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Summary Two things cause preachers to wake up in the early hours in a cold sweat… So one of the things preachers soon learn is to check whether the day they are going to preach is one of the special Saints’ days in the church calendar. Well today we are bang in between TWO special dates: 24 August is put aside for St Bartholomew the Apostle – of whom more later while 28 August (Tuesday) is set aside for the curiously named Augustine of Hippo…. And no he wasn’t some sort of Christian zookeeper in Imperial Rome but a man in North Africa who became an important Bishop and figurehead of the early Church in the 4th century. Augustine’s was an interesting story because he seems to have spent a pretty riotous youth. In fact a life of utter debauchery which I wouldn’t dream of telling you about. His mother however – St Monica (course she wasn’t called that then!) was a very Christian lady. She obviously did have some influence on her wayward son for he prayed daily. Unfortunately his prayer is popularly reck0oned to have been along the lines of – ‘Lord make me holy. But not yet’ However he did reach the stage when a startling conversion took place and no doubt when he was eventually made bishop the local Hippo newspapers all carried banner headlines about ‘Local boy makes good’ or something like that. Interestingly, earlier in the year we also celebrate another Augustine –(Aspley- no, not the Church mouse who lives in the cupboard) This one was sent over here in the 6th century by Pope Gregory in order to convert us to Christianity. And for some strange reason he tried to get out of it and turned back in mid-channel at least once. And as this was before the days of the asylum seekers and the Channel Tunnel we can be sure this wasn’t because the immigration authorities boarded his ship and expelled him as an asylum seeker. But Pope Gregory knew what he was doing and had picked his man well, because there’s no doubt that after a rocky start Augustine spearheaded and consolidated the Christianisation of these islands very effectively. In fact Pope Gregory also appears in our Church Calendar and interestingly preached a sermon based on the calling of Ezekiel to be a prophet. God said to Ezekiel, "Son of Man I have appointed you as watchman to the house of Israel" Pope Gregory reflected how unworthy this made him feel. Being a watchman demanded that you live a life high up and able to help others by taking a wide, detached view. Gregory – like most of us was all too aware that he was not high up at all, but was very much subject to the dirt and dust of everyday life. Yet despite that he reflected that God could still work through him and enable him to catch glimpses of at least some of what the perfect spiritual watchman would see. And that’s a cheering thought for us to as we continue to drop spiritual clangers and fall short as we go through life. God never abandons us – a theme that Graham picked up on last week. This theme of watching is an interesting one, because it turns up in Jeremiah too. In today’s reading right at the end there was one of those biblical plays on words. You probably remember that this was the occasion of Jeremiah’s call by God to be a prophet and at the end of the passage. At the end God asks Jeremiah what he sees. "An almond branch(or tree)" says Jeremiah. The words for ‘almond’ and ‘ watching’ are very similar in Hebrew and Jeremiah is therefore to take this as a sign that God is watching over his wayward people and Jeremiah is to act as his eyes, ears and voice too. A job that will lead him into great danger and unpopularity. But so far I’ve been talking about a very male oriented world – we all know the great names that God called to be prophets and leaders -–the Moses, the Elijahs, the Jonah’s the Isaiah’s the Jeremiah’s and the Ezekiels. And I always think that women – who form the majority of our congregations – just look around- must sit there thinking what a male oriented book the bible is! One day, would you like me to preach you a sermon to put you right on that? Are you up for that? ( Maybe when the Rector’s away) Because in fact if you look in the Bible you will find that all throughout, women have played crucial roles ... not simply as the power behind the throne, but as people in their own right.… And it makes for fascinating reading! And an absolute revelation! I think it’s a scandal that our Churches have played this down for so many years. Just to give you an example. Jeremiah lived in very troubled times. The people had taken on board all sorts of pagan beliefs and rites and this was largely a Godless society. A new King, Josiah had come to power and was attempting to reverse the trend and in the course of some Temple Renovations the workmen found… The Book of the Law. (You can read all this in 2 Kings 22.) The King went grey overnight when he read this and realised how far away his people had strayed from God. Did the King seek advice and guidance from Jeremiah the prophet? Or Hilkiah the male High Priest? No. He sought it from a lady prophet called Huldah. SHE was the really important person of God. There are lots more like that! And I’d like to tell you about them sometime. But I just want to pick up on this whole idea of ‘calling’. Those people I’ve mentioned were all called in some way or other- usually pretty dramatically. But we are called too. We are here this morning because of a call. God may be calling us Whichever way, the call is certainly different for each of us. And the call that you receive now may well be different from the one you had last year-or will have next. Because we believe in a dynamic, moving God, who acts in a dynamic fast moving world. In the OT we have seen how God called men and women to dramatic acts. Not the sort of thing we visualise ourselves doing. We are also aware of the individual nature of our calling to. God’s call can reach us in a variety of ways at a variety of times; through the spirit and through Jesus Christ as well as through our prayers to God. Jesus tells a parable about a King who arranged a great banquet. The day of the feast arrived and the invited nobles and guests made excuses and stayed away. So the King opened the doors to everyone, poor, the sick the halt and the infirm. God’s call is now seen as a universal call. And because it’s a universal call the NT teachings of Jesus strip away those individual callings I have mentioned to reveal that actually, there is one thing we are all being called to as Christians. And that’s to love one another – and to accept the love of others. Let’s remember that as we share the peace later, and as we go out into the world from this service. Amen.
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'Being called' is a commonly used phrase. Subconsciously Christians know that their individual callings are different. Starting with examples from the calling of notable Christians, David Funge ground calling in the here and now for each of us by drawing on Jesus' parable of the banquet.