Church on Sunday Feb 25/09

As you may or may not know I attend the church of the Epiphany on 74th and York Av. This is the church where I was baptized and confirmed and where I have met the most incredible people around. What follows is my take on the Sunday service.
I'd like to start with hymn 539 "O Zion haste". I strongly recommend it due to the fact that the chorus or refrain is bomb.
Publish glad tidings, tidings of peace, tiding of Jesus redemption and release."
It's the word publish that really gets me.. being a writer and all.

This Sunday we read from the old Testament, Jonah 3:15. And in OT form God speaks directly to Jonah- for the second time. Why can't God speak to me like that directly clearly unmistakable sadly I have no such luck. In the story, God is apparently ready to annihilate the city of Nineveh due to the populations sinning ways. However after Jonah tells them of their fate, they repent by fasting and wearing sack cloth and God changes his mind.

It's funny but the OT God that I've heard is such a harsh disciplinarian can apparently have a change of heart. This is good thing for me. Being a person of no faith for so many years. I take heart that God can find favour with me as I find favour with him. I'm not convinced it was the sack cloth that did it but instead the idea of sincere change.

Next, we heard a reading from the Gospel of Mark 1:14-20 which is read by Jennifer. In this part of the gospel Jesus finds two fisherman Andrew and Simon ( later known as Peter) and tells them to drop everything, abandon their family business of fishing, leave their wives and children and come and follow him. Without blinking an eye they do just that.

This theme of being able to change sets the tone for the sermon delivered by Andrew. He speaks of a calling. What would I do if Jesus called me? Could I drop everything? Would I even consider the option? What have I done? I've been resisting "a calling" all of my life but at the same time hoping I'd just get up one day and there it would be my calling the career made just especially for me all laid out on a silver platter. One day I'd live with no calling and a split second later I'd have a calling. Was there something wrong with me? Why couldn't I say I've had that experience.

I used to get jealous of my husband who is an artist , who was an artist since I met him and will be an artist till the day he dies. I'd ask myself how come some people know their calling and act on their calling and I can't seen to see the horizon through the trees?

Then Andrew said something quite interesting. He said once you get a calling you've got to train it, and accomplish it. And then I saw it was my error in understanding a "calling" that was the problem. A calling is not just something that hits you over the head, changes your life for the better and lets you exist in a perpetual state of happiness, In my case I indeed had a calling a calling to be a writer, and it was up to me to write, to learn to grow with that calling- to take an active role with my calling and make it part of me accepting it like a marriage the good and the bad.

We all have a calling and a calling I believe comes from God. How was I supposed to hear it without faith in my life. What was there to hear? It was not till I engaged in faith that I was able to listen to what was always there- always set before me.