Sermon from April 10th
May
the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your
sight O God, our rock and our redeemer.
Amen.
Off
and on over the past few months I have invited you to find yourself in the
stories of the Bible. I have asked you
to think about where it is you see yourself as a character in stories already
written. Today, I am going to ask you to
do something you may find to be a greater challenge. I am going to ask you where your story fits
into the story of God.
One
of the parts of applying for seminary, entering seminary, and ultimately being
approved for ministry of word and sacrament is telling your call story. It is something, should you ever decide to
become a pastor, that you will be asked to do many times, including most likely
every interview for call for the rest of your life. I am not going to tell you my story of call
today, but I can assure you it is nowhere near so dramatic as that of Saul in
our first lesson this morning. I wasn’t
struck blind and I did not take on a new name.
A lot of my friends in seminary seemed to have far more interesting and
profound call stories than my own. One’s
call began when she was invited to a potluck.
Several others felt God’s pull having come out the other side of cancer
with their lives made new.
It
does seem to me that every call story, mine included, was not a solo
event. After all, it only makes sense
that if you are being called into a ministry of community that God would use
the people of God’s community to invite you in, right?
I
think many times when we hear the Saul/Paul story we tend to pay a lot of
attention to the BIG ways God reaches out and ignore the little ways that Paul
is moved to minister. Heavenly light and
blindness, the voice of Jesus speaking to you; let’s face it, these are hard to
ignore. Yet, God chooses to use a
regular person as Saul’s story continues.
Ananias is told by God that he will be used to bring Saul into the call
of God’s Word and work. And so he
does. Saul is received into the
family. The welcoming includes being
baptized and fed and restored to health.
These are the human things we do for one another, and we may do them in
God’s name. Finally, like any story of
call, Saul’s story includes telling what he is called to do…proclaiming Jesus
the son of God.
In
today’s Gospel Peter’s call comes to him in the question Jesus asks him not
once but three times. Most
interpretations understand this repeated question to reflect Peter’s three
denials of his identity as a follower of Jesus.
Maybe, too, Jesus is helping Peter discover his strength and courage for
the call ahead. Do you love me? Yes, I love you. Are you certain this is the life you want? Yes, I love you. Are you prepared to live and to die in the
name of Jesus? Yes, I love you.
Peter’s
call is again a call to the work and Word of God. As David Lose points out, we as people are made
for community, and we find our identity in community as well. Lose states that “the gift of identity is
given to us by those around us as we see ourselves through the eyes of those
closest to us.” Our identity is, in
part, knit together of the many roles we play to all those with whom we
interact. We discover who we are by our
actions and interactions with others.
There
is another thing the calls of Paul and Peter have in common. “I myself will show him how much he must
suffer for the sake of my name.” God
tells Paul there is a cost to following Jesus.
And Jesus tells Peter “the kind of death by which he would glorify
God.” Death. Death is part of the call.
Yesterday
marked the 71st anniversary of the death of Dietrich
Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer was executed in
Flossenburg concentration camp only two weeks before it was liberated by the
United States. Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran
scholar and theologian who returned to his native Germany while it was under
Nazi rule. His faith would not allow him
to stand silent and at a distance as the terrors of the Holocaust were ongoing.
He is famous for his understanding of
costly grace. God’s grace is free, but
not without consequences. One of
Bonhoeffer’s famous quotes is: “When Christ calls a man he bids him come and
die.”
To
follow Christ is a call to die. Paul,
Peter, Bonhoeffer along with so many others throughout history demonstrate this
for us. Yet, we need not die a literal
death and be martyred for the faith to live a life in service to the work and
Word of God. The sacrifices we are called
to make may be different; sacrificing our fears, our certainties, our
insecurities, our ways of clinging to the material world. There are so many stories to be told.
And
your story? Where does your story fit in
the story of God? The Gospel of John
closes with these words, “(T)here are also many other things that Jesus did; if
every one of them were written down I suppose that the world itself could not
contain the books that would be written.”
God’s
story continues. It continues in you and
in me. We are part of a story that is
still being told. A story so large that
the world cannot contain it. Because God
cannot be contained. God’s story, and
Gods own self, grow in the telling and in all who are called to the work and
Word. We each have a part in this story,
a story that goes on and on.
Do
you love Jesus?
Do
you love Jesus?
Do
you love Jesus?
Thanks
be to God. Amen.
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