Distractions From The Corner Of Your Eye

Luke 7:11-18  Deut 24:17-20

England flags are starting to flutter. From as far a field as the Cromwell Estate and deepest Charlwood, national allegiances are being declared from balconies, windows and flagpoles. All over the parish women are down on their knees praying the special world cup prayer written by our Bishop for those who are not the slightest bit interested in football, and the Vicar’s diary is reaching  crisis point. For I have to admit to you, my brothers and sisters, that as soon as the fixtures for the world cup were announced I plotted England’s likely route to the final and wrote the dates and times in the tiniest of writing in my big green diary. So there would not be a staff meeting, ministry team meeting, finance and standing meeting, getting in the way of the football.  I am determined not to be thwarted this time round. Because usually I am, usually I miss the vital game or the crucial penalty shoot out because of parish duties.

I put myself down to lead a Deanery Quiet Evening without realising that it was the same night as an England game. There was a crucial PCC meeting which turned out to be at the same time as one of those dreadful penalty shoot out’s. A wedding during a vital qualifying game, so that I had to solemnly  depute the best man to update the score on the bottom rung of the hymn board. It never works out for me, and the last world cup, the biggest distraction of all, first game,  the day of my interview for the vacant post at St Matthew’s Redhill and we’ll ring you during the evening to let you know if you’ve got the job. How’s a chap supposed to enjoy a game of football with that hanging over him.  I do believe God had a sense of humour, because of the distractions he delights in putting my way, when there’s football on.

But in all seriousness, I try to take heed of distractions, of the thing that suddenly gets in the way of my carefully laid out plans, because often, those things that are suddenly and unexpectedly there, or the person you catch out of the corner of your eye, whilst someone else is demanding your complete attention, is I have found, where God might want me to be…and you too.

There’s a pattern unfolding in Luke’s Gospel that we would do well to heed. Jesus has just delivered the Sermon on the Mount, that great body of inspiring teaching to which we can turn time and again when we dare to examine our motives for doing things. Jesus is in a controlled environment. He has the floor to Himself. He speaks maybe for hours and the people lap it up. The disciples are pleased and proud to be followers, and when finally the sermon is over, Jesus and the twelve stride forth to show how the teaching is to be put into action, and Jesus is beset by distraction, all the time, and it is in his paying attention to the distraction that we see the real depth of the Gospel and just precisely who the Good News was for.

He is coming to Capernaum, and might have gone to the synagogue to teach some more, but he is bothered by a Centurion who  has a slave who is at the point of death. Now surely Jesus didn’t come to be bothered about Gentiles, especially those of the Roman regime, that were stifling the people’s identity, and not to go to the bedside of a slave, someone who really amounted to next to nothing.

But Jesus goes to those people, he heals the slave and people are starting to wonder.

Then comes our Gospel reading and the raising of the widow’s son. Now it is a gross exaggeration to call Nain a city. It was an out of the way little hamlet. He did not intend to stop there. It would be like being on the M25 and thinking I know let’s detour through Merstham. But as he was passing by the outskirts of this nothing and nowhere place, he saw something out of the corner of his eye. He allowed himself to be distracted and was filled with compassion. Compassion for a woman that would now have nothing. This would be bereavement at its keenest. This woman was already a widow, she would have relied upon her son for her wellbeing and status in the community. Now he had died too, she would probably be struggling to survive.  The Mosaic Law classed a widow alongside orphans and refuges and gave them the right to glean in the fields after harvest time and collect spare produce from olive groves and vineyards –f or they probably wouldn’t have much else. So Jesus’ heart goes out to her at all sorts of different levels. He touches the bier of the coffin, something else you just didn’t do, he spends his time with those on the margins, he ministers to those whose hope is gone.

The final story in that chapter is when, at last the religious leaders get him to the place where he ought to be, sitting round a meal table talking theology, and a woman bursts in, a dubious woman at that, she comes straight to the heart of the scheduled meeting and throws the agenda out of the window, weeping at Jesus feet and pouring expensive perfume  over them, and Jesus steps into the distraction, he takes that which is only discernable out of the corner of your eye and gives it central place.

In these three stories, which would have been lost had Jesus not given into distraction, we have the heart of the Gospel. The centurion’s story – the Good news is for everyone. The widow’s story – Jesus’s compassion for those on the edge brings life from death and the Woman’s Story – knowing you are forgiven is that which unleashes your love of God and gives perspective to your life.

The priorities Jesus sets in this one chapter causes concern amongst would be followers, for we also read here that the disciples of John hearing about these things, send a deputation to Jesus and ask “Are you the one who is to come or should we be looking for another”- is this really how the Messiahs’ ministry evolves through the interruption of Soldiers, Widows and women of no reputation.

 Beware then when people get in your way. Look out when you are suddenly late for an appointment because your time with someone else is running over. Always notice what’s happening out of the corner of your eye. Watch your diary and your calendar lest they become tablets of stone. For the grace of God might be in the distraction, and then next time you pray and find you are distracted, don’t be exasperated, the distraction might be God telling you just where your prayer needs to be.

RH 6.6.10