SAYING YES TO GOD'S CALL
Exodus
3:1-15 Psalm
63:1-8 1
Corinthians 10:1-13 Luke 13:1-9
I
read
In a
book
That
a man called
Christ
Went
about doing good.
It is
very disconcerting to me
That
I am so easily
Satisfied
With
just
Going
about.
The
responses
in the gospel reading this morning reveal
something about how we react to news of tragedy. There is bewilderment
about the travesty inflicted on the Galileans and the
suffering of those who died when the tower at Siloam fell. We often
want to blame the victim of disaster so we can feel comfortable that
such things would never happen to us. Those things happen to bad people
or "less civilized" people in Africa or Haiti or ...
After all, we’re pretty good
people, keep the rules, go to church most Sundays, pay our tithes and
offerings, and rarely kick our dog. No. the
challenge of trials is not in the fact they come to us but rather in
how we respond to them. Jesus, as does Paul in Corinthians, urges us
to look at tragic events as examples of life's realities – full of
uncertainty and risk. The message is simple: Live each day to the
fullest, not putting off those things that are important to us. Life
is for but a season and then the opportunities to fulfill our highest
calling are gone.
On
the heels of this challenge to live in the present Jesus tells a
parable about a fruitless fig bush. For us, it is a
discomfiting call to ministry, a call to be fruit-bearers in God's kingdom. The fig tree, like the vine, is a type, a
symbol, of Israel and, as Jesus spoke, a fig bush was probably
nearby. To the listening disciple, God is the “man,” Jesus the
gardener, three years a time of fulfillment. Jesus’ ministry
produced large crowds but few grasped the good news of the presence
of the Kingdom of God. Decision time is at hand; at the culmination
of this teaching which began in Luke 12, Jesus forcefully calls his
disciples to respond.
For
Luke, writing for believers challenged by separation from their
Jewish roots, searching for identity, this is a call to become the
church. His challenge is to live boldly, not waiting until we are
good people to begin to live out our baptismal calling. Jesus comes
to us as the gardener, calling us to show forth the God who is with
us. He “digs and dungs” – unsettles our lives at the very
roots and feeds us with sustenance – and gifts each of us so we
might be fruitful. Christ was training disciples who would carry the
message, who would form the church. Luke is challenging the
formative church to become the living Word of God in the world.
But
the real
issue is how do we
live this call to be God's people, God's hands at work in the world?
We
seem to think repentance is asking forgiveness
for the bad things we do or the good things we fail to do. The truth
is, asking for forgiveness is confession – repentance is something
much deeper.
Our
actions – or failures to act – reflect on our beliefs and
convictions. When we are dominated by fear and a sense of isolation
from God and creation, our actions produce sin. With awareness of
the presence of God's Kingdom and our place in that kingdom, our
actions begin to reflect that. To repent is not so much about the
things we do that bear evidence of our sin as it is about opening our
minds, our hearts, our souls to the love, presence, and grace of God.
It is to serve the Kingdom of God and be active participants in
God’s creative mystery. We are disciples – servant-leaders –
ministers in the government of God, bearers of the word of peace,
justice, love, and life.
Moses'
story
provides an excellent illustration. We move from a barren bush
in the land of milk and honey to a burning bush in a barren
desert. Here is a challenge to rise up from our place of inertia
(fruitless
death) and to take our rightful place in the living Kingdom of
God. We are to move out from our comfortable place and accept a
mantle of
responsibility, not just for our own self but for the community in
which we live, in which we find our identity.
A
lawbreaker and a murderer, Moses is called to become a leader and
lawgiver. Minding his own business, or at least his father-in-law's
sheep, in Midian, he encounters a bush that bursts into flame with a
voice issuing from it. The voice says "Moses, Moses."
This is going to be a story of call; in the Bible, nobody gets called
just once. To get someone's attention, God says his name at least
twice: "Samuel, Samuel," or "Saul, Saul."
remember last week? “Jesus' lament, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem...”
YHWH
does all the talking: "I have observed the misery of my people,
I have heard their cry, I know their sufferings, I have come down to
deliver...." The idea of deliverance is God's; the initiative
is with YHWH. But then comes the surprise: YHWH says, "I will
send you."
It
is odd that God needs someone, particularly someone as inept as
Moses, to do the work. Surely being God means having the ability to
work solo. It is odd of God to pick Moses – something Moses
realizes and in quick succession, he lodges five objections. Moses
isn't just being humble when he says he isn't good at public
speaking, theology, or politics. He really doesn't have the skills
required for liberating leadership. But YHWH answers Moses'
objections by promising to give him what he needs, the words and
deeds he needs to get Pharaoh's attention.
Some
principles emerge.
Ministry begins in the mind of God: God's choice tells us
more about the quality of God than about the qualities of those called to lead in ministry.
The
people called to serve are usually the “wrong” people. It is as
if God goes out of the way to pick those who, at least on
the face of it, have no virtues to suggest they would
be good leaders. Think about Abraham and Sarah, Jacob, Mary,
Peter, and Paul, as
well as of Moses. Perhaps God likes a challenge. A God who
makes Moses into a great priest, prophet, and pastor must be a
wonderful God.
The qualities of "good ministers" are gifts from God to be
gratefully received rather than skills, techniques, or knowledge to
be developed. The only true credentials we have is faith in the promise, "I will be with you."
As
Jesus put it: "You did not
choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit,
fruit that will last ..." (John 15:16a). But always in saying
yes to God's call, we yield our personal autonomy. We are owned,
commandeered for God, to be used for purposes greater than ourselves.
There
are
many stories of people, great and small, who, over the centuries,
have responded to God's call. One is that of Toyohiko Kagawa, the
“St. Francis of Japan” who is sometimes called a 20th century
“Moses” and was a forerunner of Mother Teresa. Born in 1888 in
Kobe, Japan, Toyohiko's life began in trouble. Shamed by his
illegitimate birth, his mother left
him abandoned, an orphan. He was raised by Christian missionaries from whom he
found meaning and love. When he became a
Christian, his only relatives disowned him. As a Christian in
Japan, he had few examples to imitate; he simply had Jesus to follow,
and follow he did — into the slums to serve the
neediest of the needy. He heard a call to a vocation to
help the poor and felt he must live as one of them.
From
1910
to 1924 he lived for all but two years in a shed six feet square
in the slums of Kobe. As one of the lowest of the low, he shared
his living quarters. He received a small income from a
training school and supplemented it by working as a chimney sweep. He
then gave away the food and clothes it bought. The slum bullies
robbed and beat him, burned down his shack, knocked his teeth out and
challenged
his faith by demanding that he give away all his clothes. He did
that on
more than one occasion and had to wear a woman’s robe until he
could replace them.
He
spent two years (1914-1916) at Princeton studying techniques for the
relief of poverty. In 1923 he was asked to supervise social work in
Tokyo. His writings began to attract favorable notice from the
Japanese government and abroad. He established credit unions,
schools, hospitals, and churches, and wrote and spoke extensively on
the application of Christian principles to the ordering of society.
He founded the Anti-War League and was arrested in 1940 after
publicly apologizing to China for the Japanese invasion of that
country. In the summer of 1941, he visited the United States in an
attempt to avert war between Japan and the U.S. After the war,
despite failing health, he devoted himself to the reconciliation of
democratic ideals and procedures with traditional Japanese culture.
Once
when he visited an American University two students went to hear him
speak but were unimpressed . One said to the other, “He didn’t
have a lot to say, did he?” A woman behind them leaned over and
said, “When you’re hanging on a cross you don’t need to say a
lot.” He died in Tokyo 23 April 1960.
He
wrote the poem with which I opened this morning. I would end with
another of his, a poem called “Discovery” that summarizes God’s
challenge to each of us to live out our calling in God’s Kingdom:
I
cannot invent
New
things, Like the airships
Which
sail
On
silver wings;
But
today
A
wonderful thought
In
the dawn was given,
And
the stripes on my robe,
Shining
from wear,
Were
suddenly fair,
Bright
with a light
Falling
from Heaven---
Gold,
silver, and bronze;
Lights
from the windows of heaven.
And
the thought
Was
this:
That
a secret plan
Is
hid in my hand;
That
my hand is big,
Big,
Because
of this plan.
That
God,
Who
dwells in my hand,
Knows
this secret plan
Of
the things He will do for the world
Using
my hand!
What might God do with your hand?
Amen
The
Rev. John Dryden Burton
St.
James Episcopal Church
Springfield.
Missouri
7
Mar 2010