Proper 10 – B

July 16, 2006

The Rev. Dorian McGlannan

 

Being a prophet is a hazardous business. People don’t choose to be prophets. After all, why would anyone choose to be the target of hostility? Trust me, being a prophet frequently engenders some rather pointed daggers. Amos, who we heard about this morning in our first reading, apparently is not all that crazy about this assignment. When he starts getting hassled by Amaziah and told to go prophesy somewhere else, Amos denies that he is a prophet: “I am no prophet, nor a prophet’s son; but I am a herdsman, and a dresser of sycamore trees. The Lord told me to become a prophet. This was not my idea.”

 

Amos was the first of a long line of Israelite prophets. The book of Amos is dated between 760 and 750 BC. It centers around a major event in Israelite history, the end of the northern kingdom in 722 BC and is comprised mostly of oracles of judgment.  Despite the fact that he was not all that keen about this particular assignment from God, Amos became a firm critic of the Israelites and their lives of excess.

 

Sometimes we get these assignments from God which take us out of our comfort zone.  We talk back to God and say, just like Jonah, “There is no way I am going to Nineveh.” However, when God calls us, it is difficult to say no even when common sense might suggest otherwise. 

 

My husband and I got married rather late in our lives. Our son was born when I was 40 years old. At that point we figured we were done. One child was going to be enough! When our lives became more settled than either of us had ever experienced, we both heard God calling us to adoption. And it was definitely a calling. Common sense said “no”. By that time some of our contemporaries were planning marriages for their children. But here we were just like Sarah and Abraham – looking at adding to our family at an advanced age. We had a few little extra hindrances that would have scared off most people. Not us! We plowed ahead. 

 

I’ve been thinking a lot about our adoption experience these last couple of weeks as I finally, after nearly six years, am putting together Kaylee’s adoption trip scrapbook. Sometimes my husband and I look at each other and think we really must have been out of our minds. Sometimes the kids laugh and tell us their friends think we are their grandparents. But in the end we feel nothing but gratitude for the very special, if not unique, family we have become. It is all a matter of listening to God. As I was inserting pictures of children from one of the Chinese orphanages into Kaylee’s scrapbook, I knew that if we were younger, we would bring back more children. Prior to our first visit to China, I remember my husband telling me: “I know I’m going to get over there and want to bring back the whole family, including the water buffalo!”

 

Listening to God takes us to unpredictable places. But not listening to God is far worse because then we suffer from one of the greatest ailments to plague humanity and that is the curse of a restless spirit. It’s the “if only I had done this with my life” syndrome. It’s a terrible place to be emotionally and spiritually because we are never able to settle down and just be with the life God has given us to live. 

 

My call to the ministry came out of the blue. In fact, when God spoke to me I was adamantly opposed to institutionalized religion and the whole idea of a God was beyond my imagination. As one who had a very clear conversion experience at a very particular time, during May of 1979, I did not fit the norm of one who was called to the priesthood. Within an incredibly short period of time, I moved from being a cynic who ridiculed Christians, to not being able to get enough in terms of spiritual fulfillment. I identify with St. Paul in this respect! I had suffered intently from a restless spirit during my teenage years into my mid-twenties. The discovery of faith literally turned my life around. It was a complete shock to anyone who knew me at the time. But eventually I grew into my faith and my life in the church and within a few months, I could barely imagine not having God in my life. I listened to God despite the fact that this change of vocation steered me away from a perfectly good career in arts administration.

 

The grounding that listening to God provides allows us to be a calming presence in the midst of strife. There are so many things that have the potential to send us over the edge. It is hard to imagine on these wonderful summer days in this lovely, well-tended community that other parts of the world are incredibly fragile. It is hard for me not to be anxious about my 27-year-old niece who is attending medical school at the University of Tel Aviv in Israel. As our family follows what is happening in the Middle East, it is hard to let go of the preponderance of nightmarish possibilities. But in the end, I find great comfort in knowing that my niece has listened to God, even as God has called her to do her medical training in the midst of this unstable part of the world.   

 

Today we will be welcoming Kevin Balint into the Christian faith through the sacrament of baptism. Being baptized as an adult is not an easy thing to do. People who are baptized as infants know nothing other than life in the church. It seems natural. It is a part of who they are. But those who come into the Christian faith as adults are bucking the tide of our increasingly secular society. Adults making a commitment to accept Christ as their savior are publicly claiming a radical dependence on God. This goes against everything that our individualistic society tells us we should be doing. It goes against all the messages of “acquire” that permeate our consciousness. It goes against the messages of denying and repressing pain that are so prevalent today. Becoming a Christian as an adult is acknowledging that there is a different path that we can take. It involves entering into a life that sometimes causes us to do the most surprising things.

 

This week I got a phone call from parishioner I have come to know in various circumstances during the past year. So he calls me up out of the blue and says: “Aren’t you getting tired of the church parking lot. I really think it needs to be redone.”  “ Yes”, I said, “vestry has been looking at this since I started a year ago.” “So”, he says, “why don’t I just take care of it.” He knows and I know that this is no small chunk of change. “We’ll do it right and just get it done. And by the way this needs to be anonymous.” Now here is someone who has a great sense of playfulness. He listens to God and lives his faith with joy.

 

This is not the first time this kind of thing has happened to me. I will never forget the time a man walked into my office and said: “Thought you’d like this check. Aunt Sadie put the church in her will and I’m here to make sure it gets to the right place.” The check was for $30,000. What made this so much fun was that I had no idea who Aunt Sadie was since she had long ago moved to another part of the state to live closer to family in her final years. I could tell this man was enjoying himself delivering the goods. I also knew that Aunt Sadie had been someone who felt connected to God. 

 

Amos listened to God and was therefore able to have a sense of interior peace despite the fact that his assignment may have made him less comfortable in terms of his physical life. After all he went from tending trees that didn’t talk back to him, to dealing with the likes of Amaziah, the priest of Bethel who kept telling him to go away.  

 

Listening to God sometimes takes us to unknown places. In this lovely summer weather, most of us will have some time to sit back and listen, whether we are by a lake, in a boat or just sitting in our backyard. Take the time, feel the gentle breeze of God’s spirit surrounding you and then wait! Like Amos, you might be surprised. You just might be surprised.