Do you believe that God calls us to certain actions? Do you want to believe but aren’t sure? How about making space in our lives for the Holy Spirit to land on us, to listen for God’s call? Even if you don’t believe in this kind of divine intervention, it’s still valuable to take the time to ponder… what is the right thing for you to do with your unique abilities and values, in your time and place? Then inspiration may land on you.
This idea of God’s call for everyone is part of Process Theology. The world rolls on, and we can go along with it mindlessly, like a ping-pong ball, bouncing this way and that as we bump into this person and that idea. But the lure of God invites each of us moment by moment to choose something good and beautiful and true. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is from God. That’s the process way of talking about God’s call.
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Brea Congregational United Church of Christ
January 27, 2019
Claim Your Calling
Luke 4:14-21 Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. 15 He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.
16 When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
20 And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
Last year we walked through the Gospel of Mark. To Mark, faith in Jesus means seeking Jesus’ power in our lives to face and even to dispel those things he calls demons, things that warp us into illness and strife and cruelty. Mark didn’t tell us what to believe. Instead, With short stories and very few rules, he showed us how to follow Jesus. I like to talk about ‘following Jesus:’ that is my code for faith in– being faithful to– Jesus Christ. Mark showed us what following Jesus looked like in Galilee two thousand years ago. If we are faithful, we are regularly asking ourselves what following Jesus looks like in Brea in 2019.
Now we’re settling in to Luke’s Gospel. Luke was more sophisticated than Mark. He was upper-class and well educated. Yet in Luke’s Gospel Jesus lifts up the poor and challenges the rich. Luke was probably a Greek-speaking Jew, but he understood that following Jesus was for everybody.
As Luke tells his story, Jesus was born into poverty, with lots of signs from God and flowery speeches. He was the fulfillment of prophecy. Around the time of his Bar Mitzvah at 12 years old, Jesus amazed scholars at the Jerusalem temple, and gave his parents a terrible scare. As an adult, he was baptized by that wild preacher John in the river Jordan. There the Holy Spirit descended on him, and God called Jesus beloved son. Full of that Holy Spirit, led by the Holy Spirit, Jesus went into the wilderness for forty days to argue with the devil about how the Son of God should acting. We who don’t believe in the devil would say: he pondered all the ways he could mess up on being the messiah, so he could do it right the first time. Then Jesus began to preach all over Galilee, and people were impressed. When he gets to his hometown of Nazareth, he’s filled with the power of the Spirit, again. His relatives must have been so proud. They had no idea what they were in for. Of course he’s been chosen as liturgist that day in Nazareth. Or as preacher? It’s not clear.
Jesus reads a scripture from the prophet Isaiah, chapter 61. Good scholar that he is, Luke includes both the Greek and Hebrew verses where they differ:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Jesus then preaches the shortest sermon ever, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing,” and he sits down. I suppose it is not really a sermon, rather a public announcement of his calling. Jesus is claiming to be messiah, Christ, both of those words mean, literally, anointed. Chosen by God. In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus’ identity as messiah was a secret. In Luke, it’s not. Jesus claims he is God’s chosen, and he makes sure people know what he’s chosen to do.
To my ears the things he announces sound like social justice. What Jesus announces is a world where everybody matters and is treated right, the beloved community, the upside down Kingdom of God. Or you can spiritualize his speech and make it a call to personal spiritual rebirth, reconciliation with God, union with the ultimate. The two are not mutually exclusive. Love God, and love neighbor. Social justice means showing care to all our neighbors, not ignoring some. In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus declares social justice on earth, and also offers forgiveness, reconciliation and the promise of heaven.
Back in Mark’s gospel, we were clearly supposed to follow Jesus. Do we have the courage to follow Jesus in the Gospel of Luke? It means seeking that upside down Kingdom, valuing the people that society considers expendable, and letting go of all the ego that makes us think we need to be better than, that keeps us from admitting what is broken and rejected in us.
Following Jesus in the Gospel of Luke also means something more particular. The Holy Spirit might land on you as it did on Jesus, and give you a bright idea about how to love God or neighbor in your own unique way. You might have a calling, as Jesus had a calling.
When I grew up Catholic, I believed that people got callings, but only special people: priests and nuns, missionaries, saints. Then I hung out with some United Methodists in my late 20’s. They were big into the Holy Spirit, and they challenged me to believe that anybody and everybody can listen and hear God calling them, one way or another, to do something for God or neighbor that is right for them in their place and time. It might be something big and life changing. It might be a small thing that is just the right thing for right now. Everybody can be filled with the Holy Spirit: inspired to love God or love neighbor in some way that’s right for them.
Do you believe that God calls us to certain actions? Do you want to believe but aren’t sure? How about making space in our lives for the Holy Spirit to land on us, to listen for God’s call? Even if you don’t believe in this kind of divine intervention, it’s still valuable to take the time to ponder… what is the right thing for you to do with your unique abilities and values, in your time and place? Then inspiration may land on you.
This idea of God’s call for everyone is part of Process Theology. The world rolls on, and we can go along with it mindlessly, like a ping-pong ball, bouncing this way and that as we bump into this person and that idea. But the lure of God invites each of us moment by moment to choose something good and beautiful and true. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is from God. That’s the process way of talking about God’s call.
This idea of God’s call for everyone is also Congregational. The Holy Spirit does not get dispensed by a bishop around here. Each of us can be filled with the power of the Holy Spirit. The will of God is not dictated to us by human authorities. God is still speaking. Each of us is empowered to listen for the call of God in our lives. And if we are faithful, we will listen.
Some people are afraid to listen for God’s call, for fear of what they might hear. I can understand that. God might have a big challenge for you. But it will be your challenge, right for you, and you will be the richer for answering it. I fear not listening, and missing out on the gift of being in tune with God, not doing that thing that I am needed for, that will heal me, or that I will love. Imagine what we all would have missed if Mary Oliver hadn’t listened to her call.
Maybe you have been called to something big and life changing. Mary Oliver’s poem, “The Journey” talks of such a call.
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.
Or it could be a small thing you are called to do. A thing that doesn’t seem important at all, except you are called to do it. And we don’t always know what is important and what is not. A member of my retreat group in Virginia, named Chantal, lost her beloved riverside home in Ottawa to a flood in 2016. She didn’t know if she would be allowed to salvage it. Another member sent a little email of encouragement to her, complete with pictures of beautiful homes on stilts. Chantal read that little email every day for months as she waited and waited and finally got permission to repair her home. Maybe we don’t always know what is important and what is not.
Don’t let perfectionism get in the way of your call. So many gifts from God go unused because the recipient of the gift is waiting to be good enough, waiting for perfection. We learn to do better by practicing that thing we are called to learn and do. Leave perfection to God.
Maybe you are called to a morning ritual that feeds your spirit each morning in some way, so that the Holy Spirit will have room to land on you later in the day. I feed my spirit by visiting my garden, and I also enjoy reading the UCC daily devotional. Mary Oliver has some ideas about this too, in her poem, Why I Wake Early.
Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who made the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and the crotchety –
best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light –
good morning, good morning, good morning.
Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.
Hello, you who made the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and the crotchety –
best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light –
good morning, good morning, good morning.
Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.
We are all called to remember that everything and everyone is sacred, and to voice our gratitude, each in our own way. When we can’t find the words, we can borrow from people like Mary Oliver.
You might be thinking: God’s call on my life! Oh no, one more thing to add to my to-do list! I am convinced that God does not call us to be overwhelmed, or to fix everything. God never asks us to do the impossible. I pray over my to do list, and discover I can let something go. I should pray before I get my next bright idea, and spread myself too thin. In between our ideas of saving the world and our despair at doing anything of value, God has something large or small and just right for each of us to create, to enjoy, to learn, to give, and then leave the results to God.
You might be thinking, who am I, to have a calling? A child of God, that’s who you are. You are a follower of Jesus. You are a seeker of justice and compassion. You are a little slice of the infinite, given breath, and a span of years, and imagination, and the power of the Holy Spirit. I can’t wait to see how you answer God’s call in your life. Amen.
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