Call to Us

Text: Matthew 4:12-23

Off the coast of Scotland is the small island of Iona. It has been known for centuries as a holy place. The monastery which dominates the landscape of Iona was founded in the year 563 by Saint Columba, who was responsible for the spread of Christianity throughout Scotland. On the grounds of Iona Abbey are buried the remains of Duncan, the king of Scotland made famous by Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

There are not many people on Iona these days. Just the abbey and a small village, a few houses. But there are many many sheep. There are sheep everywhere. Every field that is not a swamp or a cliff is home to some flock of sheep. In the spring, the lambs are born. They wander freely about the island, learning to close-crop the grassy fields. They drift far from their mothers. But when something frightens them, as we did when walking across Iona, they call out. Baa says the lamb. Baa says the ewe. Baa, again, from the lamb. Another answering Baa from the mother. Closer and closer they come, drawn together by their signature sounds. How does the lamb know which of the many ewes are calling it? How does the mother know which lamb is lost?

The lambs and their mothers are imprinted at birth. They are joined from each lamb’s creation. Each pair of calls is different. Each call moves something deep inside the lamb and its mother. They are compelled to seek out one another, until they are finally joined, safe, ready for the next adventure.

Follow me, says Jesus to Peter and Andrew. Immediately they left their nets and followed him. Follow me, says Jesus to James and John. Immediately they left their boat and their father, and followed him. They left their families. They left their livelihood. We read this story and wonder: how could they have done that? Immediately, it says. With urgency. As if they were compelled.

The disciples are called as if they and Jesus were imprinted at birth. Jesus calls, and the now-former fishers follow. It is as if they had been waiting all their lives to hear this call. Something inside them pulls them forward into a new life, a new adventure, a new calling as followers of Jesus.

At my mother’s funeral a couple of weeks ago, a women, a contemporary of my mother, in I guess her late 80s, spoke. She said that all her life she had been looking for a soulmate. After 80 years, she had found that soulmate in my mother. I wonder if she didn’t feel like the lamb and the ewe. I wonder if Simon and Andrew and James and John didn’t feel like that.

The call of Jesus to Christians, to his followers, is a powerful part of our faith. It is more than an invitation, which one may carelessly ignore or accept as one pleases. “Come and see” and “follow me” are imperatives and prophecies. In them is the possibility of a new life.

These kinds of calls are less calls to belief and more calls to a new beginning. It is not an accident that the story in Matthew ends with a summary of new life for Jesus and his crew. This should not sound odd to us. Jesus is assembling a startup operation here. He calls a team of people who are without resume and seem unqualified: they are fishers, not religious leaders. He tells them straight away what the strategic plan is: I’ll make you fishers of people. He insists that they be able to start right this minute: they are going to begin work immediately. And he asks them to leave behind their former commitments. No competing entanglements.

A choice to abandon one kind of life and take up another is not easy to make. It is for us usually more complicated than Matthew makes it seem. Not all people want to change their lives in an instant. How you hear Jesus’ call depends a lot on where you stand in life and what your hopes are for it.

Martin Luther King, Jr., whose life we honored this Monday, thought he had a good plan in mind. He had gone to seminary, he was married, he had just received his Ph.D. from B.U. He expected to teach and be a pastor and have a family. He was a reluctant speaker at an early rally for Rosa Parks, whose refusal to give up her bus seat sparked the civil rights movement. Nonetheless, he knew that he was being called and was as compelled as the four fishers to respond. He later said:

“If a man happens to be 36 years old, as I happen to be, and some great truth stands before the door of his life, some great opportunity to stand up for that which is right and that which is just, and he refuses to stand up because he wants to live a little longer. . . or he is afraid he will lose his job. . . he may go on and live until he is 80, and the cessation of breathing in his life is merely the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit.”

People follow the call of God—as King did, as I’m sure the disciples did—because they feel that to do so will make a difference. It will make a difference in their own lives. And it will make a difference in the world. Both are necessary. It is neither just about personal self-actualization nor just about service to others. They hope for a new life and a new world.

They know for sure it will not be easy. That they will leave behind things that are important to them. That the odds are long. Someone once wrote that a call to a new life, in the way we are talking about here, was a call to “move our spiritual center of gravity to a zone unknown.” That captures the significance of it. It is a weighty moment. But although the zone may be unknown, it is not unimagined.

When people are called—to a campaign for justice, to a startup venture, to be fishers of people—they follow because they hope that in some ways both the world and their lives will change for the good. It is like a quest, with some great and good goal, and obstacles to overcome, and rewards of fellowship and transformation.

We are all like the lambs of Iona. Some of us are contentedly munching away. But many are wondering whether they hear a call, or hope to hear, or have heard and are wondering what to do next. We gather together into this church to help one another listen for God’s voice.

The job of the church—through scripture, sacrament, prayer, and fellowship—is to help people hear the call of God. But the church itself listens for God’s call, too. And it is the job of we who gather here to help the church hear that call.

What does God call you to do? What does God call Faith to do? And are those two calls aligned? When we pray each Sunday that the church nourish and be nourished by those who are called to be here, that’s what we pray for.

When we are lost and feel far away from God, then we are as relieved as the lambs of Iona. We call for God, and God calls to us. We seek one another, step by step, call by call, until we, like the lambs and their sheep, are finally joined, safe, ready for the next adventure.

As I Live and See

Text: John 1:29-42

The Gospel of John is like a cloth, woven in complex patterns from a few simple threads. Light and darkness, love and truth, belief, revelation. These threads cross over and under each other, creating for John a convincing image of the Word of God incarnate, dwelling here with us. The divinity of Jesus, and the notion that he has existed for all time and will for all time to come, is strongest in John of all the Gospels. For John, everything Jesus does is a pointer and witness to this man’s divine DNA.

Two of these threads in John’s theological colors appear strongly in the reading we just heard. Where do you live, asks the disciples of Jesus. Come and see, Jesus responds. Where Jesus lives and what he sees, and where as a result we live and what we see are important to John.

The word in John for “live” also appears in the Bible as reside, remain, abide, stay, dwell. The disciples ask Jesus, where are you staying? Do they mean: where do you bunk down for the night? Do they mean: where do your journeys take you? Do they mean: what is your stance on important issues of the day, like the politics of Rome and prospects for the coming Messiah?

The disciples expect an answer that will help them to know Jesus. It makes a difference whether Jesus is staying in a big fancy hotel, or with some friends in the bad part of town, or with his parents, or on the street. Or whether he is just passing through. Where you live tells people about you. What do you want? Jesus has asked them. They are not sure what to answer, because they are not sure what they can ask of Jesus until they know more about him. But Jesus does not say.

John the Baptist has told these disciples of his: That’s the guy I was telling you about. They were John’s disciples then, not yet the disciples of Jesus. The Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. As if they knew what that meant. He ranks ahead of me, John tells them, because he came before me. Does that help? There’s more: the Spirit descended on him and lives—remain, abides, dwells; it’s that word again—in him. Is that enough? They’d like to know for certain before they commit.

How much about Jesus do we need to know? What does it mean, as we are taught, that he is both divine and human? What does it mean that he comes to save the world? That he is the Messiah, not king of Israel but ruler of this earthly kingdom of God? Where is Jesus at? Can anyone tell us in words, by clever persuasion, by forceful argument, by coercion, by scripture, by personal story, for certain who Jesus is? We wish to do due diligence before we join up, invest, and give up our hearts and wills to this man.

Where do you stand, ask John’s disciples and potential disciples of Jesus. And Jesus in response says this: Come and see.

This is a declaration of fact: If you want to know what’s going on with me, you must come and see. And also a test of purpose: if I call you, do you have the heart to follow? But most of all it is an invitation: join your life with mine. Let me lead you, guide you. Teach you. Spend some time listening to me.

Come and see. Seeing is the second theological thread in this passage. Words for sight and seeing appear more in the Gospel of John than in the whole rest of the New Testament combined. In today’s passage they appear ten times. There is no blind faith in the Gospel of John. Faith comes from sight. Behold—see—says John the Baptist. I saw the Spirit. What are you looking for? Jesus is revealed to—is seen by—Israel. Some of these words mean seen in an instant—recognized. Some mean seen over time—revealed.

For some, the important part is what is seen. Watch Jesus, see what he does in the world, whom he meets with, how he heals. But for others, the important part is who is doing the seeing. Come see not what Jesus does, but come see as Jesus sees. Come and see the injustice, see the hypocrisy, see the suffering, see the hunger. Come and see the love of God, the healing of God, the compassion of God for all people. See with the eyes of Jesus. We are called not only to watch Jesus, even as passionate believing spectators. We are called to see the world in a new way, the way Jesus sees it.

The disciples ask for Jesus’ position and what they get is an invitation to be transformed. Come and see is an invitation to live a different kind of life because we see the world differently. That is why “come and see” is a good answer to “where are you staying?” Jesus is not evading the question. He is answering in the most direct way possible: I live in a world that I see in a certain way, and you can too. The disciples follow Jesus, I’m convinced, not because they want to wander around with this man, but because they want to see the world that will be revealed to them in a new true way.

It is common to think of evangelism as an activity of explaining. If I only explain things to you in the right way, you’ll believe as I do. But evangelism is more like a calling card, an address card, an online profile. It is a statement about you. Here is where I live, here is how I see the world. It is not persuasion. It is not even an invitation. It is an announcement about yourself. It is Christian evangelism when part of the announcement includes Jesus. Not symbols and signs of Jesus everywhere on your body and in your life, but in the way you are. Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, once said “you cannot know me unless you understand how I stand with Jesus.” Being Christian means that the way you see things is affected by Jesus. The evangelism part is that when people understand how you see things, they will then know something about Jesus.

Teresa of Avila, a sixteenth century mystic, once wrote that “Christ has no body now on earth but yours. … Yours are the hands with which he is to bless [people] now.” Meaning that we are to be Christ in the world. But we are not Christ. Christ abides in us, says John the Gospel writer, and we in him. This mutual abiding, Christ in us and we in Christ, is key to Luther’s view of forgiveness and the power of Holy Communion.

Where does Christ live? When we see as Christ does, then Christ lives in us. When we see as Christ does, then Christ lives in the world.

Numbered Blessings

Text: Numbers 6:22-27

Near the end of the story of the foundation of Israel, in the book of Deuteronomy, Moses speaks to the Israelites. They have escaped from slavery in Egypt and are about to enter the land promised to them by God. Moses has given them the gift of the law. He is about to die. He says to the Israelites: I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you may live.

The distinction between blessing and curse is as fundamental as the one between life and death. The two opposites seem to be part of the nature of the world rather than something we can choose. How can one choose to live? How can one choose to be blessed?

In the study of theology, the first question theorists ask is: What does it mean to be human? What is the essence of being a person? What is the nature of humanity? Are we by nature good or evil? Or to put in another way, are we mostly blessed or mostly cursed? Are we at heart good people who are blessed, but often mess up and occasionally are corrupted? Or are we at heart bad creatures and cursed, but by discipline and redemption able to do much good?

For each of us, this is not an academic question. The answer determines how we think of our own lives, what our relationship with God is, how we live day to day, how we think about order and justice, how we vote, how we treat the people we love, and those we fear. Do we pray: God, free me from the things that keep me from being the good person you made? Or do we pray: God, restrain me from doing the evil I am inclined to do? And which of these prayers do we say for others?

It is an old question. Answered ambiguously by religion. I would answer that we are blessed but flawed, and that Lutherans teach the same. But many Lutherans and other Christians over many centuries have argued the opposite. But all agree that we do pray to God that we may do good and have good lives.

Today’s first reading, which is from the book of Numbers (the fourth book of the Bible), should be familiar to you. It is the basis of the blessing that we say at the end of every Sunday worship. The Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord’s face shine on you with grace and mercy, the Lord look upon you with favor and give you peace. These verses are called the Aaronic Blessing, because Moses’s brother Aaron was first charged with saying them. They are also called the Priestly Blessing, because the line of Aaron was the priestly line in Israel. Even now, in some faiths and in some Christian traditions (even among some Lutherans), only ordained clergy may recite them in worship. They are words given by God to Moses and then to Aaron and then to all others. Me, you. These words are very old; some think this blessing is one of the oldest passages in the Bible. The notion of God’s blessing is for many the beginning of faith.

The formal word for the blessing we say after worship is “benediction.” That means “good words,” so it is a little like the word Gospel, which means “good news.” A blessing is good news. Good for us. But not just good news in general. Good news that comes from God. And not just good words, really. For the blessings of God include all the gifts of God—life, food, love, beauty, courage, pleasures—good things that God gives. Things that come from God.

In the benediction the motion of the blessing is unclear. “The Lord bless you and keep you.” Is that a hope, a plea, a declaration? The blessing is always God’s doing, but when we say these words, what are we doing?

For one thing, we are asking for God’s favor. When we ask for a blessing for someone’s house, we are asking that God bring happiness and comfort and joy to the people who will live in it. When we ask for a blessing on a meal, we are asking that the food provide good nourishment and flavor. Bless, O Lord, this food to our use and us to your service, we pray before we eat at Faith Kitchen. We are asking that God will move things so that our lives and endeavors work out well and good. Favor us means make it easier and better for us. The blessing pleads with God.

For another, we are holding God to God’s promises. God, our creator, has called all things good. God favored Sarah and Abraham, whose children became Israel. God has promised through Jesus to restore and repair the broken world. God has promised to be with us. When we ask for a blessing, we are not doing something new. We are reminding God of earlier and eternal promises. We are calling on God. The blessing holds God accountable.

For a third thing, we are reminding ourselves of what God has already done. The Lord has blessed us. Our lives have been blessed. We do find joy in living. We do take pleasure in things. We are prosperous. We have known love. Not all of us all the time, but all of us sometime. And we have known God’s grace and mercy. We have been given more than we have earned. We have been let off the hook. The blessing thanks God.

And finally, and mysteriously, we are hearing God’s words. These words in Numbers are spoken by God through Moses and priests to us. This Priestly Blessing is a pronouncement. “Say this,” God tells Moses. Say this to the people. “The Lord bless you and keep you,” the blessing begins. By doing this, God tells Moses, “I will bless them.” God has put power into the words of this blessing. God has agreed to bind God’s self when these words are spoken. The blessing, therefore, at the end of worship is more than prayer, reminder, and thanksgiving. The words, God’s words in Numbers, bring blessings to those who hear them. We are commanded to say them. God is obligated to obey them.

In some way, these words of blessing reunite us with God. In the way that we are reunited with a friend we haven’t seen for a long time, a spouse greeting his or her returning soldier, a child coming home from away at school. “The Lord make his face to shine upon you,” it says in Numbers. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you,” it says. Unlike the way we say this in worship, the verses here make clear that God is doing something active. God is turning to us. We look for God from afar, as we might look for a friend, spouse, child in a crowd. They turn, we recognize them, they recognize us. We are happy. We are joined. God turns God’s face to us, we recognize God, recognizing us. We are blessed.

The book of Numbers is a story of a people in the midst of making a decision. The Israelites are in the desert. They have wandered about confused, uncertain, and deprived for a long time. It has not been easy. It will not be easy. What is this moment for them? Is it the final straw that turns them in retreat? Or is it the dark before the dawn, the labor pains, as Paul says, before the birth? Has God abandoned them, as some complain, or has God been with them all along?

They are presented with two ways of seeing things. One generation wishes to remain focused on the past. They see sorrow and death. The other looks to a new future. They see hope and life. The people have a choice. Go back to slavery, go forward to freedom. Go back to what is known, go forward to new possibility.

Moses does ask the people of Israel to do something. To listen to the law, to obey it, to follow Moses. But he is also asking them to see things differently. Tell them, God says, to see the world in a blessing way.

These words in Numbers are themselves are a blessing. In these words of blessing, God has given us the power to be blessed. In these words, God has taken a stand. You are blessed. Choose life.