God is Calling You

The Rev. Kathi Johnson

A Pentecost – 4 June 2017

Texts: Acts 2; Philippians 4:4-9 (Cecelia’s Confirmation verse)

Our Redeemer Lutheran Church, Grand Prairie, Texas

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Cecelia has chosen a verse from Philippians 4 as her Confirmation verse, read a few minutes ago: "Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation by prayer and petition present your requests to God." Whenever we look at a solitary Bible verse, it is helpful to look at the context of that verse. So, for some context of Philippians 4:6 –

Remember that this book was originally a letter, written by the Apostle Paul to a group of believers in Philippi. By the time Paul writes this letter, the Church in Philippi is undergoing some suffering as a community because of their belief in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Roman Empire is the pre-dominant ruling power, and absolute allegiance to the Roman emperor is the expectation. But, allegiance to the emperor is more than just saying a pledge – it’s a religion, so Christians in Philippi are being persecuted because they don’t worship the emperor, they worship Christ.

In addition to the suffering that the Philippians are enduring, Paul himself is writing this letter to them while in prison, so he himself is dealing with some pretty difficult circumstances when he writes to them.

So into this situation, and from his own difficult situation, Paul writes these words to the Philippians: "Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation by prayer and petition present your requests to God."

It is one thing if Paul writes these words to them, and everyone is secure and happy in their faith. Having some of the background about the verse, it begins to take on a different significance. Paul writes to the Philippians from a place of endurance, knowing that they are also having to endure some things.

Last week, Cecelia came up here to work on her banner, and she brought her artwork with her. I offered to keep it in my office for safekeeping, and, Cecelia, we had no idea in that moment (when I asked you about keeping it in my office) how much of a witness that artwork would be for me over the next couple of days.

I wasn’t facing difficulties like Paul and the Philippians faced, however, I can tell you there was one point (following a challenging phone call) that I happened to look over and see this verse – and it spoke to me. It spoke directly into the situation I was facing in that moment – directly into my anxiety and stress – and it helped me focus on lifting my anxiety and stress to God in prayer. And several times over the next couple of days, I found myself pondering the words on your artwork. This message was a witness for me.

Even beyond the stresses of our day-to-day lives, we still live in anxious times. Maybe the names of countries and people in charge have changed since the First Century A.D. when Paul lived, but our world is filled with fear and stress, fear and stress that threaten our faith in a loving God.

But today is Pentecost, the day upon which we remember the coming of the Comforter, the Holy Spirit. Jesus had promised the Spirit to his disciples – and on that first Pentecost, as they gathered, the Spirit descends upon them in a mighty way, granting them strength and power. And this Spirit is poured out on all kinds of people, just as the prophet Joel had said it would be: “…God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.”

Which means, Cecelia, that God is calling you – but not only you – but you, and you, and you – God is calling all of us to proclaim God’s love and grace. All of us – young and old, and in the middle – all of us together are joined in this call of proclamation, and we are equipped by God’s Spirit for this work. It is the Spirit who empowers us, and we are not given that power only for our own sakes, but for the sake of this world that God loves. This world needs our witness to God’s love, this world needs our care in God’s name.

Today, you are affirming your baptismal faith. You were baptized – as many of us were – before you could speak for yourself, and so others took the vows for you. Today, you affirm those vows for yourself – promising a life of faith in which you live among God's faithful people, listen to the word of God and share in the Lord's supper, proclaim the good news of God in Christ through word and deed, serve all people, following the example of Jesus, and strive for justice and peace in all the earth.

It’s a lot.

But – I promise you this – none of us is alone. Look around you – see your family and your friends, your pastor, and your church family – we are all here to walk with you. In a few minutes, when you come up to affirm your baptismal faith, you’ll kneel for prayer, and we will gather around you, surrounding you with our prayers and our love. Then, this congregation, representing the Body of Christ everywhere, will promise to support you and pray for you as our sister in Christ.

Never forget, too, that the Spirit of God – the same Spirit poured out on those first disciples way back when – that Spirit has been poured out on you, too. That Spirit has been poured out on all of us. Through the waters of baptism, and throughout our lives until today, and into tomorrow, and the next day – that Spirit is with us.

Thanks be to God for this gift. Amen.

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We are lost; then we are found; and then what?

Lectionary 24, Year C – 11 September 2016

Our Redeemer Lutheran Church, Grand Prairie, Texas

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When our gospel story opens today, Jesus is surrounded by tax collectors and sinners. They are surrounding him in order to listen to his teachings and presumably to learn from him. Also gathered nearby are the Pharisees and the scribes and they aren’t happy. They see all these “undesirables” gathered around Jesus and they cannot believe the company he’s keeping. They start to grumble against Jesus, saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

So, Jesus responds with some parables, and he talks first about a shepherd who leaves 99 sheep to go look for the one who’s wandered off. Then he talks about a woman who turns her house upside down to find a lost coin. When both the lost sheep and the lost coin are found, there is joy for the shepherd and the woman. Jesus likens that joy to the joy in heaven whenever a sinner repents.

In other words, to Jesus, finding the lost is a really big deal.

On a theological level, these parables remind us that God finds us because God loves us. Like our Hymn of the Day, which we will sing in a few minutes, says – we once were lost, but now we’re found. God is the shepherd, searching for the sheep. God is the woman, searching for the coin. We are found by God, we are saved by God, we are lifted up by God.

And these are all helpful reminders to those of us who live lives of faith.

 But this past week, I reflected pretty intently upon the life of a woman who was recently canonized by the Roman Catholic Church. The woman we know as Mother Teresa of Calcutta became Saint Teresa of Calcutta officially last Sunday. We remembered this saint in our Wednesday worship this past week, and I was so moved by a particular story of hers that I am sharing it in part here again. These were Mother Teresa’s words, from her Nobel Prize acceptance speech in 1979:

“The poor are very wonderful people. One evening we went out and we picked up four people from the street…[There was a] man whom we picked up from the drain… and we brought him to the home. He said: ‘I have lived like an animal in the street, but I am going to die like an angel, loved and cared for.’

And it was so wonderful to see the greatness of that man who could speak like that, who could die like that without blaming anybody, without cursing anybody, without comparing anything. Like an angel - this is the greatness of our people. And that is why we believe what Jesus had said: ‘I was hungry - I was naked - I was homeless - I was unwanted, unloved, uncared for - and you did it [for] me.’”[1]

She is here referring to Matthew 25 when Jesus is telling his disciples that whatever they do to care for the least of these, they do for him, as well. And whatever they don’t do to care for the least of these, they are not doing for him.

This man whom Mother Teresa found – the one who died in her care – she knew he could not save him physically, and she knew that saving his spirit was in the hands of God. And so, she did what she could to provide for him so that he could die at peace, knowing love and care.

Mother Teresa lived her whole adult life searching for the lost, searching for the poor, searching for those whom everyone else in society had discarded. She spent her ministry looking for and caring for those whom Jesus calls the least of these. Moved by the very Spirit of God, Mother Teresa realized something very early on in her long life of service – she realized that God finds us because God loves us, and she realized that God wanted her to search for the lost. And so, search for them, she did.

We are lost; then we are found; and then what?

Our baptismal lives are not to be only lived for ourselves. Our baptismal covenant puts it perfectly: We are to live among God’s faithful people, learning the word of God and receiving the holy supper, having our faith strengthened by teaching and nurtured through prayer so that we trust God, proclaim Christ through word and deed, care for others and the world God made, and work for justice and peace.

God finds us, and God uses us to search for those who have seemingly been lost to everyone. In today’s gospel lesson, the Pharisees and scribes complain that Jesus is keeping company with sinners. Yet Jesus doesn’t just keep company with sinners – Jesus seeks them out! And not only sinners - but also the sick, the poor, the hungry, the despised, the forgotten. Jesus seeks them out!

The world at times seems very big to me, and very full of problems. There is no way I can fix them all – there is no way that anyone can. But what we can do is serve the part of the world that God has entrusted to us, and we can serve it faithfully and with love, so that our little part of the big world shines brightly with the light of Christ.

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[1] From her Nobel Prize acceptance speech, 1979. Found at http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1979/teresa-lecture.html

What do you want to be when you grow up?

A hint of what I dreamed of being when I grew up...

Second Sunday After the Epiphany, Year B – January 18, 2015

Our Redeemer Lutheran Church, Grand Prairie, Texas

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Grace and peace are yours, from God our Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

If you had to guess, what do you think I wanted to be when I grew up?   

Actually, when I was a kid, I wanted to be a meteorologist when I grew up. This desire was based on two things:  First, growing up in Tornado Alley, I was fascinated with weather.  Second, I was a bit smitten with the TV weather guy that we watched on the news every evening.

I really, really wanted to be a meteorologist – that is, until I hit the sixth grade and was placed in Pre-AP (or advanced) Science and Math classes…and almost failed both – miserably. Because Science and Math are subjects that are important to the field of meteorology, and because I felt I wasn’t good in either of those subjects, my dream of becoming a professional meteorologist gradually faded.

I continue to have an amateur interest in the weather, and will hopefully take some classes as an amateur someday, but I don’t think I’ll ever be a meteorologist when I grow up. My gifts are now being used elsewhere, as I eventually discerned that God was calling me to this work of pastoral ministry.

So, what did you want to be when you grew up (or what do you want to be)?  And now that you’re grown up (those of you who are) – what are your vocations? I don’t just mean – how do you earn your paycheck. Vocation is so much more than simply earning a paycheck. I mean – how do you serve God and others in your daily life? What roles and responsibilities do you have? 

Tying all of these roles and responsibilities together under the umbrella of “vocation” can be very useful for us as Christian people, because it helps us to see that God uses us in so many more ways than simply doing tasks around a church or serving a congregation in one way or another during worship, for example. God can use you in every single role you have in order to serve the world and to show others his love.

This is why Jesus calls disciples to follow him, like in today’s gospel lesson from John, and next week, we’ll hear about the calling of some of the other disciples in the Gospel of Mark. Without these disciples, Jesus is just one guy, wandering around Galilee, doing all the work himself. But God wants his love out there – among the people – and so Jesus begins calling people to help him with this loving work of God.

And so, my brothers and sisters, that is why we are called to follow Jesus, too. Whether we are a parent or a child, a student or a teacher, a husband, a wife, a single person, a dating person – whether we are a pastor, an assisting minister, a lawn-mower, a Council member, an usher or any of the other myriad of roles around this place – whether we are still working or retired, working 80 hours a week or 10 hours a week, cooking dinner or ordering take-out – we are called to follow Jesus in each of these vocations, and to show the love of God to others, no matter what we are doing.

Last Thursday, we had our monthly Women of the ELCA Bible Study, and at one point, we were looking at Psalm 51 together. Psalm 51 is heavy into repentance and forgiveness – it is often used as a part of Ash Wednesday worship and at other times during Lent.

This psalm has long been associated with one of the most sordid tales in the Bible: the story of King David having an affair with a woman named Bathsheba, and then killing off her husband. Later on, David is confronted about his sin by the prophet Nathan, and David repents of his great sin. Tradition tells us that Psalm 51 was written out of that scene of confession and forgiveness.

The psalm begins, “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions…” and then the psalmist continues in his confession, asking God to create a clean heart within him, and not to cast him aside. “Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit,” he says.

And then, he turns a corner - he is confident of God’s loving forgiveness - for the very next verse says this: “Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you.” And so the one who has sinned and repented and been forgiven is the one who will now teach others about sinning and repentance and forgiveness. As we began to discuss this part of the psalm in more detail, one of the ladies in our group simply said, “We have a job to do.”

Exactly right. We have a job to do. In the case of this psalm, we are given God’s loving forgiveness whenever we come to him in repentance, ready to turn from our sin and to seek his way. And then, having received God’s forgiveness, we are not called to wallow around in the mud like a bunch of pigs – we are called instead to teach others about our repentance and God’s forgiveness.

Expanding this back out to the greater question of vocation – if you are here today, you almost certainly have as one of your vocations, “Disciple of Jesus.” How do you live out that calling? You have been given the great gift of God’s love – how will you offer that same gift to others, saying to them, like Philip said to Nathanael, “Come, and see Jesus.”

That absolutely happens in our work done in and through Our Redeemer Lutheran Church. But it can and does happen in a thousand other ways and places and times, too. Pay attention to every opportunity that God brings before you to offer his love and forgiveness to others, and through you, people will see Jesus. Amen.

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