Sunday, July 31, 2011

Perfect Freedom (sermon preached on July 31, 2011)



Sermon preached at Church of the Ascension, Munich on July 31, 2011 on Genesis 32:22-31 and Romans 9:1-5

"Farewell" sermon preached at my home parish before leaving for seminary

One of the presents my wife gave me on my 50th birthday exactly a year ago today was a selection of 50 songs for my ipod each chosen by the guests at the birthday party. Some were clearly personal favourites of the guests, some were songs people knew that I liked, some appropriate to the occasion such as ”holding back the years” or “this is the day”. I’m not quite sure what the song “highway to hell” was supposed to tell me though! Anyway one song was “wanna talk about me” by Toby Keith that I had not heard before: The refrain goes:

But every once in awhile
I wanna talk about me
Wanna talk about I
Wanna talk about number one
What I think, what I like, what I know, what I want, what I see

I mention this as when Steve asked me to preach today on my “last Sunday” he did say you will have to talk about yourself even if it is something that you are not overly fond of doing. But why? Am I supposed to be some sort of example, and if so a positive or negative one?

As most of you know we, Heidi and I , will soon be little less visible and present here for a couple of years. About 5 years ago I gave in to and accepted the call from God to go into ordained ministry. It wasn’t as easy as it now sounds and seems. It meant giving up quite a lot, it meant taking a risk – a step into the unknown and uncertain and I – we struggled with the decision. Even when we had decided some things still needed to happen first, there was a formal church discernment process – mostly to help me be sure of my calling, but also some struggles with church “bureaucracy”. We wanted the children to finish their secondary school education and I started a part-time course in theology to make sure I was still capable of academic learning. But now, 5 years on and after nearly 29 years in Germany, after close to 29 years with one company I stopped work at the beginning of June and in just 3 days time Heidi and I will be on a plane to Washington where I will study full-time for 2 years at VTS as preparation and training for ordination. It’s a big step but it’s one we are looking forward to, now. We don’t know what will happen after but God does and that’s what I trust in.
 
Why am I telling you this? Not because I think you should all feel called to ordained ministry, that’s not what the “priesthood of all believers” means and anyway, it would get pretty crowded up here at the altar. Ordained ministry is not the only or even a better calling. But everyone has a calling from God. We struggle at times to hear and understand it. Sometimes we even struggle with or against it when we have heard and understood it – O not me Lord, not this, Lord.

That brings me to today’s OT reading[1], to part of the saga of Jacob in Genesis. One commentator calls this passage “worthy of a Rembrandt but as enigmatic as the Mona Lisa”! It is rich in images. We read of a mysterious struggle of Jacob with God, a wrestling match that lasts all night long. Jacob, Abraham’s grandson, is also an interesting person to set up as an example: a liar, a cheat, a scoundrel, a coward!

Let’s look at his story. Stole his elder brother, Esau’s, birthright, deceived his father, ran away from Esau to save his life, then tricked his father-in-law, ran away from him home to Israel. That’s where we find him now. He knows his brother is on his way to meet him with what seems like a small army of 400 men. Jacob has prayed for safety, but, covering all bases as usual, he has also sent his brother presents to appease him and split up his own company – he is prepared for the worst. Jacob is afraid, that’s why he has sent his wives and children on ahead to safety. He is struggling with himself and then as we heard physically with God.
Should he be true to form – trickster – or true to God’s calling after all? God called Abraham’s and his descendants to be a special, holy nation, God’s visible people on earth. That’s not going to happen if Jacob runs away yet again. And he doesn’t, "you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed" he is told.  The struggle with God has changed him, not just physically with a limp. He has grown in that long fight with himself and with God. The new name he is given, Israel, is a symbol of that change. After the fight Jacob takes responsibility, meets Esau – now with God’s blessing as an assurance – and makes up to his brother and accepts his call from God. This is the call St. Paul refers to in the reading from Romans[2]. His people, Abraham’s and Jacob’s physical descendants, are those to whom the promises and the patriarchs belong and from whom our promise, the Messiah, Jesus, comes.

The passage reminds us that God often has very poor material to work with, not saints and angels but real human beings like Jacob, like me, like you. We don’t always get it, we take too long, we are stubborn, we fight our calling, we forget, we fall back into bad old habits.
Sometimes the whole biblical narrative seems to be about struggle, about both individuals and the whole people of Israel getting it, losing it, turning back. That’s good news because it shows us that God didn’t give up on that very normal and stubborn people he chose for his purposes just as he won’t give up on us either. God gives us freedom to choose even when he tells us, if we’d only listen, what the best choice for us is. “to serve you is perfect freedom” is the somewhat paradoxical expression for this from a collect in the BCP. Or as a modern worship song[3] puts it: “All of my ambitions, hopes and plans, I surrender these into your hands. For it’s only in your will that I am free”.
So do please listen out for your calling from God, for your perfect freedom. By all means question it and wrestle with it, if It’s real it won’t go away and you will grow in the process just as I have grown in mine.
Let me end with part of prayer on vocation in daily work from our BCP:
Deliver us in our various occupations from the service of self alone, that we may do the work you give us to do in truth and beauty and for the common good; for the sake of him who came among us as the one who serves, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen


[1] Genesis 32:22-31
[2] Romans 9:1-5
[3]  Jesus, all for Jesus, Robin Mark