at pains to say through the Psalmist “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool.”

The truth is, God’s house stretches from one end of the universe to the other. There is no one place where we meet him. On the contrary - the geography of our days is littered with opportunities to encounter God in the most ordinary practices and places, if we only have eyes to see and ears to hear.

If Sunday is the only time we expect to encounter God, we place a intolerable weight of expectation on this time together. A burden this hour was never meant to carry.

Though our church buildings and services should certainly inspire us, and God undoubtedly meets us here, a biblical faith understands that the real place of encounter with God is in our daily living, during the other six days of the week.

We shouldn’t think of church as the place we come to experience God for an hour every Sunday. Church should be where we come to remember and give thanks for the ways we’ve experienced God throughout the week.

And over the next few months, that’s what I’m going to be preaching and teaching about – how we encounter God in the ordinary routines and patterns of our days. And I need to learn that stuff as much as the next person.

Centuries ago people got this; they knew what they had to do to be rooted deeply in Christ throughout the week. And we’re in danger of losing the memory of those practices, and we need to recover them if the church is to get a second wind in our lifetime.

And it all starts when you begin to live out of a truth that you already know: that God isn’t just in the church. God is in the world.

Earlier in the week I sent out an email to everyone in the church whose emails I have. I asked them to think of a time when they felt especially close to God, and without going into details, to tell me where it happened: here are a selection of the answers:

When I was ill in hospital and feeling a bit down.
When I’m out among the elements, walking.
When I was on the trolley heading for the operating theatre
When I was hanging out the washing.
When I was sitting at my father’s deathbed.
When I met a deer while out for a clifftop walk
When I was looking after a patient in a hospital ward.
When I sat in the kitchen with friends, talking, crying and praying.
When I was at my mother’s funeral
When I was climbing a mountain in Sri Lanka
When I sat looking out a window at the sunset in Southern Spain
When I used to ride on horseback through the countryside as a teenager
When I was really worried about someone and was out looking for them.
When I was out in the middle of nowhere on a Duke of Edinburgh expedition.
When I was at the birth of my children.
When I’m in church.

Of the sixteen folk who responded to the question, fifteen reported that their deep experience of God took place somewhere other than church.

God is waiting to be found in the world. And Jacob, in this morning’s story – shows us just that. Listen to what he says when he wakes up after his restless night’s sleep:

He says in v 16 “The Lord is here! He is in this place, and I didn’t know it!”.

He went to sleep on an ordinary patch of red earth somewhere between Beesheeba and Haran. And he woke up on the very same patch of red earth. Nothing had changed. But everything had changed, because he now knew in a real and vital way, that God was only ever a hairsbreadth away. That any place, any situation, any set of circumstances, can become a meeting place with God if we have eyes to see and ears to hear.

God is in the world. The place of meeting isn’t over there, or round the corner, or within four particular walls. It’s right in the place where you are, wherever that may be.

And though Jacob had his dream, and Moses had his burning bush, and Gideon had his fleece, and Elijah his still small voice, there’s a strong current in Scripture which gently reminds us that these are the exceptions rather than the rule.

Sometimes God appears unbidden. More often than not, he’s found by those who make it their business to seek him out. God’s canny that way. I think. He’s keen to see who’s interested. The Psalmist says just that in Psalm 14: “The Lord looks down from heaven on his people, to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God”.

“Seek God” is one of the most common commands in the whole of Scripture and the desire to seek God is as vital a sign of living faith as a pulse is a sign of a living body.

Is that desire, that pulse, within you?

If it is, we have a firm promise that that it won’t be disappointed.

“Draw near to God – says the apostle James – and God will draw near to you”.

Earlier this week, with a little bit of time and imagination, we turned this familiar space into a labyrinth. A handful of folk walked it on Sunday and Monday, and a good number more on Tuesday at the Guild. I spoke to many of them afterwards, and there wasn’t one for whom God didn’t show up in some way. Often in a very moving and powerful way.

And over the next few Sundays, I hope to show you that life itself is labyrinth enough to encounter God. All we need to do is approach life with that same spirit of openness and attentiveness, and we will find him, his feet dusty with the red earth of our ordinary living.

“The Lord is here!” we’ll say, as we look around us with new eyes. “He is in this place, and I didn’t know it”

Years after his angelic dream, Jacob made plans to return to Bethel where his stony pillow still stood as a landmark. By now he had wives, children and flocks and his travels had taken him across many hundreds of miles and through many dangers.

And the old man, now well on his way to becoming Israel, the Patriarch, said to his family “we’re going to leave here and go to Bethel, where I will build an altar to the God who helped me in the time of my trouble and who has been with me everywhere I have gone.”

Everywhere I have gone. Not just in Bethel. Not just within the four walls of the place I call my church. God is in the world, and it’s there he waits to meet us.

The Bigger Picture

I’m sure that many of you will remember the series “Tales of the Unexpected” that had a good run on television in the 1980’s. It was introduced by Roald Dahl, and each episode was a half-hour short story with a twist in the tail.

There’s one in particular that I’ve always remembered, because it was based on fact. It was set in the late 1800’s, and most of it took place in one room where a young Austrian woman was struggling away in labour.

As the story progresses you discover that she’s already lost three young children to illness; so for the whole programme you’re willing her and the baby to get through this difficult labour. And right at the very end of the episode, she delivers her beautiful new son and he’s placed in her arms. And with her face full of joy she turns to her husband and says “We’ll call him Adolphus. I hope his friends don’t shorten it to Adolf”.

Nightmare! You’ve just been rooting for Hitler!

“What is this child going to be?” say the folk gathered to celebrate with Zechariah and Elizabeth.

Luke is the only gospel writer who offers us this piece of the jigsaw - drawing another nativity story alongside that of Jesus – that of his older cousin John.

And given their common heritage, it’s remarkable how little their paths seem to cross in any of the gospels, and how they almost seem like strangers when they do meet, as men in their thirties.

John’s busy down by the Jordan, preparing the way of the Lord, but when the Lord appears asking him for baptism, he seems a little taken aback. And though we find him growing in his understanding of who Jesus is, there are times when even he finds himself questioning. “Are you the one who was to come” he asks Jesus from prison, “or should we be looking for someone else?”

The caricature of the locust-eating, wild-eyed firebrand doesn’t do justice to John.There’s more to his story, and to his character than that.. And that’s why I drew in that second gospel reading this morning, because I think it goes some way to answering the question that was on everyone’s lips at the time of his birth: “what is this child going to be?”.

John the gospel writer tells us that for a spell John the Baptist and Jesus were baptising on the same stretch of the river Jordan. A potentially awkward situation made more awkward by the fact that people were choosing Jesus over John.

Some of John’s disciples come to him and say “Teacher – you remember the man who was with you on the east side of the Jordan, the one you spoke about? Well, he is baptising now and everyone is going to him!”.

Even across two millennia, you can hear the anger and the fear in their voices. Everyone’s going to him.

I wonder what they wanted John to do?

Go and get heavy with Jesus? Call a peace summit where they could agree how to carve out the territory together? Change his tactics so that he could woo back some of those who’d defected to the Jesus movement? Put on a better show than the next man down the river?

We don’t know; but we do know that all of those responses were borne out of an unnamed fear that we’re going to put words to today: “How is this going to affect us?” – that’s the central issue for John’s disciples.

How’s this going to affect us? Is all of this coming to an end? What are we going to do now?

And John’s answer, God bless him, shows why he deserves a place in the story, and to have the third advent candle lit in his memory.

He looks them in the eye, and maybe with a touch of rebuke in his voice he says: “No-one can have anything unless God gives it to him.”

Do you see what he’s doing, there? His disciples gather around him going “we, we, we, we, we” – all the way home.

And John says “No. This has never been, and should never be, about us - our work, our territory, our desires. This is about God and what God is doing. And if God is doing something new in and through Jesus’ ministry, then all we can do is say ‘amen’ to that and celebrate it. He must become more important, while I become less important.”

What immense maturity as a person. To willingly accept the limited nature of your own life’s work, knowing that it’s only a part of something much greater.

So often we do the reverse, even in the church. We act as though our sphere of interest is the only one that matters and we fail to see the bigger picture.

When our interests are threatened, more often than not, we copy John’s disciples. We get defensive and start marking out our territory.

I remember the church I first trained in. It was a union of three different congregations and each church had celebrated communion in a slightly different way. One used the common cup, another the wee thimble glasses we use, and in the third they used spoons which were dipped in the common cup – a practice I’d never heard of.

Decades after the union, communion was still having to be served in three different ways at every communion service because people weren’t prepared to give up the practice of their original church.

So at the heart of a sacrament that’s supposed to be about unity, we had a visible disunity. Talk about losing sight of the big picture!

I read this week that the church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, supposedly built over the site of Jesus’ birth, is falling into disrepair. The three Christian groups who have a say in its running can’t agree, so the largely Muslim Palestinian Authority is having to step in and take over the renovations.

When marking out and defending our territory becomes more important to us than co-operating with the bigger picture of what God is doing, then we have left the path of wisdom.

But when we’re able to give and take with generosity, and without fear for our own position, we can achieve a lot. And I think our banner-makers have shown us that this week.

I wasn’t present at those Monday gatherings, so I have no inside knowledge! But I know fine well that when five folk gather together to do something you’re guaranteed at least five different opinions on how it should be done! And to work through all of that together, and to be ready to set aside some of your own cherished ideas for the sake of the greater good, is no mean feat. But you managed it – you kept the big picture in view. Quite literally!

John also saw his own work in the light of the big picture. It didn’t stand alone. And that really helped him when it came to dealing with the changes that Jesus brought on.

He says to his disciples: “You yourselves are my witnesses that I said “I am not the Messiah, but I have been sent ahead of him”. I am the bridegroom’s friend, not the groom himself he said.

John knew from the beginning what his role was. He was steeped in it. He had a particular calling – to prepare the way for the Messiah.

And now that Jesus had arrived on the scene and become established he was happy to accept that his work was done.

Jesus’ success at the Jordan wasn’t a condemnation of John’s ministry. It was the strongest possible affirmation of it. John had done exactly what he’d been called to do: he’d prepared the way for the Messiah, and now the Messiah was on his way. Job done.

He didn’t need the acclaim of the crowds, or the adulation of his disciples to justify his existence.. He knew within himself that what God had put him on the earth to do, he’d done, and that was enough for him.

We need to learn that from John. We take ourselves so seriously, sometimes, don’t we? We obsess about our little piece of the jigsaw, but we forget about the rest of the picture on the box.

Witness the stressed chef in the kitchen, trying to prepare the perfect Christmas dinner so everyone can have a good time, but growing cross and irritable with everyone and stopping them from having a good time!

Witness the exhausted parents, running themselves ragged so they can give the kids a good Christmas, when all the kids want is for mum and dad to be less busy so they have time to play a game or read a story.

Witness the minister, or church member, running between services and social events and other commitments that they have no time to be leisurely with Christ in prayer during Advent.

We all do it. We all focus on our little jigsaw piece and forget the big picture.

Here’s a thought to take away and reflect on.

Of all the things you could do in the build-up to Christmas, what do you think God most wants you to do?

I can’t answer that question for you. It demands a personal response. But it’s a big picture question; And it’s worth spending some time on in what remains of Advent.

“What is this child going to be?” say the folk gathered to celebrate with Zechariah and Elizabeth.

“I assure you” says Jesus, thirty years later in Matthew’s gospel. “John the Baptist is greater than anyone who has ever lived”.

Why? Because his focus was always on the big picture of what God was doing, and not just his part in it. Because he was happy to play the part he’d been given, and not crave the spotlight for its own sake.

In all our living, may God grant us the maturity and the grace to do the same.