I had an interesting experience last week. A reporter from the Spalding Guardian interviewed me for a Profile. Occasionally they identify a local person and print a photo and a short profile about them in the local paper.
I knew he was coming to interview me in my office. I’ve actually had this done before and last time they asked me questions like, “what is your favourite food, drink, movie, novel…’
So this time I was prepared: I thought about all these things in advance so when he came I was ready with my answers.
Unfortunately though he wasn’t interested in my favourite food or drink. He didn’t care if I read novels or had a favourite movie!
What is your … strongest passion … your greatest achievement … what do you want to be remembered for … what will people write as your epitaph?
My favourite food paled into insignificance in the face of these questions!
They were questions that made me stop and think.
What do I want to be remembered for? What am I trying to achieve in
life? Will I be remembered for
good or ill? Will I be remembered at all?
Personally I don’t want to be famous (just as well) or expect to be remembered for any act of greatness, but we all like to think that our lives are going to make a difference for the better. Most of us aren’t going to have a tomb in Westminster Abbey with some great epitaph. Yet we can still make a difference, a positive contribution to our families, community, school, or work.
I have read some interesting epitaphs recently though on the Internet:
We don’t all make a positive contribution it seems: like John Gray
Poor John Gray, here he lies,
No one laughs, and no one cries,
Where he's gone, and how he fares,
No one knows, and no one cares.
Or this lady:
Here lies my wife,
I bid her goodbye.
She rests in peace
and now so do I.
So what we do, how we behave, will influence how we are remembered. So too apparently will what we eat:
In a New Jersey cemetery
Rebecca Freeland
1741
She drank good
ale,
good punch and
wine
And lived to the
age of 99.
Hopefully we’ll be spared these kinds of epitaphs. This last one though is something we could all hope for:
As the flowers
are all made sweeter by
the sunshine and the dew,
so this old world
is made brighter by the lives
of folks like you.
But how do we
want to be remembered? What effect do we want our lives to have on those around
us?
In this season of
Easter we reflect upon the scripture readings of the disciples’ encounters with
the Risen Christ, and on the early ministry of the apostles in the book of Acts
and on how they were able, in the power of the Lord, to make a difference in
their situation .
The earthly
ministry of Jesus was drawing to a close. His ongoing ministry would now depend on the life and work of his
followers. So what they did, how they lived their lives,
was to make a difference.
This story in Acts
Ch 9 (1st reading) is a key marker in the ministry of the apostles
and can be for us a role model in our ministries.
Peter was at Joppa,
NE of Jerusalem, and he prayed for Tabitha (Dorcas) who had died. There are
many parallels here with the way Jesus healed Jairus’ daughter, and also
(but to a lesser extent) with his raising of Lazarus from the dead. They clear
the room of visitors, both women are clearly dead not just asleep, they use
similar words, they both take their patient by the hands.
There are of course
important differences:
Jesus wanted to keep
his healing of Jairus’ daughter a secret, while the healing at Joppa became
known quickly throughout Joppa and led to the belief of many.
Also with Jesus’
healing he gets the praise, yet in Acts it is not Peter, but the Lord, who is
praised.
For us this
encounter is a reminder that the ministry that has been entrusted to Peter and
to us as believers is an empowered ministry.
This is what living
in the power of the Risen Christ can mean!
There is a definite continuity in this story between the ministry of Jesus and the ministry of Peter, and our ministry.
Peter’s calling on
the name of the Lord in his prayer for Tabitha gains him empowerment by the
Lord to work the cure: so it is not Peter himself but the Lord who effects the
miracle.
In our ministries
too we might think that we are inadequate or not worthy to perform a particular act or prayer: but we need to
remember that it is not you or me, but Christ whose ministry it is, and
it is in his power that people are made whole.
And so if we truly
want to make a difference in our families, community, our world, then we can:
not in our own strength or power but in the name and power of Christ working in
us and through us.
My encounter with
the reporter last week left me feeling uncomfortable.
Perhaps I should
know what my greatest achievement is. What my greatest passion is. We should be
clear about what the defining idea of our life is: the basic message we want to
proclaim with all our being.
And if we truly want
to be empowered in our ministries, to remember that it is, in the end, the
Lord’s ministry. It is the Lord who will empower and equip, energise and
sustain our work in his name.
Appropriately today
is vocations Sunday.
On this day we are
reminded by these readings that God calls us all.
In order that we
might be called, he created us purposely and purposefully. In other
words he created us with a purpose: to serve him.
And he created us to
have a purpose. That is, he wants us to be purposeful as we go
about our lives.
In last week’s
Gospel reading Jesus questions Peter three times: do you love me? In the end
Jesus tells Peter to feed his sheep. And he warns him that this ministry with
which he was entrusted would lead him where he did not wish to go.
Perhaps those words
echoed in Peter’s mind as he entered Tabitha’s house knowing she was already
dead. Was this where he wanted to go? What was expected of him? Was he
up to this ministry to which he was called?
I wonder if he
expected to be undertaking that kind of empowered ministry in his master’s
name?
And yet through his
being open to respond to this call, we are told that this became known
throughout Joppa and that many believed in the Lord.
May our lives be
defined by our response to his call. May it be our defining purpose in life.
May we call on his name and his power to equip and
strengthen us for the ministry he wants us to do, so that we might be
remembered for bringing glory to his name.