(A sermon preached on 10th September 2023) (Photo is of Eeyore)
I’m very excited and glad to be back. I’ve had a lot of fun, you can read all about my time in Jerusalem and other places on the Blog. Someone said before my sabbatical – We know how this works, vicars go on sabbatical and then they leave – So I’m telling you I’m not going anywhere. We’ve got too much to do here.
I’m very grateful to all of you for just getting on with things, not waiting for the vicar to come back but making all sorts of decisions – well done thank you – Oh and those of you who are new – I’m the vicar.
For part of my sabbatical – I’ve been to the Scottish island of Iona. It’s a wonderful place, often referred to as a Thin Place – a place where you can easily feel close to God. Having spent a week there I do get that.
Perhaps it was helped by the poor wifi so there’s less to distract you, but also helped by a daily rhythm of prayer and chores – my job was to mop the floor of three toilets – and there was unhurried time for reflection. See my blog for more details.
At one of the suppers I was talking to a local about this OT bible story and I said ‘I think I’ve got the sermon pretty much there, but what I’m lacking is a title’. He suggested: Get off your Ass.
And so there it is, obvious really, Get off your ass.
It’s a weird story and there’s lots of take home points that you can take.
Point one could be Be Nice to your Animals
Point two could be Bless don’t curse
Point three could be about the importance of living close to God, and listening closely to God
Point four could be about looking out for Angels.
I can only think of two talking animals in the bible. I don’t think that any of the Dragons in Revelation speak, Jonah’s whale vomits but doesn’t speak, Daniel’s lions might have growled but its only the Snake in Genesis 3 and the Donkey in Numbers 22.
You might think, given the absurdity of this story that the bible would stay away from it but we are reminded of the person of Balaam in this book of Numbers 57 times, and then again later in Deuteronomy, in Joshua, in Nehemiah, in the NT in Jude and the last book Revelations – and each time, each reference to Balaam skips over the Donkey and instead picks up on a different sin that Balaam falls fowl of.
The bigger story is that there is a King called Balak and he sees 600,000 Israelite refugees fleeing through the desert having escaped Egypt. And that’s a lot of people and perhaps Balak thinks they are too many for me to fight so we need to try something else, lets try Cursing them.
Oddly Balak does not think to try something else meaning Talking to them. These Israelites say that all they want to do is pass through Balak’s land, they’re not going to stop, they will keep going. That would have been the best outcome all round from this story. Talking and listening.
But no the first solution, War – is too expensive. The next best solution is to curse and so the king sends for Balaam who is a renowned curser with an excellent track record of cursing – at least I presume that’s how it is.
Balak offers Balaam lots of money if he will come and curse these people.
God meets with Balaam and says – ‘I have a problem with that. They are my people, you are not to curse them, you can only say what I tell you to say.’
Balaam should at this point decline the contract. He should say ‘Dear King Balak, I am ever so sorry but I am a bit busy and God wont let me curse this lot, you need to try Plan C’.
But the prophet Balaam chooses to go and this is where the donkey scene comes in – I’m going to skip straight over this bit and go to the next scene which is where the king having fed Balaam a hearty supper and a good bed says ‘Now its your turn to do what you came to do.’
And Balaam can’t do it. He tries but only words of blessing come out.
So the king says ‘Well this wont do, Maybe it is difficult cursing such a large number of people in one go, maybe if you just cursed a smaller group of them’.
So the king takes Balaam to the back of the Israelite camp and says Try cursing just the back end of this lot’
And Balaam talks to God about this and the outcome is the same – it’s a blessing. And the blessings just keep coming, depending on how you count it there’s 7 blessings.
King Balak says ‘Well I don’t think I will be paying you’. So Balaam says look I told you, you need Plan C. Plan C is you’ve got some pretty women here, that seems to be a weakness for them why don’t you send them to woo them, maybe marry them, and then they will be your subjects.
Good idea, we’ll give it a go. And it works. And when the Israelites realise what’s going on then go to Plan A – War – in which Balaam gets killed.
Now later bible writers like the book of Revelation will say – the Real problem with Balaam – and this should be your take home point is to look out for your weaknesses, where you are easily enticed. And Perhaps pray for God’s strength in that area?
And the NT letter of Jude echoes St Peter’s 2nd letter saying The real sin of Balaam was money. If Balaam hadn’t been lured by the king’s money in the first place then none of this death and destruction would have happened. So again look for your weaknesses, where are you easily enticed?
That might be something to be bringing to God in prayer – and say – either Dear God show me where I’m easily led into sin – or more simply: Good Lord deliver me!
I’m often saying the wrong things, I’m often thinking the wrong things, ‘Lord keep surrounding me with your love, keep transforming me by your grace, and lead me to be the person that you’re calling me to be. Help me Jesus!’
But the books of Nehemiah, and Deuteronomy, stand back a bit and say – Did you see how the curse did not work. He tried to curse and it bounced back, God turned the curse into a blessing.
And so maybe here are two lessons for us. Firstly, not to curse. It’s so easy – no I don’t mean saying four letter words and things – I mean genuinely wishing someone ill. ‘Oh I wish you were dead, I wish that things would go very wrong with your life, your marriage, your business’.
We have grievances, and there are mean and evil people, and haters and hurters, and they should have to face truth and justice. But that does not start with your curse.
So do not pray for, say, Putin to die – pray instead for God to send him an Angel to shame him into repentance and peace.
I know that this is hard. And the closer and more personal it is the harder it is. But the power of blessing your enemy is not to be belittled.
The trick here is to start small, and just bless people who are your friends, and then bless people that you don’t know and then bless strangers and homeless people and then bless those who see the world differently to you. I think that God can do something with that blessing.
And the 2nd part to the point about Not Cursing other people point – is when people curse you.
And this happens, there are haters, there are people who we offend and then they refuse an apology, a reconciliation, they just want to stand on as tall a tower of their own self-righteousness as they can muster and from it hurl their condemnation and judgement upon you.
It happens, we see it in the news papers all the time, and no one wins, people only get hurt.
So when this happens, bless back. Ask God to give them such love that their curse rebounds on them and that they might know God’s peace and love.
You’ll note that I haven’t talked about the talking animal bit. This conversation is longer than Eve has with the snake and at no point does Balaam say – Hang on a mo, How are you even talking?
But perhaps the take home point is for you to be nice to your animals, and to be on the look out for the unusual.
We also have here the longest conversation with an angel in the bible. I haven’t checked that because there are quite a lot of them so I’m open to being challenged but I think that this is longer even than the dialogue between the angel and Samson’s parents.
(Okay you could view most of the book of Revelation as one long conversation with an angel but that’s more of a vision, so I think I still I win this one.)
Again the point here invites us to be open to listening to what’s happening around us.
If you’ve read my blog over the summer, you will have come across some strange conversations that I have had with some people in Israel and on trains – like the frightened Scottish couple just as we were getting off the train in London – we needed to run to our next train and they speak a word of kindness to us saying ‘We’ll pray for you’. You see? Angels, they’re everywhere if only we had eyes and ears to notice.
Perhaps you might be an angel to someone later this week and offer to pray for them.
So be nice to your animals.
Bless and do not curse. Work on that one.
And listen out for Angels because I think they cross our paths more than we realise.
Amen.
I think maybe you meant 10th Sept not October?!