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United Church of Paducah
4600 Buckner Lane
Paducah, KY 42001
(270) 442-3722
Worship Times
Sunday Service: 10:00a
Refreshments &
Fellowship: 11:15a
Christian Education
For All Ages:
11:20a - Noon
Nursery Services Provided Handicap Accessible
All Are Welcome!
A Congregation Of The
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From January 27, 2008
You're Hired!
Matthew 4: 12-23
My first career came to an end when the
university for which I worked was forced to down-size. For
fifteen wonderful years, doors on campus opened without much
knocking on my part--something that served to put me at a
disadvantage when it was time to move on. A supportive
colleague in the Personnel Office recognized this and so
graciously volunteered to coach me.
Putting a resume together was a snap. But my mock interview
left my colleague underwhelmed. No, make that concerned. It
seems very time he posed a question, I would quickly look
away, pause, and then look back again as I responded. "I
hate to tell you this, Karen," my friend said in his kindest
voice, "but you come across as sorta shifty. People may
think you've got something to hide."
But even with a super-polished presentation, there are no
guarantees. You know this if you've ever watched "The
Apprentice." How many times do we hear "You're fired" before
The Donald finally says, "You're hired!"
Some job interviews are harder than anything Donald Trump
can dish out, as this year's race to the White House reminds
us. In an election year, every voter is an employer in need
of convincing; the interview process seems nearly endless.
Contrast this process with how God operates! Throughout
scripture, our sacred story reminds us that God holds no
auditions or interviews. God does not ask us to be
impressive or even to take the initiative.
Instead, God adores employing (that is, calling) people who
appear unprepared or ill-suited for the job. God calls the
prophet Samuel when he's just a boy. The same with Jeremiah.
God recruits Abraham and Sarah long after the spring has
gone out of their step. God's first and only choice for King
of Israel is a no-status teen-aged shepherd. God's go-to-gal
for mother of our savior is a low-income maiden from a
nowhere place in the far reaches of an occupied country.
We see this unconventional "hiring policy" at work again
today. Jesus is beginning his public ministry, he's on the
verge of preaching his unbelievably good news, and he does
exactly what his heavenly father has been doing for
generation after generation. "You're hired," Jesus says to
men who hadn't even turned in an application.
Not only is Jesus' approach unconventional, it makes Jesus
look bad. No self-respecting rabbi would ever be caught dead
recruiting disciples. No, he would let any and all comers
seek him out to convince him of their worthiness.
"Follow me and I will make you fish for people." Jesus the
rule-breaking rabbi says out of the blue. That's just plain
crazy!
Crazier still is that these fishermen drop their nets and
go.
Think about this for a minute. Imagine you're at the
Kentucky Oaks Mall and someone waltzes up and offers you not
only a whole new career but one that will take you away from
your family, your community, and life as you know it. Would
you take the job? Would you go even if you sensed God was
involved?
Maybe. Maybe not. It's one thing to be singled out by God
and informed you've been hired. It's quite another to return
the favor and hire yourself a God who behaves like this.
Which is what Simon, Andrew, and the Zebedee brothers do; in
accepting Jesus' offer, they hire him on as their savior.
In his latest book, Peter Gomes suggests that the most
dangerous verse in all the Bible is found in Romans 12,
where the apostle Paul endorses Christian nonconformity. "Do
not be conformed to this world," Paul writes, "but be
transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may
discern what is the will of God--what is good and acceptable
and perfect." (The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus, p. 45)
Forget what some of those Italian-suited TV preachers imply.
What looks good and acceptable and perfect will surely
impress folks but doing God's will may also appear to others
as off base and ill advised. What impresses others can be
odds with faithfulness. Which is why, sometimes, our life
together can be so hard, why discipleship is so danged
difficult. Because following Jesus frequently means doing,
saying, and valuing what our culture does not or cannot
affirm.
Just listen to Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. Just look at the
friends he cultivates and the way he lives. Notice the
"empire" he's seeking to create. His might be the Good News
but by worldly standards, it also contrary--that is,
backwards and upside down.
Had Jesus been a cultural conformist, had he been like every
other rabbi of his day, it would never have occurred to him
go on a shoreline recruitment junket. And even if the
fishermen had come to him, a conventional Jesus would never
have considered; their profession was considered one of the
lowest of the low.
Had Jesus' seashore recruits themselves been culture-bound,
they would never have signed on for career change. Instead,
they would have pointed Jesus down the beach and then turned
back to their nets and their roles as providers.
To be a disciple of our Good-News-preaching savior is to be
a follower of a way that makes little worldly sense. To be
willing to be a disciple means risking that we will leave
people scratching their heads in confusion, even shaking
them in consternation and judgment.
Ours is a savior, remember, whose journey to Jerusalem ends
not with him waving from the back of a convertible while
riding through a ticker tape parade but on the cross looking
to all the world like a fool and a failure.
No matter how eloquent his words, Paul's admonition that we
not conform to the world challenges us left and right. Even
as we want to do God's will, deep down we can also want
others to take note and be impressed.
This is why it's important to find contemporary examples
from which to draw strength and courage. One who has much to
teach us is Mother Teresa. Living in a world geared toward
success, Mother Teresa lived with a keen understanding that
God was pleased with something else--faithfulness.
On this Sunday when we meet to look back and look forward, I
am reminded that this is a congregation willing to follow
both Mother Teresa's and Jesus' example by focusing on
faithfulness and letting God handle the rest.
Let's talk about US for a few minutes. From the get-go, one
of the things I have loved about this congregation is that
you trust Jesus' leading even when he takes you in
directions those in our area may not understand or,
sometimes, respect.
The kind of discipleship I see here in our church does not
come easily; we step into God's future, sometimes, with
trepidation and the knowledge that in our quest to be
faithful we may be misunderstood and, perhaps like Jesus on
his way to Calvary, even mocked.
That you trusted your collective discernment to call a
pastor from outside the region--a woman and a
Berkeley-educated woman, at that--says to me that the
discipleship you've hired on for is the kind that embraces
risk, rather than shirks it. And faithful discipleship does
that--it takes us into territory that feels and is,
sometimes, risky.
Again and again you insist on being the kind of community
Jesus created: the kind that loves without conditions or
hesitation, the kind that emphasizes pardon over punishment,
the kind of community that knows that even though scripture
ends with the last word in Revelation, God is far from
finished speaking.
Ours is a risky kind of discipleship in any community but it
can feel even more so here in Paducah because, unlike our
UCC family in and around Evansville, we don't have sister
congregations nearby to encourage and inspire us the way
they so often do for one another.
In our walk with Christ here, we can easily feel like the
odd church out. Sometimes that experience invigorates and
emboldens us; other times it concerns us and can serve to
cool our resolve.
The discipleship we have signed on for, the kind we've
dropped our nets for because Jesus is just too compelling a
Savior for anything less, is a kind of discipleship that can
call us to act and speak in ways that the wider faith
community may not yet understand.
Even Mother Teresa, for all her Christ-like, deeply faithful
ministry to India's most needful, even Mother Teresa had to
live with criticism and consternation. The kind that came
from within her own church. In her calling to serve
Calcutta's poorest, Mother Teresa refused to have conversion
to Christianity be part of her agenda. Those who were
Buddhist, Moslem, Hindu, or who had no faith were affirmed
"as is." In a religious institution as substantial as hers,
you imagine the pressure that was brought to bear on this
diminutive Romanian nun as she pressed for faithfulness
rather than the "success" of evangelism.
Mother Teresa would not conform. She ministered without
prejudice and without agenda. Why? Because she answered to
only one authority: the one who came and comes and comes
again. Jesus her Christ.
The one who is our Christ, as well. The one who came to the
water's edge that day and did the unconventional thing.
May our faithfulness to him always and ever be the measure
of our success. Amen.
© Rev. Karen Winkel
United Church of Paducah (UCC) For your
reading and prayerful reflection, I commend to you The
Scandalous Gospel of Jesus: What's So Good about the Good
News, Peter J. Gomes, 2007. |
"Never place a period where God has placed a comma." - Gracie
Allen
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