Third Sunday after Trinity – evening
Sunday 17th June 2018
Proper 6 – 3rd Sunday after Trinity – evening
Jeremiah 7, 1-16
Romans 9, 14-26
Revd Preb Maureen Hobbs
One of the things that really annoys is me is wasting time.
Now that is not to say that I cannot enjoy opportunities to relax and do relatively little; to veg out in front of some TV soap or historical or crime drama; to spend time in meditation; or just to be with friends…
But all that is not a waste of time – it is time spent to a very good purpose, namely rest, relaxation and replenishment.
No wasting time is quite different. It happens most often when I think someone is coming to see me or to deliver something, – so I delay starting a particular task – and then they fail to turn up ! I’m sure we have all been there!
My friend Sherry (who also hates to waste her time) spent many years as a senior nursing officer in the Territorial Army. So rather than go on holiday when she was nursing, she would be off somewhere setting up a field hospital in the middle of nowhere. And she has told me many a tale of regular manoeuvres or exercises, when large groups of soldiers (and all the support services they require) are moved around the countryside, on foot or by lorry. In such cases, one officer is charged with drawing up a detailed plan, listing who was to move where and when; what the chain of command was to be; how the various units communicate with one another; and above all, at the head of the paper, was “The object of the Exercise”.
So when they had to do it for real in Kuwait during the first Gulf War, they already had a pretty good idea of what to do and when – It may not have been perfect, but they did not waste much time in what became a very dangerous situation.
The same applies to the whole of life. Aimlessness is a waste of time; a waste of the talents God has given us. On my rest day – if I have nothing at all planned, then by the end of the day I am usually feeling a bit restless and disgruntled – feeling that I have wasted a precious day of leisure. On the days when I do have plans – even if they don’t run completely smoothly, I feel a much higher level of satisfaction by the end of the day – Time well-spent!
In this evening’s reading from St Paul’s letter to the Christians at Rome, he suggests that God had a purpose in mind for Pharaoh, King of Egypt, even though Pharoah knew nothing of the Jewish God… He was given free will to persecute the Jews, and then to pursue them into the desert and across the Red Sea. It might seem rather arbitrary and cruel to our modern way of thinking, but God knew it would serve a wider purpose. God’s purpose at the Exodus was to reveal that he is a Saviour God, one who, when we get ourselves into a mess, will save us out of it eventually, if we will only be patient.
Part of our task, as disciples of the living, creating God, is to discern God’s wider purpose in creating the world and ourselves as part of it. There is something both loving and playful about a God who creates so much of beauty and who even allows creatures to develop who have power to evolve into beings capable of a personal type of relationship with the supreme being.
So what is God’s over-arching purpose? I believe that God created earth in order to populate heaven. God wanted creatures whom he could love, and who would respond by loving him return. But love takes time to develop – a whole lifetime of experience to learn how to love in a community. So God created a universe in which we could learn to love our friends and even our enemies, to prepare us for the next life where all is love.
You and I are involved in his plans – so we must work at this loving lark – although when I look at some human beings, I confess that it can be very, very difficult! As the popular hymn says, “God is working his purpose out as year succeeds to year.”
So that means that God has a purpose for each individual; even for Pharoah, even for Donald Trump; even for Christopher Chope, even for Jeremiah and Paul, even for you and even for me! He has given us freedom to choose what we do, but he can use the results of those choices. None of us knows exactly what God’s Plan is for us – although when it feels that we may have stumbled across some understanding, we call that sensing a call, or vocation. It will certainly involve meeting up again with those whom we have loved and lost. Beyond that, we rely on faith and hope; confident that God’s plan for us will be far more wonderful than anything we might have imagined – and definitely not a waste of time!