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Mystic
Congregational Church, UCC Mystic,
Connecticut Sermon
from January 16, 2005 “Listening
for God’s Call” Rev.
Patricia L. Liberty
Scriptures: 1
Corinthians 1:1-9 Imagine,
if you will, for a moment that you’re back in the fourth grade.
Now, for some of us, it’s a longer time than others but work with me.
It’s recess. A teacher is
organizing a pick-up game of dodge ball. Captains
are chosen for each team. Now, if
you’re anything like me, you are not the captain of either team.
There’s a large group of children who are waiting to be called.
If you’re anything like me, you’re not the first choice, or the
second choice, or the third choice. As
time goes on, it’s clear that your only hope is that you’re not going to be
dead last, because in the fourth grade, it’s just not a good thing.
Those kinds of images of being chosen or being called are about some kind
of popularity or, perhaps, a perception of talent or innate ability, or even
some favoritism on the part of the chooser.
It colors our image of what it means to be chosen.
Well, the good news is that God is infinitely more gracious than the
captain of a third grade dodge ball team. The
synergy of our three texts offers a wonderful progression of understanding in
what it means to be called. God’s
selection and choosing uses completely different criteria.
It comes from the richness of who God is and not the qualifications we
carry. We
are called of God and chosen by God out of pure, unbridled, limitless
love—pure and simple as that. It
has nothing to do with whether or not we’re better or brighter, more talented,
smarter, more talented, or more deserving than anyone else.
We are called of God because God’s desire is for all God’s creatures
to be in a life-giving, life-affirming, life-transforming relationship.
We are called because to be anywhere else besides the embrace of God is
to be very, very far from home. The
second servant song of Isaiah says, “God formed me in my mother’s womb to be
his servant,” right from the very beginning, before anybody knew what color
his hair was or what color his skin was or what color his eyes were.
In the waters of the womb, in the waters of baptism, we are called by
God. God’s call is about
God’s love, God’s deepest desire that we should be
in the divine embrace. James
Liggett is a clergy person who serves on a committee for ministry—that’s the
group that, in any denomination, meets, interviews and approves people who are
coming forward for ordination. I
served on that committee in Rhode Island. It’s
called the Commission on Ministry. Oftentimes,
people who come before the Commission on Ministry for interviews for Ordination
really struggle with this idea of call. I
remember as I trembled before a similar committee almost twenty-five years ago
that I was having a similar difficulty. Sometimes,
people have had very powerful experiences of the presence of God, and think that
means they have to do something new and different; and that usually means to get
ordained. Others think it might be
a good idea to get ordained, but aren’t sure if they are called, whatever that
might mean. So they all just dread
talking to the Commission on Ministry because they know folks are going to ask
them about it all and they all think they ought to have a better answer than
they do. What they don’t yet
realize is that any call to any kind of service begins with hearing God call our
name and living into the relaitonshp that comes as a
result. There is such a thing as a special call to a specific
ministry or type of service. But that is not the way the word “call” is
usually used in the Bible. It’s
not usually what’s going on when calls us, at least initially because God’s
first call is to discipleship. Whether
we are upposed to be ordained or not, is something else to figure out.
When we are called by God, as we are each called in our Baptism, we are,
called to be disciples, to be in relationship. Several
weeks ago at “Soup to Nuts”, we
were at Kim and Jaimie McGee’s with the Covins and the Keachs.
As our conversation over dinner ambled nicely along, at a moment of lull,
Regina asked how I came to be a minister. I
said it’s a very long story that is still unfolding.
But whenever I’m asked the
question, I always point to a very specific moment.
It wasn’t a lightening bolt from heaven or a burning bush that said,
“Go into ministry”. I
wonder if that might have been easier. Rather,
it was a moment of profound connection to God that was life-changing and
life-sustaining. The
journey toward ministry began with the moment I heard God speak my name in the
midst of a devastating illness and all of the uncertainty and loneliness that
was its companion. But I would not
come to name it as such for many, many years.
My awareness of God’s presence in that moment did not change the
situation, but rather gave me a sense of how I was going to get through it.
It didn’t change the truth, but it transformed my understanding of it.
My call to ministry was not immediately clear at that time.
Countless moments of encouragement in the journey, countless sermons
heard in the pulpit, countless tiny insights and the gentle embrace of a church
community allowed the journey to unfold until I could see that ministry was
where I belonged. In
the gospel reading, Peter and Andrew are called by Jesus.
If you noticed, Jesus doesn’t say, “Do this.”
He says, “Follow me.” There
is a big difference. The first call
is always to intimacy and to relationship with God because that is the
foundation where you figure out everything else. James
Liggett further notes is very different from signing up to do a piece of work.
(It’s just like falling in love with someone is very different than serving
together on a committee with them). To set out to do a job requires some clarity
about what is involved, it is negotiable, it has its limits, you know what it
looks like when the job is over, and so on. To be called into relationship,
however, is to be called to follow—that is, to enter into a mystery. It is to move out, full speed ahead, into uncharted darkness.
Jesus simply says, “Follow me.” He calls us first to himself—to a
personal intimacy and shared life. That
is what matters, and that is to be central. Everything else comes after. You
get the point. That image of being
called is the foundation that can then inform every other relationship of our
lives because, before we are sent anywhere, we are sent to God’s embrace. Before we are sent anywhere to do we are called to Gods
embrace to simply be. By and by. it
will lead us somewhere. But we won’t know where for a while, maybe for a long
while. Sometimes the church needs
to be an incubator before it is a
deployment office. Out of the richness of relationship and connection, we come to
understand what it is we are called to and how we are to live out our call. There
was no way I could have known all the places that ministry would take me when I
started out almost 30 years ago. To
be truthful, that was probably a good thing because I’m fairly sure that at
that time, I wouldn’t have had the faith or the guts to follow if I’d known
all that I know now. Instead, the
journey has unfolded one step at a time and I have, at times, gone joyfully
along and, at other times, stumbled along stubbornly and unwillingly.
That’s how it goes for all of us—the journey unfolds one step at a
time. When
Martin Luther King was in his fourth grade dodge ball game, I
wonder if he had any clue that he would be remembered throughout the ages
as the one who changed the face of racial relationships for all time in the
United States, and to some extent, in the world. His dreams and visions and prophecies unfolded in the context
of his life as he lived as a black man in a white man’s world.
As he heard God speak his name, he was nurtured not only in a
relationship but in a vision of discipleship and prophecy and inspired his
dreams, and later inspired, comforted, challenged and angered millions more.
That
Leads us to the final scripture from Paul.
There is that notion that once we are called and once we are nurtured, we
are supposed to go and do something about it.
Paul, for all the problems of the church in Corinth, starts his letter
and he calls them saints and tells them that they have everything they need to
be God’s witnesses between now and the time that there is no more need for a
witness. “There is no lack of
gifts among you,” he says. He
points to an important truth—that we are all gifted by the Gifter to do the
work that God calls us to do. At
the Deacons’ Retreat this weekend, I spent some time talking about spiritual
gifts. It isn’t a question of
whether or not we have them. It is
a question of what ones we have. We
had an opportunity to explore that, and to confirm each other, and to surprise
each other with what it is that we learned about how God desires to work in our
lives. So,
first we are called to relationship.
Then, we’re called to be nurtured.
Then, we are sent forth with the promise that all the time that we have
spent in quiet, in prayer, in community and nurture will be enough as we go out
to serve our God. So listen for the call of God in your life.
It will comfort, change, and challenge you.
Amen. |