Changing Direction                                                                                                                                                       Rev. Colin S. Marshall   

18th April 2010                                                                                                                                         St. John’s Presbyterian Church, Mt. Roskill

Readings: Psalm 30, Genesis 17:1-20, John 21:1-19, Acts 9:1-27

            This morning’s readings all concern the way that God breaks into peoples’ lives and that when this happens people’s lives tend to head in a new direction.  Abraham, Peter and Paul all play significant roles in the Scriptures.  Each of these men were individuals in their own time and situation and God deals differently with each of them. 

            We turn first to Abraham.  Abraham is the acknowledged father of the Hebrew people.  In Genesis we have a period of ten generations, or something close to a four hundred year gap, between Noah and Abraham.  In that time people had spread out across the region and there was little, if any, knowledge of God.  According to His divine plan God intervened in history and chose a man, Abram, to be his instrument of change in the world.  God chose an individual and his wife to begin a people and community that would witness to His plan for the world.  A people who would shine His light into a world that was spiritually uneducated and uninformed yet full of people with amazing talent and creativity – a world of people He had created in His own image.  It was the time to provide direct leadership.

            In this early period, when so little about God was known, it is hard to imagine how it was that God chose a specific person to do His work.  The Scriptures tell us that Abram was born circa 1800 BCE in Ur in Babylonia.  Abram’s father was Terach, a relatively wealthy merchant. 

Jewish tradition and teaching tell us a couple of things about Abram’s background, the truth of which is shrouded in time.  These accounts tell us that Terach was a successful dealer in idols but as a youth Abram watched his father creating these idols and questioned how they could have any real power.  One day, while his father was away, Abram took a hammer and destroyed a bunch of idols in the shop.  He them placed the hammer in the hand of the largest one and waited for his father to return.  When Terach asked what had gone on Abram answered, “The idols got into a fight and the biggest one destroyed the others.”  An angry Terach replied, “These idols have no life and cannot do anything.  You are not telling the truth.”  To which Abram asked, “If they have no life why do you worship them?”  Judaism teaches that Abram came to believe that there was only One Creator who was unseen.  It was this Abram Jewish tradition teaches was called by the One he sought.

Whatever the truth of this background account God certainly did call Abram in a clear and distinctive manner although we are given little detail of the encounter.  We are simply told that the Lord called Abram and made a covenant with him.  This covenant is the first essential covenant between God and the Jewish people.  The Lord told Abram to leave his country, his people and his father’s household to go to a land the Lord would show him where he would be made into a great people. He and his people would be blessed and protected in an unusual manner.  Whoever blessed Abram and his people would be blessed and whoever curses them will be cursed. 

We might pause to consider this for a moment.  God’s covenants are open ended.  God remains faithful to His Word even when people are unfaithful to it.  God cannot deny His own Word or nature.  Even today we see the truth of this blessing/curse being played out.  I have to admit it came to mind during the week as I was watching a news item and a brief interview about the death of the Polish leadership in a plane crash on April 10^th.  Most of you will have probably heard the news that the President Lech Kaczynski and his wife died in a plane crash last week.  You may not have been aware that almost half of Poland’s leadership died in the same crash – the heads of the army, navy, air-force and church all perished in an incredible disaster.  What struck me was a grieving woman who was interviewed by a news crew.  She stated, “I can’t believe the disasters that have continued to strike Poland since the Second World War.  It just keeps happening over and over.”  Having studied the history of the Second World War and in particular the fact that the Germans set up their most notorious Nazi extermination camps in Poland because the Polish government and military, along with the Roman Catholic church, either ignored or supported the Nazi program gives one pause to wonder.  On the other hand many individuals and their families who supported and assisted the Jewish people throughout this desperate time and since have been honoured and blessed.  When God makes a covenant it has no time limits.

Abram was called by God to a new start.  A start that called on him to give up what had gone before for the promise of something new; the promise that God would make him into a great nation.  In Genesis 17, some four or more decades later, we get the confirmation of this covenant in an unusual manner.  At one hundred old, with his wife now ninety, God makes a further covenant with Abraham. Abraham is promised possession of the land in which he was living for himself and all future generations of his descendants … and a son to start the multitude.  Abraham and the males of his household were to be circumcised as a sign of the covenant. 

Abram’s faithfulness in this whole situation is quite incredible.  In the intervening decades between God’s first call and God’s second covenant Abram had held to the promise he had been given.  Even though he had not seen it realized, nor did he understand any of what it could or would entail, Abraham had held faithfully to God’s promise. Like Noah before him Abraham had held on waiting for God to do what he had said.  How it would have been easy to mock this type of faith that for years seemed to bear no fruit.  It is not hard to understand how Abraham and Sari laughed at the thought of finally having children at their age.

Here is the question: did God wait to see how faithful Abraham and Sarah would be before he started blessing them?  And is this something God still does today?  Does God wait for us to live and act out of faith, not once or twice but as a matter of course, based on what He has already revealed to us, before He takes us further?  In Abraham’s case it would certainly seem so.

Next we turn to Peter.  Here the circumstance is very different.  Unlike Abraham’s waiting on the unseen God, Peter has lived for three years knowing about and seeing Jesus in action.  Peter had been an active part of Jesus’ ministry, His teaching and His miracles.  But Peter had not acted in faith.  First, Peter had repeatedly fallen asleep in the garden of Gethsemene when Jesus had asked him to pray.  Peter hadn’t really believed that Jesus was going to die or he wouldn’t have been so casual about praying.  When trouble did come Peter resorted to violence, cutting of the High Priest’s servant’s ear when it looked clear Jesus was going to be arrested ... only to be publically told off by Jesus. Secondly, Peter had acted in fear.  He, along with the other disciples, had run away when we might expect Jesus had most needed his support. Peter fled the garden though he did follow the arresting party back to see what was going to happen.  But then a third failure.  Challenged in the courtyard he had denied he even knew Jesus … three times.  Unlike Abraham’s careful, patient faithfulness, Peter’s actions seemed fearful, impulsive and decidedly unfaithful. 

How do we respond when our friends fail to be faithful and let us down?  It hurts and our natural tendency is either towards defensiveness or anger.  Yet we see that Jesus had a special concern for Peter.  When Jesus was resurrected Mark’s gospel records a young man sitting in the tomb who instructed the women to go and tell Peter and the disciples that Jesus had risen. This angelic being, whose very presence struck fear into the women, was a messenger of God.  One of God’s first concerns appears to be to let Peter know Jesus had risen.  Peter who had failed. Peter who had let Jesus down. Peter who had promised so much but delivered so little. 

I wonder if we ever feel like Peter must have? Do we sometimes feel we have let God and ourselves down a critical stages? That we have done less than we could or that we have actually  done things we know we shouldn’t have? I have seen situations where a person has fallen out with someone or a relationship has not been good and then the other person has died unexpectedly.  There is a horrible hole left, a tear, that sometimes people never get over.  It is a lot harder to say sorry.  Jesus knew what Peter was going through and he knew his heart.  Jesus made sure Peter was among the first to know of His resurrection.

One part that I love about the account of Jesus and Peter in John’s gospel is Peter’s response when Jesus appears.  Place yourself in Peter’s sandy sandals for a moment.  He is back at work on the family boats fishing.  Jesus had appeared a couple of times so they knew He was alive but He had disappeared again.  Now Jesus appeared on the water’s edge telling the disciples to throw the net on the other side of the boat.  This is not that strange – fishermen know that sometimes you can see the fish playing near the surface – of course it’s normally where your line isn’t. Peter is happy to throw the net the other side because they were not catching anything as they were.  And he’s tired after an early start fishing.  It’s when the net is suddenly loaded to breaking point, given the type of nets they used an almost impossibility that Peter suddenly wakes up and realizes who has called out to them.  And it’s not Peter that realizes it.  It’s John.  Peter had been too busy getting on with the work of dragging in the fish.  But John realizes with something that must have approached awe and tells Peter.  And what does Peter do? Jumps straight out of the boat, into the water and wants to get to Jesus as fast as he can. After all he’d already had experience at walking on water hadn’t he?

Having had breakfast Jesus and Peter went for a walk along the beach together.  Three times Jesus famously asked Peter if he loved Him and three times Peter replied he did … with increasing confusion.  Each time Jesus replied, “Feed my sheep.”  For each of his failures and denials Peter was asked to repent, to turn in a different direction and Jesus gives him new direction for his life.  He will now truly no longer be a fisherman but a fisher of men.  Peter will teach the things of Jesus to all of Jesus disciples.

When Jesus comes into our lives He gives us things to do.  A new focus, a new work.  This is not easy.  It isn’t an easy adjustment.  We struggle with ourselves.  We struggle with what we are used to.  We struggle with our own limitations and self-doubt and anxiety.  We struggle because we have a new higher and more difficult goal and we don’t want to let ourselves, our colleagues and most of all our Lord down.  We wrestle with the fact that other people see things differently, or aren’t as committed, or seem to lack in real enthusiasm and commitment for the Lord.  All this is natural and it should lead us to a new stage.  A stage we see in the story of Saul become Paul.

 The last of the accounts today concerns a young zealot named Saul.  This young religious fire-brand was a Jew from northern Greek-speaking synagogue in Tarsus.  He had been sent to Jerusalem as a young man to study under Gamaliel the great Jewish teacher we heard about last week. Paul was on fire for God and extremely intent about everything.  Already he had been made a Pharisee and was shining star for the future leadership of the Jewish people.  But his zeal had become hard.  In becoming increasingly legalistic in his thinking and in his works he had failed to see the people that God wanted him to see.  His lack of compassion and his legalism led him to coming exactly what his teacher Gamaliel had warned could happen.  By following law and tradition Saul had become an opponent of God and a persecutor of God’s people.

On the Damascus road as Saul went with another arresting party to gather Christ’s disciples for imprisonment and punishment Jesus met with him.  With a blinding light Saul was thrown to the ground and Jesus asked him why he was persecuting Him?  Saul in total confusion asked “Who are you Lord?” On hearing this was the risen Jesus come to confront him we have to wonder how Saul felt?  Like Thomas seeing Jesus hold out His hands to have a finger placed in the holes Saul must have been in complete shock, but worse. 

Again Jesus commands a change of life.  Saul is symbolically blinded.  For three days he remained blind and without food or drink.  Three days like Jesus in the tomb.  And then taken to Ananias, a man who Saul would have perceived his enemy, Saul is prayed for and the blindness was removed and he was given a new task by Jesus.  A complete change. And sometimes this is what is called for when we come to Jesus.  Not a small change but a complete change.  Saul will take on the Greek form of his name Paul.  He will not return to his old life will go to Damascus, to Jerusalem, back to tarsus and then to Arabia before he begins his missionary work.  For some fourteen years Saul become Paul prepares himself for the new work that God has for him.  

 To conclude then we can see that there are three vital points from this mornings readings.  Firstly God can and does break into our lives to call us to new ways of doing things.  This may be while we are still young, as in Saul’s case, in middle age as in Peter’s case, or even to bring about significant change even at an elderly stage. If we are open to it God never stops working in our lives.

Secondly once God has caught our attention He may take many years preparing us for what He wants us to achieve.  Along with this He watches and waits to see if we will trust in Him and be faithful to the Word that He has placed in our hearts.  Noah and Abraham both had to wait many years before they saw the fruit of their faith.  Saul had to go through many years of re-training, even though he was already a well studied and educate man, before God could use him.  In contrast Peter was used straight away and had to draw closely on what Jesus had taught him.

And thirdly when we have genuine encounters with the Lord He will bring about change in our lives.  He accepts us as we are but He doesn’t expect us to stay there.  He moves us on to a better, more profitable place where we can be useful to His mission.  Our challenge is not, like Saul, to go too fast, or like Peter, to be too impulsive or take on too much, but to be more like Abraham slowly, quietly, confidently going about our work in a Godly manner waiting on God for His time to bring about what He wants us to achieve.  We are all different and God deals with each of us in a unique manner  but above all He wants to keep us on His course towards a bright new tomorrow.