Don’t you know? Haven’t you heard? Who sits above the circle of the earth and looks at us as if we were grasshoppers? Who stretched out the heavens like a tent so we could live under it? Who thinks nothing of princes and rulers (for they come and go like weeds)? Who are we compared to God?

         Do you feel insignificant yet? Who created every person who ever lived and gave them a name? How can we say that God has forgotten us or that God doesn’t care what happens to us? God doesn’t grow tired or forgetful. In truth, God gives strength. Our strength fails. Even the youngest and strongest of us will tire eventually.

         “But those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,

         they shall mount up with wings like eagles,

         they shall run and not be weary,

         they shall walk and not faint.”

         The Psalm reminds us that God is powerful and ready to strengthen us. The first verse calls us to praise God. The next four verses describe God’s power. God restores the people of God and heals the broken. God creates the stars and there is no limit to God’s power and wisdom. Verse six reminds us that God lifts up the lowly and casts down the wicked. Verse seven repeats the pattern and calls us to praise God. Verses eight through eleven remind us again of God’s power. God creates the heavens and the rain and the grass and plants. God feeds us, and the animals. God is not impressed by our symbols of power. In verse twelve we are reminded that God is pleased by those who fear God; that is, those who have proper respect and reverence for God. God loves those who seek to be in right relationship with God.

         We already know all this. We know that God created the world. We know that God is in control. Why bring it up? We forget it. We can repeat the Nicene Creed and the Lord’s Prayer and then walk out the door of the church and live as if we stop believing it at the door. Some of this is the evidence we see around us. If God is in control, then why is everything so bad? Why doesn’t God fix it or make it better? Is this really a question about God’s power? Or is it a question about our response? Maybe things are bad because God is calling us to fix it.

         Maybe things are bad, not because God is neglectful or busy elsewhere. Maybe things are bad because we’ve held onto things that are precious to us. Maybe we’ve been too concerned about keeping things the way we like them instead of seeking what God wants for us. God calls us to live faithfully. God invites us to enter into God’s work of reconciling the world. Maybe that calling is very different from the programs we grew up with. Maybe the world is hurting in different ways and our faithful response is to try something new.

         The apostle Paul had many difficulties with the church in Corinth. They were so proud of themselves. They thought they had all the answers. The discussion Paul is working through is their attitude towards eating food sacrificed to idols. Food would be brought as offerings to pagan temples and those temples would sell the food to get money. The Christians in Corinth knew there were no real pagan gods, so they bought the food and ate it. Food is food, and it’s not good or bad. Paul is reminding them to respect the consciences of new converts who might be offended. He reminds them that he has many privileges as an apostle. He doesn’t insist on what he is due. Instead, he is always thinking about how he can reach others with the good news. He doesn’t rest on his credentials, but he submits himself to whatever is needed so he can reach different people. In other words, it’s more important to share the good news than it is to be right. It’s more important to help people to be reconciled with God than it is to get people to respect his position as an apostle.

         We are not apostles. We are Episcopalians. We have a long and proud tradition. We have beautiful gifts of liturgy and music. We have a marvelous building. We have a long tradition in this place. None of this is more important than how we help people become reconciled with God. Perhaps the beauty of what we do will draw people in. Maybe our openness and tolerance of others will help people feel safe. However, our goal is not to create more Episcopalians (nice as that may be.) Our calling is to draw people to God and trust that God will inspire and empower them to go out into the world and share the good news.

         Jesus enters Peter’s house in the little village of Capernaum. He heals Peter’s mother-in-law – so well that she can serve them. The whole village gathers in the house and crowds around the door. Jesus teaches and heals the sick and demon possessed. What a great day! Let’s do it again! In the morning, the disciples are looking for Jesus to keep up all the great stuff that they were doing. Then Jesus tells them the hard news. He has to go to other villages. The good news isn’t just for one place. That means they have to travel to strange and different places. They can’t preserve what is comfortable and what is easy.

         Our future is unknown and difficult. We have much work to preserve our community in this place in this day. Maybe the place we will find the strength is in knowing that we are not simply preserving a building for as long as we can. We are always a people called to share in God’s work of reconciliation. Whether the roof leaks or the boiler quits or the budget is a challenge – or not – we will always be invited to enter into the work of sharing God’s love to anyone who will listen.

         None of us can say what the future will hold for us. If we remain faithful to out first calling as bearers of good news, we will find God’s strength to sustain us – and we will be able to bear whatever sacrifice we are called to make because we will be doing God’s work.

          When we think about the prophet Jonah, what do we remember? We remember the whale (or the big fish.) We reduce the story into what we think is a simple children’s story. Why we think that a story about someone being swallowed by a fish is comforting to children is another issue. What we often forget is why the whale swallows Jonah in the first place. He was going the wrong way.

         The story of Jonah is the story of a racist, who does God’s will despite himself. When God first commanded Jonah to prophecy to the Ninevites, he got on a ship going the opposite direction. He didn’t want to proclaim God’s word to the Ninevites. Jonah knew that if he warned the Ninevites that God would destroy them, there was a chance that they would repent and God would forgive them. Jonah was holding out for destruction. So Jonah is swallowed by a whale and spit up on the shore, and he travels into the city and proclaims a message five words long in Hebrew. “Forty days Nineveh is destroyed!” I’m sure he proclaimed that hopeful message with great zeal. Then Jonah waited on a hillside under the shade of a tree, for the destruction of the people he hated.

         God has bigger plans than we imagine. The people of Nineveh took the message to heart. King and peasant all fasted and wore sackcloth and ashes. God saw that they had a change of heart and spared them all. Jonah was upset and the tree that gave him shade had withered in the night. He was so upset about the tree that he asked God to kill him. Life was not worth living. God points out to Jonah in the closing words of the book, “You care for a tree that grew up in a night and died overnight. Should not I be concerned about this great city full of people who do not know their right hand from their left?”

         There is a great message here about how God has a larger heart than we imagine. Many of the barriers and limits that constrain us are of our own making. There is also a reminder that it is God who has the power to transform hearts. We often think in absolutes and deny the possibility of new life. We think nothing will ever change. We despair that we can be any different. We blame others for the problems of our lives – politicians, bankers, foreigners, Ninevites! – and fail to see that God can overcome anything – even us.

         We think of miracles as stories that are preserved in old books. They are things that happened long ago, in a different age and time. We remember little snippets and give them to children like old broken things that we can’t use anymore – but they might amuse the children. The thing about miracles is that they are rarely what people think that they want. Whenever we are reminded of a miracle, the miracle is always about how God has created something new that is unexpected.

         God is always drawing people into new life and deep love. We are so stressed out and worried that we are tempted to reduce the world around us into simple practical rules of thumb. “You get what you pay for.” “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” “The squeaky wheel gets the grease.” We have begun to believe certain truths about the church. We think we have to be a mega church in order to gather members. We think we have to have fabulous programs in order to be a good church. We fear that we can’t afford to be the church. Yet the church is not about money or market forces. We are gathered here to enter into the work of God of drawing the whole world to God.

         We hear the story of the call of the disciples and we may think that it has little to do with us. It is very impressive that these fishermen left everything to follow Jesus. But they are apostles after all. Jesus himself invited them. How could they say no?

         The call of the disciples is not a story of extraordinary people with heroic willpower. The call of the disciples is a story about ordinary people who accept an invitation into something new. The fishermen left their familiar world and entered into God’s work or restoring the world. Along the way, they had to face their old preconceptions about how the world was supposed to work. They questioned Jesus’ teaching. They were troubled by some of the people who wanted to follow Jesus too. They were confused and afraid and fled when things got tough. After the resurrection, it took some time for them to appreciate what God had done and how they would live new life. The rest of the New Testament is the continuing story about how the people of God continued to enter into the work of God.

         Today we are invited to participate in the work of reconciling the world. It doesn’t matter what we have or who we are. God has called us and God loves us. God wants us to share this love with everyone. The question we have to ask is how will we do this today? I think all our attempts to repair or restore the church we knew can be empty distractions. We are worried about preserving something that had once been life giving to us. Today we must discover what is life giving today. We have to be ready to drop our familiar fishing gear and pick up the new tools God is giving us. We need to look beyond our familiar boundaries and look to the horizon of God’s love.

         We are worried that we cannot hold together the church of the past. This is a good place to be. Now we have nothing to lose as we enter into God’s work.