Hi,

Here is a sermon that I put together that uses illustrations from Lord of the Rings to help with this weeks reading. I hope you find it helpful.

This is my first posting on this network, and I would be interested to hear any feedback that you may have, positive or negative. Please excuse the roughness of the flow but I hope you get the idea.

Happy Reading

Andrew Somerville

Mat 4: 12-23

The reading talks about Jesus calling his disciples. We have been talking about calling and being called.

I saw a cartoon once where a minister all dressed up in his robes and very straight. At the end of his sermon the Pastor said, 'Brothers and sisters, years ago the Lord Jesus called me to be your pastor. And now I feel like the Lord Jesus is calling me elsewhere'. The choir, then stood up and sang: 'What a friend we have in Jesus!'

I went to see Lord of the Rings on Thursday night. The kids were off with their grandparents and Heather and I had the night together. We went to see the movie. If you have read the books, it is definitely worth going to see. The effects were great and the scenery was spectacular. It was made in New Zealand and a great tourist promotion.

There is a great scene in the movie when Frodo Baggins is told by his good and wise friend Gandalf of the power of the ring that Frodo owns. Frodo learns of the dangers of owning the ring. He learns that he will have to travel to the dangerous lands of Mordor to get rid of the ring.

As Frodo looks down at the ring in his hand he says that he wish that the ring had never come into his possession.

Wise Gandalf says, "So do I, and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for us to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."

Friends, our task for our life is to decide what to do with the time that is given us. I am sure like Frodo we would like to see things in our life differently. We have mistakes in our life that we would love to change. I am sure each of us has things that we wished never happened.

But as Gandalf says, "that is not for us to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."

Matthew in his Gospel wants us to think seriously about the time that is given us. The first thing Matthew does is lay the foundation for who Jesus is. Matthew quotes the old prophet Isaiah who talked about 'a great light' that would be coming and he applies that to Jesus. Matthew wants his readers to understand who Jesus really is. That Jesus is the one who was promised way back in the OT by the prophets. Jesus is the Christ, Jesus is the one that they were waiting for. Jesus is the Son of God.

Secondly Matthew wastes no time in telling us how Jesus started. Andrew and Peter had seen and heard Jesus before. So when Jesus passed where they worked, he said to them, "Come, follow me."

And as the three men were going along the shore together, they came upon three other fishermen -- Zebedee and his two sons, James and John. Jesus called the two brothers; they left their father in the boat and went with Jesus and the others. Jesus took four fishermen as his apprentices. What a group, a carpenter and four fishermen. This was the beginning of the Christian church.

When Jesus invited these people to follow him, he was saying to these fishermen, there is more to life than earning a living, there is more to life that establishing a career. There is more to life than working for things to make us comfortable. There is more to life than earning enough money to buy the things you really want, but don't need.

Jesus was saying All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us. The best thing that you could do with that time is to follow me.

There must have been something in the way Jesus said "Follow me," that pointed to God so clearly that two, then four, then 12 people decided that whatever Jesus had to offer was worth leaving their livelihood for. And as far as Jesus was concerned, their willingness to get up and follow was all that was needed. He made his community out of this diverse, eclectic dozen.

So, how do we understand God's call on our life today? God's call does not mean that we have to leave our employment and become a missionary in africa. God's call does not necessarily mean that we have to drop what we are doing and do not enter the work force again.

Calling can be defined like this,

Calling is when God invites us to follow him so that that everything we are, everything we do, and everything we have is in honour of him.

God's call on our life invites us to do what is the best for us. God's call is doing what God wants us to do. God knows what is best is for us and he calls us to it. No one else knows what that call is except you.

Calling is not just about our employment, although it involves our employment. It doesn't mean that if we work in a career it is secular, and if we work for the Church then it is sacred.

Sometimes we get the idea that what we do on Sunday is sacred, what we do for the Church is sacred and what we do in worship is sacred. Then what we do on Monday morning is secular, what we do in our work places is secular, how we spend our time in recreation is secular.

We have a wrong idea of call. God is not calling us just on Sunday. God's call is for all our life. God's call affects everything that we do. Our work, our recreation our family, everything.

God's call is for the whole of our life. God can call us to be an accountant. God can call us to be a manager, God can call us to be an engineer, God can call us to be a home worker. God calls us to be the best that we possibly can in whatever field he calls us.

Any vocation is sacred if you're called to it by God. Martin Luther understood this when he wrote, 'The maid who sweeps her kitchen is doing the will of God just as much as the monk who prays -- not because she may sing a Christian hymn as she sweeps but because God loves clean floors. The Christian shoemaker does his Christian duty not by putting little crosses on the shoes, but by making good shoes, because God is interested in good craftsmanship.'

Our career can just be as sacred as the monks time in a monastery. We can hear the call of God just as clearly in the work place or home just as any clergy could in his study at Church. Any vocation is sacred if God has called us to it.

When God calls us, when Jesus says follow me, our task is to find out what God is calling us to. Our task is to choose what to do with the time that we have.

Kierkegaard wrote in his journal,

The thing is to understand myself, to see what God really wants me to do: the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die.

Our call will define not only what we do, but how we do it. In following Jesus we take on his way of living. We embrace his love for all humans, regardless of race or religion. We commit ourselves to forgiving others just as Christ has forgiven us, we strive for peace.

When we answering God's call to follow him, it is a risk. The life of faith is a life that involves risk.

I read this during the week,

'To laugh is to risk appearing the fool. To weep is to risk appearing sentimental. To reach out for another is to risk involvement. To expose feelings is to risk exposing our true self. To place your ideas, your dreams before the crowd is to risk loss. To love is to risk not being loved in return. To live is to risk dying. To hope is to risk despair. To try at all is to risk failure. But risk we must, because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing. The man, the woman, who risks nothing does nothing, has nothing, is nothing.'

God's call on our lives invites us to take a risk.

As Gandalf says, "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."

God is calling us, God is asking us to follow him. God is inviting us to take a risk.

It's because of the risk that whoever God gives His calling, He always says, "Do not fear; I will be with you."

God promises that wherever we are and whatever we do, God will be there with us, in every circumstance.

Andrew

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------- Andrew Somerville Armadale Baptist Church Email: