Hiding From The Unexpected Caller
2 Tim 3:14-4:5 Luke 18:1-8
How do you deal with callers who knock unexpectedly at your door?
Do you ever run and hide.
I had an Aunty and Uncle who had two children and I’d better not tell you their names.
They would come calling unexpectedly.
They’d park their car somewhere round the corner and sneak up our street, in through the back gate, up the path, in through the unlocked kitchen door and the first thing we’d know of it was when one of them made the downstairs toilet flush or they call out “Whoo – ooo”
Then our afternoon changed for they were noisy friendly happy people, with jokes to tell and stories to spin., but we just wanted to watch TV and be quiet.
One day my Dad saw them coming and with a speed of movement for which he is not normally renowned. he locked the doors, pulled the windows tight and we had to hide.
Hold our breath. Not sneeze. Not laugh. Just hide.
Whilst the door handle was tried. The door bell was rung. Windows were knocked upon and faces peered in through the glass, and we hoped we’d not be seen.
I’m sure none of you have ever done anything like that.
Over the years I’ve had one or two instances where I’ve gone calling and looked through the glass to see someone creeping stealthily away to a hiding place out the back.
I want to take a liberty with our Gospel reading this morning and turn it all upside down.
The way Jesus tells the story we have widow trying anything to get the attention of a Judge so that she could secure justice.
What if the judge is ourselves and the widow is God and he’s trying anything he can to open wide a loving relationship between us all.
What if this is not so much about the way God answers our prayers – but more about a prayer deep in the heart of God that we might really let him in to our lives.
Our Epistle reading has been a personally shattering text for me.
It gives me the creeps every time I read it.
In 1981 I had been to see for the third and final time, the Diocesan Director or Ordinands in the Chichester Diocese. I had come away from that visit having told him that I would not be taking this idea of Ordination any further. It was not for me, I had decided.
I came home and at that time I was reading the bible from a little book called “Daily Bread” which set out a passage each night to look at.
I wasn’t feeling especially interested in Daily bread that night.
I thought maybe I’d give that up too.
And it was that reading from Timothy, those actual words
Verse 14 “As for you , continue in what you have learned and firmly believed”
Verse 5 of chapter 4 “As for you, always be steady, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfil your ministry”
I will, if I have to, put a dirty great brick through the window of your life.
Now, I’m not that sort of Christian – who goes around treating the bible like some divine horoscope – no way – but there it was –larger than life.
I could keep the unwanted caller away no longer.
There is dangerous teaching behind all this.
Give God what he wants – let him have his way with you.
Don’t practice your faith in a way that’s actually locking God out, because of fear of what might happen.
I’ve been reading a No.1 best seller. It’s not by Josephine Cox or Ian Rankin or even Jodie Picoult. It’s by John Pritchard and its called “The Life and Work of a Priest”
And it has been in the top ten best sellers ……in the Church Times list anyway.
He points to three ways in which our relationship with God begins to grow in our daily lives and at the heart of it lies the reason why we might wish to keep outside as the unwanted caller, we hope will go away fairly soon
Presence. Partnership and Prophecy – Pritchard talks of these in terms of the ordained priesthood, I want to widen the scope to include every baptised person.
When finally you get up and answer the door – you will begin to get a sense of his presence in your life.
That God has never been locked up in churches, or pressed flat in the pages of a bible, he is out there in the world you inhabit day by day and a part of every experience you may have. You get a conviction that he is actually present in you and you begin to realise that by the way you are – you can make him present to others.
That sounds like a joyful and a good thing to be doing.
Then you move from personal presence out into partnerships. You begin to make some links in your life that have some Christian backing to them. You help a friend and realise it’s something to do with God. You do some voluntary work and you come to see that its more than about filling some spare time. You even find yourself speaking up for things.
You find there is a network developing in your life and that it’s happening because its something to do with the Gospel
Now as long as that doesn’t lead us into a holier than thou sort of approach, that sounds good too and maybe until this moment you’ve not realised just how much this is a part of you.
But then you move to prophecy – now that sounds decidedly dodgy.
But what it means is that as you are involved in things you feel God’s presence in them in terms of blessing or judgement.
It is to look into the depth of events and discern their direction – either as a movement towards God’s kingdom or a subtle deviation from it.
Now there’s a lot of this that goes on which has little to do with God and ends up being about our own prejudices or we become directed in our thinking by the preoccupations of our daily newspapers.
In prophecy we’re talking about the sting of the Gospel.
It’s little wonder that the Old Testament prophets were often dragged kicking and screaming to the task.
Presence. Partnership. Prophecy.
These challenges can only be met through the quality time with God we call prayer.
Prayer in stillness. Prayer before a passage of scripture. Prayer before the sacrament – not a prayer of asking for things but a prayer which has as its intention – letting God more deeply in to your life.
Someone’s knocking at the door – will you go or shall I.
RH 21.10.07