St Margaret's Church Prestwich

Rev Helen gave this sermon on Wednesday 19 July. Here it is for you again:

Moses sees the bush that looked to be burning and blazing but it was not being consumed, God calls to Moses into that sacred space and tells him he wants to go and free his people from Egypt. I think this is one of those iconic bible stories and it gives me a shiver every time I read it. When God speaks to Moses and asks him to go and demand freedom of the Israelites from Pharoah what does Moses say, quite reasonably ‘Who am I to go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt’. Moses first reaction to this but he does and they do escape from Egypt under Moses care.

Ordinary people who are doing extraordinary things and this is something that you can never underestimate we can all do some amazing things when we are put on the spot and there are so many stories out there of this being the case, extraordinary people performing amazing feats of bravery when faced with sometimes terrifying odds. One of these stories, which I only heard earlier this year doing research for a service and was amazed by it, is of a man named Rudolf Vrba. Now you many not have heard of him but he escaped for Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp to warn the authorities what was happening there. This is his story.

Vrba was sent to the camp from Poland in 1942 when he was 17 and assigned to work in the offices. While he was there he noticed that many of those who came on the trains weren’t coming into the camp, they were disappearing. Eventually he learnt the disturbing reality of what was happening there. He started to make mental notes of the trains coming in, where they were from, how many people were on them, the process of people arriving and roughly how many people were being killed. He also remembered the layout of the camp. By early 1944 Vrba knew that this information needed to get to the appropriate authorities so, with his friend Alfrid Wetzler they made plans to escape, knowing many other attempts had failed and what the consequences would be for them if they were caught. In April 1944, after much planning they finally managed this and walked for 80 miles to Slovakia to tell their story. A report of what they said was made and named the Auschwitz protocol, which eventually made it’s way around Europe and to America, many of who had no idea what had been happening in the camps. Although they didn’t stop all the transports Vrba’s actions are estimated to have saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. An ordinary person doing something extraordinary, what an amazing story! And I’m sure you know many more.

And when we hear stories like this, the story of people like Vrba and Wetzler, Moses and some of our other great ancestors in the faith, it’s difficult not to become overwhelmed. You just think, how can you match up to that! But do you really have to do something that big to go from being ordinary to extraordinary? No we are all ordinary people capable of doing the extraordinary.

Let’s go back to today’s story of Moses and see what it says there. God gives Moses his instructions, Moses says who am I to do that I don’t think I can and God gives Moses some reassurance, just five words, God says to him ‘I will be with you!’, ‘I will be with you!’ You do not have to do any of this alone, because you are in my care.

And with God’s comfort and support nothing really seems impossible, that moment when you gently say, please help me I need some support right now! God sends out people like us to be the messengers of the faith and in return is with us when we feel most out of our depth, doing things that can feel very daunting but God doesn’t call the qualified, he qualifies the called and with God by our side, like Moses we can do anything and we can all be extraordinary people doing amazing things.

Now we might not all be up to leading a nation through the desert for forty years or being demanding with a powerful ruler however there are many other ways we can be extraordinary people for God, just by being our wonderful, loving and caring selves, being that person of God in the world and showing God’s love and affection for all those in the world. God will give us the strength and the courage we need and God will be with us so we can all be and do extraordinary things in Gods name. Amen

 

If you would like to learn more about Rudolf Vrba I would recommend the book The Escape Artist by Jonathan Freedland or this documentary free on YouTube which looks at the aftermath of the report: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KH25lL1QTP4