November 26th 2023 “Christ The King”

Readings:  Ezekiel 34:11-16,20-24, Psalm 100, Ephesians 1:15-23, Matthew 25:31-46
Preached at Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church on Christ the King Sunday, November 26th 2023

Today in the church calendar is the last Sunday of the Liturgical year known as "Christ the King" or "Reign of Christ" Sunday. One of the readings suggested for today was Matthew 25:31-46, the passage where Jesus speaks of the Son of Man separating sheep from goats, as a King bringing righteous judgment upon all nations. It is that image of "Christ the King" I would like to explore with you this morning.

Coming as I originally do from the British Isles, where they still have a monarchy, you'd think that maybe I had an advantage in understanding this text. However, the role of the royal family in Great Britain in no way reflects the image of Christ as King in our passage. Any notion of "The Divine right of Kings" has long since passed into memory and the King and his family occupy a role that has more to do with promoting a charitable spirit and celebrating state occasions than wielding political power.

Now that I’m living in America where July 4th is celebrated as the day that the tyranny of King George was overthrown, I realize that the notion of "Christ as King" needs re-interpreting. The whole idea of power and authority being invested in some despotic force out there, answerable to nobody and far from benevolent, makes the whole idea of Kingship difficult.

Yet I wonder if it was any easier for those who first heard these words. I say that because Matthew’s gospel, from where our scripture was taken, begins by painting a picture for us of a King called Herod who is little more than a puppet in the hands of Rome.

And as such he is consumed by fear for his position, so consumed that when visitors arrive from the East asking questions about a newborn King, Herod is driven to embark upon a course of infant genocide just in case some rival to his precarious position were to arise. Not exactly a flattering portrait of Kingship!

For a positive image those who first heard these words would need to reflect on their history, and in particular the figure of King David, who led the nation through a period of great prosperity and advance, and under whom they had never had it so good. The image of David as the Shepherd King, chosen and anointed by God was a powerful one for a people who were beaten down under the rule of a faraway Caesar.

The image of David was associated with passages full of promise like Ezekial 34:22-24, where God declares; “I will save my flock, and they shall no longer be ravaged; and I will judge between sheep and sheep.  I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd. And I, the LORD, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them; I, the LORD, have spoken.”  

In our passage from Matthew the separation of the sheep and goats brings in an unexpected and radical view of the King. Judgment is made upon the basis of compassion and service. The Kings family are revealed not to be the wealthy and privileged but the unfortunate, the sick and imprisoned, the stranger, the hurting and the needy. “Truly I tell you," says the King, "Just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”

Jesus takes things further. He pictures the role of the Son of Man as not being just as Shepherd/King, but as being the Servant/King. My mind wanders to that encounter in the upper room, where He who reigned over the disciples takes a bowl, wraps a towel around Himself and proceeds to wash their feet. John 13:14-15 “So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.”

What can we glean from this scriptural picture of "Christ as King" to help us live our lives today? Let me suggest three things I gained from this passage. Hope, Motivation and Encouragement.

Firstly, Considering Christ as King can bring Hope.  

The notion that there will come a time when all will be right with the world, when those who currently are making life intolerable for others will be called to account, the hope of both future justice and future reward shines a ray of light in times of darkness. This life is not the end of the story. The story ends with Christ enthroned as King.

Christ's coming has not been the arrival of a now lost and lamented hero, but death and resurrection have unleashed a sequence of events that will lead to His enthronement. The lectionary reading from the epistle to the Ephesians seeks to capture this hope. Ephesians 1:20-21 “God put this power to work in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come."

The picture of Christ as the Victor occurs time and time again throughout the New Testament. To commit to Christ is to align oneself with the winning side, even though it is a victory in anticipation rather than one that is fully realized. But as in people’s lives we glimpse daily miracles of grace, we understand this hope is not an illusion, but a reality that sneaks upon us and takes us by surprise.

Christian singer/songwriter/peacemaker David Lamont speaks about hopes for peace with the thought that "God is not only mysterious, God is also mischievous." He reflects that God has a habit of shattering the traditional viewpoints and stereotypes that we try and label the Divine with. A shepherd who is really a King? A servant who reigns? An all-powerful slave? Such are images that make mischief of our understanding of power and position. Christ as King can be for us an image of hope.

Secondly, the image of Christ as King can be a powerful motivator.

In a world that continues to play the game of the "one who has the most toys wins" the picture of Christ as the Servant/King invites us to invest in what really matters. This whole passage about “In as much as you did it for the least of these who are my brothers and sisters" suggests to me that we are at our best when we seek to lift those who are at their worst.

When we celebrate our blessings, by being a blessing to others, when we invest our time in those who others have little time for, we imitate the example of the Shepherd King. The Good Shepherd allowed 99 well capable ones to look after themselves in order that one who was lost and abandoned could be rescued.

God's Kingdom takes all our notions and turns them inside out and upside down. Blessed are the peacemakers, Blessed are the meek, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst, Blessed are those who mourn? The little things become the big things. The unexpected becomes the defining moment. The improbable becomes the possible.

And in the end, it all boils down to a couple of principles that are easily remembered but so seldom truly lived. "Love God" and "Love your neighbor.” That is the Servant/Kings manifesto. That’s the line He draws in the sand that separates sheep and goats, good sheep from bad sheep.

Christ's Kingship is expressed through a Kingdom that is plainly not of this world, does not respect the false values and motivations that this world counts important and stands at times in radical opposition to ideals we thought were the important ones!

Seeing Christ as a King… a King who is everything we don’t expect a King to be… is to me a powerful motivator to try and be like a child of that King and rejoice in such a radical heritage.

Thirdly, the image of Christ as King can be a tremendous encouragement.

There's a lovely chorus that comes from the monastic community in France known as  Taizė. “Jesus, Remember me, when you come into Your Kingdom.” Usually, the song is sung acapella and repeated numerous times... almost creating a wave of sound as people interject their own harmonies and nuances. The power in such repeated chants is that as you allow yourself to become absorbed in them, God is able to take you all sorts of places.

The words "Remember me when you come into Your Kingdom" were the last request of a penitent criminal. Those words received a response. “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” With all this talk of sheep and goats and casting out into the darkness and “in as much as you failed to do this unto them, you failed me,” we do well to recall that the dominant note sounded through the life of Jesus was not that of judgment but of grace.  

That grace is there for all who seek it. Even dying criminals. The only excluded ones are those who choose to put aside the invitation to feast at the Kingdoms heavenly banquet. There is hymn in our hymnbooks that puts it this way, reflecting on the 23rd Psalm;

“The King of Love, My Shepherd is,
Whose goodness faileth never,
I nothing lack if I am His
And He is mine forever”

CHRIST THE KING!
THE KING OF LOVE!
THE SHEPHERD KING!
THE SERVANT KING!

Worship is such a privilege! The King has invited us to His banqueting house and His banner over us is love. I pray that our reflections upon Jesus, the Servant King, may lead us to places of hope, motivation and encouragement.

•    Hope that one day all things will be well.
•    Motivation to pursue a servant lifestyle that reflects the love of a Shepherd King
•    And encouragement from the Holy Spirit that as Jesus Christ is the King of love our labor in Him shall never be in vain.

The Reverend Adrian J. Pratt B.D.

Harvest Sunday - “Harvest Of Talents”

Readings: Zephaniah 1:7 & 12-18, 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11, Psalm 90:1-8, Matthew 25:14-30  
Preached at Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church, NY, November 19th, 2023

Our gospel passage from Matthew this morning gave us a story about a businessman, who goes away for a while. While he is gone, he entrusts to three of his servants a considerable amount of his assets to take care of, assets that are described as ‘talents.’ Two of the servants use their talents in a beneficial way.

The other, who appears to have a very low judgement of his bosses’ character, buries his gifts. When the boss returns, he is extremely angry with the one who has done nothing with what was entrusted to him. While the first two profit from their actions, the third one loses even the little that he had.

Today is our Harvest Sunday when we celebrate all the gifts, all the assets, all the good things God has given us. We are blessed! This little story Jesus told has a lot to say about gifts.

Our gifts are different. Our gifts need growing. Our gifts are an opportunity to serve. Let us think about each of those in turn.

Our gifts are different.

There are things I could do when I was younger that I can’t do anymore. There are things that some of you can do, that I will never be able to do. There are some things I’m good at that you may not be so good at, and likewise, there are things at which you excel and which I will never master. From the moment we arrive on the planet, we are all different.

In our bible story we are told that the three servants all have different levels of ability. The Master recognizes that his servants are different, so he doesn’t entrust them with the same amount of responsibility but gives them assets that correspond to what they can do. He is very careful not to over burden them or to underwhelm them.

If he overburdened them then they would not be able to produce anything. If he underwhelmed them, then they would not have any challenges to face, and they could not grow.

God has created us all as unique, beautiful individuals. Every child of God is different. That’s why we need each other. That’s why God calls people to be in community, to be a church. There are things God has given you to do that somebody else can’t do so well. And there are things that others can do that they do better than you can do.

That can actually create problems. The last of the 10 commandments teaches us not to envy what others have. I have known some people who say things like, “Well, it’s OK for them. If I had what they had or could do what they do then my life would be so much easier.”

That’s not the way it works. I am me and you are you are we get along best when we appreciate what each other can do! We need to discover our own gifts and cherish them for what they are. We don’t need to focus on what we don’t have, or on what others have, but be thankful for the blessings we have been given.

Isn’t that we sing about at Harvest time? “All good gifts around us are sent from heaven above, then thank the Lord, Oh thank the Lord, for all His love.” We are blessed. We are not all blessed in the same way, at the same time, or in the same places, but we are all blessed with gifts that differ and gifts that create different opportunities for service and worship.

Which moves us on to this second thought…

Our gifts need growing.

Some years ago, I was part of a leadership team that put together a youth retreat that was based upon this passage from Matthew’s gospel about ‘Talents.’ The retreat was given the title “Use it or Lose it.”

The first part of the retreat was about discovering our gifts. We talked about where life had led us up to that point. The families and communities we were from. The opportunities we had been given. The things that we couldn’t do that had created opportunities for us to develop different gifts. The recognition that we are all different, not only in our natural abilities, but in the path that life may have had us walk.

The second part of the retreat was about how best we could develop the gifts that we had been given. A part of that was recognizing that if we didn’t develop the gifts that we had been given, then they had a habit of disappearing. Hence…“Use it or lose it.”

The basis for that observation was the servant in the parable, who is given only one talent, but buries that talent, does nothing with it, and ends up losing it all. The reason that servant gives for not growing his talent is that the servant thinks the master is a hard, unforgiving taskmaster who “gathered where he had not sown.”  

Our image of God can affect how we use the gifts God has given us. If we feel that God is some unapproachable, mean spirited, judgmental being before whom we can never do enough to please, then that’s not a great incentive, to try and achieve anything!

But if we see God as the One who is all love, all grace, prepared to forgive, the Gardener who knows how to make beautiful blooms rise from the soil, the Shepherd who really wants his flock to thrive, well… that offers tremendous freedom to explore, to take risks, to make mistakes and think outside of conventional boxes. The first two servants in the parable seemed to understand that. They take the gifts they have been given and use them to create more opportunities for service.

One of the participants at the retreat came to me and asked if we could go somewhere quiet and if I could listen to a song they had written. They were afraid to sing it in front of anybody and had zero confidence in their abilities.

Turned out this particular teenager was coming out of a terrible home situation. A broken home, abuse… just not good in any way. The song that they shared was incredible. Just cut right through to your heart. An emotional intensity that was almost overwhelming. At the end of the week there was an opportunity for folk to share their gifts. They sang their song. And it had the same effect on the whole group. Not a dry eye in the house!

That teenager then went on, not to a career in music, but to pursue a career in social services, helping others who life seemed to have been dealt an impossible hand. The process of articulating their pain, through a song, created a situation where growth could take place. Singer Larry Norman had a lyric in his one of his songs that says, “A song can’t change the world, but it might change you.” Sometimes our gifts release other gifts.

Which brings me to a final observation…

Our gifts are an opportunity to serve

There are many remarkable things that can be said about the life of Jesus. Could anybody who ever walked the earth be considered more gifted than the one we describe as the ‘Son of God’?

There’s a passage in Philippians that reflects on the humility that is revealed through His life. Philippians 2:4-7 “ Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though He was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant.”  

That’s something isn’t it. To have it all and give it all in the service of others. To take all that God has gifted your life with and harness it in the service of those you share your life with.

Now I know, we’re not God and we are not on a mission to save the whole wide world, but here’s the thing. We are all gifted with talents and resources and abilities and opportunities, and we make choices as to what we do with those gifts. Through this passage God challenges us to create a harvest from the seeds, from the gifts God has sown in our lives. A harvest of talents, not just to serve ourselves but to enrich the communities of which we are a part.

We are not all the same. Our gifts are different. We are all unique children of God. God calls us to use our individuality in the service of others.

To do that our gifts need growing. Use them or lose them. Recognize how God can nurture and grow the seeds God’s love has sown. God is the Gardener who grows beautiful blooms, the farmer who creates an overflowing abundance of produce.

Finally, may God help us see how our gifts are an opportunity to serve. One of the areas where God invites us to serve is within our faith communities. We can do a whole lot more together than we can ever accomplish on our own. We have the example of Jesus to follow. We have the strength of God’s Holy Spirit to enable us to rise to the tasks that God will call us to.

In our lives may we take this story Jesus told to heart, that through our lives, both as individuals and as a church, there may truly be a harvest of talents.

And to God be the glory. Amen.

The Reverend Adrian J. Pratt B.D.

 

THIS IS MY STORY, THIS IS MY SONG 3. "The Jonah Man"

Readings: Psalm 70, Wisdom of Solomon 6:12-16, Matthew 25:1-13, Jonah 1:1-10

The last couple of Sundays I’ve been answering questions that folk have asked me throughout my ministry. How I came to faith. How I felt a call to ministry. My accent has a habit of evoking a response, “You are not from round here, are you?”  When people find out I came from Great Britain usually it isn’t long before somebody asks, “Well what made you decide to come to America?”

Two weeks ago, I was sharing how it was as a teenager that I became involved in a church and how in my early twenties I felt God called me to offer myself as a candidate for the ministry of the Presbyterian Church of Wales.

I shared last week, this call to be part of the established church was not something that I had ever seriously contemplated. Having been brought up near the City of Liverpool, whose only famous sons I knew about were the Beatles, I had a rebellious streak within me that had a profound distrust of authority and institutions. I can identify with the prophet Jonah whose first thoughts when God called Him to go one way was the desire to head as quickly as possible in the opposite direction.

Even when I departed from my hometown to study at Aberystwyth Theological College I was still nursing a real hope that... well... God had only called me to be a candidate for the ministry, God hadn’t actually said I had to become a minister. People who went to theological colleges ended up in all sorts of occupations. I could still play music. I could teach in a college. Offering myself as a candidate did not mean that my destiny was to be a minister of Word and Sacrament within an established denominational church.

One year went by, then the next and then the third year. All the time I’m saying to God, “C’mon now, times getting short here. “Time for You to show me what You really want me to do!”  During my final pastoral studies year, my name appeared on the list of prospective students open to receive a call to serve a church .

For Jonah it took sitting inside the belly of a stinky fish before he realized that, ‘Yes’, maybe doing what God asked could result in a favorable outcome for his life. In chapter 2 Jonah concludes a prayer about his plight with the phrase, “Deliverance belongs to the Lord.” Shortly afterward he is deposited on the shores of Nineveh to begin his task. I’m just glad that it didn’t take being thrown off a ship into the raging waves by a group of angry sailors, only to be swallowed up by a whale that convinced me to accept the preacher’s role. It was quite a challenge having to go to Wales to study, without being swallowed by a whale!

Accept ‘A Call’ I did. To two wonderful churches in the beautiful Welsh Vale of Clwyd, in two market towns called Denbigh and Ruthin. What I didn’t realize about the town of Denbigh back then, was that it housed a large mental hospital. “Going to Denbigh’ was a polite way to explain someone was being admitted to the insane asylum. After many years of being part of this institution we call the church, I am of the opinion that being a little bit crazy might be helpful for pastoral ministry.

After being in Wales, I moved to inner city ministry in Liverpool, which included chaplaincy work at a large Children’s hospital, before accepting a call to minister in the churches of Beaumaris, Menai Bridge and Caernarfon in North Wales. Caernarfon boasted a castle, making it a Mecca for tourists from all over the world. The Presbyterian Church in Caernarfon was situated right on the square, in view of the castle’s walls.

Now all of this is by way of a lengthy introduction to explain how it was that I came to America. Did I hear a voice from the heavens saying, “Go to the U.S.A?” Was it something that I had secretly been planning and hoping for all along. Did some scripture verse jump out of the bible to direct my path?  No.

Over the years I’ve learned something about the guidance of God. It can be most irregular. That as we place our trust in God and commit our way to doing the things God wants us to, both God’s methods and the outcome can be wildly unpredictable.

This was a message that Jonah found hard to understand. When he reluctantly marched into Nineveh declaring God’s judgment on its God forsaken inhabitants the last thing, he was expecting was that they would listen, and set about amending their lives to live the way God wanted them to.

He wants to see the Ninevites get blasted by the judgment of God. The story ends with Jonah in an angry sulk, sitting in the shade of a tree which dies. God suggests that Jonah is acting foolishly and that as God, He had every right to forgive whomsoever He wished to and to show mercy wherever mercy was needed. And it was certainly needed in Nineveh. So, Jonah, “Get over yourself.”

Again, the message that “We know best” is challenged by the thought that whatever we think should happen is not necessarily the way God sees things.  So, there I am, in this beautiful area of Wales, enjoying the mountains and the beaches and the castles and blessed with two children who were blossoming at 8 and 10 years old, and my wife in this wonderful job working in the offices of the Oceanography department. “Settled’ would be a good word to describe things.

One of the ministries that Castle Square, Caernarfon Church still operates on a Saturday morning is that they open up the church and invite visitors in for a coffee and a chat. One Saturday, a pastor and his son from the Chicago area walked in. The son was an organist and Alan Jones the organist at Castle Square was just finishing up his practice for Sunday. They got chatting and the son got to play the organ. A few months later I received a letter from the pastor in Chicago asking if I would be interested in doing an exchange trip.

So, we thought about it, and prayed about it, and decided that a twelve-week exchange trip to Chicago might be kind of fun. My churches in Wales agreed that they would carry on paying my salary, so we only had to find the airfares. We would live in each other’s houses, drive each other’s cars, minister through the summer in each other’s churches.

The phone rang. It was the pastor from Chicago. “I’ve accepted a call to serve a United Reformed Church in Cornwall, England. I’m guessing you wouldn’t really be interested in doing an exchange trip to England? However, there’s a guy from our church who is about your age, who went into the ministry and is in a place called Red Wing, in Minnesota, I’ve spoken with him. What do you think?”

I thought, “Whatever. Red Wing, MN, Chicago.IL, I’m sure they are very much the same.” In the summer of 1994, we exchanged pulpits and locations with Rev Elg and family from Red Wing Presbyterian Church and had a great time. I went back home with the thought that I could put all the things I’d learnt to good use in my churches in Wales.

Out of the blue I started to get invitations to consider moving to other positions in Wales and in England. Some of them weren’t even to do with me being a traditional minister. That ship to Tarshish stays in port for a long time!  Maybe that ‘Get out of the established church” clause that I’d expected to come along during my seminary days had finally come to pass. I investigated some of them, but they just didn’t feel right.

Following my Minnesota experience, I had received a subscription to a PC(USA) magazine that contained descriptions of pastoral vacancies. I should explain that the calling process in Wales is very different to that over here. Wales is a small place. As a pastor you didn’t call the church, they called you.

So, the notion of applying to a church for a position was completely alien to me. And I knew nothing of the Presbyterian USA’s process of filling in forms and matching candidates to churches and going through committees and presbyteries, and still less about the whole complicated process of obtaining Visas and permits to actually live in the United States.

But I did entertain the thought ‘I wonder what would happen if I responded to one of those churches in the magazine?’ So, I did. A very gracious church in Monroe, Louisiana replied to me, explaining the process and how they’d need a little more information than “Hello. My name is Adrian. I’m a pastor. Believe you might be looking for one?”  We corresponded; they flew me over for an interview. The interview went really well. Looking back though, I guess it wasn’t a good sign that the day I set foot in Louisiana … it snowed. Turned out that I wasn’t the best match for that position. So back to Wales.

Weeks later, in the middle of dinner, the phone rings. A guy called Mike from a place called Fayetteville, West Virginia, is on the line. He wants more information. I suggest calling the nominating Committee I’d met with in Louisiana and sent him a video of me preaching in Minnesota . A few weeks later he calls again. ‘Would I come over for an interview?’ ‘Sure’ I said. I hung up the phone and went look for an atlas. Never mind “Where was Fayetteville?”  where on earth was West Virginia? The only point of reference I had was a John Denver song about ‘Country Roads.’

In ways reminiscent of twisting, turning roads, one thing led to another. It really took a while for God to convince me that leaving the denomination that had nurtured my faith for a foreign land thousands of miles from my extended family was the right thing to do.  I’d always thought that those bits in the Bible about “Going into all the world” only applied to other people.

And it has not been all plain sailing. There were hassles with immigration that nearly had us being sent back to the UK the day we arrived. Were it not for a fax we had received, literally the morning we departed for Manchester airport to board the plane, that was a high probability!

Then we had the challenge of living in the USA for 40 days without a Social Security number or any form of identification because our passports had been confiscated… and waiting for our furniture (which had been delayed because of immigration problems) to get here and then finding out we were moving to a different house across the road than the one we were in! I could write a book… and maybe one day I will.  

My ministry here in the USA has led me to different places. West Virginia, Maryland, Nassau County and now here in Bridgehampton. It’s been quite a journey and I’ve learnt so much about the crazy ways that God directs our lives. God has been so faithful. In difficult times, crazy times, times of uncertainty, times of doubt, God’s grace has just kept holding on tight, even though things hardly ever seem to work out as planned! Again, the story of Jonah and his reluctance, and the way things never turn out as he expects, often comes to mind!

I remain excited that the journey has led me here, to this beautiful corner of creation. Belonging to a historic church like Bridgehampton reminds me that the story never started, nor will end with me.

And I share my story, because truly, it’s not about me, it’s about the love of God, found in Jesus Christ, through the action of the Holy Spirit. And that love is so real and, as I said at the very, very start, if God can guide the life of someone like me, I am totally convinced God can do amazing, wonderful, exciting things in each of your lives.

As a youngster I searched for freedom, and was surprised that freedom, in Jesus Christ, found me! I’m just one stumbling pilgrim hoping to help other wanderers find their way home. But I am delighted to be able to share parts of my personal journey and say,  “This is my story, This is my song!” I pray that you will find your story and song within the all-encompassing love of God.

And to God’s name be the Glory! Amen.

The Reverend Adrian J. Pratt B.D.

THIS IS MY STORY, THIS IS MY SONG 2. “Now the Lord said to Abram 'Go Forth' "

Readings: Psalm 43, 1 Thessalonians 2:9-13, Matthew 23:1-12, Genesis 12:1-8
Preached at Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church, NY,  November 5, 2023

Last week I was explaining how there have been three questions that I have been asked throughout my ministry. Firstly, “How did you come to faith? Secondly, “What made you want to be a minister?” and thirdly, “What made you decide to come to America?”

Last Sunday I was sharing how through an unlikely combination of Rock Music, Youth Retreats, chocolate bars and the unmerited grace of God I came to be embraced by the Christian Faith in my late teens. This week “What made you want to be a minister?” My hope is that as I share how God called me, that you’ll consider where God may be calling you.

Returning to where I left off last week. As a teenager I went on a Christian youth retreat about freedom. Two friends had prayed for me that the freedom of Jesus Christ would become a reality in my life, and it surely did! I knew life could not be the same again. It felt a bit like when you are on a jet plane, and you zoom down the runway and the power pushes you back in your seat. I was starting over. I knew the reality of Jesus Christ. I knew that God was my Father. I knew that the Holy Spirit was doing something inside of me that had not happened before. But where was it leading?

The answer? Downhill - fast. I went back with my newfound Christian brothers and sisters to the reality of my non-Christian friends. I tried to tell some of them of my newfound faith. They laughed. I told them that I’d changed. They didn’t believe me. I can’t say I’m surprised. At that stage of my life my language was not as choice as it should have been, my alcohol intake was more than was healthy and I probably resembled the guy you really hoped your daughter would never bring home for dinner. Inside I felt different, but truly I had a lot to learn.

I started to behave inconsistently. I would act one way with the folk at church, another way when hanging out with the non-church friends. It didn’t feel right. I wanted all this freedom stuff, but I didn’t want it to cost me anything. I liked the good feelings but wanted a good time. After a while it hit me. I wasn’t flying anymore. I didn’t know if the plane had landed, if it was still hovering around or had crashed out beyond repair.

What was going on? God was dealing with me patiently - in God’s time. Showing me new things I had yet to realize. Showing me ways, I could serve God. Showing me how I was free to do anything, but that not everything was good for me. Showing me that if I was serious about having the sort of freedom Jesus expressed then it demanded deep commitment.

I mentioned last week a verse from Galatians 5. “You were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature, rather serve one another in love.” It was as though, through God’s Spirit, God was teaching me the deeper implications of that text. It’s one that is hard to really live by because the nature of Christian freedom is so radically different to that which our culture tells us being free is all about. It is freedom that is found through obedience rather than through doing as we please.

I have been asked “What made you want to be a minister?” and the answer to that question has its roots in my experience of coming to faith. For me the measure of my discipleship was my willingness to act upon those things I felt God was calling me to do. Those who heard the call of Jesus also heard the command to follow. This brings me to another scripture which has shaped my life. Genesis 12:1 “Now the Lord said to Abram, Go Forth.” Hearing the call to “Go Forth” and acting upon the command were not the same thing.

I’d like you to picture me as a 19 year old. I know that may be difficult now I’ve reached this stage in my life! But indulge me.  I’ve been struggling with how to be a Christian and keep true to my beliefs. I’ve been spending less time with my non-Christian friends and more time with those who encouraged my faith. After wasting a lot of time in High School and landing in a dead-end job stocking shelves in a supermarket, I’ve been back to college to obtain some qualifications and I am now working on a Government funded scheme.

The work involves helping elderly and disabled people with their gardening and working out in the countryside maintaining footpaths. I’m working with a mixed bag of people, including some young offenders whom I have become friends with and I’m even sharing my beliefs with them. Better still the hours are flexible, so I’m able to give a lot of time to what was becoming my real passion… the band.

Coming from Liverpool I cherished a dream that, like one of the Beatles, whose music I grew up with, I could make it through life writing songs and playing music.  Like Jake or Elwood from the ‘The Blues Brothers,’ I was “on a mission from God”, because this was no ordinary band. I was playing in, but a gospel Rock Band and we didn’t want to be famous throughout the world, we wanted to save the world.

Never mind that the church folk said we were playing the Devils music whilst some of the un-churched said, “We like your music, but why do you have to keep bringing Jesus into it?” God was opening doors. There is talk of record contracts, festival appearances, slots on prime-time T.V.

To top it all I am nineteen, going on twenty and I’ve fallen in love. As I shared last time, one of the reasons I was attracted to church was that some of the girls looked good. Now I was engaged to one of them. I have my wife’s permission to say that because it was her and after over 45 years of marriage, I still think she’s lovely.

So, for a near 20 year old lad things couldn’t be much better. Great job, great band, great fiancé, great expectations. Yet throughout it all, when I stopped to listen for long enough, there was this little voice, somewhere deep inside that said, “You should go into the ministry.” Whenever I became aware of it, I would say “But Lord I have my ministry, my work, my music, my relationships. I’m doing fine.”

Genesis 12:1 “Now the Lord said to Abram, Go forth....”

I wonder how many times the Lord told Abram to ‘go forth’ before he went? Over the next two years my comfortable world fell apart. The band, that mission from God, broke up. Yvonne and I set our wedding date and obtained a loan on this lovely corner house in a nice area of town near the sea. The week before we were due to be married the bank informed us the loan was no longer available.

The day before we were due to be married the works manager called me into the office. ‘Got a problem’ he said. ‘According to the governmental guidelines, we must pay you a higher wage as a married person, and we don’t have that cash in the budget. If you get married, you are out of a job.’ Ouch!

Yvonne and I went ahead and were married. That scripture about Abram and Sarai leaving their Fathers house and going out not knowing where they were heading took on a special significance. I had lost my job, I’d lost my place to live, and my musical dreams were shattered. The frightening thing was that I’d been trying so hard to do the right thing, to do what I thought God was calling me to do, except of course for that little voice about the ministry.

I learnt however that when God is on your case, things work out. Against all the odds a place became available at a ludicrously cheap rent just a few doors down from where we’d first tried to purchase a home. Yvonne still had her work and after a while I managed to land a position in the Civil Service. A few months after I was dismissed from that Government scheme the whole project collapsed. If we’d had a loan to pay back on that corner house, we could have ended up in serious debt.

And the band?  Well, sometimes there is a very thin dividing line between “Doing the will of God” and “Doing what I’d like the will of God to be.” Sure, we had a ministry and were breaking new ground. But God was saying “go forth.”

There were reasons why I didn’t want to be a minister. In Great Britain most of the clergy I knew didn’t seem at all interested in the things that excited me. They never seemed particularly relevant. And as Groucho Marx once said, I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to be part of any organization that would have me as a member.

After we were married Yvonne and I moved from our hometown and began attending a church that had been the Welsh Presbyterian Church, but had become an Elim Pentecostal Church. We became pretty active, and they even allowed me to be their volunteer youth leader for a while. One night they had a youth mission rally. During the prayer time, I was sitting in the pew, head down, eyes closed, not really seeking God for anything, and there started to come over me an overwhelming sense that I should offer myself as a candidate for the ministry of the Welsh Presbyterian Church. There was no audible voice, no blinding light or messages from the pulpit or sky, just an incredibly intense feeling that this was something that I had to act upon and until I did there would be no peace in my life.

After the service I went to see the preacher. I told him, “I think I’ve had a call to the ministry.” “PRAISE THE LORD!” he said. I added “Of the Welsh Presbyterian Church.” Now, I did not know this at the time, but the Welsh Presbyterians and the Elim Pentecostals hadn’t exactly had a positive history of good relationships. The pastor said, “I think we better talk about this.”

After what seemed like an endless evening as he explained to me the errors of Welsh Presbyterianism, I gained the impression that, in his opinion, Presbyterians were only slightly to the left of the Satan. The strange thing was, the more he talked, the louder the voice inside of me became telling me to offer myself as a candidate for the Welsh Presbyterian ministry.

I thought I better tell Yvonne. “Yvonne” I said (Using that voice young husbands use when they tell their wives something that they are not sure how they will react to), “Yvonne, I think I’ve had a call to be a Presbyterian Minister.” Yvonne replied, “Well God hasn’t said anything to me about it!”  She was about as enthusiastic at the prospect of being a minister’s wife as I was about being a minister.

We arranged to see the late Rev Barrie Redmore, the Presbyterian minister who had baptized Yvonne, confirmed myself and married us. He listened carefully and then told us to and come back in a year’s time if I still felt a sense of calling! 

A year later the feeling was stronger than ever. The process of becoming a candidate for the Presbyterian ministry was set in motion. At the age of 23, after taking nearly five years to come to terms with the notion that God may be calling me to the ministry, I finally went forth to Aberystwyth, on the coast of Mid-Wales, where I attended seminary.

So, to answer the question, “What made you want to be a minister?” the fact is that I never wanted to be a minister, but it became a question of obedience to what God was showing me. These days as I look back to, if you include seminary days, nearly 45 years of ministry on two continents, I am forced to swallow my pride and admit that God knows best.

As I said at the start of this brief series about “This is my story, This is my song,” my aim in sharing these things is not to put myself on a pedestal, but simply share with you how God has worked in the life of one of God’s reluctant disciples, with the prayer that you will discover in your own life the awesome possibilities that open up to you through giving your life to be lived under the Lordship of Jesus Christ and through trusting in God to lead you, through the work of the Holy Spirit and the guidance of God’s Word. 

Next time “What made you decide to come to America?”
To God be the Glory. Amen.

The Reverend Adrian J. Pratt B.D.