Hinde Street Sermon

I am preaching at the 11am service at Hinde Street tommorow, which is quite scary! Here is the sermon.

Sermon for Hinde Street Methodist Church Sunday 8th June
Karen Hilsden
Readings: Genesis 12:1-9, Matthew 9: 9-13, 18-26

Today, after this service, will see the competitive football match between the church and communities! Football was my reason for starting to go to church! I come from a family of football fanatics and started going to church because on a Sunday morning I had the choice of standing on the touch line watching my brother play football in all weathers or going to Church with my Nana and Uncle! Church was a much warmer place and thus won! This was really the beginning of my journey of Christian faith.

Today‟s readings give us the stories of people of faith and parts of their journey. We have Abram: called by God to set out to a new place; to leave behind his home, relatives and so on. We have the call of Matthew: a tax collector. We also have the story of Jesus being touched by a woman who then is healed. This encounter with Jesus brings her a new identity: a new journey. Prior to this, the woman would have been excluded from society because she would have been seen as ritually unclean. Finally, we have the story of a girl being taken by the hand by Jesus and re-awoken.
So today we hear words from Scripture about relationships with God and Jesus: about encounters and journeys of life. Each of us has our own journey and story to tell. Some of us might identify with different characters in our readings for our own journeys. This morning I am going to share with you a part of my story.

For me, hearing the story of Jairus‟ daughter as we have just done brings back memories of a musical that I was in when I was 11. In it there was quite a cheesy song, but it was profound to me and the words were:

Jesus friend of little children be a friend to me,
take my hand and ever keep me close to thee.
Teach me how to grow in goodness daily as I grow,
you have been a child and surely you will know.
Step by step oh lead me onward upwards into youth,
wiser stronger still becoming in your truth
never leave me nor forsake me ever be my friend.
Never leave me from life‟s dawning to its end.

These words for me were words that spoke clearly to me as a child, and I suggest that they were words of commitment. They are also words that are applicable to all of us in our journey of life: the call to follow Jesus is a call to go on a journey with him. Those words “Step by step, lead me onward” are words that challenge us all, whatever stage we are at in our lives to follow where God calls. God‟s call on lives comes in different ways: through religious experiences, other people, situations we find ourselves in and at different times. Abram was 75 when he responded to his call.

I stand here this morning as the result of a response to a call. The Methodist Church accepted me to train as a minister as long as I spent my first year at WLM. I first sensed God calling me to be a minister at the age of 16 or 17: it was during a healing service and I sensed a call to celebrate Holy Communion. I thought God must have been having a funny five minutes! A few weeks later however, a minister was talking to me about my future and my University career and said to me, “Have you thought about becoming a minister?” I began to think back to the healing service. I hadn‟t mentioned my experience and what I sensed to anyone, but now someone else‟s suggestion to me made me think twice! When we reflect upon God calling people, we find ourselves looking not as individuals but as communities. People can play a big part in helping people discern what God might be calling them to do. Part of our work is to help one another in discerning this and encourage people! Just remember: you don‟t know what‟s going on in somebody‟s life and your encouragement could help them!

We believe and have faith in the God who calls; but how do we respond? For a while I kept trying to come up with excuses why I couldn‟t be a minister: number 1 I hadn‟t experienced bereavement. How on earth could I cope with doing a funeral or helping people that were bereaved? My answer to God was „I can‟t do it‟ and I continued to argue with God over why I couldn‟t be a minister. This was my excuse and remained my excuse for a while. Meanwhile my Aunt was ill. Eventually she died and I was asked to speak at her funeral. I had just gone on note – that‟s the first stage for those of you that don‟t know! – as a local preacher and hadn‟t yet preached in Sunday worship let alone at a family funeral. I managed to speak at the funeral and the only way I managed, I am quite sure, was with God‟s strength. That night I was at midweek worship: again it was a healing service. This time, during the service I realised that what for so long had been my excuse could no longer be! Now what was my excuse?!

When God calls us, we can sometimes try arguing with God, but actually God can be quite persistent! Eventually there needs to be an active response to a call. I went to University in Lancaster to study Christian ministry, initially as part of my response to my call. I wasn‟t convinced that I would cope being 244 miles away from home, but 2 weeks after I‟d been at University I found myself reflecting back: I was having a great time. Prior to going I thought I would be back, but along the way I sensed that that was where God was calling me to be. As we look at the story of Abram this morning we see God calling Abram to new places. Just as God called Abram to new places, so we can be called to new places: this might be geographically, or vocationally. Is God perhaps calling you to new places? Are you resisting responding?

One of the things I have found with calling is that it‟s always tempting to leave it or for it always to be in the future. For me there was a temptation to leave candidating. When I went to University I thought that beginning the process of offering for Methodist ministry, if that‟s what I was to do, would come much later. However, towards the end of my first term I discovered that my University Chaplain had been in conversation with the Methodist Church who had decided that Foundation Training could be done whilst I was at University! So, instead of beginning to think about doing it all once I‟d finished University I found myself offering for ministry in my final year at Lancaster.

I once heard a sermon on priesthood, vocation and motherhood which was really inspirational and helpful to me! One of the things that the preacher said was that just as you cannot stay pregnant forever with a baby, neither can you stay pregnant, as it were, with vocation! The process can be painful and involve vulnerability. At some point, our response to vocation has to come out: in whatever form that might be. For some people, it could perhaps be asking for a note to preach; for others, volunteering to help out with jobs that need doing in church. Is there an area where you are being nudged to respond?

Our Old Testament reading ends today with us seeing that Abram journeyed in stages. Our response can be made in little steps. “Step by step oh lead me onwards”. Looking at our calling is an ongoing task: we discern the big brush strokes, as it were, but we then have to discern the finer details. Responding to a call is not a momentary action: it‟s a journey, a process. Shortly my journey will move on yet another stage as I move to Queen‟s College in Birmingham for a further 2 years of training.
Abram set out to respond to God‟s call and the following passages show that times were not easy. For my journey there have been some hard times. Half way through my first year at University, my Dad was diagnosed with cancer. Times were hard: I was in Lancaster whilst everyone else was at home, there was nowhere else I wanted to be but at home, yet this wasn‟t possible. There were things that needed to be done in Lancaster.

Trying to work out what we are called to do can be a struggle. For me, whilst I was exploring vocation I used to go down to Manchester every 6 weeks or so for vocational exploration evenings. The number of times I left Hartley Victoria thinking „Can this really be me?‟ or „Has God really got this right? Me a Presbyter?‟ I quite often say to friends that God must have been having a funny five minutes when he called me to be a Methodist minister and that this certainly illustrates God‟s sense of humour!

God calls unexpected people to do unexpected things: Abram at 75 and Matthew, a tax collector, someone not to have been very popular. God calls me, and you, to share in the mission of Jesus Christ: living lives of love in action. Living out the message of the incarnation of the God who dwells among the people. How do we respond? Are we prepared to give our "yes‟?

So to conclude:
Call needs encouragement! We can all encourage one another in helping to discern God‟s will for our lives.
Call cannot be in the future forever: at some point we have to respond actively.
Call isn‟t easy! There can be challenges and it can be hard!
When we make a response to God, to whatever it might be, we make it in the knowledge that the God who calls us is the God who is faithful; and in the promise of Jesus “I am with you always till the end
of the age”. So may we have grace to respond to God‟s call on our lives to follow Jesus but also to tend to those things that God calls us to.