Epiphany 3 Year C

It’s not the call of the wild, but the call of love. . .

Luke 4:14-21

Once upon a time there was an inquirer desiring to be a disciple, so he approached the Rabbi and said:

Rabbi, I can endure the heat of the day, and the cold of the night. I can carry the burden of a day’s toil for miles without fainting, eating and drinking only what the land provides. I have brought my body into subjection and am ready to be your disciple.”

The Rabbi replied: You are certainly qualified to be a jackass, but not a disciple.

The story speaks just a bit of truth, doesn’t it?  We sometimes do tend to think that to be called by God is going to mean that we have to start acting in ways that are extraordinarily not who we are, and that to be called is only for people with uncommon and special gifts.

Without really intending to, the church throughout the centuries has managed to give the impression that the ministry that really counts is the ordained ministry and I’d like to put that impression to rest.

Our Gospel for this week is once again about the notion of Call that is so central to what we are about in the church: 

As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the lake – for they were fishermen.  And he said to them, ‘Follow me.’

If you’ve ever witnessed a service of the ordination of a deacon, priest or bishop, even in the smallest of churches, then you know just how majestic a service it is. Usually, churches are packed and there is a hush of anticipation as the service begins. It hardly resembles a simple call issued to peasant fishermen by an equally peasant itinerant preacher.

I have devoted my whole life to the ordained ministry, but it’s a fact that only about one percent of Christians hears that call.  What a pathetic state the Kingdom of God would be in if this was the only call that really mattered. I’m afraid we’d be a church with far more jackasses than disciples. 

If there is one thing I have learned from my auto accident about 10 years ago it’s that in my most fateful hour, it would not necessarily be a bishop I would want to minister and pray with me. It would more likely be my parish family.

I can’t think of a better time and place to lift up your call than in church on a day approaching your Parish Annual Meeting.  I know many churches are doing their serious business in or around the month of January. It is important that they see themselves on that seashore dropping their nets to follow Jesus when he calls, and there are a few things we can say about call that I hope will be helpful.

Firstly, everyone is called by God. In fact, I believe that call is God’s way of embracing humanity moment by moment, usually in a still, quiet voice. What my favorite philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead called God’s Initial Aim for creation, the church has chosen to name God’s Call to us. It’s that persistent gentle and suasive nudge that can be felt in the heart moment by moment as we continue on our journey through life.

I think Frederick Buechner’s definition of call is probably the most useful. To paraphrase Buehcner’s definition, one is called to where one’s deepest joys, meet the world’s deepest needs.

Try that litmus test next time you think God is calling you. Does the call excite me, fulfil my deepest yearnings? Does the idea of it bring me joy> If the answer is yes, then ask yourself, will this call bring me to the needs of God’s people?

When I told people that my undergraduate major was in Philosophy, the most common reaction was, What are you going to do with that? Translated, it really means, How are you going to cash in on that?

All that served to do was to make me wonder how many people are performing tasks every day that don’t touch the deepest joys of their hearts. Someone once said, quite profoundly I think, that God’s call is to that which you could NOT NOT do?

That those fishermen dropped their nets and followed Jesus right then and there, shows the tremendous appetite that we have to follow that often small quiet voice in our hearts.

I suspect that if someone came into any one of our churches and truly called any one of you to a place where your deepest joys would meet the world’s deepest needs, you just might drop your bulletins right where you’re seated, stand up and follow. And whatever you would end up doing, it would be a true and validated ministry. You would be a priest of God, and your ordination would have taken place at your baptism.

Seminaries are necessary for that small portion of God’s people who are called to specialized ministry, but God does not look for the best educated or most learned when God decides to call you.  Jesus did not come to establish a school of religion or even a body of belief. Jesus calls you to where your greatest joys meet the world’s greatest needs.

Martin Luther King once said that there are too many Christians who have a high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds.

An Episcopal Priest who is one of my heroes, Ed Bacon, one time rector of All Saints in Pasadena, California put it this way:

In the end, Christianity is not about what you believe but about whose values and call you follow. Isn’t it the case that all of us have known people who were regular church attendees or who were eloquent teachers or preachers of the Gospel and yet they made the people around them miserable? They were so unloving or so unforgiving or so shaming or so anxious or so perfectionistic or so wounded or so victimized that everyone around them walked in fear or on eggshells. On the other hand, there were those who don’t know hesed from Hezekiah who love everything in their path and leave peace, joy, and strength in their wake.

It always comes back to love, doesn’t it? Real love where we couldn’t possibly hurt another person with our words or actions which we know is so easy to do. To do so never brings lasting joy, and it never meets people’s greatest needs. Being called to be a disciple is to be called to a life of loving.

Jesus called ordinary fisherman to a greater joy that meets the world’s greatest needs.  In a small quiet voice, they heard what each of us is able to hear if we listen well:

Follow me.