© Church of the Good Shepherd, Edinburgh

Church of the Good Shepherd Murrayfield

It sounds almost like a throwaway line:

“When the days drew near for him (Jesus) to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.”

But that verse – Luke ch 9 verse 51 – is one of the most significant verses in the third and longest Gospel.
Up to this point, Jesus has been portrayed by the Evangelist as an itinerant teacher and preacher, wandering the countryside with little clear aim or overall objective. His ministry, albeit focused on the poor, the underprivileged, the sick, the outcasts of society, is widespread and dispersed.

But from now on there is definite and clear sense of direction – both in geography – “he set his face to go to Jerusalem” and in his teaching – he directs most of his attention on the smaller group of close followers. Add to that, the fact that most of this central section of the Gospel that starts here consists of material exclusive to Luke – not found in Matthew, Mark or John.

This is a pivotal verse in the Gospel. This is turning point. Up until now, one direction – from now on, another direction.

Now most of us have one or more such turning points in our lives. Moments or occasions or events – on which turn the whole of our histories. We can honestly say: “If it were not for that happening then, I would be a very different person now.”
And I thought it would be helpful and instructive to have a series of sermons over these summer months reflecting on these Turning Points. So I have invited the other members of the Team Ministry and one or two other people in the congregation to talk with us over the months of July and August on their Turning Points – what happened to them, how they were changed by them and perhaps most importantly what they learned from them. And it is my hope that as we do this so we will learn more about each other and more about the way in which God’s life and ours have been brought together.

Obviously, I will have to start: what are the Turning Points in my life?
I suppose I have to say that the first was my baptism – although being three months old, I don’t remember it. But on November 14th 1948 I was baptised, made Christ’s own through water and the Spirit, signed and sealed with the sign of the Cross, Christ’s own soldier and servant until my life’s end. Whatever else I am, I will be, I have done, do or will do – that baptism is the primary and fundamental event on which everything else is founded. Without it, I am nothing. With it, I am God’s person – and all my life from then on, consciously and unconsciously is a working out of what that Baptism means, a living out of the privileges and responsibilities of that baptism.

But in that respect I am no different from anyone else, there is nothing intensely personal in that – although each of us will have a different sense of what our baptism means to us.

My second turning point I cannot date exactly – although it took place in the front room of 144, Streatham Vale, London SW16 on a Sunday afternoon at 4.00 pm around the middle of May 1968. I was a student at the time, studying Estate Management in London, and those were my “digs” as we used to call them. I had been invited to give a talk at the evening service at the local Anglican Church, the Church of the Holy Redeemer, at their 6.30 pm Youth Service. As I went through my talk, I had the clear and absolute certainty that God was calling me to ordained ministry. It was like the proverbial voice from heaven. No one had ever suggested this idea to me – and when I told my parents three months later they were pleased and supportive but very surprised. Up until that point I had seemed set on a career as a chartered surveyor – now a totally different future. Seven years later – October 4th 1975 - I was ordained as a Deacon into the Scottish Episcopal Church along the road at St. Thomas’s.

This was a Turning Point that changed the whole direction of my life and almost ever since then I have been a stipended worker in the church.  I suppose this Turning Point taught me that God can call each of us – personally and directly – in clear, unequivocal ways.

God doesn’t always work like that – but God can. And I have tried ever since to be open to God doing that – listening for God’s voice, and when it comes, listening to God’s voice.  Sometimes I have misheard and got it wrong but somehow I reckon God would rather have me – like Samuel of old in the Temple - listening and mishearing than not listening in the first place. I believe if we want God to work in our lives, then we must be ready to hear and heed the call however and whenever it comes.

My second Turning Point was again on a Sunday – this time at the end of August in 1985. I wasn’t working that day so I went to an early morning service of Holy Communion at St Peter’s in Inverkeithing in Fife. When I received Communion, there were tears running down my cheeks. Afterwards I went home, packed my bags, drove away and my marriage which had lasted 13 years was finished. What led up to that is not really important now or relevant to this sermon: the effect was a total deconstruction and subsequent reconstruction of my life. At the time it was devastating – emotionally and physically: I chose to leave everything – wife, daughter, home and it soon brought an end to the job that I had started six weeks earlier. A true Turning Point – from that moment nothing would ever be the same, there was to be a different direction for me.

Of course 22 years on, I can say that that change in direction was the right one. Yes, and the decision I had to take was the right one – however hard it was to take. Bishop Alistair Haggart directed me to Galashiels, where I was able to put together my life and ministry, met, fell in love and married Irene in 1988, and stayed for 17 fulfilling years. The only un-reconstructed aspect is the present lack of contact with my daughter now aged 30.

What was the learning from that Turning Point? I think I learned that God can take the messes that I get myself into and work them out with and for me. I say “Can” again with caution – as there is no law of inevitability about this. Some folk have lives that really fall apart, everything does go wrong – and they never see them “redeemed”, they never get to the stage when they can say “God worked everything out for the best”. I have no answer to their question why that is the case for them but for others things do come right.

All I know is that – as in my life - God can put the bits together again. We do make awful mistakes, fall flat on our faces, make the fundamental wrong decisions - things collapse around us. We may lose those we love, we may be made redundant, our business may fail, our health disintegrates, our children walk out on us – life becomes unbearably bad and a total disaster. But somehow – over time – God can and does sort it out. The only condition to it seems to be that we have to continue trusting God, saying our prayers – even for the months and sometimes years when they don’t seem to mean anything  and doing what we hope is right before God.

Now I could give more Turning Points from my life – marrying Irene was certainly one: I’ve never been the same since! Becoming Dean of Edinburgh in 1991, going on Sabbatical in 1995 which opened up a whole new vista and enthusiasm in ministry for me, perhaps also not being elected to Aberdeen this year will be one – who knows?

What I do know is that I am not the person I was on April 30th 2007 when the election took place. I am not the person who married Irene on June 8th 1988. I am not the person who split up from Dorothy in 1985 or who was called to fulltime ministry in 1968.  God has made me different – somehow, someway – over all these years since my baptism. Lots of twists and turns, lots of Turning Points – the only constant has been God, is God and will be God. Amen