We Are Called!

Isaiah 49:1-7; Psalm 40:1-12

1 Corinthians 1:1--9; John 1:29-42

I did not write this sermon fully before it was preached. The following are the main points that I tried to convey.

We are baptized into Christ Jesus, made God’s daughters and sons by adoption and it is this adoption that provides us each with our call. We are called exactly as those first two disciples were called. We don’t have to imitate Andrew or Peter, nor do we have to be like John the Baptist, Isaiah or Paul but our call is like theirs in three important ways: We are invited to become disciples. We are invited to be evangelists. We are invited to be prophetic witnesses.

Being Called

There’s one theme that can be found in all four of our readings from scripture. It’s the notion of being called.The readings from Isaiah and from Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians both begin with words about being called, about being set apart by God. And those first two disciples of Jesus, they go from following John to walking after Jesus after John points out who Jesus is: “Behold the Lamb of God.”

The whole notion of being called is important but it’s also complicated. There is a tendency to see calls only in terms like those of 1 Corinthians or Isaiah. That is, we see a call in terms of specificity, of being given a particular task or role. This task or role is usually a pretty major thing, and usually associated with being called to a special form of service – often full-time and in the church.

That tends to be about all we do with being called. It’s really handy, though, because when we look at things this way, we can neatly separate what happens to the disciples, apostles, and prophets from what’s going on with us. “They were called. We’re just ordinary Christian folks so we’re safe from all that call business. It’s about someone else.”

This way of looking at a divine call – of seeing it as to a specific task or role, however, really does miss the mark. I am not here denying that there are “special” calls to specific roles, functions, and tasks. But when we focus on those types of callings, we really do miss the bigger picture – the larger notion of what “call” is all about in the biblical context and the broader Christian tradition. Indeed, being ordained or being a missionary or a monk (or something like that) is quite secondary to the real, central call that we all have from God.

You see, we are all baptized into Christ Jesus, made God’s daughters and sons by adoption and it is this adoption that provides us each with our call. Those two followers of John the Baptist who Jesus asked to “come and see” - we are called exactly as they were called. Now, one of the things this means is that we don’t have to imitate Andrew or Peter, nor do we have to be like John the Baptist, Isaiah or Paul to see how their call is like the call of Christ to each of us.

When I recognized that I was able to see how this Gospel of John account (together with the accounts from the Isaiah 49, Pslam 40, and 1 Corinthians 1) might be a useful tool to see what our calls – all of our calls – invite us to be.

Invited to be Disciples

First and foremost, our call as baptized children of God invites us to be disciples.

Notice, in particular, that Jesus does not, at first, call those two disciples to any particular task or to fill a specific role. He didn’t ask them to do anything. Likewise, our call as Christians is not initially for us a call to task or role. Instead, our call is an invitation to relationship. There is no, “Do this!” and Do that!” Instead, Jesus says, “Come and see.” Jesus first invites them to be with him – to enter into relationship – called into love communion – to come into the presence of the mystery of the incarnate Word.

This is the invitation, the first and primary invitation of our calling, as well. When Jesus says, “Follow me,” he is calling us first to himself – to a personal intimacy and a shared life. That’s what matters, that’s what is primary. Everything else is left behind; everything else becomes secondary.

Now, while our calling is first and foremost an invitation to be disciple, there are two other important invitations issued at our baptismal calling – both of which find life in today’s gospel passage.

Invited to be Evangelists

First, through our calling we are invited to be evangelists.

Who wants to be an evangelist? It is sometimes a dirty word in the Episcopal Church. We get encumbered by the word because evangelism and evangelist are words that bear some heavy baggage in 21st century American life. We get caught up in popular notions of televangelists and hellfire and damnation preachers. Evangelism has gotten a bad name. It’s a notion that’s been hijacked. But I want to take it back if for not other reason than our calling beckons us and invites us to evangelize.

I wonder if we haven’t been approaching evangelism from the wrong angle. Effective evangelism cannot be borne our of command and it cannot bully its way into scaring someone into heaven. Indeed, evangelism shouldn’t even be about the attempt at conversion. Rather, evangelism should emerge from a deep sense of being loved by God and of being in love with God. Evangelism seen thusly is the result of personal transformation understood as derived form the freely offered grace of God. Such transformation leads naturally to gratitude. Evangelism should emerge, then, from one’s encounter with the living God in the power of the Holy Spirit, the telling of one’s personal story of transformation propelled by a disposition of gratitude to be shared with others.

It is “seeing and naming the Holy Spirit at work in ourselves and those we encounter – giving voice to our own grace-filled experience, and helping others find their voice. It is practicing what we read in the Psalms _ no matter what our current state, we can recall for ourselves and other the great work of God in each other’s lives.” (David Gortner, Transforming Evangelism, 32)

Evangelism is a word proclaimed by us out of personal experience, aware that we are members of something or someone great than ourselves. It is a story told by grateful disciples with passion, grace, and confidence, welcoming others to the same story. It is a word spoken out of deep concern for another who might benefit from knowing the same loving God that we know and hearing the same good news that we hear.

Recall the gospel narrative, it doesn’t begin with Jesus demanding an intellectual ascent or a particular prayer or any action at all. It begins when Jesus first “sees” them. Jesus beholds those two that were following him and asks them what they are seeking. Jesus then invites them to share their story then he tells them his (this is seen in the ensuing action of John’s gospel). This is evangelism at its best. We are likewise invited to welcome others and to share our story of life with God in Jesus Christ. It is good news, after all, and who doesn’t like to share good news.

Invited to be Prophets

Second, through our calling we are invited to be prophets.

And I’ll ask the same question as I asked about evangelists: Who wants to be a prophet? Seriously, read the stories of the prophets of Israel – they were often mistreated, hunted down, berated, and killed. And John the Baptist lived in the desert, ate locusts and honey, and was eventually beheaded by Herod. So, I ask again: Who wants to be a prophet?

Like evangelism, the notion of prophet can be confusing. Prophecy has often been viewed n terms of foretelling the future, as if the prophet had some crystal ball. It’s the Nostradamus effect by which everything prophetic utterance becomes a prediction of some future event. I rather think, however, that this is not what really is happening in biblical prophecy. Instead, I see biblical prophecy as a sort “forth”-telling. Prophets respond to what they see as it is occurring, the Word of God a word directing the present generation.

Such prophecy takes on two distinct, yet related forms. On the one hand, the prophetic is used to challenge the status quo. Amos, for example, speaks the word of God, declaring, “For I know how many are your transgressions, and how great are your sins—you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe, and push aside the needy in the gate” (Amos 5:12). On the other hand, the prophetic word is often a word of hope in a time of trouble. Take Isaiah, from our first reading this morning, who is God’s “servant,” called from his mother’s womb to “raise up” and “restore the survivors,” to be “as a light to the nations, that my [God’s] salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

In both of those situations, the prophet saw what was going on, applying God’s word to the situation at hand. Think Rosa Parks. She saw the degradation of her people under Jim Crow and responded. It was a quiet, determined response of refusing to move to the back of Cleveland Avenue bus in Montgomery, Alabama, on that December day over half century ago. Hers was a prophetic indictment of one of the great signs of American racism. We are clearly not there yet as far as racism goes in America but we are a long way from Montgomery, Alabama in 1955 – thanks in part to the prophetic witness of Rosa Parks. Rosa Parks pursued the prophetic for all of us and Jim Crow is dead.

But, what is the next Jim Crow? Our calling invites us to be the prophetic voice when we need to challenge the status quo or provide a voice of hope.

It can be difficult to accept the invitation to be the prophetic witness. We see those prophets of old that were hated and excluded, reviled and defamed and say, “No, thank you!” But we don’t really need to go that far back to see how we’ve mistreated the prophets. We remember Martin Luther King, Jr., one of the greatest prophets of our day, on Monday (January 16) - killed on that April afternoon at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. There is a litany of modern prophets and the abuse they endured: Rosa Parks, Harvey Milk, Susan B Anthony, John Lewis – the list is long. It can be difficult to accept the invitation to be a prophet but we are invited nonetheless.

Barack Obama remined us on January 11, in his farewell address to the nation, “If something needs fixing, lace up your shoes and do some organizing” (Obama, “Farewell Address”, 1/11/2017). This is what it means to be prophetic. If you see change that needs to made or hope that needs to be found, we are invited to be the change and to , G the hope. The prophet, quite simply, is the one who proclaims, “We’re not where we need to be. All of us have more work to do” (Obama, Farewell Address, 1/11/2017).

And this brings us back to John the Baptist who asked Jesus, “Are you the one, or do we wait for another.” And Jesus response, “I am the one, ‘God from God, Light from Light, true God for true God, Begotten not made, of one substance with the Father…” Oh, wait…that’s the Nicene Creed – a great statement of faith but its not what Jesus said. Remember how Jesus replies in Matthew’s narrative, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offence at me” (Matthew 11:5-6; see also Luke 7:22-23).

John the Baptist was the voice of the one crying in the wilderness, “make straight the way of the Lord” (John 1:23). John came to preach repentance and to prepare the way for the kingdom. Jesus has now come and proclaims that the kingdom is now at hand. John Dominick Crossan writes about the kingdom, “Heal those who are hurting and then eat with those who are healed. And out of the healing and our of the eating will come a new community. (Crossan, God and Empire, 118).

Who want to be a disciple like Andrew?

Who wants to be an Evangelist like Paul?

Who wants to be a Prophet like John the Baptist?

I don’t. But I do want to be a disciple and an evangelist and a prophet just like the one that God has invited me to be.