God's Economy: A Sermon for 18 September 2011

Christ Church, St. Joseph, La.

We really don’t like this story, do we?

I mean, listen to this! Here’s Jesus once again teaching his disciples using his favorite method: a parable (Matthew 20:1-16, NRSV). The characters in the parable are easily recognized by us. The Master of the Vineyard is, of course, God.

Because Jesus is speaking, I’m guessing many of us immediately think “God the Father.” But the Master of the Vineyard could also be Jesus the Christ, who was, after all, frequently called “Master” by his disciples, and did, after all, sometimes refer to himself in the third person.

Either way, the Master of the Vineyard is clearly a personification of the one and only God we worship.

The workers are, of course, us. And we recognize each type. Being good church people, we are probably the ones ready and eager to go into the vineyard at the break of day, and stay at it all day.

We do it, at least in part, because we are good church people. We’re loyal and committed. We believe in our work, that it is a good thing to do. We have a strong work ethic. We’re not slackers!

We look with disdain on those we perceive to be slackers. And we are pretty sure those who show up to be hired late in the day, and who therefore put in only an hour of work, are slackers. 

Parable of the Workers of the Vineyard, by Rembrandt

                                       
It goes without saying that we expect to be rewarded for our hard work, and we expect those we have judged to be slackers to at least earn less, if not be outright penalized for their lesser effort.

Sound familiar? It should, because it is a system devised by humans for the purpose of regulating human behavior. It’s called the merit system, and we are quite devoted to it. 

And I will certainly grant you that it makes a certain kind of sense and accomplishes certain things in the world of human endeavor. One of the hats I wear is that of a member of the Board of Control of the Ouachita Parish Public Library system. Just this past week, we decided, in these days of economic constraint, that the only raises the library system will give this year will be merit raises.

Last year we gave an across-the-board, cost-of-living raise to everyone. But we agreed that we could only do that occasionally. We agreed that merit raises hold people accountable and are an incentive to work harder and better.

So, yes, the merit system has value in the quid pro quo world of human endeavor.

But we get confused. As with so many things that seem necessary to make human societies function, we imbue the merit system with moral virtue. We even come to think it so wonderful that we are quite sure God must have invented it.

The story of creation in Genesis says that God made us in his image. But we humans put the cart in front of the horse all the time. We think that because we are made in God’s image, therefore God must think like us.

We would be wrong.

And as people of the Good News, who purport to not only believe in but follow Jesus, we really should know better.

Jesus tells us and shows us, over and over again, in myriad ways, that the human economy of merit falls short. He teaches it through his criticism of the scribes and Pharisees—the good church people of his day—who believe they are earning their way to heaven by following the letter of the law.

He teaches it with parables like the one about the treasures accumulated on earth through our economy of merit, treasures that will rot and rust and be stolen by thieves.

He shows it by insisting upon associating with, even eating with, all those people who don’t measure up according to the economy of merit: prostitutes, poor people, even tax collectors.

He preaches it in the Sermon on the Mount with its series of inversions: The meek shall inherit the earth! Really, now? Not in the economy of merit, they won’t!

He teaches it in today’s lesson: The last shall be first and the first shall be last. And who are any of you, you good church people, to say I can’t do what I want with what belongs to me?

Fr. Richard Rohr is a Franciscan monk and Roman Catholic priest. He writes prolifically and publishes both books and an online daily meditation. He is another of my favorite spiritual mentors.

Fr. Richard says that the gospel—the good news taught by Jesus—won’t make much sense to those who are committed to worthiness, competition and rewards—in other words, to the economy of merit.

That’s because the very heart of the Gospel is that God’s economy is one of grace, radical grace, offered to us as unconditional love—a wedding feast of God’s love.

Sounds fabulous, right? So why do we have such a hard time accepting it? Why do we cling so tightly to our economy of merit?

Well, for one thing, we really aren’t sure we want to rub elbows with all the folks who are invited to God’s feast of unconditional love. The economy of merit feeds our pride in accomplishment, our pride in being the ones who show up for work at the break of day. The economy of merit allows us to think we are better than the ones who show up at noon, or late afternoon, for heaven’s sake.

But Paul, in the passage read today from his letter to the Philippians (1:21-30, NRSV), gives us a glimpse of what happens when we accept God’s unconditional love and embrace God’s economy of grace. Remember that Paul wrote this letter from a Roman jail under threat of execution. Yet he is free, free even from fear of death. Living is Christ and dying is gain, he rejoices, and I do not know which I prefer.

Then Paul admonishes us to live a life worthy of the Gospel of Christ. But note that the purpose is not to merit God’s love. Rather, following Jesus the Christ serves as evidence of our salvation in the face of a hurting and sometimes evil world.

Or, as Fr. Richard puts it, God does not love us because we are good. We are good because God loves us.

AMEN

                  

Called to Live: A Sermon for 26 June 2011

Some passages and stories in the Bible, especially the Old Testament, seem to say that if you love God and put God first in your life, then surely you will prosper. Everything will go your way!

And the corollary that comes with that notion is that if things aren’t going your way, you must not be living a Godly life. We recognize immediately that Job’s friends, who harangued him mercilessly to repent so that God would reverse his fortunes, had bought into that equation hook, line and sinker.

From that sort of quid pro quo perspective on living a life committed to God, a literal interpretation of the story of Abraham about to sacrifice his son would lead us to ask, What in the world did Abraham do to deserve being tormented by God with such a horrendous order—an order to murder his only and beloved son?

Abrahan and Isaac on Mount Moriah

Would God really test Abraham—or any of us, heaven forbid—that way?

I have certainly heard that interpretation of bad things happening in a life. I have thought it and said it myself: Something bad is happening. What have I done to deserve this? And if I can’t think of any horrendous sin I’ve committed lately, then it’s “Why is God testing me this way?”

Reasons are really, really important—to human beings. We want to know “why?” And we want to know “why” in part because that will point us to a solution. If I know “why,” then I can figure out how to fix it!

But that’s human thinking, not necessarily God thinking. Remember that we are made in God’s image, not the reverse. Just because we think a certain way, just because reasons are important to us, does not mean God thinks that way or that “reasons” are part of God’s thinking at all!

We get so confused about that at times that we think we possess the people God has put in our lives: our children, our spouses, our friends. And then life happens. Those we love the most die. We cannot always protect our children from the bad things. Spouses or lovers leave us in the lurch.

We discover that love and relationship cannot be put in a jar and stored, like pints of mayhaw jelly lined up on the pantry shelf, to be pulled out and enjoyed during the off season. We must let go—and it does feel like dying.

But we must let go in order to go on living. And I would venture that going on living is sometimes the harder part of the bargain.

I’m not going to assume we know all the details of what actually happened so many centuries ago in a wilderness area of the Middle East. But I think it safe to conclude that God saved both Isaac’s and Abraham’s lives that day.

How, after all, would a father go on living in the knowledge that he had killed his only son—even if because God demanded it?

Yet I also must conclude that, in spite of having been saved from the unthinkable by God at the very last minute, both Isaac and Abraham went on living with huge, unanswerable questions in their minds.

What sort of God would demand such a thing anyway? What sort of father would be prepared to carry out such a demand? How does one trust God or anything else when we might, at any moment, be asked to let go of that person, that thing, that aspect of who we are… that we hold most dear?

Yes, God provided. But the entire incident can hardly be said to be a happy chapter in family life. It is hard to believe that Abraham and Isaac ever looked at each other quite the same way again.

But, of course, we Christians believe that God did precisely what this story seems to ask Abraham to do, and the passage from Romans that is our Epistle lesson today reminds us of that.

Paul wanted the followers of Jesus to consider themselves dead to sin, but alive to God through their association with Jesus' death on the cross. This text, therefore, is a vital reminder to us of the significance for us of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection, and of the meaning of our baptism.

God saved our lives in a big way with the sacrifice of God’s only and beloved son and with the gift of the Holy Spirit, that kernel of God planted in each one of us.

But I find it interesting that in all of Paul’s talk in this passage of being dead to sin and free from sin, not one single particular sin is mentioned.

Of course, Paul does at times and in other passages provide us with some catalogs of bad things we shouldn’t do. But the absence of that here suggests that we need not always think of sin as specific things we should or should not do, nor of living a life for God as somehow never again doing any of those bad things.

Of course, we are not to go out and deliberately do bad things just because we live in and through God’s grace. But right there in the middle of the passage Paul explains why he says that: “I’m talking about this in these human terms because of your natural limitations.”

We will sin again; bad things will happen again. We will be asked to let go of things that have come to matter more to us than than life itself, perhaps even more than God… and yet to go on living. We are called to live... by and in and through the grace of God... after, and in spite of, all those things.

One of my favorite mentors is a Franciscan monk by the name of Richard Rohr, who publishes a daily meditation via e-mail. Just a few days ago, he wrote this: A Christian is someone who’s animated by the spirit of Christ, a person in whom the spirit of Christ can work. That doesn’t always mean that you consciously know what you are doing. …We may have no idea that we do what we do for Christ.

Note the utter absence here of any notion that we earn God’s grace by having the right answer, or by avoiding sin, or by believing or doing six impossible things before breakfast! That notion of earning our way to eternal life by good deeds, or proving ourselves through great acts of faith, is one of the things we are called to let go of—no easy task in a society dominated by concepts of merit and earning one’s own way.

Rather, we fall into God’s grace, pushed by the trials and failures and impossible choices life hands us. We can only accept God’s grace… in all of our human imperfection and limitations, and thereby become a vehicle of that grace.

And then we give a cup of cold water to a little one who needs it, not to prove we love God but because we know that God loves us, not to earn eternal life but because we already have it.

AMEN.

Amazing Grace: A sermon for 21 March 2010

So here we are, rounding the bend and heading down the home stretch of Lent. Today begins the fifth week of our annual journey into the wilderness, following the example of our Lord.

This week culminates with Palm Sunday, a moment of celebration that kicks off the somber events of Holy Week, leading up to the ultimate joy of Easter. Thus today’s lessons not only help us to look back at our Lenten journey, but also offer us a glimmer of what is to come, both the somber and the celebratory aspects.

The prophet Isaiah (43:16-21) is quite explicit in bridging past and future, and placing the emphasis on hope. The context of this poem or hymn is that the Israelites have been exiles in Babylon for nearly 50 years. By the 43rd chapter of Isaiah, they have heard that they will be allowed to go home.

But Babylon and Jerusalem are a long ways apart when travel is by foot and camel. The way is rough. It goes through wilderness, where food and water is scarce and animals of prey do their thing.

And so Isaiah begins by reminding the Israelites that the Lord has seen them through danger before. He made a way for them through the sea, the same sea that then “extinguished” the Egyptian chariots and warriors that pursued them.

But then Isaiah makes an about face. Don’t dwell on that, he says. The Lord is “about to do a new thing.” Notice how the poetry switches into future tense: The Lord will make a way in the wilderness. The Lord will provide water. The wild animals will honor the Lord their God.

Had I begun preparing this sermon a little earlier last week, I might have e-mailed Ed and asked that we sing “Amazing Grace” today. For the most significant, unifying factor that ties together all of our lessons this morning is the good news of the amazing grace of our God.

My study Bible suggests that Psalm 126 was most likely written after the Israelites have returned from Babylon to Jerusalem. It is a hymn of thanksgiving that also begins in the past tense, but on an even more upbeat note: “[T]he Lord restored the fortunes of Zion” and we were so happy we had to pinch ourselves to make sure we weren’t dreaming. We laughed and shouted for joy, and bragged about our Lord to anyone who would listen.

Then the psalmist too turns to the future. This will happen again, he says. We can count on the Lord our God. Tears and weeping are part of the human condition, but with God’s help we will “come again with joy.”

The apostle Paul’s testimony in his letter to the Philippians (3:4b-14) is a very personal variation on the theme of God’s amazing grace. Paul’s look backward is at his own life and accomplishments. He enumerates them: circumcised on the 8th day, an Israelite of the esteemed tribe of Benjamin, not just a Jew but a Hebrew, a Pharisee who knew and followed the law flawlessly, a zealous protector of the faith as he understood it, even to the point of persecuting the church of Jesus Christ.

But now, Paul says, all of that is worthless. It is rubbish. Again, my study Bible says that the Greek word Paul used here actually has a stronger connotation, the connotation of “excrement.”

Having come to know God in the risen Christ, Paul turns his back on such egoistic claims and attempts to earn righteousness through the human worthiness competition. Instead, he says, righteousness is a gift made possible by the amazing grace of God. It is given and accepted through faith by all who have been made God’s own, through Christ Jesus.

Notice two things about this passage. First, suffering itself is transformed. It is no longer something to beg God to relieve us of at the first possible moment. Rather, it is precisely that which draws us closer to Christ. “I want to know Christ,” Paul says, “and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death.”

Second, human striving is no longer a worthiness competition. It is no longer directed at being more religious or more pious or more moral or better behaved or whatever… in relation to other people. Rather, Paul says, let us keep our focus on the only worthy goal, which is the heavenly call of relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Thereby we will receive the only gift worth having, which is the righteousness of God.

And so we come to today’s Gospel lesson (John 12:1-8), and it is here we find most explicitly the foreshadowing of the somber events of Holy Week.

Jesus sits at table in the home of his friends, Mary, Martha and Lazarus. We have met these people before. The presence of Lazarus, who was dead and now lives, foreshadows what is to come for Jesus, although none of those at dinner save Jesus have an inkling of what is to come.

Martha serves, as usual. Mary expresses her extravagant love and devotion to Jesus, as usual. She takes a pound of costly perfume, anoints Jesus’ feet and dries them with her hair. For this she is criticized by Judas Iscariot. Why wasn’t that perfume sold and the money given to the poor? he asks.

But John makes sure we see the falseness of Judas’ piety. Of the four Gospel accounts, John’s is the one most preoccupied with making a case against Judas by seeing signs that lead up to his betrayal of Jesus.

Jesus, on the other hand, is rather gentle in his rebuke. He reminds Judas that the poor aren’t going away. They will always be here.

I have actually heard this passage used by people to excuse not helping the poor and to justify opposing social safety nets for the poor. “Jesus said the poor will always be with us,” they say. And their piety is as false as that of Judas.

It is always possible for the self-righteous to take something out of context and make it mean whatever serves the selfish interests of the moment. Jesus’ teaching about how we are to love and care for the poor, as recorded over and over again throughout the Gospels, is eminently clear.

In this story, what Jesus most likely means is that the apostles can take care of the poor tomorrow and the next day and the next, but at this very moment, what they need to do most is begin to come to terms with what will soon happen. And what will soon happen are the somber events of Holy Week.

I like to think that somehow, through her devotion to Jesus, Mary intuitively collaborates with him in this scene by anointing his feet with burial perfume.

The Lord is indeed about to do a new thing. That new thing is, by the grace of God, the most amazing gift of all time. It is no less than the salvation and reconciliation of the world to its Maker. But it comes through the suffering, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.

AMEN.

One More Year: A sermon for 7 March 2010

Manure is an amazing thing. And I know whereof I speak. I was raised on a small Iowa farm, a farm my family did not own. We were “share croppers.” We tilled someone else’s land and shared a significant proportion of what we earned with the landowner.

It’s a difficult way to support a family, and so we didn’t get our fertilizer from a nice, shiny tank truck or in tidy plastic bags at the garden center like I do now. Instead, we—my brothers and I—shoveled it out of the barn and out of the hog lot.

So the parable Jesus tells in today’s Gospel lesson (Luke 13:1-9) is for me like one of those Disney World 3D, surround-sound cinematic experiences. I know about working manure into soil. I even have the smells to go with it!

But you don’t have to have been raised on a farm to get the point. In fact, the Saints winning the Super Bowl after 40 years of rarely making it into the playoffs is also to the point: We all need a 2nd chance, a 3rd chance, a 4th or a 40th chance.., or more.

“Give the tree one more year,” says the gardener to the farmer. These are some of the most hopeful words in the gospel. All of us live with the frustration of things that do not work as we wish. Churches strike off in what seems to be a destructive direction; children do foolish things; after trying and trying many of us are ready to give up on someone, something.., even ourselves.

Thanks be to God… for being extremely generous with chances. This Gospel refuses to give up on us. And as Paul says in his first letter to the Corinthians (10:1-13), God does not promise to spare us from trials and tribulations, hard times and difficult choices. Rather, he says, God promises to be with us and to provide the wherewithal to endure.

And that directs our attention to another theme of today’s readings. Since the book of Job, people have been in the business of blaming the victim and pointing fingers at the sufferer. The old Jewish idea said that if someone suffered, it meant they had done something wrong and were being punished.

Pat Robertson would be the modern day equivalent of Job’s friends, with his charge that the earthquake in Haiti was because the people of Haiti had made a pact with the devil.

Jesus fractured that idea by saying that suffering came to all -- the Galileans persecuted by Pilate, those 18 killed when the towers of Siloam fell, all those who were listening when he told today’s parable. “No, I tell you,” Jesus said. No need to point fingers at those experiencing hard times. God's judgment does not work that way.

Then we have the folks who work the other side of that street, the ones who promise that all good things—especially material things—will come to those who believe the right things. These would be the “prosperity gospel” preachers, and it is striking to me that God’s plan for handing out Mercedes Benzs seems to be linked to our sending money to the prosperity gospel preachers.

In other words, from ancient Israel until now, religious folk have been in the business of categorizing, dividing, and grouping people into us versus them. They are sinners and will be punished. We are righteous and will be rewarded with a good life, healthy children, and an abundance of blessings.

But Jesus erased all of those divisions. We are ALL sinners in need of repentance, he taught. This divided age of ours between Red States and Blue States, conservatives and liberals, orthodox and progressive, illegal immigrants and not-so-illegal-immigrants needs to ponder Jesus' words.

Martin Luther King Jr. once said, "We might have come here on different boats, but we are all now on the same ship. If we could get our hearts around this idea of our one-ness we could mend a lot of fences in our world."

I subscribe to a daily online meditation written by a Franciscan friar and Roman Catholic priest by the name of Richard Rohr. One of the themes Fr. Rohr writes about often is that even though Christians say we believe in grace, we have actually made Christianity largely into what he calls a “worthiness contest.”

This worthiness contest is all about preserving our own ego. It’s about projecting evil and sin onto other folks, those we deem less worthy, rather than confronting it within ourselves. And the more precarious our own position, the more threatened we feel by change we don’t understand and forces beyond our control, the more we look for others to identify as "the problem."

Last week’s Seattle Times published a story under the headline, “In hard times, Americans blame the poor.” The story is a response to statements made in recent months by relatively prominent politicians. The lieutenant governor of South Carolina is quoted saying that when government helps the poor it’s like people feeding stray animals that continually “breed.”

The article goes on to report research over the past few months indicating that middle class folks express less generous and more negative attitudes toward the poor when they themselves are afraid of falling during economic hard times.

To summarize, I offer excerpts from several of Fr. Richard meditations because I simply can’t say it any better than he did. He writes, “Jesus ‘took away the sin of the world’ by exposing it first of all as different than we imagined, and letting us know that our pattern of … attacking and blaming others is in fact history’s primary illusion and its primary lie.

“We Christians who dare to worship the scapegoat Jesus became many times in history the primary scapegoaters ourselves—of Jews, heretics, sinners, witches, homosexuals, the poor, the natives in the New World, slaves, other denominations, other religions. It’s rather hard to believe that we missed such a central message.

“…Through Jesus, we all have to face the embarrassing truth that we ourselves are our primary problem. …Our greatest temptation is to try to change other people instead of ourselves. Jesus allowed himself to be transformed and thus transformed others. That is the meaning of the necessary death of Jesus.”

It is especially tempting during Lent to fill any remaining nook and cranny of our lives with some new act of piety or exercise of a Lenten discipline. These too can become part of the worthiness contest.

Remember the fig tree. It can do nothing to save itself. The farmer’s judgment can only kill the tree. But the gardener loosens the soil, works in some manure and gives it another chance. And therein lies the possibility of its transformation.

We too can be transformed. But first we must die to the worthiness contest that keeps us projecting our own fears, anxieties and unworthiness onto the other, then judging and attacking them “over there.” Only when we open our hearts and minds to the mercy and forgiveness of the gardener can we access God in ourselves and then see God in the other.

AMEN.

Called, but... to do what?: A sermon for February 7, 2010

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 the culmination of the process is etched in my memory.

Five men stand at the front of the church. An elder of the church holds up to each man a row of matchsticks, all appearing to be identical. Concealed by his hand is the fact that one of the matchsticks is way shorter than the others. Each of the five takes a matchstick, and the man who chooses the short one is thereby “called” to be our next pastor.

Casting lots to determine God’s call was standard practice in Mennonite churches at that time. And it was based on scripture—specifically, the story in Acts 1 of how Mathias was chosen from between two candidates to replace Judas among the apostles.

Today’s lessons provide three examples of God calling humankind. The scene described by Isaiah (6:1-8) is high drama indeed. It appears to have been staged, not for Isaiah’s benefit, but to proclaim the glory of the Lord. Only when Isaiah realizes and proclaims the profound implication of what he is witnessing does one of the seraphs come with a glowing ember.

Every time I hear this story, I shiver in awe and apprehension. What must Isaiah have experienced in that vision to describe it as being touched on the mouth with a live coal!

Whatever it was, Isaiah is purified, his sins wiped out. And then he hears God’s call, and his answer reverberates through the centuries: “Here am I; send me!”

Simon, also called Peter, and his partners, James and John, receive their call from Jesus in person (Luke 5:1-11). The drama on this occasion surely makes the hearts of many a resident of this Sportsman’s Paradise, Louisiana, beat just a little faster: nets so full of fish that the boat begins to sink. Wow! What a catch!

The response of those Galilean fishermen was amazement, of course, mixed with a bit of apprehension. But most importantly, Peter falls to his knees and, like Isaiah centuries earlier, declares his unworthiness. Only then does Jesus first reassure him then issue the call.

I’m not sure why—perhaps because enough food for the table was never a sure thing when I was a kid—but I’ve always enjoyed imagining the peasants who had gathered to hear Jesus helping themselves to the boatloads of fish abandoned by the new apostles who went off to follow Jesus.

The reading we just heard from 1st Corinthians (15:1-11) does not describe Paul’s conversion, but we know that story. Paul is struck down by the light of Christ, the Resurrected One, and is left temporarily blind by the experience.

In his letter to the Corinthians, he too emphasizes his unfitness for The Call. But he emphasizes even more the divine source of his ability to answer the call. “But by the grace of God, I am what I am,” says Paul, “and his grace toward me has not been in vain” (NRSV).

The Bible offers many stories of God’s call to various people. In contrast to the drama of today’s three lessons, 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 we actually hear God speaking to us, we experience it as supernatural. Back when I was in the process of discerning a call to the diaconate, I parked my vehicle one day in the middle of a Louisiana thunderstorm. Just as I opened the door and began to get out, thunder clapped… right in my face, so close and loud the sound waves pushed me back onto the seat of my car.

“Okay, okay,” I said. “I’m listening, I’m listening!”

It is also clear from these stories that feelings of unworthiness in the face of God’s call have a long and honorable history. Nevertheless, those feelings do not constitute justification for avoiding that call. God’s grace is sufficient for all, 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.

Now, at this point in building this sermon, I considered spending a few minutes on how Paul, the reluctant and by his own designation the “least” of the apostles, teaches us that ALL are called. Not just those who can prophesy and those who can preach, but also those who serve in the most humble capacity. All are called. And by the grace of God, all have something to offer God’s work in the world.

I also considered spending a few minutes on making a connection between “showing forth,” the theme of this season, and “going forth” in response to God’s call. And that would have made a decent sermon for this Fifth Sunday after the Eiphany.

But this week’s breaking news compels me to go briefly in another direction. Today, ten Baptist missionaries from the United States sit in a jail in Haiti, charged with kidnapping. They had gone to a remote area of Haiti and gathered up a busload of Haitian children. They were stopped by authorities as they were about to cross the border into the Dominican Republic.

The details of the story are not yet fully known. At least one version I read suggests the children, and perhaps some of their parents who were still alive, were seduced by pictures of a beautiful hotel with swimming pool and visions of a relatively luxurious future for the children.

But the part of the story that most gives me pause and compels me to speak to it today is the insistence of the missionaries that they were called by God to save those children by taking them away from their ruined homes and out of their traumatized country.

I believe them to be sincere. I believe they thought they were following God’s call. They might well have known what they were doing was illegal but took the risk willingly in their zeal to follow what they understood to be God’s call.

Countless times throughout human 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, like piety, righteousness, and wanting our own answers to the mysteries of God to be the only answers—these things and more get all tangled up in our sense of God’s call.

Yes, we are called, but how do we know what we are called to do? How do we separate our own rich imagination, our arrogance, our wishful thinking about who we are… from our response to the needs of a hurting world?

As usual, it’s easier to come up with the questions than the answers. But one thing we can do to avoid going down a wrong-headed path is to test our sense of call in a community of faith. Today, not even the Mennonites use the system of casting lots to determine who is called to what. Both our individual calls to ministry and our ministries as a congregation merit discussion and evaluation from various points of view.

Another thing we can do is to bring those we would help to the table to participate in decision-making about how we can help them. It has too often been the vanity of developed nations and well-established religions to impose their beliefs and practices along with the charity they hand out. Bringing people to the table to change the way decisions get made requires a good bit more courage and faith in both God and humankind.

And so today let us give thanks for God’s call, let us accept the grace that enables us to respond to that call, and let us pray for wisdom in discerning how we are to carry out that call in ministering to the needs of the world.

AMEN.