August 22, 2010
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Called by God to speak God’s words of grace
What does it mean to be “called by God”? We often associate being called with ordained ministry; we speak of someone having a calling. It is true, I was called into ministry; and more specifically I was called into intentional interim ministry. In some ways, God’s call to me is an echo of what God said to Jeremiah, “Your job is to pull up and tear down, take apart and demolish, and then start over building and planting.” Called to pull up the old habits that no longer serve the congregation, to take apart the barriers to growing ministry, and demolish the idols of past practice and then building healthy ways of being church and planting the seeds of future vision. I am called to do this and I am called to do the tearing up, the taking apart, and the destroying with you. I am called to build and plant with you because what we build and what we plant will be your place and your garden long after I am gone. I am not called into solitary ministry; we are all called by God into ministry.
God knew each one of us as we were being knit in our mother’s womb. God was knitting into our fabric the gifts and talents God knew we would need to follow our calling. Being called by God is not unique or special. What we are called to do is unique and finding our calling is special. I believe true peace and contentment comes to us only when we find our calling. I have heard people say they have never received a call from God. I have also heard my fellow seminarians speak of the moment of their call and how clear and dramatic it was. It is my experience that the call of God is not always dramatic and it is not your one call. In the Hebrew texts, the call of God does often seem to be clear and dramatic, frightening even. I believe these are the encounters with God that were recorded in the ancient texts because this is what was required to break through into the experience of the ancients. They didn’t have that much experience with God to recognize a God encounter of a milder sort. It is clear to me that David had God encounters that were not dramatic and frightening. My explanation is that David developed such an intimate relationship with God that it was not necessary for God to startle him or speak to him with an authoritative voice. Jesus came to show us that God encounters did not have to be frightening experiences. We do not have to approach God with fear that God is going to be displeased and strike us down. God made us to be in communion with God, God is not seeking opportunities to punish us when we seek relationship with God.
It is my experience and my belief that those who preach of a judging and punishing God are the ones who have never really felt and accepted God’s amazing grace. They are serving God as an insurance policy against burning in hell. They know nothing of God’s love and grace, they believe you earn your way into God’s good graces and seem to believe part of their work to earn their own salvation is to convince others of their unworthiness and how much God abhors them. There are some evangelists who even seem to have a scorecard on the number of souls they have saved from the pit of hell, as if our salvation has anything to do with anybody other than our God and us. We are not called to scare people into behaving as we believe they should. We are called to share the Good News of God’s desire to be in relation with us, to walk with us and guide us in this mortal life. We have Good News to tell and each of us is uniquely called to share this Good News.
The health of this congregation and any congregation is dependent on not how often we tell ourselves we are loved of God. The health of this congregation is dependent on how well we encourage everyone who comes here to discover their call and provide them with a way to live out that call. Our spiritual health is not demonstrated by how well we feed ourselves, our spiritual health is measured by how well we feed others. We have been called to serve not to be served. At the Size Summit, I was introduce the concept of bibs or aprons. Too many people come to church with a bib on, they expect to be fed. The scream and cry if the food doesn’t come fast enough or if it isn’t to their liking. People in bibs often burp and spit and do little that is actually productive. On the other hand, people who wear aprons are prepared to serve, they are looking for work to be done and the resources to do it. People in aprons are more mature than people in bibs, they communicate concern about others and seek instruction in how to improve what they do. People put on aprons with the expectation they are going to be put to work. The health of this congregation or any congregation is dependent upon how quickly and successfully we move people from wearing bibs to wearing aprons. Amen.
