Blogging Towards Sunday

August 26, 2007

Are We ALL

- each and everyone -

REALLY Called by God?

The texts from the Christian Bible that I'm preaching on this next Sunday are Jeremiah 1:4-10 and Luke 13:10-17.

In the past weeks we've been talking about disovering the Will of God. We tend to think it's some sort of Secret Truth, or objective knowledge that we have to acquire in order to finally grasp the will of God for the world. We're unable to figure it out. So in our uber-individualistic world we thus feel disempowered, distant from God, unworthy of the faith that we claim as foundaitonal in and for our lives. Yet many theologians and disciples have reframed the question. It's not about acquiring some difficult truth, but rather more about perspective, purpose and participation. God's will is easily understood: Love God with all of who you are. Love your neighbor as God loves us. Love the excluded (the orphan, the widow, and the foreigner) with particular intention and passion. Rather clear. The trickier part is applying it to our lives. Often we turn in circles, waiting, praying, hoping, and then being disappointed that we haven't been struck by a lightening bolt as we hear God's voice boom from the heavens. Instead we should ask ourselves 3 simple questions:

1. What are the great needs around us?
2. What might God be doing? What might we be glimpsing?
3. How might God be inviting us to join in, to participate in the work that God is already doing?

Are we really all called by God, created by God, meant to be involved intricately and integratively in what God is doing in our world?

The passage from Jeremiah is about Call and Transformation. Jeremiah has this experience of God's holiness and power around 627BC. He's either a small boy or a young man still living in the home of his priestly father Hilkiah in the village of Anathoth (near Jerusalem). This experience of God forms him. God says that he was born, intended and created for a special purpose: to be God's prophet at a unique time in the history of Israel, in particular during the final years of the Judean Monarchy before it's ultimate destruction. But Jeremiah is reluctant to accept, even refusing. God says "NO" - he can't turn down the call, for God doesn't ask him to participate....rather God says this is what you are meant for. In experiencing God's holiness (like Moses reluctant to be a leader in Egypt and like Isaiah seeking to avoid God's Call) Jeremiah is changed forever.

Often we say that we are each and everyone called in a same manner by God. But I haven't had such an experience. I haven't seen a burning bush, seen an angel fly with coals to my lips, or had God touch my mouth. Maybe it's all just some narrative ploy to make us feel good about ourselves, feel loved by God, included in the pantheon of the disciples. But is it?

In Luke 13 Jesus pushes the envelope. He is trying to open the eyes of the Religious Leaders of his day. Yet they fail to discern the significance of what is happening in the present moment. They're so focused on following the laws and traditions given in the past, maintaining the status quo, afraid of being the ones to get lazy on their watch, that they miss what God is doing in their midst. They fail to see what Jesus is teaching, that this crippled woman is more important to God than observing the Sabbath law, that people are more important than "principals", rules, or traditions. She is even integral in the Will of God in that moment, time, and place! Jesus tries to open their eyes, to give them a perspective of the world transformed by God's holiness (like Jeremiah), yet they are stuck and as they're shamed by their failure to "get it" in public they decide that the only thing left to do is to eliminate the threat to their power that Jesus represents.

The conclusion of the story rings true for the predicition in Luke 12:49-53 that Jesus will ultimately bring division. In my own life I've often naively thought that if I could just figure out the will of God for me then everything would work out just right. The reality is that God's will isn't just for me, that isn't not just about me and what I can do on my own initiative. It's about what God is already doing - and how you and I together are an integral part in God's purpose and passion for the world. Yet when we doing participate in what God is doing it doesn't always result is our wildest-dreams-coming-true. Often it can lead to difficult relationships, fear of the unknown, rejection by friends/family that don't understand or share the same vision. We mean well but often the desire for power, the fear of rejection, the shame of being confused and the anger at being excluded lead to division rather than collabration, to destruction rather than construction, to death rather than life.

Recently I heard a discussion about who is righteous and who isn't (the Mormon church articulated a new take on their perspective of holiness in terms of homosexuality today). I think such talk misses the boat. In Luke 13 Jesus isn't talking about who is with God and who isn't. He's trying to get everyone into the boat, to open all eyes to the significance of what God is doing in the moment and time in order for them to enter in to God's emerging work. We often want God to break into our lives and speak to us. But rarely are we content when God breaks into our world to transform it and to transform our experience of who God is and how God wants us to be with one another as co-participants and colleagues in God's work of good news and justice right here and now.

So are we all called like Jeremiah? The witness and testimonies of the Bible and the words and actions of Jesus say "YES." We all are called to love and be loved by God. We all are called to love each other and be loved in that same grace-full, peace-making and justice-doing way. Wether we seem to have a lot to offer (like Jeremiah) or not (like the crippled woman) is besides the point. It's not what we have to offer, or what we can do that is the crux of the question. It's what God is doing and how we respond to the invitation to join in with God's people to transform the world into what God longs for it to be.

So the 3 questions remain:

1. What are the great needs around us?
2. What might God be doing? What might we be glimpsing?
3. How might God be inviting You and I to join in, to participate in the work that God is already doing?