Joel D. Kline
February 1, 2004
Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren
The Fourth Sunday after Epiphany
Back in my seminary days, many of my fellow students and I were trying to determine the future direction of our lives. More than once, I recall hearing a seminary professor give the advice that if you can do something other than ministry in the church, that’s the path you ought to take. It was a way of reminding us that set-apart ministry is a response to God’s call upon one’s life. In that sense, ministry is not simply an individual’s personal choice, but rather a response to God’s leading, to an inner compulsion. To respond to God’s call is to assert, “Here I am; I can do not other.”
While growing up in a pastor’s family, I can recall telling others adamantly and with some frequency that the last thing on earth I wanted to become is a pastor. In fact, some of you have heard me share that when I went off to college, I told my folks that I was finished with the church—that I had already had enough of church to last a lifetime! Yet, even then, in my more open and honest moments, I was aware, deep within, of an “urging” beyond myself—an inner prompting that I only gradually came to claim as God’s call.
When I consider the story of Jeremiah being called as a prophet, I am not surprised that he would offer words of resistance. “Ah, Lord God!” laments Jeremiah. “Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.” Jeremiah protests that he is too young, and with a whole host of excuses I also protested, attempting to convince others—and myself—that I was not fit for ministry. I was too introverted; I had had my fill of the church; I was not capable of caring as deeply as a pastor ought to care.
I rather suspect that Jeremiah and I are not alone in making excuses, when we sense God calling us to embark upon some new venture in life. Who in this morning’s congregation has not considered that perhaps you might be open to a new venture at some later time—perhaps after completing your education, or once your career has gotten off the ground and you’ve been able to set aside a sizeable nest egg. For those of us who are parents, we may well say that we will be open to God’s call after the children have grown and are living on their own, or once the house is paid for, or perhaps after we’ve had the experience of being grandparents.
Likely you remember the story of Abraham and Sarah, well into their seventies, hearing God’s call to go to a new land and give birth to a new people. I sometimes wonder if God had not been calling them for some time, and they simply ran out of excuses by age seventy-five! Or perhaps, for the first time in their lives, they were at a point of really listening for the voice of God.
Jeremiah heard the call to be a prophet among the people of ancient Israel. Sarah and Abraham heard a call to give birth to a new people. Over some years I gradually came to terms with the sense that God was calling me into pastoral ministry. But God does not only call pastors and prophets and founders of nations; God calls each one of us to consider the gifts with which we have been blessed, and how we will use those gifts in ministry and service, for building up the body of Christ, and in ways that carry the good news of God’s gracious love into the world around us. Indeed, Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his book Life Together warned that a community of faith “which allows unemployed members to exist within it will perish because of them. It will be well, therefore, if every member receives a definite task to perform for the community, that he [or she] may know in hours of doubt that he [or she], too, is not useless and unusable.”
Problem is, discerning our gifts and responding to God’s call frequently involves a “letting go” every bit as much as a “taking on.” The writer of Hebrews asserts that Sarah and Abraham went out, not knowing where they were going! Talk about faith! We like things well planned, thoroughly mapped out; perhaps that’s why many are drawn to religious traditions in which everything is spelled out to the Nth degree. But the Scriptures point to a very different experience of faith—faith as a matter of trust, of being willing to hand over the direction of one’s life journey to God, of acknowledging God’s control rather than clinging to our own need for control. In a very real sense, faith means that we are no longer firmly based within ourselves; instead, faith is allowing ourselves to be overtaken by God! Rather than answering all our questions, faith frequently raises every bit as many questions as it answers. Is that not the power of Thomas Merton’s prayer that we used earlier in the service as a prayer of confession?
My Lord God,
I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
This is the paradox of faith, isn’t it? On the one hand, in our relationship with God we find a deepened level of security; we trust that the One who created us loves us and is working through us to further life in the kingdom of God. But on the other hand, faith also creates insecurity, for we little know where the journey we embark upon with God will lead.
In a book about prayer and the spiritual life entitled With Open Hands Henri Nouwen asserts that the life of faith
means being constantly ready to let go of your certainty and to move on further than where you are now. It demands that you take to the road again and again, leaving your house and looking forward to a new land for yourself and your brothers and sisters. That is why praying demands poverty, that is, the readiness to live a life in which you have nothing to lose so that you always begin afresh.
Letting go of certainty and beginning afresh. Some years ago I read the story of wealthy businessperson William Larimer Mellon, Jr. Mellon seemingly had everything he needed and wanted at his fingertips—prestige, wealth, status, success, a healthy family, opportunity to travel, freedom to choose his involvements. But at the age of 37 Mellon happened upon a magazine article, the reading of which began to alter his thinking and eventually led to a fresh beginning. The article focused on Albert Schweitzer who, years before at the age of thirty, put aside successful career opportunities in music, writing and teaching, so that he might go to Africa as a medical missionary.
An idea was planted in Mellon’s mind, one he found he could not shake. Reading all he could find about Albert Schweitzer, even corresponding directly with him, Mellon began to embrace a new call, blurting out one day to his wife Gwen, “I think I’ll go to medical school, then settle down somewhere that can use a good country doctor.”
William Mellon’s imagination had been grasped by new possibilities; a new purpose, a new vision for life was now his. After graduating from medical school, Mellon began work in disease-ridden Haiti, where he built a hospital with his own funds. This new calling of Mellon’s involved both a letting go—a turning from past priorities and involvements, from what seemed like a “sure thing”—and a taking on the uncertainty of a new vision. Mellon took to the road yet another time, and found himself involved in ventures he could not earlier have foreseen.
Jeremiah the prophet initially objects to the call to serve God, but it is a call that will not let him alone. Looking back on his life, the prophet feels as if God’s hand has been upon Jeremiah from the very beginning, even while in the womb, and so the sense is that the prophet is literally compelled to embark upon a new road. Along the way, God assures Jeremiah, “Do not be afraid … for I am with you to deliver you.”
Someone once said that whenever God or one of God’s messengers speaks the words, “Do not be afraid,” watch out! For invariably the assurance, “fear not” is accompanied by the challenge to embark upon new paths, to embrace a new chapter in one’s life. The call to Jeremiah involves sharing a difficult message—a message that includes judgment as well as hope, plucking up as well as planting, pulling down as well as building. As a result, Jeremiah has become known for words of denunciation. In his book Peculiar Treasures: A Biblical Who’s Who Frederick Buechner writes of Jeremiah,
He denounced the king and the clergy. He denounced recreational sex and extramarital jamborees. He denounced the rich for exploiting the poor, and he denounced the poor for deserving no better … right at the very gates of the Temple Jeremiah told [the people] that if they thought God was impressed by all the mumbo-jumbo that went on in there, they ought to have their heads examined.
There were competing prophets in Jeremiah’s day who offered an alternative perspective, who proclaimed “peace, peace, when there is no peace” (6:14; 8:11), who blessed the status quo and assured the people of the day that things were getting better and better. Jeremiah became so frustrated with the people’s lack of response that at one point he cries out to God, “Truly you are to me like a deceitful brook, like waters that fail” (15:18). And on another occasion the prophet laments in anger,
O Lord, you have enticed me,
and I was enticed;you have overpowered me,
and you have prevailed.I have become a laughingstock all day long;
everyone mocks me.For whenever I speak, I must cry out,
“Violence and destruction!”For the word of the Lord has become for me
a reproach and derision all day long.If I say, “I will not mention God,
or speak any more in God’s name,”then within me there is something
like a burning fire shut up in my bones;I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot (20:7-9).
Do you have within you something like a burning fire, an inner compulsion that suggests it is time to take to the road, to embark upon new beginnings, to take up the cross and follow in Jesus’ footsteps? This is the nature of God’s call, to lead us from the comfortable certainty of the past to the challenging uncertainty of a new future. Answering God’s call can indeed be risky business, but along the way we find ourselves filled with a brand new song—a song of hope, a song of purposeful living, a song of peace, a song of self-giving love.
Sisters and brothers, are you ready to answer the call and take to the road?
Creator God, speak to us in these moments of stillness.
Speak to us words of love, reminding us of who you are—Source of abundant love—and who you call us to be, bearers of your light and love in the world around us. Speak to us, O God, words of hope, reminding us that there is much more to life than what we now see, that a new world, even now, is being born—a world where justice and compassion and mercy and grace are the order of the day. Speak to us words of peace, O God. Fill our hearts with the kind of peace we cannot create on our own, a peace that far surpasses our limited understanding. And guide us, holy God, in those paths of peace that will enable us to bring healing and reconciliation to our broken and searching world. O God of peace, transform our weapons into instruments of love and healing; transform our fear into courage, our darkness into your marvelous light.
Hear us now, O God, as we hold before you those who find life to be tough going. We pray for those served by the PADS ministry and by our Soup Kettle. Particularly in these days of frigid cold, we are mindful of the gifts of warm homes, caring hearts, and supportive relationships, and we remember those who find themselves alone and without the basic resources we often take for granted. In moments of stillness, fill us with gratitude, O God, for the good gifts we receive.
Compassionate God, we pray your healing touch upon those struggling with illness … May your light and love uphold, encourage, and strengthen each, filling each with renewed hope and healing.
Loving God, be our vision for the living of these days. And guide us as a congregation, as we discern your leading and make decisions about an associate pastor.
We pray in the name of the One who came among us in human flesh, embodying the way of love and peace—Jesus the Christ. Amen.