GOD’S CALL

The word of the Lord came to me, saying, before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born, I set you apart.

Jeremiah 1: 4,5

            I was raised in a medical family. My mother was a nurse, my aunt was a nurse, my uncle was a cardiologist, my oldest brother was a hospital administrator, my middle brother is a retired surgeon, and it was just assumed that I was destined to become a medical doctor. Even I believed it. You can imagine my surprise, then, when the minister of my home church in Hawthorne, New Jersey said to me one day in the parking lot of the church (I was in about the 8^th grade or a freshman in high school), “Jack, you’re going to resist it, but some day you are going to become a minister.” My immediate thought was, “Rev. Moore, I have great respect for you, but frankly, I think you’re crazy.” Come to think back on it, he did have a few things to back up his claim. I had been president of our youth group for a number of years, was by that time a Life Scout, had taken piano lessons since the 5^th grade and was now taking organ lessons at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Paterson, and had obtained permission to practice on the organ at our home church.  Don’t tell Monica about this, but I even got a job in high school playing the organ and directing the choir at a small independent church, where I seriously disliked their music but enjoyed the work. None of this, however, even remotely suggested that God might be calling me to be a minister. In fact, I resisted the whole idea with more than a little intensity.

            So, I went through college as a chemistry major, and was told by Columbia Medical School that if I made up a few courses in biochemistry and comparative anatomy, I could be admitted in next year’s class. I dutifully enrolled in the classes. Right across the street from Columbia is Union Theological Seminary of New York. For the fun of it I went over there for some meals at their refectory, and was amazed at how interested I became in the students’ conversations. I talked with a few guys and gals at the bookstore, and even enrolled in some summer classes at Union. Whatever it was that hit me, or whoever, one day I went home and announced to my family that I was tired of hitting my head against the wall, intended to drop out of Columbia, and apply for admission at New Brunswick Theological Seminary on the campus of Rutgers University. They thought I had lost my mind. The Seminary admitted me provisionally. My major was not exactly what they wanted for seminary students. But I need to tell you, it took me about three weeks to know I was at the right spot, at the right time, and I loved it.

            I tell you that little story in order to affirm that even though we can resist God’s call in our lives, for years, to become what God wants us to become, which might be a minister, but maybe a social worker, or a doctor or nurse, or a judge or a teacher, or a champion for the homeless and the hungry, God seems to have a way of coming out on top.

            I love to tell a more detailed version of that story to Senior High Youth Groups, and the message is, listen to what your mom and dad say they want you to become, but whatever, become what you and maybe God want you to become.  Be true to yourself, first, last and foremost. You never know, God may be calling you, and you may resist it, but that does not diminish the power of the call.

            Jeremiah is the paradigm here. How is this for a call? “The word of the Lord came to me, saying, ‘Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.’” Now that’s hard to argue with! That, by the way, is predestination at its best. Before you were born, my son, I had it all figured out for you. But even to such a claim, Jeremiah resisted. “Oh, Sovereign Lord, I do not know how to speak; I am only a child.” Like Moses, Jeremiah claimed inability to be a prophet. But Jeremiah’s objection is denied immediately by the Lord. “Do not say, ‘I am only a child.’” There are times I think our very resistance to God’s call is the sine-qua-non of the authenticity of God’s call.

            I’m not quite sure what to say of the call on Jesus. We have no record of Jesus ever questioning the call of God on his life. But here in Luke when he spoke his first sermon, mentioning God’s helping two non-Israelites through Elijah, making the point that when Israel rejected God’s messenger of redemption, God sent Elijah to the Gentiles, and so it might be again if they refuse to accept Jesus, thus making everybody in the synagogue furious at the thought of God’s blessing on the Gentiles, and they took him to a cliff to throw him down, I suspect even Jesus might have given second thought to this calling. Could it be that he might have said to the Father, “Dear God, you know, I could go back to the carpenter shop in Nazareth and do very well building fine chests of drawers!”

            The point is that we may not only resist God’s call, but what we do with God’s call may not always help us win friends and influence people.

            I was struck by an observation along these lines made by Kyle Childress, pastor of Austin Heights Baptist Church in Nacogdoches, Texas, writing in the January 9 issue of The Christian Century. He said, and I quote, “I was only seven or eight when one of our small-town West Texas heroes came home from Vietnam. He had lived three doors down from me, was a star on the high school football team, and had been in my father’s Sunday school class before going off to Vietnam. He came back with one leg and a message. God told him, he said, that the war was wrong and that our church and our town needed to change our minds and hearts about racial segregation. Since he was never given the opportunity to stand in the pulpit and testify, he prophesied in casual conversation, but the results were the same: everyone talked about what he said, what had happened to him over there, and whether or not the war had messed up his head. One Sunday after church, my father commented to my mother that perhaps the boy had some mental problems from Vietnam, but that didn’t mean that what he said was wrong. Soon however, my father, as a member of the local school board, began pushing for our schools to be integrated.” Childress concludes with this observation. Though that young Vietnam veteran never considered himself a prophet, I’ve come to believe that he was. And although our church didn’t know what to do with him, he was formed by its members and taught from the nursery on up that God speaks and God calls, and that our job is to “trust and obey, for there’s no other way, to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.”  It just may be that those who are on the extreme edge of most of us centrists may have a word from the living God for us!

            I say to each and every one of us here, who is to say, other than your own conscience, when God may be speaking to you and calling you, the God who may just be saying to you, “my son, my daughter, before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born, I set you apart.” And of course you are going to say in response, “But Lord, I don’t know how to speak; I am only a child.” And will you give God the chance to come back to you and say, “Now, now, do not say, I am only a child. You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you.”

            Now, dear friends,  I want to say something to every member of this church, whether you are listening now or might read this later. I am of the firm belief that God is calling you in a very special way, a way that may take a bit of your energy and thought. God is calling you to take part, with the rest of us, in a very exciting process that may last about a year or so, a process in which we will soon be engaged, because we are a church between the times. Between our celebration of Haywood’s incredibly wonderful leadership of 32 years, and between that time when we as a congregation call the new pastor of this outstanding church. And in this in between time, we are going to be engaged in some very interesting and significant events. As, for example, celebrating our history, asking, what were the significant events and turns in our past that shaped us;  as, for example, celebrating who we are today and, as rich as our worship and work is, are there some aspects of our life together that we would like to improve on or add to; in other words, we are going to work together at redefining ourselves. As for example, asking ourselves, what new visions do have for our future. What new commitments would we like to make in order to determine what is important and maybe what is less important. And more precisely, we are going to be electing a nominating committee which will happen at a congregational meeting on February 18, which committee will nominate to you members of the Pastoral Nominating Committee, which will draft a position description for the new pastor, the church information form which will describe who we are and what we want to be, and begin the process of searching for that new pastor. You will hear much more about this in very soon in much greater detail,  but just let me now underscore the fact that every member of the congregation will be invited to participate in this process which I believe you will find exciting, interesting, stretching your mind a bit about our past, our present, and our future. God is calling you to this adventure. I think it is not too much to affirm that God is saying to us as a church, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I set you apart, and appointed you as a prophet to the nations. And we can say, “Yes, Lord, but I do not know how to speak; and I am only a child.” And I firmly believe that God comes right back and says, “Now, now, do not say that. And here’s the important part and why God responds in this way. God says, “Do not be afraid, for I am with you.”

            And here is the final word. Whether it is a young high school student resisting God’s call until he just gives in; whether it is Jeremiah scared to death to answer God’s call; whether it is Jesus who in his calling outlasted the rejection of his own people, whether it is a congregation triumphing through a time of change, whatever we say, whatever we do, there is only one way in which it needs to be done, and that is the way of love. Talk about how to say what we are called to say, well, “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” Talk about being a prophet to our own time,  well, “If I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.” So how would you describe this “love,” in which we are to respond to God’s calling? Well, love is patient and kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. Or, to quote Paul from another context, “it builds up the body into Christ who is the head of the body.”  You think this is really true, that before God formed you in the womb He knew you, and before you were born God set you apart. Well, says Paul, Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. So, there are three great attributes we can posses in life; faith, hope and love. But you see, says Paul. Love never ends; it is of the stuff of eternity which is why, I guess, the greatest of these is love.

            God calls, we resist, God comes back at us, and then sends us out and says, now, do your thing. Don’t be afraid. I will be with you. And whatever you say or do, do it in love, and it will last for a very long time.

Here I am, Lord. Is it I, Lord?

I have heard you calling in the night.

I will go, Lord, if you lead me.

I will hold your people in my heart.