Readings:
Jonah 3: 1-10; Psalm 65: 5-12; 1 Corinthians 7: 29-31; Mark 1: 14-20
When Libbie and I travel, we like to do our own thing. Sometimes people ask us “Did you do a tour?” Well, we don’t. Partly that’s a reflection of our own personality types – we both find large groups of people exhausting – so those of you who have had any exposure to Myers-Briggs Personality Type might be thinking “Oh yes, they’re both I’s” and partly because when we go away we’re generally peopled out. It goes with the personality type territory. And partly it’s a reflection of tour guides we have seen. I remember once visiting Versailles in France.. For those who have been there, you’ll know it’s a wonderful experience, but it was ruined for us by tour guides. We were doing our own thing, trying to take our time to look closely, but constantly having to avoid phalanxes of people practically running us down, pointing here, cameras clicking there, wherever they managed to point them, all the while trying to keep up with someone at the front with a coloured flag leading them around at a great rate of knots while talking fifteen to the dozen – or whatever the metric equivalent is. Or if you’ve been in one of the great cathedrals trying to find some time and space for a chat with God, you’ll know how difficult that can be sometimes as tour guides rush here and there. We had a similar experience in Basle in Switzerland recently – had to get off the footpath to make way for the tour guide and the following mob.
We did make an exception once. Over ten years ago we were in Prague and joined a walking tour of the city and it was a completely different experience – one that stuck with us. We were a small group, two Australians, three young men from middle America on their first overseas trip, a Canadian woman who lived and worked in New York. We met our tour guide at a pre-arranged spot – and what an amazing experience it was. She was a young Czech university student – supplementing her income no doubt, and why not. But we took time as we walked. And as she lead us around we walked and talked with her and with each other, and our eyes were opened. She told us things about landmarks and obscure corners that we wouldn’t have otherwise heard, she pointed things out, she gave us time to look and to observe. I remember sitting with her in a café – a literary café where as long as you buy one cup of coffee, you’re free to sit and read and watch for as long as you wish. Gradually we became aware of her story, and her city’s story, and we began to see things through her eyes. And as we continued to walk and talk, we lost track of time – there was no “We have to be somewhere else in ten minutes” – and we learned from her and from each other. Lives and opinions began to change. I’ll always remember one of the young American men saying to Libbie and I that he’d come to realize that next time he came to Europe he would need to take the time to gain some understanding of one of the European languages. He said he was surprised to feel in many places how much Americans were disliked – they have a reputation of being insular and arrogant and demanding – and he wanted to be able to engage in some way with the people he met. He was beginning to see his own life and the life he saw around him in a different way. I’ll never meet him again, but I hope he carried through with it.
So, from the Gospel reading this morning, as Jesus gathers a small group around him and says “Follow me”, what makes them follow? I want to suggest that if we think about the two different types of tour guide, we might find an answer. Jesus knew the territory, both physically and spiritually – he was, after all, a Rabbi. And as he gathered his group together they began to walk – and he walked with them. Not some flag waving hustler out the front – but with the group of disciples. And as they went, he told stories – stories about everyday things of life – farmers planting the crop, travelers falling among thieves, vineyard owners looking for day labour, trustworthy and untrustworthy servants, bridesmaids at a wedding, a woman searching for a lost coin. And as they walked and shared the stories, Jesus pointed things out to them about the landscape of their culture and their lives, he answered their questions, not always in the way they expected or wanted to hear. And gradually they began to see things in a different way – they began to see through his eyes – not always, and not all of them – but as they began to see things through his eyes, lives and opinions began to change. They saw that he wasn’t always talking just about the ordinary things, but behind it all there was a much greater and deeper reality- the kingdom of God had come near. It was time for repentance – which is not just a change of mind about lives and living, but a change of practice in the way they lived their lives.
Now just imagine for a moment that we are about to start a journey through a foreign city or town……..and we’re not going to have to wait too long for our imaginations to be fulfilled, because we enter that foreign territory the moment we go out the door this morning. Christians are increasingly marginalized in our society, as are all people of faith. On Friday night, Fr. Daniel Berris was commissioned as Priest-in-Charge of the Provisional Parish of North Lakes – where Bishop Raymond Smith has been working to establish the faith community. Bishop Jonathan Holland in his address invited the congregation to think back 50 years to 1962. He told us of St. Stephen’s Coorparoo which then had a Sunday School of 900 with 60 teachers. They hired a train to Beenleigh for their Sunday School picnic. He said if we had walked out on a Monday morning and picked up our Courier Mail, there would have been a column “From the Pulpit” on page 2. On Wednesday there was a section “Round the Churches”. We are increasingly being frozen out of public discourse. Not because we don’t want to be part of it – but often the media just aren’t interested in what we might want to say. Our community speaks a different language now – the language of consumerism tells us to spend on things; our language tells us that where our heart is, there will our treasure be. The language of pragmatism says do what seems OK; our language speaks of righteousness – doing what is good and honourable and true. The language of individualism says “I” and I can do what I like as long as no one gets hurt; our language says not what I want, but what God wants and talks of sin and repentance The language of celebrity says “look at me, I’m famous”; our language says those who would be great must be servants. Bishop Jonathan said that we are daily faced, as the Psalmist was, or as Jonah was with the question of the exiles in Babylon “How do we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land.”
Well, if we’re going to sing the song, we need to know the words – and have the words deep within us. That takes time in prayer, in reflection on the scriptures, in allowing Christ to be the tour guide around our own lives first – pointing out landmarks, telling us about obscure corners we thought were hidden from view, gradually beginning to see our lives through his eyes, gradually changing our lives and refining our ways – and what we do here in worship is crucial in all of that. And then we go out, with the tour guide around our own landscape of which we are a part, but also not a part – in it but not of it. And we bear two gracious invitations with us – one we heard last week – “Come and see”. The other we hear today – “Follow me”. God give us grace that with his disciples through the years, we may turn to him wholeheartedly.
There is an epilogue – Marilyn Cullen reminded Libbie and I as we drove back from Northlakes on Friday night, the exiles came back. Singing the Lord’s song in a strange land does not last forever. But if we don’t sing it, who will?
Note:
The “tour guide” theme was drawn from an address given by The Rev’d Canon Rosalind Brown at the 2012 Clergy Summer School