Get Up! God has Plans. Aug 9, 2015

Jane was finished. The pain too much, the efforts to relieve it too much, the hate she had for her very being, toooo much. So, she drove partway across the bridge and stopped. With a deep breath and a resolve she hadn’t been able to muster for years, she got out of the car, climbed over the guardrail and looked down, prepared to jump.
But, as is so often the case, God had other plans.
There was a hesitation—not really doubt, not even fear, Jane couldn’t explain it, but something caused her to pause and in that moment, a soft voice said, “it’s not hopeless. Please don’t jump.” And, as she turned to face the speaker of those words, a gentle giant of a man wrapped his mammoth arms around Jane and lifted her to safety. Jane says it was a Holy Spirit moment….Joe, the truck driver who saved her life, agrees. “I’m not one to get involved–I figure folks deserve privacy. I don’t know what came over me-- It had to have been a higher power. I did the rescuing, but it wasn’t me, someone/something else took control.
Yes, God had other plans.
Elijah’s toast. He’s done. He dared to disagree with King Ahab’s wife, Jezebel and neither she nor the king were amused. Elijah was literally running for his life. He knew that there was nowhere to hide, he knew that eventually he would tire out and the King’s guards would find him and that would be that. So, Elijah, exhausted and berating himself for his lack of faith, collapses under the broom tree—a desert shrub---and begs for death to overtake him.
But God had other plans.
While sleeping, a messenger taps Elijah and says, “Get up! Eat something!”
Elijah opened his eyes and saw bread and water right by his head. He ate and drank, and then went back to sleep.
A second time the messenger awakens Elijah, saying, “Get up!”
“Eat something, because you have a difficult road ahead of you.”
Elijah got up, ate and drank, and refreshed by that food for forty days and nights, Elijah carried on.
Because God had other plans.
At General Convention in Salt Lake City last month, our Presiding Bishop Katharine preached a fabulous sermon on the gospel story where the woman who was bold enough to touch the hem of Jesus’ robe is healed of her hemorrhage and where Jesus heals Jairus’ daughter , pulling her off her deathbed with the wonderful admonition “Talitha Cum”…translated as Get Up Girl!
This woman and this girl were as good as dead, but God? God had other plans.
God, through messengers, prophets, apostles, the Messiah and the Holy Spirit, calls to us all the time, telling us to “Get Up, wash our face and get something to eat, there’s work to do and God needs us…yep you and me specifically, to do this. Get up girl, get up boy, get up man get up woman, get up church, get up world, there is work to do and WE are just the people to do it.



Yep, God has plans for us:
Get up, woman.
That’s what the Holy Spirit was saying to Jane as she climbed over that guardrail.
Get up, man.
That’s what God was saying to Joe, the truck driver who prided himself on not getting involved but who got involved and pulled Jane from the edge.
Get up, prophet!
That’s what the messenger was saying to Elijah, “your work is not yet done.”
And yes, by the way, the road will be long, the journey tough, but GET UP, for I need you---yes YOU---to do this work and to do it now.
It’s a good message and it’s one we’d all be wise to heed.
Get up girl. Oh you’re hungry? No worries, “I am the bread of life.”
Get up boy. Oh, you’re thirsty? No problem, those who come to me, fully and completely, will never ever be thirsty.
Get up woman. What, you’re scared? You don’t know how to do it? It’s ok, I do. Follow Me.
Get up man. What’s that, you’re too tired? You’ve tried everything and nothing works? Well, get up ---through me you’ll find your way and. I need you… there’s work to be done.
Throughout this month of August we read from John’s gospel and in particular, what’s known as the Bread of Life Discourse. In these 50 + verses Jesus repeatedly tells us that he’s all the nourishment we need. That the strength we find sapped from our very being; that the hope we find elusive at best and utterly absent at best isn’t gone, it hasn’t run out, it hasn’t been removed.
 It’s still there.
It’s always there.
Jesus is telling us in these gospels, Elijah is showing us in the reading from Kings that hope and strength aren’t things we create, or earn, or acquire. They’re gifts, given to us by and through the unending, outrageous, abundant love of God.
It can’t be said enough. God loves us beyond all measure.
But God’s love of us doesn’t mean that the road won’t be long, bumpy, scary and full of detours.
It will be. It is!

And that’s just what Jesus is trying to get across to us in these endless verses about being the Bread of Life.
Life isn’t easy. We’re faced with challenges all the time. Scary things.
Difficult things.
Heartbreaking things.
There are times when we want to give up.
There are times when we, just like Elijah, want to set ourselves down under a broom tree and fall asleep, hoping to never wake up.
There are those of us who, like Jane, have contemplated ending it all by our own hand.
There are those of us who’ve lost the ones we love because they became overwhelmed, heartbroken and at the end of their rope.
Life is most definitely NOT EASY.
But, as we say in the invitation to communion at Ascension and as I think Jesus is telling us through the Bread of life verses and the messenger told Elijah and the Presiding Bishop told us in the sermon:
Come to this altar, we have a holy meal to share.
Come, those of you who have much faith and those who feel you have none.
Come, those of you who have tried to follow Jesus, but believe you’ve failed.
This is the feast of Jesus our Lord;
holy food for holy people.
So get up girl, boy, woman and man….come and be fed, God has plans for us.