The psalm we read today, begins with
:
“The Lord is my light and my salvation;
whom shall I fear?”
‘The Lord is my light’, for the
people who first heard this, light was the sun, or moon and stars. Other than
natural light it was a small lamp that burnt oil.
One article I read this week
commented that : God gives us just a pottery lamp’s worth of light, just enough
to take a few more steps.[i]
Just
enough light to see to take the next step, and sometimes not quite enough to
see where our foot will land.
“The Lord is my light and my
salvation; whom shall I fear?”
For
many, the fear is the unknown, the not knowing two, or twenty, steps
ahead.
We
have this idea in our western culture that we can plan for the future, that we
can decide what we will and won’t do; to a certain extent that is true. I
decided what I ate for breakfast this morning, cereal and toast, but I didn’t
get to decide what the weather would be like. And no-one knows when our lives
will take a dramatic turn.
“The Lord is my light and my
salvation; whom shall I fear?”
Some
of us fear looking foolish, making mistakes; so we resist trying anything a
little different.
Some
of us fear death, some of us fear life.
“The Lord is my light and my
salvation; whom shall I fear?
But then I noticed it is whom, not
what, shall I fear? So a person or group?
Reading the paper, watching the
news, and checking out some social media websites, I think we fear people we
don’t know. In this country we fear refugees, we fear indigenous people, we
fear Muslims, we fear young people. Except for the ones we know.
“The Lord is my light and my
salvation; whom shall I fear?”
This isn’t
to suggest that there aren’t risky places in our community, though Engadine and
Heathcote are quite safe places to live; and it isn’t to suggest that there are
not risky places and situations in our country and the world. But if we find
our place in this life, and in whatever comes after this life, in God; what do
we really have to fear?
….
Looking at the reading from
Matthew’s gospel for a moment. we hear
about ordinary
people amidst their ordinary everyday world, when Jesus calls them to do
something extraordinary. He calls the four fishermen to follow him. In the
midst of our everyday activities, Jesus calls us to follow him.
Sometimes
I think it would be easier to leave everything behind and follow Jesus, a
travelling Rabbi, then try and work out what it means to follow Jesus while
living in a community, paying a mortgage, raising children, going to work and
school, going about the ordinary everyday tasks that come with life.
Often with
this passage we talk about call, and particular calls, but to me this passage
is about the call to discipleship.
Jesus
called the four fishermen to follow him, no altar call for eternal life, no
dangling carrot of the reward of heaven or the terror of an eternity in hell.
Jesus said : follow me.
And they
followed, and saw Jesus teaching,
proclaiming and healing. We too
can follow Jesus, we can listen to his teaching, we can proclaim the good news
of God’s love and we can witness to the healing power of love and hope.
I wonder
what it means to you, and what it has meant to you, to follow Jesus, to be a
disciple, a learner , an apprentice in the kingdom of God?
Young men would go to a Rabbi, in
hope of being his student, a bit like applying to university. In Matthew’s
gospel, Jesus doesn’t wait for people to come to him, he invites people, even
people who caught fish for a living, to come and learn and live in a new way.
We too are invited to live this new
way, we are invited to follow Jesus, to be disciples, to learn, to welcome, to
offer healing. And to be changed, because we can’t be in a relationship with
Jesus and not be changed.
“The Lord is my light and my
salvation; whom shall I fear?”
I wonder if we fear Jesus, if we
fear his call to follow, the call to follow one whose life was offered for the
transforming of the world.
…
Earlier I
showed you the picture of all the finalists in the Australian of the year
awards; The Chair of the National Australia
Day Council, Adam Gilchrist said:
"In Adam, Fred, Jacqueline and
Tim we have fellow Australians who live their values every day, who have
achieved great success and also use their success to help others and make a
difference.
"They inspire us to be better
Australians and their contributions make Australia a better place to
live." [http://www.australianoftheyear.org.au/]
What were
the values that Jesus lived every day?
In what
ways do we live these values every day?
