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From January 28, 2007 Throughout the Bible we are blessed with stories in which God comes to particular people and calls them to ministry. Calls them to serve. Calls them to give themselves over to God's work in the world. Read a few of these call stories and you'll quickly see how marvelously inventive God is. Each encounter is as distinctive as the person God is calling. For instance, Moses is minding his own business herding his father-in-law's sheep when God speaks to him through a burning bush about Egypt's misery and Moses' role as liberator. However, when it's Samuel's turn, God takes a different tack. God comes to Samuel at night and without any of the dramatic flourish God used on Mt. Horeb. And because Samuel is Samuel and not Moses, it becomes necessary for God to give it several goes before young Samuel realizes that the voice he keeps hearing belongs to the Lord and not Eli, the elderly priest Samuel has been assisting. Isaiah's call from God is different from either one of these. Isaiah is given a profound inward vision, one that then prepares him to hear God calling him to be a prophet. No two calls to ministry are ever the same. Why? Because no two people are the same. Abraham is in the winter of his life when God comes to him. Elijah is partway through his when God reveals his calling. Today we hear of God seeking out a still-young Jeremiah to be a prophet of the Lord. "I am only a boy," Jeremiah blurts out in response, as if God hadn't already noticed. No two calls are the same. Just as no two ministers or ministries are. I'm not just talkin' Bible here. I'm talking here here. Each week's bulletin reminds us that ours is a church with one pastor and as many ministers as there are members and friends and visitors. But reading this isn't enough to have us feel this. So something happens each Sunday as worship draws to a close. Remember? After the closing hymn, I rarely speak words of blessing over you (you're already blessed); almost always I commission you for ministry. Why? To affirm the truth that your ministry--your distinct calling--isn't theoretical; it's waiting for you right outside. A ministry God is excited about and is sending the Spirit to help you with. It is rare that we experience God calling us the way God called Moses or Samuel or Jeremiah. But everyone has a calling, a ministry, a gift to give that no one else can give because there is no one else in the world who can give it in quite the way you can. While driving home from Atlanta on Monday I listened to a talk given by one of my favorite spiritual teachers, Fr. Richard Rohr. Speaking out of his thirty-plus years of experience serving the Roman Catholic Church, Fr. Richard remarked that from where he sits he sees that the church has not done enough to affirm and support the ministry of the laity. For ever so long ministry was the domain of priests and bishops and such. From my perch in the Protestant Church, I see this too. The people in the pews have too often been regarded as doers, helpers, sometimes as assistants to the pastor, but not often enough as the church's full-fledged, Spirit-called ministers. We like being pragmatic, the church does. So when it comes to encouraging involvement in the life of the church, we have tended to focus first on responsibilities, tasks, duties and then on who we might find to assume these. If you've ever served on a church nominating committee or ever been approached by one, you know what I'm talking about here. Warm and willing bodies were what the church has most often looked for. Ministers? Not so much. I have to think we've done it this way for so long because most of us lack confidence in recognizing callings, our own or others. Clear and obvious calls like the ones Moses and Jeremiah got, those are rare. From my experience, God tends to come far more subtly, speaking most often in quiet tugs and gentle nudges. Which can mean that our respective callings might go misunderstood or overlooked unless we have support and encouragement. How do you recognize a call to ministry? If you hear inside your head words like ought, should, no one else is willing or wants to, then you would be wise to listen again. Because often that isn't God talking but the voice of obligation, the voice of guilt, the voice we've heard and heeded too often. Guilt and obligation get our attention, certainly. And they work. For a while anyway. Because no matter how worthy the project or how important the commitment, following the voice of guilt or obligation often leads to predictable dead-end destinations like resentment or burnout. Want to know how to recognize your ministry? Notice what
makes your soul sing, if even for a minute or two. Pay attention to what enlivens
your spirit. We are all ministers. And yet God does not call us to McMinistry. Our callings are unique; they rise up out of who and what we are. They relate to the gifts of the spirit the apostle Paul assures us we are each given. To what special ministry is God calling each of us? Frederick Buechner answers this so well. He says "The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet." Let me say that again because I don't want you to miss the power here. "The place God calls you is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet." Leave it to God to come up with such a marvelous formula as this. Your gladness, your joy, your "juice," plus an unmet need somewhere equals the ministry to which you're called. Call this the mathematics of God's love because that's what it is. Only God could dream a combination this amazing, this match-made-in-heaven kind of approach to ministry that supplies us with joy even in the face of life's hard realities. "It doesn't make any sense," a parishioner once confessed. "I'm old, don't have much energy, I've got plenty else to do, and yet I can't not be involved in this." This was a project no one wanted, one that might easily consume a person, one that wasn't convenient at all and might even require a sacrifice or two. It was also a ministry that, if it died, might not be missed by anyone except the people it had been serving. Now even though she didn't understand why she was being called to this ministry, this parishioner got involved. Not because someone asked her and she was afraid of saying "no," not because she felt obligated. She took on this effort because something stirred inside and gave her the desire, the hunger to minister. The result? She said it was the strangest thing: looking back over her ministry, with all its ups and downs, with all its challenges and disappointments, she could see two things. First, that the Spirit led, fed, and energized her. And second, it was evident that she got back far more than she ever put in. "The place God calls you is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet." As we gather as a congregation for our annual meeting after worship today, we will do some looking back over the year God gave us. Our focus, if we want, can be on any number of things: who served, what decisions got made, how we managed financially, what we accomplished. When we meet, we'll also look to the future that stretches out before us. We'll affirm certain folks for leadership and service on Boards and Committees. We'll vote in a new budget. We'll enter into discussion and decision-making about matters of importance. And yet we mustn't forget or lose sight of why we're here. We're not here to maintain a building. We're not here to polish our past or be certain the light bill gets paid or, as my naughty seminary classmate's t-shirt suggested, "look busy because Jesus is coming again soon." We're here--each of us, all of us--we're here to support one another in naming and claiming whatever ministry God has called us to. There is a story from the Jewish tradition that goes like this. Rabbi Zusya, when he was an old man, said, "In the coming world, they will not ask me: 'Why were you not Moses?' They will ask me: 'Why were you not Zusya?'" This is why we are here. For you to be the Good News minister God calls you to be, for me to be the Good News minister God calls me to be, and for all of us together to take up the great Good News ministry that is ours alone in Paducah. Ministries--all of them--in which our deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet. We don't do this by ourselves, remember. "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you," God says to each Jeremiah here. The God who knows us and consecrates us, this God will lead us onto joy, not jobs. All for the sake of the world God so deeply, dearly loves. Amen. © Rev. Karen Winkel |
"Never place a period where God has placed a comma." - Gracie Allen
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