Sermons

Fourth Sunday after Trinity
Sunday 9th July at 8am

Simon Cowling
Readings: Ezekiel 2. 1-5; Mark 6. 1-13

We have just come through one of the times in the Church's year, Petertide, that ordinations traditionally take place and so I've been reflecting a good deal on vocation recently. Most of you will know that Kathryn Elliott, one of our Readers, has recently been recommended for ordination training as a deacon. She joins Ikuko Williams, who has just completed the second of her three years of training for ordained ministry; and last Tuesday I was at St. Aidan's Harehills as Diana Zanker, one of the newly ordained priests in this deanery, presided at the Eucharist for the first time. But vocation is not just about, indeed it's not primarily about, ordained ministry. Vocation is, at its deepest level, about being attentive to the call of God and being willing to follow that call in ways that we might not expect, understand or even like very much.

The Bible gives us a range of vocations to reflect on, callings which are unexpected, not fully understood and even not much liked. Think of Moses: already an old man, minding his own business looking after sheep and goats in the desert and suddenly brought into God's presence at the burning bush. Moses uses every excuse he can possibly think of to slide out of a calling he doesn't much care for, a calling to lead God's people out of slavery: I am a nobody, he says; I don't know who it is that's calling me; the Israelites will never believe me; I'm no good at public speaking. Think of the boy Samuel, serving under the priest Eli in the Lord's temple at Shiloh, who innocently believes that it's Eli calling him in the night, not understanding that the call is God's. Three times he goes to Eli, who eventually, and gently, points him in a different direction and tells him to be attentive to the Lord. Think of Saul, ardent persecutor of the early Christians, blinded by God's glory on the road to Damascus in a way that neither he, and certainly not the early Christians were expecting. Moses, Samuel, Paul, and many others, receive God's call and, one way or another, respond.

So it was with Ezekiel. From a priestly family in Jerusalem, he is called by God at the river Chebar in Babylonia, after five years in exile with thousands of other Jews. Ezekiel's task, spelt out in today's reading, is to recall God's people to the path of holiness they have left:
'Mortal man, I am sending you to the people of Israel. They have rebelled and turned against me and are still rebels, just as their ancestors were. They are stubborn and do not respect me, so I am sending you to tell them what I, the sovereign Lord, am saying to them.' (Ezekiel 2. 2-4)
Like Moses, Samuel and Paul, Ezekiel responds and we see his vocation being worked out, sometimes in very strange ways, in the following 47 chapters.

I said earlier that vocation was not confined to ordination. It's not confined safely to the pages of the Bible either. Vocation is a word that should never be far from the lips of any of us as we seek to discern, in prayer, what it is that God is calling us to do. Our vocation may not be what we are expecting, we might not fully understand what it is we are being called to, and we certainly might not like the idea of it very much. But we need to remember that a vocation is not ours alone; it is ours and it is God's: The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid. May God bless us all in our calling. Amen.

© St Edmund's Church, Roundhay