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Sunday November 22, 2005 - Proper 29, Year A

The gospel today is full of striking images. The son of man separating people like sheep and goats, one being pushed one one way and one the other, one this way and one that, and so on, until we have all the sheep on one side and the goats on the other.
Then there is the image of Jesus, standing and saying those memorable words that , "I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me." Words that have inspired many Christians to great acts of mercy and justice.
And of course the final, kind of frightening image, of a bunch of people who have failed
being thrown into eternal fire and punishment.

But sometimes
the power of those images
obscures, gets in the way of us hearing
other parts of the reading
that are just as important
but not quite as loud.

On Thursday, the conference I was at had a quiet day. A day when we could take the time
to read, pray, reflect. There was a time of guided meditation,
and as part of that, we listened to the readings for today.
It was in the quiet
that I unexpectedly heard a few words from our gospel today.
Not the sheep and the goats, not the hungry thirsty Jesus, not the ravening fires of hell,
but a few quiet words
of promise.
The king said, "Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world."
The kingdom prepared for you
from the foundation of the world.
From eternity, from before all things began
God has been preparing a kingdom, a realm
a place
for his people. God has been preparing
a kingdom, a realm
a place.
Think about it.
Here we are
living in the twenty first century, a world of technology
and complexity and uncertainty.
Five years ago
many of us
were living in a different place; some of us had different jobs.
And the future looks much the same.
We don't know for sure
where we will be living, what we will be doing.
Health is uncertain, life sometimes precarious.

But here is some certainty. Here is something to hold on to. Before we were even imagined as individual people
God was preparing a place for us.
We have a home
that is unlike any other.
It can't be sold, or torn down.
The area won't go bad.
We have a home
waiting for us
safe with God.

But there's more.
Because if God has prepared a place for us
then God has known about us from the very beginning. We aren't just accidents,
the random result of successful genetic evolution. We have been known and loved by God
from the time this world of ours
was made.

While I was away on sabbatical, I was talking with a friend.
She had just been given a book to read — you may have heard of it.
It's by a Californian pastor, Rick Warren, and it's called
The Purpose Driven Life.
It's been a huge success, and you can buy it at pretty much any bookshop around the country.
Now I have to admit to being pretty skeptical about it all.
After all, we're not in California, and I'm always a little suspicious of churches that become business empires. Plus there's always the risk that they'll tip into fundamentalism, that they read the bible in ways that ignore all the discoveries of archaeology and sociology, that try to make things so simple that they sometimes miss what is really being said.
And Episcopalians are generally not known for liking simplistic answers — we like complexity and ambiguity; we have a tradition of walking a middle way.
So I've always been a bit suspicious of this kind of book.

But I changed my mind. Because my friend had started to read it. It has forty short chapters, one to read each day for a little over a month. And at day 2,
my friend began to cry.
Day two is called, "You are not an accident."
And what she was reminded, something that she maybe had never even really known
was that her birth
was no accident. It wasn't just a matter of chance, of luck, even of planning on the part of her parents. It was in the mind of God
from the very beginning.
It's something that is echoed in the bible a bunch of times,
that God knew us even before we were born,
that God planned for us
before we were conceived.
Rick Warren's book is right.
It echoes those quiet words in our gospel today.
We were known, loved, planned for
from before we were born, in fact, from the very time of creation.
We are not mistakes.
Our lives matter.

And they matter now, here at the end of 2005,
and they will matter always.
Even when we die.
God has a place for us, a home for us,
just waiting.
At the end of life,
and even now.
Even now, God has a place for us, God is a place for us
and invites us to come and find safety and security and love
even in the middle of life as it is.
Because God loves us.

It's so easy to forget it.
To get distracted by sheep and goats and hunger and thirst and fears of fire and judgement,
by mortgages and work and the general messiness of life.

But sometimes
we have to listen beyond the shouting
for the whispers of God to us.
Listen to God
whispering to us,
"I love you. I love you so much.
And I have a place ready for you, a place of safety
just waiting for you.
Welcome."

I'm going to take a couple of minutes now
for us to be quiet. In that time, I invite you to listen for God
speaking to you.

And then I invite you to respond to the God who loves you so much
that he prepared a place for you
before you were even imagined.

Because this week is thanksgiving, as we did last year, I invite you to respond
by writing your thanks to God
on the card that is at the end of your pew.
At the end of the quiet time, we will collect the cards,
and they will become our prayers of the people for today.

Let's listen
for the whisper
of God.

 

Sermon ©Raewynne J. Whiteley 2005