This past week, as you will have realised if you follow us on social media, has been ‘Volunteers’ Week’, and we have been trying there to thank some of the people who give up so much of their time and energy to support this church in a huge variety of ways: servers, sacristans, musicians, those who help in the Community Centre and behind the bar, PCC members, and so on…
We have been trying to convey our thanks, I promise; but I am willing to bet that some of you are already bristling slightly. What about the refreshments teams? The welcomers? The comms team? The finance team? What about Marjorie, who slaves over a hot photocopier for us every week to produce our orders of service? What about Dave and the amazing work he does taking all our food donations to the food bank? What about the flower team? The open church volunteers? What about our amazing tech team? What about the people who do those most unromantic of jobs… like unblocking the loos?
What – come to think of it – about me? Not me, Claire, of course; I’m pretty much the only person here who’s not a volunteer… I mean, you, all of you. There is not one person participating in this service this morning who does not contribute in some way to the beautiful and varied body of Christ that is the Church of God in Whitkirk. From the youngest to the oldest, whether you are here in person or watching online, even if you’re just here as a visitor today, you are part of something bigger than yourself to which you have voluntarily given yourself.
The words ‘volunteer’ and ‘voluntarily’ both derive from the Latin, voluntas, which means will, or desire. To volunteer is to give oneself, of one’s own free will, to an activity which is for the good of the community and not purely for one’s own benefit. In a Christian context, volunteering implies an attempt to align our own free will with the will of God for us and for the communities of which we are a part. Volunteering can therefore be seen as one of the ways in which we try to live out the commandment – the greatest commandment – to love our neighbours as ourselves. Loving our neighbours means wanting what is good for them, wanting what God wants for them; and volunteering is a way to ensure that God’s will for our neighbours is realised.
But if volunteering is fundamentally about aligning our wills with the will of God for us and for our neighbours, then volunteering is connected not only to love but also to vocation… for how can we know what God’s will for us might be if we are not able to discern where God might be calling us, in this season and in this context.
In church circles we often think of vocation in a very narrow way, in reference to the vocation to ministry of some sort, lay or ordained, but most often the latter. The reality, though, is that God calls all of us – every single one of us – all the time. There is never a time, from our birth to our death, when God is not calling us, seeking to draw us closer in love, inviting us to respond, to serve, and, above all, to love, and love, and love some more. Which brings me to today’s readings, which provide us with no fewer than four examples of what it might look like to hear and to respond to God’s call.
The simplest of these calls is that of Matthew the tax-collector. Jesus sees him sitting at his tax booth, invites him to follow him, and he does. There is no back story, no build-up to this call. As far as we know it comes from nowhere. And yet there is nothing far-fetched about it. Already this year, two people have contacted me, entirely separately of one another, telling a very similar story: ‘I’ve been an atheist my whole adult life. But now, apparently out of the blue, I think I believe in… something… something I am prepared to call God or Jesus’. And these stories should not surprise us. We are very good at tuning out God’s call and turning our attention elsewhere, but sometimes it becomes impossible to ignore… and then there is nothing for it but to ‘do a Matthew’: to get up and follow Jesus.
Abram too knows what this feels like. Unexpectedly, at the age of 75 and with a wife who has been unable to have children and who is now, in any case, well past childbearing age, Abram hears God’s call to leave everything and go to an unspecified new place where he will become the founder of a great nation. He hears God’s promise that through him all the families of the earth will be blessed. The promise makes no sense, and yet Abram does not demur: ‘Abram went’, we are told, ‘as the Lord had told him’.
The call makes no sense. And yet God, for whom nothing is impossible, does make sense of it. Abram has his son. And centuries later, another Matthew begins his account of the life and works of Jesus, the son of God, a light to lighten the Gentiles, a blessing for all nations, with the words, ‘An account of the genealogy of Jesus, the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham…’. God calls. Abram responds. And, 42 generations down the line, his response comes to fruition.
And something of Abram’s trust in a God who can do impossible things emerges also from the final two stories in our Gospel reading, both of whose protagonists show quite extraordinary faith. In their stories, the leader of the synagogue and the woman with the haemorrhage are not called to up sticks, leave everything, and be led to a new place like Matthew and Abram; rather, they are drawn by their faith into a life-changing encounter with the living God, who is Emmanuel, God with us.
‘My daughter has just died’, the leader of the synagogue says, ‘but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live’. There is no doubt in his mind. Jesus can save his daughter. Amid the confusion of the wailing, the flute-players and the commotion that follows a tragic and untimely death, the leader of the synagogue does not allow himself to be frozen by the grief that he must inevitably be feeling. In the midst of death, he is propelled – called – by his love for his daughter towards the source of all life, and through his faith his daughter is restored to him.
And what of the woman with the haemorrhage? For twelve years she has suffered from a dual affliction: not only from her physical symptoms, but also from the shame and exclusion of being ritually unclean, unable to participate fully in the life of her community, literally untouchable. She too is drawn to Jesus by faith. She too does not doubt for a moment that he can heal her: ‘If I only touch his cloak’, she says ‘I will be made well’. She epitomises those who feel, even now, that God’s call is not for them, those who feel that they have nothing to contribute, those who are excluded or who fear the judgemental gaze of others. And she too, through the healing touch of the one whose love excludes no-one, is made well.
Our stories today, then, could not be more appropriate for this volunteers’ week, as we celebrate those in this community who respond – each in her or his own way – to God’s call. They are reassuring stories and inspiring ones. They remind us that God’s call does not demand special qualifications or abilities of us. God does not even require us to be particularly good or holy people: ‘Don’t panic’, God reassures us, ‘for I have come to call not the righteous but sinners’. God does not require us to be youthful and sprightly either. Abram is 75 when God calls him and 100 years old when his son Isaac is born. God does not require us to be powerful or important. God calls those who hold positions of authority and those who are outcasts alike. No, God merely requires us to have faith – the faith we see in Abram in Matthew, in the leader of the synagogue and the woman with the haemorrhage. God requires us to believe that we are beloved, that we can make a difference, that, as members of the body of Christ, we can be Christ’s hands and feet and eyes and ears and Christ’s heart, overflowing with love, here and now.
So, my friends, please know that your contributions to the life of this church are valued. Your presence here (including your online presence) is valued. You matter and your contributions matter, above all else because they are offered in the service of God and because they stand as a testimony to your faith. And that is, truly, something to celebrate.