call and response

Come and see...

Forty-three years ago on January 15th it was snowing in Washington, D.C. It was a light snow, falling gently through a gray sky. A co-worker and I were walking across the National Mall at lunchtime. Just past the Washington Monument we came upon a small gathering – small by National Mall standards.

There were thirty or forty thousand people standing in the snow, listening to Elihu Harris and other representatives from Congress, to celebrate the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., and to remind us what he meant to our nation and the world.

Stevie Wonder was there too and he sang a new song to Martin, written for the occasion: “Happy Birthday.” We can still sing the song – and now we have a holiday – Martin Luther King Day.

But why talk about Martin on a winter Sunday in Tucson, Arizona, forty-three years later?

The gospel reading for  the second Sunday after the Epiphany, John 1:43-51, is about the calling of Jesus’ first disciples … and that is exactly why! On this Sunday we hear how Jesus met Philip and Nathanael, and invited them into his ministry.

“Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, ‘Follow me’ … Philip found Nathanael and said to him, ‘We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.’ Nathanael said to him, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" Philip said to him, ‘Come and see.’” (John 1: 43, 45-46)

Nathanael was from then on the quietly faithful one – we only hear his name again in the accounts of the Resurrection. Philip is the one who broke the news of the Messiah to the nations, by teaching the Ethiopian eunuch, vizier to the queen of the Ethiopians, all about Jesus, and baptizing him then and there. For all we know that the Ethiopian, who went on his way rejoicing, was the first to bring the gospel to Africa. Well done, Philip. Good and faithful, Nathanael.

What does this have to do with Martin – and you and me?

Well, in 1955 Martin was a fairly successful preacher, who had recently taken a pretty good job at a nice church in Montgomery, Alabama. Maybe the disciples Philip and Nathanael had pretty good lives too. But they seemed to be searching for something – or someone – more. So, as Philip told Nathanael – “we have found the one – the one we have been searching for.”

I suspect Martin was searching for something too. And it found him!

Rosa Parks in 1955 was a faithful, church-going lady, who rode the bus to work in the morning, and rode it home again at the end of the day. If you have ever been sitting on a crowded bus late in the evening, ready to go home, when one of these ladies comes down the aisle looking for a place to rest her feet, you know what tired looks like.

But back then, in Montgomery, Alabama, you had to move to the rear of the bus unless you were white. And if you weren’t white, and a white person wanted your seat, you had to get up and give it to them.

But this time, in December 1955, something happened.

Mrs. Parks sat down. She sat down in the front part of the bus. Even though she was black.

The driver told her to move. A white person wanted her seat. She did not get up.

Soon it was all over town.

“Everybody can sit anywhere on the bus – or we won’t be on it at all.”

This caused some consternation – throughout the community.

And Martin Luther King, as a respected local pastor, was asked to speak – to say why. Why justice needs to roll down like a river just as much as buses need to roll down the street.

Since that day things began to change – for Martin, who was called to something more than Sunday-morning piety, more than success, to preach good news to the poor and justice to the mistreated.

And things began to change – for the people of Alabama – and for us, too.

What had happened? Martin had stood in his pulpit in front of the church facing his congregation. But now he and his church were facing outward – toward the world, where they were needed, where their witness was needed: their hearts, their hands, their faith, their prayers, their walk with the Lord hand in hand with the people of their city.

Like Philip and Nathanael, we seek something more, we are called to something more, than simply to be “Israelites” of no guile.

Like Martin we are called to something greater than our own success.

Even – like Rosa we are called to put aside our own quiet life – and join something larger. We call it the Kingdom of God. So the calling and the challenge come to us in our time:

What is the Kingdom of God to look like here and now? How will we seek it?

JRL+ Come and see…. 

• 1 Samuel 3:1-10(11-20)
• 1 Corinthians 6:12-20
• John 1:43-51
• Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17

calling

Samuel. 

Here I am.

Samuel.

Imagine.

A boy. Alone. 

In a cold room.

Not alone. Not dark. Not really.

There is a dim lamp, still just burning. It hasn’t gone out yet.

So you can see, a glimpse, of what else is in the room. What else is in that room, but not in any other.

The Ark of the Covenant. 

Alone. But not alone. 

There is a voice.

It is not the voice of the old man. After all.

He heard the voice three times. Three times the old man said, I did not call you, go back to sleep. He tried. But the voice persisted. 

Samuel.

And the old man finally understood.

This old strange room where nothing unexpected happened, not for a long time. Where the routine had gone on for a long time, as if it would matter. Routine duties performed routinely.

The boy had learned the routine. He had routine duties, chores. Later that day, when it was day, he would open the door. Perhaps he swept the place out. Found oil for the lamp. Cleaned up after the sacrifices. But nothing happened. Nothing unexpected. Nothing unwanted. It was not as if the LORD were really there. Was it?

Samuel.

And the old man understood.

It was the LORD. The LORD was calling the boy.

It was not calling the old man, the high priest, or his wayward sons, his heirs to the post. No, his family was done.

This was something new, and very old.

Take off your shoes for this is holy ground. 

Here in this dark room in the middle of the night, where you might most expect it, and expected it the least.

It had been a long time since anyone had heard from God, and God had heard from anyone.

But now, 

Samuel.

And so the old man said, say something back. Say, here I am, LORD, your servant is listening. And the boy did.

And so it began. The LORD had something to tell him that day. A message for him to pass on. Something not so pleasant, but something true. And the boy said it. 

And it came to pass. And the boy grew up, and continued to say, and do, the things the LORD commanded, pleasant or no.

Among other things he anointed a king.  He found a young man, the youngest of eight brothers, and brought him out from among the flock he had been tending, and – from now on you will be shepherding people.

Centuries later it was just a story. A good story, but nevertheless. Shepherding people. Where was that shepherd king now? Now that we needed him. But what we had was an occupier. A terrifying overwhelming military force. There was no king, but Caesar. 

Was there? 

“We have found him.”

We have found the anointed one, the one to take the place of that ancient story. We have, and you should come see.

There were people by the side of a lake, mending nets. And to them came the man. From now on you will be fishing for people.

That ancient story was not so ancient anymore. The boy who had been tending sheep was pulled away to be king. The people who had been mending nets were pulled away to serve a king.

Not a king like any other, of course. Not one you could quickly see, as king. He was an ordinary man, maybe good looking (as that young shepherd had been), probably sweaty from hard days working as a carpenter’s son. Calloused hands. Dirty feet. 

Compelling voice. 

Not “Samuel” this time. But names came nevertheless. 

“Philip.” “Nathanael.” And “James” and “John” and “Andrew” and “Peter” and all the rest that followed.

Follow me, he said. Follow me, and the world will change. 

Follow me, and your life will change. 

And from that, all else will follow.

***

Come and see.

And from that all else would follow.

Those simple fishermen, as the song says, were the first. 

The first of many, from that small group of people, men and women and children in small villages by a small sea, and in the hills around, the message would spread. 

And become dangerous. And change things.

We should not be afraid, should we, if one small boy who slept in the dark cold strange sanctuary of the forgotten God, was not afraid, not afraid enough not to answer. 

We should not be afraid, should we, if a couple of guys hanging out by the beach a man approaches and says, I know what you were doing, I saw you, and now I call you.

We should not be afraid, should we, if the sanctuary lamp is nearly out, but not yet, if the occupation troops are nearby, if the Messiah has been expected for two thousand years, to come back, to us, in the silence of the midnight temple, in the glare of the lakeside beaches, in the simple moments of ordinary lives, made extraordinary, by that calm voice calling once more, should we?

Should we then be afraid if like old Eli we do not hear the voice, if like others we do not see the man, or hear his call, or have him come to us along the lakeshore as of old? 

We should not be afraid, should we, if we simply have the message, the news, the need, to be the ones to follow? 

Our task, our calling, our charge, is not so simple, or so scary, as the calling of Samuel in the Temple, David in the fields, or the disciples at the lakeshore. Perhaps. We are not often called to leave everything, at once or over time, that we have known, to strike out in a new direction, with new responsibilities and burdens. 

Sometimes a new calling would be a relief. Leave those nets un-mended, leave those sheep untended. Let that lamp go out. Drop everything and just – go. Light out for the territories. Pump the gas, fill the tires, wipe the windshield, and throw away the map. 

But it does not always work that way, does it? Perhaps not even for those disciples, those followers, that prophet, that king.

Samuel still had to sweep the temple, open the door, tend the lamp. But now he also had to tell the truth, the uncommon truth, uncomfortable truth, that he had to tell.

David could leave the sheep on the hill, but now he had to put up with Saul, with the onerous scut work duties of an apprentice king who could not call himself king or reveal himself king – if he knew himself that was his calling.

Philip, Nathanael, Andrew, Peter, James, John – they had a task to learn, a duty to fulfill, one no one had done before. Nobody had been in this situation before. The Messiah had not come before. (Keep it quiet!) 

Nobody has been in our situation before either. 

The lamp kept trimmed and burning, or sputtering out. The people demanding a king who get a shepherd boy.

The fishermen who expect nothing good out of Nazareth.

Would not we like they like things to be the way they were before? Before the pandemic, before the lost job, before the fall, before the call? But we too are called, perhaps not so simply or dramatically, perhaps not all at once, perhaps not so painfully, but we are called, too, to follow, as the first disciples were, to tell the truth, as the prophet was, to look after people, as the shepherd was. 

All of those, all of their duties and callings, are in us too, as the people of God. Together we have all those duties, those callings, and more: we have the tasks before us for our day.

How will we tend his sheep, fish for people, tell the truth? 

That is our challenge, to find out, and follow, today.

JRL+

Come and see...

Come and see...

Second Sunday after the Epiphany 

• 1 Samuel 3:1-10(11-20)
• 1 Corinthians 6:12-20
• John 1:43-51
• Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17

MLK

First of all I’d like to thank you for coming out to the celebration today. The weathermen predicted an inch of slushy snow. So thank you for making the effort.

Thirty-one years ago today it was snowing in Washington, D.C. It was a light snow falling gently through a gray sky. A colleague and I were walking across the Mall at lunch time and past the Washington Monument we came upon a small gathering – small by National Mall standards.

There were thirty or forty thousand people standing in the snow, listening to Elihu Harris and other representatives from Congress, to celebrate the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., and to remind us what he meant to our nation and the world.

Stevie Wonder was there and sang a new song, Happy Birthday to Martin, written for the occasion. We can still sing the song – and now we have a holiday – Martin Luther King Day.

But why talk about Martin on a snowy day in Edmonds, Washington, thirty-one years later?

The gospel reading after all is about the calling of Jesus’ first disciples … and that is why!

Nathanael was the quietly faithful one – we next hear his name in the accounts of the Resurrection. Philip is the one who broke the news of the Messiah to the nations, by teaching the Ethiopian eunuch, the vizier of the kingdom of Meroe, all about Jesus, and baptizing him then and there. For all we know that Ethiopian, who went on his way rejoicing, was the first to bring the gospel to Africa. Well done, Philip. Good and faithful, Nathanael.

What does this have to do with Martin – and me?

Well, in 1955 Martin was a fairly successful person, who had recently taken a pretty good job at a nice church in Montgomery, Alabama. May be the disciples Philip and Nathanael had pretty good lives too. But they seemed to be searching for something – or someone – more. So – “we have found the one – the one we have been searching for.”

I suspect Martin was searching for something too. And it found him!

Rosa Parks in 1955 was a nice churchgoing lady who rode the bus to work, and home again at the end of the day. If you have ever been sitting on a crowded bus late in the evening, ready to go home, when one of these ladies comes down the aisle looking for a place to rest her feet, you know what tired looks like.

But back then, in Montgomery, Alabama, you had to move to the rear of the bus unless you were white. And if you weren’t white, and a white person wanted your seat, you had to get up and give it to them.

But this time, in December 1955, something happened.

Mrs. Parks sat down. She sat down in the front part of the bus. Even though she was black.

The driver told her to move. A white person wanted her seat. She did not get up.

Soon it was all over town.

“Every body can sit any where on the bus – or we won’t be on it at all.”

This caused some consternation – throughout the community.

And Martin Luther King, as a respected local pastor, was asked to speak – to say why. Why justice needs to roll down like a river just as much as buses need to roll down the street.

Since that day things began to change – for Martin, who was called to something more than Sunday-morning piety, more than success, to preach good news to the poor and justice to the mistreated.

And things began to change – for the people of Alabama – and for us, too.

What had happened? Martin had stood in his pulpit in front of the church facing his congregation. But now he and his church were facing outward – toward the world, where they were needed, where their witness was needed: their hearts, their hands, their faith, their prayers, their walk with the Lord hand in hand with the people of their city.

Like Philip and Nathanael, we seek something more, we are called to something more, than simply to be “Israelites” of no guile.

Like Martin we are called to something greater than our own success.

Even – like Rosa we are called to put aside our own quiet life – and join something larger. We call it the Kingdom of God.

What is the Kingdom of God to look like here? How will we seek it?

Stairway

“Lord, you have searched me out and known me; you know my sitting down and my rising up; you discern my thoughts from afar.” (Psalm 139:1, BCP)

God knows all that can be known; He is present in all places; no one can escape His reach.

God knows the whole of your life and activity.

God is in control and will be your guide, your shield, and your savior; he will help you, wherever you go.

You cannot escape from God – he is bound to find you everywhere you go.

He is present even in the womb.

His thoughts are unfathomable.

God is all knowing.

And he is just.

+

“Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” (Genesis 28:15, NRSV)

God is everywhere and you cannot escape from it. You need not; he is wise and glorious. His love for you, and his care for you, is unshakeable. He will never leave you. He will always guide you, protect you, be by your side – whether you feel his presence or not, God is always there. Indeed, he has promised, from ages old in time and history, to be the fulfiller of the promise: through Abraham and Isaac and Jacob all the families of the earth shall be blessed and in them shall find their blessing.

That hope of the world, that promise, comes to us from God in Jesus Christ. He is the one, as Paul exhorts us to grasp, who brings reconciliation, renewal, renewal, the one who brings us a vision of hope, of freedom, and glory in God. In Christ is the hope of the resurrection.

All things were made through him and in him all things will reach their completion.

+

"Jacob left Beer-sheba, and set out for Haran. He came upon a certain place and stopped there for the night, for the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of that place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place. He had a dream; a stairway was set on the ground and its top reached to the sky, and angels of God were going up and down on it." (Genesis 28:10-13, JPS)


The vision of Jacob – the stairway to heaven – is a vision of connectedness.

God and Man at Bethel – the place of God’s choosing, not Jacob’s. It is holy because God is there. Because God is there, Jacob honors it and consecrates it.

For perhaps the first time in his life, Jacob feels a sense of awe, of the presence of the holy.

What are our lives for? For our own purposes? No – for the purposes of God. We are God’s creatures, through and through he knows us; he fashions us, and carries us – covers us – through life and at the end he welcomes us home into eternity. We are called only to grow in relationship with God, to live responsibly, … responsively, in answering God’s call to a devout and holy life.

“I don't know Who — or what — put the question, I don't know when it was put. I don't even remember answering. But at some moment I did answer Yes to Someone — or Something — and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal.”— Dag Hammarskjöld (29 July 1905 - 18 September 1961), Markings (1964).


At some point in life, as Dag Hammarsjkold saw, we have a chance to say YES to God, to life, to God’s call to life in abundance. To something beyond ourselves.

This call – to life, to respond to God in his love with our own faithful obedience and trust – is at the heart of what Paul is saying, and what Jacob lived.

Here was a man, who tricked his brother, outwitted his father-in-law Laban (stay tuned, for further episodes in this summer’s saga), and – well, who would have thought he would be a patriarch, one in whom all nations would be blessed? And yet here he is: encountering God at the House of God.

His response first is AWE – praise, worship – and as we will see, in further episodes of our story (and his), that he goes forward from this point in faith.

His trust in God is complete, by the end: he has followed the path of God’s law, covenant, promise, and come to fulfillment of his own role in God’s plan.

We do not know what our own roles will be or are, entirely; what we know is that we should act faithfully, responding in awe to God’s presence, responding in confident faith to God’s guidance, responding in obedient surrender to his Lordship, responding in thankfulness to his endless Grace.

“For all that has been — Thanks. For all that shall be — Yes.”—Markings.

In the name of God, the merciful Father, the compassionate Son, the spirit of Wisdom. Amen.


JRL+

Whose service is perfect freedom: (Costing not less than everything)

Grant us, O Lord, to trust in you with all our hearts; for, as you always resist the proud who confide in their own strength, so you never forsake those who make their boast of your mercy; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.


When it came time to sign the marriage license for two of my college friends, the minister gave as his title, “Slave of Jesus Christ”. In his letter to the Christians at Rome, Paul introduced himself as “doulon christou iesu” – a servant of Jesus Christ, not distinguishing between bondservant and freedman.

In his letter to Philemon, a brother in Christ and a slave owner, Paul makes distinct the difference between enslavement in the world’s system and free service offered to the Lord. He greets Philemon as a “dear friend and co-worker”, telling him he remembers him in his prayers always thankful because of Philemon’s love for all the saints – all the saints – and his faith toward the Lord Jesus. This love Philemon shows is a source of encouragement and joy. “The hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you, my brother,” Paul writes.

Therefore, Paul continues, I appeal to you – rather than making a command. “Refresh my heart in Christ”, he asks. Back to you I am sending Onesimus, whom you held as a slave. He has become a Christian, and hence my brother – and yours. Meanwhile I myself am held as a prisoner, for the love of Christ. Do something extraordinary, Philemon: receive him back but do not punish him; embrace him as a brother, and further than that, do not hold him accountable for anything you might hold against him. Charge it to my account.

It was not unusual, scholars like Richard Horsley tell us, in those days for one person to own another. Even for Christians, to be a slave or a slave owner was a simple matter of economics. But not to Paul: he is challenging Philemon to break free from the economic system the world has enthralled him in, and to do something that will strike its own blow against the empire.

Set him free. Furthermore, flying in the face of the practice of the time — slaves could buy their freedom for a price but would always owe their former master a share of their income — do not charge him for his freedom, or require him to pay you royalties on his future earnings. And you shall be made free yourself.

Slaves are compelled; to serve in Christ is an act of freedom. Paul asks, implicitly, for Philemon to free Onesimus, and so to free himself.

Paul does happen to mention a little debt, and a small requirement for obedience. Not to himself, not really, not to anyone on earth: but to God in Christ Jesus. You owe him everything, Onesimus: even your life.

And here we are back at the cross, with Jesus, who reminds the crowds who were following him – up to this point anyway – that to follow him means giving up all you have. Family, possessions, even life itself, all are to be counted as loss, compared to the one thing left to them, the service of Christ.

Philemon is not being asked to give up a little. Paul reminds him he owes everything in obedience. It is being asked of him now. To give up – “I know my rights!” – he might protest – to give up what he has in the world’s terms in order to take his place in the kingdom of God. Like the rich young ruler who went away sorrowing, Philemon might have thought of what he had to lose – but perhaps, since after all he did save the letter, he thought of what he had to gain.

All this may sound symbolic, to modern ears… until we think of the cost of discipleship we might be asked to pay.

Imagine a world in which one person might presume to own another, a world in which people are bought and sold like possessions. Imagine, indeed, millions trafficked this way across the globe today. And then imagine someone taking some small step to redeem, or set free, someone who is being held hostage to wage slavery or debt, or through physical or other coercion.

That is a world we live in, even now. Organizations of Christians across the world – World Concern among them – are working to help people out of this system, and to challenge the system that enslaves. We might or might not be called to take direct action on this front, but we all will be called at some point to estimate the cost, of carrying the cross, of discipleship.

"Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.… So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions."

Our God, whose service is perfect freedom (costing not less than everything) – how are we to serve? Whom would we consider a saint?

If a man were give up a good job in a prestigious institution, leave his fiancée behind, and join a conspiracy to assassinate the duly elected leader of his country, would we consider him a good Christian? If, then, caught, convicted, and imprisoned, he wrote that girl, telling her we now live in a world without God, would we praise his faith? We might acknowledge his contribution to Death of God theology, but would we call him a saint?

And yet there he is, on the calendar in Lesser Feasts and Fasts, for April 9th: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Pastor & Theologian, 1945. Bonhoeffer left Union Theological Seminary to return to Germany at the beginning of the Second World War, and who subsequently was involved in the plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler that failed on 20 July 1944, is widely held as an exemplar of faith in the 20th Century.

If a nun were to talk her way out of her vow of stability, and go live on the streets of a big city, would we consider her a model of obedience? If then, and from then on, she felt – and wrote in her letters – that she too felt the absence of God, would we consider her a model of faith? If she carried on like that for fifty years, would we call her a saint?

And yet Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who confessed that she had experienced the dark night of the soul over a period of fifty years of serving the “poorest of the poor”, is widely acclaimed as a model, an extreme model, of faith.

To give up family, friends, possessions, life itself – even to experience existence bereft of a sense of God’s presence – indeed our Lord cried out from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” – and yet somehow from this total loss, to experience the life of Resurrection, this is the cost, and the glory, of discipleship.


Sources:

Readings for Year C, Proper 18 [RCL]: Philemon 1-21. Psalm 139:1-5, 13-18. Luke 14:25-33.

T. S. Eliot, ‘Little Gidding’ (1942); Four Quartets (1943) [http://www.tristan.icom43.net/quartets/gidding.html]

Richard A. Horsley and Neil Asher Silberman, The Message and the Kingdom: How Jesus and Paul Ignited a Revolution and Transformed the Ancient World (Grosset/Putnam, 1997), p. 182-183.

http://www.worldconcern.org/NETCOMMUNITY/Page.aspx?&pid=527&srcid=429

http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/b/bonhoeff.htm

http://www.cofe.anglican.org/worship/liturgy/commonworship/texts/calendar/holydays.html

http://www.vatican.va/news_services/liturgy/saints/ns_lit_doc_20031019_index_madre-teresa_en.html

Lesser Feasts and Fasts (Church Publishing, 2006) [http://www.io.com/~kellywp/CalndrsIndexes/TxtIndexLFF.html]

My Life with the Saints by James Martin, S.J. (Loyola Press Chicago, 2006)
http://www.nimblespirit.com/html/my_life_with_the_saints_review.html

September 9, 2007, Trinity Cathedral, Sacramento.