Immediately?

Immediately?

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

January 22, 2017

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

So Matthew told us a story this morning. In that story several men are plying their trade as fishermen on the Sea of Galilee. As far as we know, they’ve never even heard of Jesus, much less met him or gotten to know him. He comes walking along the shoreline where they are working. He calls to them, and they immediately they drop what they’re doing and go off following him. Two of them leave their poor old father Zebedee to do the family work without them. That’s the story Matthew tells.

Let me tell you another story. There was a man. Many people thought him wise, for he had many letters after his name—MA, PhD, and JD. He was a lawyer. He went about his work practicing law. He analyzed his clients’ cases. He did his legal research. He drafted his pleadings. He wrote his briefs. He tried his cases. He won a few, and he lost some too. He wasn’t a great lawyer, but he was a good enough one.

Then, over the course of a couple of years, things started to go wrong for him. He was finding it hard to keep practicing law. He became depressed. He knew something was missing. He knew there was something else he was supposed to be doing, but he didn’t know what it was. He had one idea about what he wanted to do, but that idea was so wildly impracticable that he knew he’d never do it—and he never did. Something deep inside him told him he was a preacher, but he didn’t pay that much mind. It made absolutely no sense. It had never consciously occurred to him to be a preacher. He had been a Christian of sorts most of his life, but for reasons he can’t tell you to this day he started to study Christian theology, the best theology there was at the time, Paul Tillich, John Dominic Crossan, and most of all Douglas John Hall.

Then something incredible happened. A university in his town created a ministry program for Protestant students even though it was, and is, a Catholic university. He knew he had to enroll. He didn’t really know why. He didn’t know what he would do with a ministry degree, for it had never really occurred to him that the thing he was supposed to be doing was parish ministry. He sure didn’t know how he was going to pay for it. Something just told him he had to do it. So he closed his law office, took a part time job in a legal services office providing free representation to low income tenants in eviction cases, and went to seminary. He went into debt to pay for it. While he was there he did intern work at a local church, and that’s when the light really came on. He said to Jesus “Really? This is what I’m supposed to be doing?” And Jesus answered “Yes, my son. This is what you’re supposed to be doing.” So he followed Jesus, and he has been doing parish ministry most of the time ever since. After he got his first call and not long before she died of breast cancer his wife of thirty years said to him: “I’m so glad you finally are who you really are.”

Those are two stories of God and Jesus Christ calling people to follow them, to be Christians not just in thought but in deed, in what they did with their lives. The first story is the story from the Gospel of Matthew of Jesus’ call to Peter, Andrew, James, and John to become Jesus’ first disciples. In that story everything happens really fast. The men Jesus calls immediately drop everything and follow him. The second story is, in rough outline at least, my story. When I compare my story to the story the Gospel of Matthew tells of Jesus’ calling of the first disciples, it causes me to wonder. Did Peter, Andrew, James, and John really just walk off all at once and leave their lives behind when some stranger they didn’t know walked by and said follow me? That’s sure not how it happened with me. It’s not how it happened with a lot of Christian pastors I know. When I went to my first orientation session at Seattle University, the university that created that ministry program for Protestant students in its Catholic School of Theology and Ministry, it became a joke among us beginning students that God called, and we hung up. We’d all resisted. We’d all had enormous doubts. We all said earlier in our lives “Sorry, God, you’ve got the wrong person.” We were like the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah. Isaiah said I’m not worthy. Jeremiah said I’m only a boy. God didn’t care. God called them to be prophets anyway, and they went and did God’s bidding. So did those first four of Jesus’ disciples really do it immediately, just like that, apparently with so little thought? Maybe they did, but most of us don’t respond to Christ’s call with such alacrity. We hesitate. We hem and haw. We deny. We try to get out of it. And Jesus will have none of it. If he’s going to call you he keeps after you until you give in and say alright already. I’ll go. Maybe it happens all at once like it did in Matthew’s story. Maybe it happens over the course of several years, like it did with me. However it happens, it happens.

Now, Jesus Christ calling people to change their lives isn’t always something that people welcome. It can be disruptive. It can change just about everything in your life. I’ve never made nearly as much money in ministry as I did in law. I had to learn how to live with less. Less material wealth, that is. But with that less material wealth came great spiritual wealth. More spiritual wealth than I had ever possessed before. With a drop of income came a miraculous increase in satisfaction with my life and my work. Peace that I had never felt before too, not that it’s always there, but mostly it is. The joy of knowing that my work has meant something really important to at least a few people. The fulfillment that comes from knowing, like my late wife said, that I am who I really am. Yes, I miss the boat I could afford when I was a lawyer, but other than that my decision to follow Christ’s call to me into professional ministry has been nothing but a blessing in my life.

Now, here’s the thing. Sometimes Christ’s call to us leads us into enormous, obvious changes in our lives. But sometimes that call is less dramatic. Sometimes it is less disruptive. It all depends on what we need. Peter, Andrew, James, and John needed to follow Jesus as intimate disciples. I needed to stop being a lawyer, something that inside I never really was in the first place, and become who I really am. And I know that God and Jesus Christ call each and every one of us in some way. Maybe they call you to go to school and change your profession when you’re way too old to do it and can’t afford it, like they did with me. But maybe their call to you is very different from that. Maybe their call to you is softer, quieter, gentler. Maybe it’s a call out of a life of fear. Maybe it’s a call to stop hiding your gifts and to share them with others. Maybe it’s a call to care for a sick neighbor. Maybe it’s a call to volunteer at the food bank. Maybe it’s a call to have peace and courage as you face the end of your earthly life.

Christ’s calls to people are as varied as the people whom Christ calls, but there’s one thing those calls all have in common besides their origin in God. See, God is with God’s people in each and every one of those calls. God is there to lift us up, to give us a nudge when we need it, to point the way, to forgive our mistakes, and to feed our spirits with God’s Holy Spirit every step of the way. That doesn’t mean accepting God’s call will be easy. It doesn’t mean we’ll always understand the call fully or know what to do with it. But see, in all of that God is there with us, continuing to call, continuing to prod, continuing to lead, until at last God leads us home. Home in this life. Home to who we really are. And home in the next life, to our eternal home with God.

So let me ask you: Have you heard God calling? Is there something in your life you need to be called out of? Is there something you dream of that you need to be called to? Whatever your circumstances, God is calling. God is calling you. Each and every one of you. Not all in the same way. Not all to the same thing. But God is calling, and God is promising. Promising you whatever you need to answer God’s call. Maybe God is calling you to do something immediate. Maybe God is calling you to get up and move now, right away, without delay, like Jesus called those first disciples. But maybe not. God’s call takes many forms. Sometimes it can take years for us fully to hear it and respond to it, and that’s OK. It’s OK because sometimes it’s how God works. However God is working in your life, God is calling.

So let’s listen, shall we? God is calling each one of you individually, and God is calling us collectively as a church. Where is God calling us to go? What is God calling us to do? Ah, those questions are much harder to answer than the question of whether God is calling. To answer them we need to listen. Most of all we need to pray. We need to be open to the myriad ways God calls and answers our needs. God answered my need in part by leading me to the perfect law job while I was in seminary, law that felt worth doing when most law no longer did. Then God led me to rewarding ministry, first in Monroe, then here. I don’t know how God will answer your need when you answer God’s call, but I know that God will. So let’s stay awake. Let’s be alert. Let’s pray. Let’s pray by listening. God is calling. Let’s not hang up, OK? Amen.