Genesis 15: 1- 6; Hebrews 11: 1 – 3, 8 – 16; Psalm 33: 12 – end; Luke 12: 32 – 40
Waiting – again!
“Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them.”
Well, are we ready? Will we be ready? I couldn’t help noticing when I read those lines a possible analogy with the interregnum. Will our new Vicar when they come some time in the New Year find us alert and at our posts – just waiting for him or for her? No doubt when they arrive some of us at least may heave a huge sigh of relief and hope that they will indeed come and serve us and that we can at least scale down what we have been doing. I believe this is a common response to receiving a new Vicar!
However, joking aside. Today it’s almost exactly three months since 8 May, the first Sunday after Father Stephen, our last Vicar, left. We have had three months of interregnum already. Perhaps time to draw breath, take stock and see how we are doing and what we might need to take us through the next three months. We shall soon be into a new phase as the recruitment process for our new Vicar begins in early autumn. On Ascension Day, 5 May I preached about waiting in the context of the interregnum. Our readings this morning are also all about waiting. So what help might they give us for the next phase of our waiting?
First, to take stock of how we’re doing. It’s remarkable I think that almost everything continues just as before our Vicar left. Spring Fair, Hampstead Players, the Choir’s last Sunday before their break, School services, Junior Church…. Not to mention three services every Sunday and all our other usual activities. It’s all just carried on without a lot of fuss – but it’s only been possible because many people have stepped up and done a little more than they used to do, or a slightly bigger job than before. Our Churchwardens, Readers and our Associate Priest Jan Rushton have been enormously helpful here of course. But all sorts of other people have been involved too and have been very supportive to me and to others. So – thank you – if that’s you. Even the little things make a difference and it’s all very much appreciated.
And of course there are many things we can’t do or develop until we have a new Vicar. Recruiting a new Youth and Children’s Worker is one of those. We just have to wait.
So that’s how we’re doing so far. What then do our readings have to tell us about waiting which might help us as we continue?
First we had Abram – not yet Abraham – and we have a lovely picture of him on our pew sheet looking up at the stars, arms upraised, having his conversation with God. He has been promised that he will be the father of a great nation – and yet – and yet he still has no child. So God takes him outside and shows him the stars. That’s how many descendants you’ll have, he says. All Abram can do is trust God and keep going. That’s faith. Trust God and keep going.
The writer to the Hebrews also takes Abraham as an example of faith. As well as trusting God, faith for Abraham also meant doing something – it meant obedience to God’s prompting to leave his home city and become a nomad. It meant living in tents, not having a settled city. For the writer to the Hebrews the wandering people of Israel are also a symbol of all those who live as “strangers and foreigners on earth” because they know that their true home is in heaven. This is why Luke encourages his readers not to lay up riches on earth, as we heard in last Sunday’s Gospel, and to give to the poor as we heard in today’s Gospel. Their hearts should be directed towards heaven rather than worrying about worldly things. As Andrew Penny put it in his sermon last Sunday at 1030 “our success in building the Kingdom will depend on the extent to which we identify our work with that of the Creator; if we are self centred, greedy or narrow minded then our efforts will be folly and we will indeed have filled our barns with wheat to no lasting or meaningful purpose.”
The earliest Christians believed that Jesus was going to return soon in glory as ruler and judge of the earth. This is why St Paul urged people that it was better not to marry. By the time Luke wrote his gospel the Christian community were possibly feeling a little discouraged because Jesus had not yet returned. So Luke records Jesus’ story about the servants waiting for their master in order to encourage them. They don’t know when Jesus will return, so they must continue in an attitude of perpetual readiness. So, of course must we. And that applies to all of our life – work, home and church.
We will, of course, know when our new Vicar is going to arrive. We already know that it won’t be until some time in the New Year. It’s going to take faith and perseverance to go on praying and waiting and working hard, just as Abram needed faith and perseverance to go on believing in God’s promise. One of our Women’s Bible Study Discussions this last year centred on Abraham and God’s promise to him. Here the writer we’re studying is talking about what it is like to live with a promise about the future. Here’s what she says:
“The promise may not be fully in hand. It may still be on the way, but to live reverently, deliberately and fully awake – that is what it means to live in the promise, where the wait itself is as rich as its end.”[1]
“reverently, deliberately and fully awake”. If we are able to live like that over the coming months life will be rich indeed, and moreover we shall be ready for anything that life can throw at us – and certainly we shall be ready for our new Vicar.
Amen
[1] Barbara Brown Taylor, The Healing Word, p44