Called

Grace Episcopal Church, Monroe, February 24, 2016

When I was a child, perhaps 8 years old, the pastor of the Mennonite church my family attended retired. I do not remember the details of how a pool of candidates to replace him was chosen. But I will never forget the culmination of the process. 

Five men stand at the front of the church. Prayers invoking the Holy Spirit are prayed—several looong prayers. An elder of the church holds up to each man a row of matchsticks, all appearing to be identical—from the outside. Concealed by his hand is the fact that one of the matchsticks is way shorter than the others.

Each of the five men takes a matchstick, and the man who chooses the short one is thereby “called” to be our next pastor.

Choosing Mathias

Casting lots to determine God’s call was standard practice in Mennonite churches at that time. It was based on scripture—specifically, the story just read of the choosing of St. Mathias to replace Judas. We Mennonites believed it to be the way to get ourselves out of the way and let the Holy Spirit decide.

The Bible offers many stories of God’s call to various people. Some are dramatic. Every time I hear the story of Isaiah being touched on the mouth with a live ember, I shiver in awe and apprehension. What must that have been like!

On the other hand, God’s call to the boy Samuel was so subtle that Samuel thought it was the old man in the next room. Perhaps it is only grown-ups who require supernatural phenomena to get their attention!

Or, more accurately, perhaps when God is actually able to penetrate our defenses and be heard above the din of our busy, busy lives, we experience it as supernatural. It shouldn’t be. It should be as natural as the air we breathe.

It is also clear from call stories in the Bible that feelings of unworthiness in the face of God’s call have a long and honorable history: Moses, Isaiah, Amos, John the Baptizer and more.

Nevertheless, such feelings do not constitute justification for avoiding the call. God’s grace is sufficient, and working through imperfect, unworthy vehicles like us is precisely the plan. Clutching our sins and gazing at God in disbelief is never a substitute for answering the call.

That does not mean you are called to ordained ministry, although you might be. It does not mean you are called to change jobs or careers or move to a new place or reinvent your entire life, although you might want to do that.

It does mean that whatever you are doing with this one glorious and precious gift we call life, God is at work loving and reconciling this world, and you, me, all of us… are called to be a part of that.

We are all called. If we have been baptized into Christ’s one, holy, catholic and apostolic church, then we are called to be ministers of that church in the world. The thing that unites all followers of Jesus is that we are all called.

The only questions are, what is each of us called to do? And how do we know?

Please do not hear in any of this the tired notion that “God has a plan and if you just pray hard enough and are good enough, God will send signs—like drawing the short matchstick—to tell you whether to take this job or that one, move here or there, sell the farm or not, start that business or not, be ordained or not, etc., etc.”

Consider the possibility that God really does not care much about those specifics!

Caroline Fairless is an Episcopal priest who has wrestled with this question of “call.” She came to the priesthood by way of a lover committing suicide, and she struggled mightily to experience herself and her call as authentic.

In her autobiography, she describes a particularly challenging life transition in which she found herself quite indecisive and praying madly for direction. Dear God, shall I go here or go there, or perhaps not to a parish at all but into some other kind of work for the church?

Then one day she is out walking the dog, who insists upon snuffling through every bush along the sidewalk. As she stands with her face in a bush that seems to be growing right before her very eyes, she remembers a conversation reported to her by a friend about his own conversation with God about his call.

It went like this:

Friend: Well, God, is this what you want me to do?

Silence.

Friend: Do you want me to be a minister?

Silence.

Friend: So, yes? Or no?

God: You already are a minister.

Friend: Okay. Word games. How about a priest? Do you want me to be a priest?

Silence.

Friend: So, yes? Or no?

God: You already are a priest.

Friend: But ordained? Seminary trained? Do you want me to be an ordained minister?

God: I don’t care. It doesn’t make any difference.

Friend: You don’t care?

God: I really do not care.

Fairless and the dog continue down the path, she struggling with the decision she must make about which of her options constitutes the “right call.” Suddenly, she says, I hear a smile, somewhere in the universe, ‘It really doesn’t matter, Caroline. It just doesn’t matter.’

By the end of her autobiography, Fairless is able to see and claim that the Spirit is in her and working through her, regardless of what, exactly, and where, exactly, she is doing whatever she is doing at any given moment in time.

Here’s what I think, she concludes. I think it’s not so much the particulars of God’s call—almost anything will do—(blasphemy, you say!). The call is to the person. The field hardly matters. Priest or plumber, carpenter, bus driver, poet, teacher, the call is to me. I am to be the richest, fullest, most loving, generous, kind, bold, fearless, funny, creative partner to God… and to you… that I can be. The context is secondary.

 

I do not mean to make light of the question of what, exactly, we are called to do. Countless times throughout history, human beings have inflicted great cruelty and suffering upon each other in the name of God’s call.

We do it because we are no less human for having been called. And so our own human motives, our rich imaginations and wishful thinking, our arrogance, our hope that our own answers to the mysteries of God are the only answers—these things and more get all tangled up in our sense of God’s call.

Tonight’s Gospel lesson is huge help in sorting out this business of being called. Jesus offers us the concept of “abiding,” and specifically of abiding in his love.

That means a lot more than “poke your head in the door once or twice a day.” It means more than “give thanks before every meal.” It even means more than “consult me about every decision you have to make.” I really can’t conceive that God wants to micro-manage our lives!
    

For our Lenten study, I and the Canterbury group at ULM are using this workbook and a series of short videos produced by the Brothers of St. John the Evangelist (available free online) to consider “growing” a rule of life. Rules of life give us focus and direction and support—like a trellis does a climbing rose—to grow and abide in Jesus’ love.

And when we abide in Jesus’ love, we will know what God calls us to do. It’s stated right here: This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. And he goes on to say, ‘I have chosen you and appointed you to go out and bear fruit that lasts.’

What more do we need to know? Does it really matter whether we do that in a law office or a classroom? In a hospital or a TV studio? As a construction worker or a banker? As a garbage collector or a brain surgeon? As a lay person, a bishop, a deacon or a priest?

My friends we are all called, and at the most basic and foundational level, we are all called to the same thing: We are called to participate in God’s reconciling love already at work in the world. Everything else is window dressing.

In the name of God, Father, Son & Holy Spirit.AMEN

    

Going Out of Our Minds

 Lenten Lunch Series, Grace Episcopal Church, Monroe, 2/23/16

What in the world has gotten into Mary? Mary, the blessed mother of Jesus, that is.

Mary, who upon learning of her most extraordinary pregnancy, a pregnancy she had every reason to be mortified by… but who instead sings a song—a song of joyful acceptance so magnificent that we have made it part of our daily devotion to God. That Mary. 

Mary, who pondered everything in her heart on the extraordinary night of her son’s birth, and who heard Simeon’s prophesy when she took her child to the temple for the naming ceremony. That Mary.

Today, that Mary stands with her other sons on the outside edge of the crowd surrounding her son Jesus (Mark 3:19-35, NRSV).

Jesus' Mother & Brothers

Her openness and acceptance of her son’s extraordinary nature seems to have evaporated. She and her “normal” sons are there to take Jesus away and lock him up because he has gone out of his mind.

Notice that she does not even go to his side herself. Is she afraid of her crazy son?

Is she embarrassed by his teaching of ideas so foreign to the family religion? Mortified by his rejection of the traditions of his own people?

Whatever has gotten into Mary, she sends messengers to fetch Jesus so she can take him away. And Jesus rebukes her and his brothers.

He does it gently. Teachers everywhere will recognize the strategy! When an answer is hard, preface it with a question! When you need to lead people to a challenging conclusion, help them participate in getting there by posing a question.

Jesus was master at this. He did it all the time when engaging with the religious leadership of the day. He rarely responded to the scribes and Pharisees with a direct answer, but almost always with a question.

And so he asks, “Who are my mother and my brothers?”

Then, turning not to his mother and brothers, but to those who had been absorbed in his sermon on forgiveness, he embraced them and whoever does the will of God as his immediate family.

When I came to Louisiana almost 20 years ago, I was struck by the tightness of family life here.

I first noticed it among my students, who seemed to have no ambition whatever to go out into the big, broad world, who wanted careers that would keep them right here in northeastern Louisiana.

I asked the department secretary about it, and she said, in her southern drawl that I cannot imitate, “Oh, yes, Dr. Kauffman. We would pitch a tent in our Momma and Daddy’s front yard and live there forever if we could!”

My late husband and I also noticed that no one was around most Sundays. We’d go to church then to coffee hour, kind of hoping to encounter some friendly souls we could hook up with for lunch or afternoon activities… but those who came to coffee, sipped quickly and were off. “Sunday family dinner,” we were told when we asked about it.

Invoking communal traditions and talk of family values are pretty sure-fire way to generate warm, fuzzy feelings in people. So much so that our politicians bandy those terms about in search of votes for themselves and their pet laws and policies.

Sadly, the content of the terms is rarely offered or asked for. A bit of Socratic method would serve us well here. What “heritage” do you mean? we might ask, the heritage of crawfish and jazz? Or the heritage of segregation and Jim Crow?

How do you define “family” and what “values” are you invoking?

You see, “heritage,” “tradition,” “family” and “family values” can become defense mechanisms.

They can shut down our minds and make us resistant to change. They can make us feel okay about excluding people—indeed, families—who do not fit our norms and standards and view of the world.

In a word, they can become idolatries.

And that, I believe, is what Jesus is teaching us in this story. He is asking us to question our most cherished values.

He is asking us to step right out of our comfort zone and open ourselves to all of humankind in a radical new way.

He is asking us to let go of fear and embrace the vast human family. 

Indeed, Jesus is asking us.. to follow him.. in going out of our minds. 

Many of you know I have long been involved in Northern & Central Louisiana Interfaith. The first lead organizer of Interfaith was a white man by the name of Perry Perkins. One of his first contacts was Rev. James Johnson, a black man and pastor of New Light Missionary Baptist Church.

Upon Mr. Perkins explaining his vision of Interfaith as black folks and white folks, Jews and Christians and Muslims, from northside and southside and across the river, well-off and poor, all working together for the good of the entire community, Rev. Johnson famously said, “You are the craziest white man I have ever met.”

A few years ago on the occasion of his retirement, I had the opportunity to turn that statement around and tell Rev. Johnson that he was the craziest black man I had ever met for signing on, which he did! And the crazy vision that is Interfaith persists today. 

How have YOU left behind your own most cherished traditions, beliefs, even family values.. and followed Jesus in going out of your mind? 

In the name of Father, Son and Holy Ghost, AMEN
     

My book!

Two of the sermons in this book reference one of the many "treasures” strewn about my house, specifically a little brown rock about the size of a meatball. It’s kind of lumpy and hard and drab. It’s chipped and cracked. But it has a heart-shaped hole in the side.

I have come to see this little treasure as a symbol of the human-God relationship. We too are small, lumpy, often hard-headed, stiff-necked, and wounded by the inevitable challenges and suffering of human life. In comparison to God, more like a little brown rock.

But we do have a God-shaped hole in the side of our tiny, frightened, wounded and often hard human hearts. Nothing can fill that hole except God. God put it there with great love and tenderness to help us know whose we are. 

And that's Incarnation and that’s what makes it possible for us to love God and our neighbor as ourselves, to care for others—even those we don’t like or who frighten us, to reach for God and to find God, right here on earth, in each other and in creation and in the very ordinariness of our lives.

I think you’ll find that theme running in the background of many of these sermons.

Buy it here!