|
Just
imagine a house where a nine month old baby is lying in his cot in the
sitting room, bawling his head off. Grandpa is sitting in his comfy
chair, reading the newspaper, and mum is in the kitchen, preparing the
baby’s food.
The baby is thinking ‘I’m hungry, why doesn’t someone do something
about it!’ Grandpa is thinking ‘When is that bairn going to shut
up!’ and mum is thinking ‘Why doesn’t Grandpa do something to
quieten the baby down – he’ll regurgitate his food unless he is
settled’.
Now let us change the scene. We are looking at the world. The baby is
all the people that are hungering for God’s word. Mum is God,
preparing to feed the people with his word.
You might be tempted to think that Grandpa is the church, and you would
be wrong. The church is the baby and also mum in the kitchen.
A couple of weeks ago I was at the monthly meeting of Edinburgh
Presbytery’s home mission committee. These meetings, in the past, have
been rather boring – more like Grandpa reading his newspaper.
This one was different. After a short period discussing business,
we split up into three groups where each person brought news of the
missions that their church was engaged in. Paul Beatyman, minister of
Gilmerton, said how refreshing the experience was.
For
once, we were not moaning, but doing something useful. We all agreed to
continue this in future meetings. What a transformation! From baby to
mum at the stroke of an agenda change.
Unfortunately, the church is not free from moaning. Our grumbles are
like stomach rumbles and gastric wind, rather than the wind of the
Spirit. And this is dangerous, for the reading from Amos shows that our
sense of being nurtured, loved and fed, can be damaged.
When this happens, what change of agenda will bring mum back on the
scene?
Have you thought about the delights of a waking sleep where the whispers
of love are like raindrops seeping through the cracks in the crazy
paving to nourish the ground beneath? Whispers of love seeping through
the cracks to nourish the ground beneath. What does this mean? In this
section of the sermon, I am going to be using many metaphors to describe
our life of prayer. The metaphors are linked to the account of Jesus
meeting the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well, which Mary read tonight.
Continued
|
