Date:
May 9, 2010, Sixth Sunday of Easter
Author: The Rev. Dr. James D. Kegel
GLORY TO THE FATHER AND TO THE SON AND TO THE HOLY SPIRIT, AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING, IS NOW, AND WILL BE FOREVER, AMEN.
I was riding out to the cemetery with a funeral director about a week ago and we starting talking about a call—how a person knows what he or she should be doing in life. His concern was not about going to seminary, he did ask about going into church work. In the Lutheran understanding we are all called to be Christian ministers, to live out God’s call in our lives no matter what the occupation. We are all given a vocation and part of that is to faithful witness wherever we find ourselves. In fact it was a reformation revolution that interpreted vocation not just for those who would become priests and monks and nuns but each Christian is called by the Holy Spirit, lead and guided by God. Anyway, our conversation was about how he could know that being a funeral director is what he is supposed to do. He had thought of doing other work, even walked away from it for a while, but always came back. Something was calling him to work with bereaved people, and he was very good at what he did—he even taught in embalming school. I shared with him my own experiences with vocation. At least twice in my life, I wondered whether God was calling me to remain in parish ministry—the first time when I went to graduate school and the second about ten, twelve years ago. The strange thing was that after soul-searching and praying, test-taking and counseling, I came back to parish ministry and realized that this is what God wants me to do.
At our text study this week we talked about vocation, calling. A retired missionary said that he had had many people tell him that they felt called to become missionaries. The pastors related stories of people they had known who felt called to become pastors. In our Lutheran Church it is important that people feel an internal call to ministry and it is important that the call be tested. The question must always be, “Is this God’s will for me?” The same goes for other careers and personal questions—is this the right job, is this the right person to spend my life with, is this what I should be doing with my life?” Then, through prayer, ask for the answer. In determining God’s will, it is important to ask other people, trusted friends and family. They can see things in us that we can not see. I remember my mother saying to me, “This is not the right girl for you”—and she was right. It wasn’t Margit; by the way, my parents were overjoyed when she agreed to marry me! We test the spirits, we test our call. We ask God’s guidance. But in the Lutheran Church every internal call must also be connected to an external call. Many people may feel called to be missionaries, but there are no jobs open. Many want to be pastors but there are no vacancies—in this economy, those who should be retiring are hanging on to their jobs and making no openings for younger people. This is not true only in the church, although it is true here, but in almost every other career.
A good illustration of God’s call is found in our text from Acts. I would like to go back a few verses because they show the importance of letting the Holy Spirit lead and guide us: Paul and Timothy are traveling preaching and teaching. Starting at verse nine we read—“They went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. When they had come opposite Mysia, they attempted to go to Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them so they went down to Troas.” Then our text follows with a vision in the night to Paul that a man from Macedonia, in Europe, pled with him to come and help. God had decided against ministry in Asia and Bithynia, but for ministry in Macedonia.
Did you catch what Luke, the writer of Acts, is doing here? He is making sure we understand that the ministry of Paul is directed by the Holy Spirit. It is not Paul and his associates who decide what to do, what problems to solve, where to put their time and energy, it is simply a willingness to be lead and guided by God. They do not go to Asia because the Holy Spirit forbade them. They did not preach in Bithynia because the Spirit of Jesus would not allow it. They went to Macedonia because God had called them to proclaim the Gospel. And our text is interesting because it changes from third person singular, Paul, he had seen a vision and then it changes to first person plural—we decided to cross, we set out from Troas. When the direction became clear, Paul was joined by Luke—that is what this seems to say. The author is directly involved in following the call of God.
In the text we catch a sense of the frustration of Paul. Until he received this vision he had doors closed to him. When we seek God’s direction we may have doors shut too. Things we want to do become impossible. I keep thinking of JillMichelle Cossart now two years out of seminary waiting for a call and Roberta Smythe who is also waiting and waiting. These women have been called to ministry and their calls certified by the church, trained well and have gifts to serve. But when there are no positions available then it is as if the Spirit of Jesus is saying, keep watching and waiting and praying. It must have been frustrating for Paul and Timothy but then God’s purpose was made known to them—they were to cross into Europe and bring the Gospel to Macedonia, Luke joins them and our text says they sailed in a straight and direct course to Samothrace and Neapolis and Philippi.
We also talked at our text study about visions and how suspect they may be in our culture and church. I know many of you have had spiritual experiences. But we don’t talk about them. We live according to cultural norms of philosophical naturalism—that everything can be explained by natural means, everything is the result of cause and effect, there is really nothing that is not material. If we say, “God has told me to do this,” people start wondering about us. I am reminded of the scene from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol when the ghost of Jacob Marley comes to Ebenezer Scrooge on Christmas Eve: “You don’t believe in me,” observed Marley’s ghost.” “I don’t,” said Scrooge…”Why do you doubt your senses?” “Because,” said Scrooge, “a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There’s more gravy than grave about you, whoever you are!” Scrooge was not much in the habit of cracking jokes…The trust is that he tried to be smart as a means of distracting his own attention.” It sounds like us—we may not recognize God’s call or try to avoid it. We may not want to discern what God is doing or recognize what the Spirit is calling us to do. When we do sense a call, we may dismiss it as an underdone potato. Yet I believe God is still calling us as people and a congregation to discern and follow. God’s Spirit is still directing and guiding us.
A couple of weeks ago there was a group from Central Lutheran camping at Silver Fall State Park. They were out of reach of phone service and there were no personnel at the park because of a required furlough. Then there was a family emergency here in Eugene and we could not reach the campers. I wondered if someone needed to drive up to Silver Falls and hunt down the family and tell them they needed to come back to Eugene. But as it happened, there was a sense of the need to get in touch. It involved hiking up a rock where there was cell service and receiving the message and driving back to Eugene in time. Was this just a coincidence or was the tug to check messages really a call from the Spirit? What I would like to say to all of you—and tell myself too—is to be open to God’s call. Practice awareness, pray and seek the counsel of other people. Sometimes it means telling ourselves, this is what I am called to do even when it is difficult. The funeral director was discouraged because his life dream was to own a funeral home but as he put it, “It just didn’t pencil out.” Fewer people are having elaborate funerals and the market is shrinking. What does it mean to be a pastor when fewer congregations can support full-time ministry. What does it mean to be faithful to one’s calling even when times are tough and the future uncertain? What does it mean to be Christian people, following God’s call, when social norms and expectations are changing, when the Christian Church is no longer in a privileged position and friends and neighbors ridicule our faith? What does it mean for us here at Central to be faithful? Be patient and pray. Wait for God to open the right door and be willing to accept when the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus, God closes a door. Wait and watch and pray. God is faithful and will show us the way. God will open another path. Let God guide you. Be faithful.
Mother Teresa of Calcutta was asked at the end of her life, after she had been working for fifty years with the poorest of the poor, whether she got discouraged because for every person she picked up from the gutter, there were still out there dying alone. This was the case year after year. “Didn’t you ever get depressed, Mother?” she was asked. Mother Teresa responded, “No, God does not call me to be successful. God calls me to be faithful.” God calls us to be faithful. Let God’s Spirit lead you. Amen.
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