Stories - Part 2

Last week, one of the things I said in my sermon is that you can’t change the world from your armchair.

But given that it’s only the stories you remember from the sermon, chances are you’ll have forgotten that bit!

But I did say it. And today I’m officially retracting it. I now believe that you can, in fact, change the world from your armchair.

More on that story later.

We’ve been thinking about journeying out in faith. About the salt getting out of the saltshaker. And how that willingness to step out of our comfort zones and take risks opens up a world of new stories to us. New places, new people, new experiences.  The example I gave was Melissa joining us from America for the summer, returning home full of stories.

But as we go in faith, and get involved, something else happens. We help generate new stories that have something of the flavour of the gospel about them. Stories that can bring change in people’s lives and attitudes. So Melissa joins us, and learns from us. But as she teaches and preaches and pastors, people’s lives are changed through their encounter with her. She helps make new stories.

Last week we watched that dynamic play out in Philip’s life as he drew alongside an Ethiopian official on his way back home from Jerusalem and met him at his point of need. The official was puzzling over the scriptures. Philip was able to help him make sense of them and respond to the Christ who was revealed in the prophesy of Isaiah.

And I argued that Philip’s story is a good example of what’s needed if we’re to journey out ourselves. We need a little fire in our belly – we need to know the God whom we believe in. We need to be approaching life prayerfully. We need to be ready to go and to engage with people and with situations, whether that process takes moments, days, weeks or years.

And today’s story of Moses’ encounter at the burning bush, adds a little more nuance to the mix.

Let’s think our way into Moses’ shoes for a moment.

You’re a murderer and a fugitive. You’ve left behind a life of immense privilege and you’ve severed links with the family who raised you. You’re living with strangers and have married into a people you don’t really know. You rely on your father-in-law’s generosity – it’s his sheep you’re tending – and here you are in the back end of nowhere with a future that looks as barren as this scrubby desert the sheep are grazing in.

You get the picture - Moses is not in a promising place. Not a place you’d expect to find God at work.

And yet he is.

You know the story – the bush burns but doesn’t get burned up; Moses turns aside to go and investigate. And the rest is history.

And lovely detail I’d never noticed before is that frightened, stuttering Moses’ has this first encounter with God within sight of Mt Sinai. It’s worth pausing to remember how much will have changed, and changed within Moses himself, by the time he arrives back here as the liberator and leader of his people, and climbs that very same mountain to receive the law.

And it might never have happened if he hadn’t turned aside from what he was doing to investigate this burning bush..

He didn’t have to. He had a choice. There were probably plenty of other things that he could have been getting on with. But something, probably curiosity, drew him in.

And as I reflected on that I found myself wondering – ‘what would it take to get me to turn aside?’

Life’s so busy for most of us, isn’t it? Hard to look up or around when you’re running so hard to get things done. And when you’re not running hard, there are so many other diverting ways to spend your time.

But how many miracles do we miss because we don’t lift our heads from our work, or our responsibilities or our pleasures long enough to really look around us and see what God is doing among us?

Ah, it was easy for Moses, though, I find myself saying. He had a burning bush to grab his attention. What have I got? The same old same old day in day out.

Really?

The poets tell us otherwise.

“The world is charged with the Grandeur of God” says Gerard Manley Hopkins.. “It will flame out, like shining from shook foil.”

What if God is there, in all the ordinary places of our lives, just waiting to be found? What if he’s there to be found in the interplay of our relationships, and our involvement with our neighbours, and in all the places where we go to work and play?

How might it change things if we turned aside from routine, or convention, or fear, or busyness long enough to open up a little crack in the ordinary where the glory of God might shine through.

We might have to take a risk to do it. But as I said last week: nothing ventured, nothing gained.

And now, a few stories to illustrate as we close.

I have to confess I’d totally forgotten about this until I was clearing out some old files and came upon a sermon from years and years ago.

I spend the summer of 1989 working for Exxon down in Southampton and as part of the training we had a two day course on presentation skills. And at the end of the course we had to give a short talk with the title: 'a subject upon which I am an authority'.

And the more I thought about it, the more I began to feel, with a little dread, that God was wanting me to say something about my faith. Now this talk was to a group of around eight people, mostly folk in their early 20’s, and I was going to be working with them for the next couple of months, so as you can imagine, I wasn’t keen to place my credibility on the line and risk being a laughing stock for the remainder of the course. But the more I thought about it the more certain I became that this was what God was asking me to do.

So the next day, when it came to my turn, I went up and wrote "LOVE" on the flip chart which instantly got a laugh because they all thought I was going to talk about sex! Instead I talked about the different kinds of love mentioned in the Bible - Eros, philos and agape and storge – and gave lots of examples from newspapers and films. And at the end, l read them part of that great passage on love from 1st Corinthians 13.

And as I spoke to that group the fear I felt dissolved because I knew that I was doing what God wanted me to do.

Later on that evening at a barbequeue one of the lads who was the life and soul of the party came up to me in private and said - "That was a fantastic talk you gave today. I was really moved. Have you ever thought of being a minister!?"

And the truth is, up until that point I hadn’t. But I did from then on.

This next story’s from Adrian Plass and you can read it in “Jesus. Safe, Tender and Extreme” – a book that I can’t recommend highly enough. Finds him standing in a supermarket queue. The lady in front of him is having a loud moany rant at her mousy husband about the service they’re getting.

She goes on for about five minutes and then looks at Adrian and jerks her head upwards as if inviting him to agree with her.

“Seeing her face more clearly” he writes “and noting the negative lines etched into the skin around her eyes and her crimsoned mouth, I think how unhappy this woman looks. So angry and so unhappy. How should I respond to her? Normally, in a situation like this, I would probably smile in a non-committal way and make a noise that could be interpreted as agreement, disagreement or a vague indication that given more time, I would have had things of great depth and insight to say on the subject.

Something is different this time, though. Words are pushing to the front of my mind and I decide to say what I am thinking immediately because any more than two seconds of reflection would result in my opting for the noncommittal smile. I just hope the origin of these words is what (or who) I think it is.

I say: “You should look deep down inside the person you are, find the softer part of yourself and bring it out so you can show it to others”.

This is not the kind of thing one normally says to complaining strangers in supermarket queues, and I wait with slight alarm to see how she reacts. Then there is her husband. Is there a chance he’ll resent these words of gratuitous advice from a complete stranger and tell me to mind my own business?

Instead, he smiles a whimsical little smile, which pales into insignificance beside that of his wife, who looks at me with real humour in her eyes.

“Perhaps I should” she says. “Yes, you’re probably right. That’s what I should do”.

That is the end of our conversation, and if I hoped my comment was going to have a miraculous, immediate changing effect I am doomed to disappointment because as they leave, I hear her expressing her equally negative views on the general management of their next destination, the chemist’s shop across the road.

I am tempted to say my intervention was a waste of time. But who am I to know? Perhaps I am half a phrase in the fourth line of the fifty ninth page of the long book of that lady’s life. And maybe that is enough.

(Jesus, safe, tender, extreme)

And finally, some conclusive proof that contrary to what I said last week, you can change the world from your armchair.

This story’s about Betty - an elderly lady in the United States who became housebound after an operation. And it was hard. She got frustrated that she couldn’t get out anymore and do the things she used to do. But she had a strong faith, and that, and the support of her church, kept her going.

And as she worked through her own problems, she realised that there must be many more people out there like her who needed some company and some encouragement, So she placed an ad in the local newspaper which read: “Hi-my name’s Betty. I’m housebound and I can’t get out as much as I’d like. If you’re lonely or just need someone to talk to, then please give me a ring anytime. I’d love to chat to you.”

Within weeks, she had literally dozens of callers, some of whom she talked out of committing suicide, and some of whom even came to faith in the months that followed as their relationship progressed.

Last week, the story of Philip encouraged us to get up and go – to journey out towards the other in faith.

This week, Moses’ experience reminds us that we can go in faith without having to go very far at all. We may just need to turn aside and look for God in the places we already are – the desert, the training course, the supermarket. Even your armchair.

And that’s all well and good. But as I said last week, our job is not to applaud other’s stories. It’s to go out and make more of our own.

And that’s why I’m setting you some homework.

My friend Chris Hoskins is a photographer down in Edinburgh and he often heads out into the wilds in the wee small hours to catch the sunset or the sunrise.

This week I saw he’d posted this image on Facebook with the caption – “Time for another microadventure!”.

And I’ve discovered that a microadventure is just a small scale adventure you have within spitting distance of where you live.

This week, I want to encourage you to plan your own little microadventure.

I want you to think about a way that you can take a risk in faith. I want you to pray about it and then to take your courage in your hands and act upon it.

You could invite someone along to something happening in the church – coffee haven, next guild meeting, soup lunch. You could chase up someone you haven’t seen around church for a while and see how they’re getting on.

You could be in touch with someone you haven’t spoken to for a long time, or take baking round to a new neighbour or one you haven’t got to know.

You could take the time to write a thank-you note to someone who’s not expecting it.

You could make a point of getting to know someone in the church family you don’t really know yet by sitting with them at coffee time.

You could get involved in something going on in the community and get to know new people and start to make a difference.

You could ask that question that you’re afraid to ask, but which might get a whole conversation going with someone.

You could offer hospitality to someone you don’t know very well, or ask them along to something.

It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as you’re journeying out. Hearing new stories and making some of your own.

And over the next week I’d invite you to let me know you’re getting on. Pick up the phone, email me, Facebook me, send me a postcard – and let me know what you’ve felt called to do and how you get on with it.

I’m excited to see what God can do among us if we dare to step out of our comfort zones a little bit. We might just make some good news stories of our own.

Amen 

Stories - Part 1

Every preacher knows that for all the hours we spend in the study, poring over the Bible passages, reading the commentaries and wrestling with our thoughts (as well as the occasional angel), it’s the stories we bring on a Sunday that people tend to remember most.

I’ve long since reached the point where that doesn’t bother me any more. I’ve made my peace with it; largely because I know that on the rare occasions when I get to sit in the pews, it’s the stories I remember too.

And perhaps that’s why the Bible comes to us, first and foremost, as a succession of unfolding stories. And why Jesus’ main teaching method was the particular kind of story we call the parable. Facts, laws, rules and points are necessary in life, but they speak mostly to the mind. Stories, almost subversively, manage to get the attention of both mind and heart. And maybe that’s why they tend to stay with us.

Recently I’ve been reading a book called ‘Journeying Out’ by Ann Morisy, and she’s encouraging the church to leave the safety of our own little subculture and journey out into the communities in which we live in a real and meaningful way. If we in the church are the salt, she’s saying, we need to get out of the saltshaker.

And Ann Morisy’s got me thinking about stories this week. Part of her argument is that when we take our courage in our hands, and venture out in faith, two things happen. 

Firstly, we become story-rich. In other words we have experiences which stretch us and challenge our thinking because they’re outside what we’re used to. We learn, we grow, and we have new tales to tell. Think about Melissa going back to Los Angeles after a whole summer in Scotland – so many stories to unpack! The rain! The greenery! The hospitality! The crazy accents! The rain!

When we venture out into a different context we become story rich. But at the same time, we also become story makers. Through our actions we generate new stories which can have a positive effect on those who hear them. Stories that have something of the fragrance of the Kingdom of God about them.

Ann Morisy lives and works in a poor, multicultural borough of inner-city London.  And she writes, very honestly, about one missed opportunity which stayed with her for a long time.

She was going shopping on her day off and because the weather had been atrocious she wore her good gore-tex jacket but took a golf brolly with her as well.

“As I got off the bus” she writes “the heavens opened and I congratulated myself on being well prepared. I put up the large brolly and went on my way, well pleased. As I came to the pedestrian island in the middle of the high street, I was confronted by three Somali women. Each was dressed in a burka which covered them from head to toe. They didn’t have anything to protect them from the rain and they were getting drenched. As I came towards them I smiled and gestured with my ‘big enough for three’ umbrella, inviting them to take it from me. They smiled back and the encounter became one that spoke of envy of how well prepared I was. But in that split second I didn’t take things further and make them understand that I wanted not just to show them the umbrella, but to give it to them, and the moment was lost.”

“Later, I speculated on what might have happened if I’d acted more decisively. When the women arrived home their giant umbrella would have attracted attention. They would have given an account of their brief encounter. Each time the umbrella was taken out in the anticipation of rain, the story of its origin would have been recalled. As the Somali household had to cope with abuse and rejection and downright rudeness, they might just remember the moment on that rainy day that was different. There might even be an occasion, many years in the future, when the story of the umbrella given by a stranger would be told to youngsters in Somalia to help widen their perspective on the ways of the world”.

Because she didn’t carry things through, Morisy can only imagine what might have been; but it’s a good example of what she calls a ‘generative story’. Stories that don’t just entertain, but have the power to effect real change. If she’d followed through with her intention, the effects of that one act of grace would ripple out and who knows where they could end.

I wonder sometimes if we in the church have lost sight of the truth that we’re not just to be story keepers, or story tellers. We’re called to be story makers; living in such a way that the old old story of Jesus and his love becomes fresh and alive in the consciousness of every new generation.

We’re not called to stay safe at home and keep the outside world at bay. We’re called to journey out and risk the adventure of faith. Read the story of the emerging church in the New Testament and tell me that’s not true.

The story of Philip we heard earlier is just one of many I could have chosen, but in just a few verses it gives us a really good model for what it takes to journey out and make new stories.

Firstly, Philip has some fire in his belly that came from a real encounter with Christ. He’d left everything to follow him, spent three years as his disciple and then fled with the rest of them as they nailed him to the tree.

But then came Easter Sunday; Peace be with you in a locked room; ascension and Pentecost – the Spirit crashing over them and into them like a boundless wave. And everything changes. Philip still didn’t have all the answers, but he knew whom he’d come to believe in and that made all the difference.

Secondly, there was ongoing communication. Prayer. The Spirit spoke and Philip went. And although our experience might not be just as immediate as that, we know that prayerfulness encourages readiness. Ann Morisy’s honest enough to admit that if she’d been more prayerful and in tune with God the day of the umbrella story, she might have made more out of the opportunity when it came our way. And many of us, I think, know how that feels.

Thirdly, there’s a willingness to ‘go’. You don’t change the world from your armchair. Or, dare I say it, your church pew. “Get ready and go south” the Spirit said to Philip. And he left – not knowing what was ahead of him, only that the Spirit had spoken and he needed to respond. That took courage – a willingness to take risks and accept discomfort. And it’s the same in every story worth telling. As the story unfolds, the protagonists have no idea how it’s going to pan out. Frodo and Sam have no idea if they’re going to get to Mordor and destroy the ring – they just know it’s what they’re called to do.

So Philip goes, and then, fourthly, he engages. For a while he runs alongside the carriage, puffing and panting. Sensibly he didn’t jump in the driver’s door and try to push the button to engage the handbrake!  That would be madness! He susses out what’s going on – the Ethiopian official’s puzzling over the book of Isaiah – and then, at just the right moment, Philip asks just the right question: “do you understand what you’re reading?”.

He offers just the kind of help the eunuch was needing; and in a very short space of time that conversation led to his conversion.

And there’s one last detail I like in this story. Once this encounter’s over, Philip disappears and the eunuch never sees him again. We never know how God can use these one-off encounters with people for his purposes – if we know whom we’ve believed in, and we’re prayerful, and we’re ready to take the risk of going out and engaging.

Now that’s the theory. What does it look like for you and me in practice? Well I want to speak more about that next week, but let me end with one story by way of illustration.

At the start of the summer, Melissa and I went down to Edinburgh for the Abbey Summer school and caught up with my friend Matt Canlis.  And back in the States, Matt’s doing his best to treat the area around his church in Wenatchee as parish – even though they don’t have that system over there.  He’s got some fire in his belly about that and he’s trying to get his people to understand the importance of having a geographical place to care for and minister to.

And as Matt got to know the area, he discovered that there’s a women’s refuge just down the street, housing about a dozen women who’ve suffered from domestic violence.

And over time, he’s earned trust of the staff there and he’s been allowed to start visiting – first just to talk and hear these women’s stories, and now he’s doing bible study with some them. And at the moment, Matt is the only man allowed to visit in that refuge.

When they meet they talk about life, family. And it’s two way traffic. He isn’t just there to preach or give advice. He shares some of his struggles with them and he listens to what they have to tell him from their own experience.

Technology’s a big issue in the Canlis family just now. They’re trying really hard to resist too much screen time, and these women have all spoken about the negative effects of TV on their marriages and their children. So much so that they’re encouraging Matt to get rid of his television! But he loves sports programmes! And his family all love movies! So they’ve come to a compromise!

Matt and Julie have this huge painting of St Andrews, which is where they first studied when they came to Scotland. It’s probably about 8 feet by 4. That painting, by choice, now lives directly in front of the TV. It was expensive, that painting. And it’s very heavy. It takes two people to move it. And that means that anyone who wants to watch TV, even the adults, has to get a buddy to help them move the picture. It’s the only telly in the house. Suddenly, everyone is accountable to someone else for the time they spend watching TV.

The women in the refuge have agreed that this is an acceptable compromise, and they are holding Matt accountable for it.

He is learning from them, and they – through him – are discovering that there are good men out there. Men who respect women and value their insights and can be trusted by them. And the next question, of course, is why is Matt like that? And if they ask him, I know he’ll be only too happy to tell them.

You know that old saying nothing ventured, nothing gained?

It’s 100% true you know.

The scriptures teach us time and time again that when we journey out towards the other, in faith, God can and does do remarkable things. Not only do we become story-rich, the things that we choose to do generate more stories,  that have the power to influence people for Christ. Philip explains Isaiah to an Ethiopian Eunuch. Matt Canlis visits a woman’s refuge in Wenatchee. And things change.

There’s so much in this I’m going to keep looking at this idea next week, and I’ll bring you some more stories that I hope will inspire you.

But the challenge for today is to realise that it’s not enough to applaud someone elses’ generative stories. We need to go in faith, just as we are, and begin making some of our own.

Let us pray

Prayer

Father,

help us find our faith,

help us find our courage.

You never ask more of us than we can manage in your strength.

Show us the next small step we need to take as individuals.

Where do you want us to journey out

so your message of grace comes home to people

in real and tangible ways?

Is it a conversation we need to begin?

something practical we need to do?

the setting aside of something old, so something new can take its place?

Lord, we bless you for these generative stories we’ve heard this morning;

may we never think that storymaking is someone else’s business,

or stand by and applaud the endeavour of others

thinking that our work is then done.

Take us as we are,

Summon out what we shall be

Set your seal upon our hearts

and use us, each one, in the furtherance of your kingdom

because we ask it all in Christ’s name.