When It All Makes You Feel A Bit Small
Rom 12:9-21 Matt 16:21-28
See a young man cycling through France.
Tired after 70 miles of pedalling he rests by the roadside in a remote village.
An old woman does the simple thing – she offers the man a meal.
She invites him to stay in the village for it is far from anywhere.
Just a bumpy track. No running water. No telephone. No church.
The young man beds down in a disused outbuilding and stays several days.
He feels compelled to do a strange thing.
He calls upon his sister to join him there, to work with him to provide a simple place where travellers might take some rest.
It’s the early 1940’s and soon they are offering soup and a bed for the night to more people than they imagined.
To refugees streaming past their door, many of them Jews on the run.
The young man prays for each and every visitor in a little place he has set apart.
Tipped off just in time – he and his sister flee before the Gestapo come calling.
With the return of peace – the young man returns to continue his work.
It becomes a place for all comers now – protestants and Catholics – more orphans, more refugees. Former prisoners too. For these are still troubled times.
The young man is joined by six others and they take vows to dedicate themselves to God with a life of service and prayer.
They set up a milk cooperative, publish religious works and create a place of retreat.
Then in 1959 it begins to happen.
Young people from all across the world start to get drawn to this place.
By train, by bus or on foot, they come in their thousands.
To pray. To sing. To learn. To be challenged about peace and unity.
And the brotherhood grows to over 100.
Beautiful new music pours out of the place into churches everywhere.
The young man devotes his life to it, but now of course, he is no longer young.
He is 90 years old and he sits at the back of the church he founded at one of the regular worshipping times. There are people all around him and for little apparent reason other than she could not attract his attention – a woman steps forward and stabs the man to death.
This happened three years ago.
Brother Roger of Taize is the man.
A story which began with the simple act of a meal offered to one resting by the roadside.
His life was inspired by that one example – of being a neighbour too, of showing mercy too.
How little things grow if they are founded in God’s love.
Taize is a world wide Christian community. The music of Taize has touched churches everywhere.
It would never had happened had not a woman offered a traveller a meal.
On such is built the kingdom of God
I say all this to encourage myself because I have to admit that this morning’s bible readings make me feel small.
Into Romans, St Paul packs a full job description and person specification about how we need to be if we are to be proper followers of Jesus. All the hard things Jesus ever said are put into précis for us here. They sound nice. They sound right and good but if you start applying them to yourself, they make you start to fidget.
It’s like as if there’s a great battle to be fought and that it starts within me.
For half of those things I’ve not got right in my life yet, so how can I inspire them in others.
It’s like as if my whole life needs to be turned over into something different.
That everything I need to believe in, all I need to do will involve going in the opposite direction from everyone else and therefore being challenged by everyone else.
“I am among you as one who serves” here we go again from last week.
It’s all too uncomfortable for a weekend in August.
It’s no better when you turn to the Gospel.
Jesus is about to spoil everything.
Just before today’s passage was the wonderful encounter between Peter and Jesus when finally and movingly, he confesses Jesus to be the Christ and is commissioned to be the rock on which the church will be built.
But now look, now look at what that church is going to have to look like and what you will need to look like to be a part of it.
It will be, says Matthew – like carrying a thing of torture on your shoulders and when you try to battle forward with it – Satan will be in the way as an obstacle at every turn.
It just doesn’t sound very promising, it doesn’t sound really what I’d really hoped for.
And I’m making matters worse when I say I think we should all follow the example of Brother Roger. But listen, all he did was to allow himself to be inspired by the kind act of another person. A meal by the roadside, that’s all it took to kick start the love of God.
The calling as I see it is to take hold of a small opportunity and let God be the strength behind your exploitation of it.
And Jesus litters the world with small opportunities.
We can’t strive after the holy job description, we can’t fulfil all those things of which Paul wrote – but by the Holy Spirit those things accompany us with us, when we step out and do the small thing in big faith.
RH 31.8.08