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.