Sermon from the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 14 by Pr. Craig Mueller + July 7, 2024
What is calling you? I don’t mean your spouse beckoning you from another room. Or your friend calling your mobile number. Or a child or a pet demanding your attention. I don’t mean your to-do list. Or the events on your calendar.
What’s calling you? What is the invitation, the challenge, the agenda for this time of your life?
When we think of vocation, it’s usually the major life transitions that come to mind. What will I be when I grow up? What will my major be in college? How will I make a living? What job is right for me? Will I find love or marriage? What are my plans for retirement? How will I plan for aging and eventual health challenges?
Sure, there are the big vocational questions. But’s there’s also the existential ones. What is calling you? What is your purpose on this earth? How will you grow into your authentic self while finding joy in service to the needs of others?
In today’s readings, Ezekiel receives a prophetic call to preach to a stubborn people. Paul frames his call within God’s grace which is sufficient for all things, knowing that his weakness is his strength. And Jesus, growing in his own sense of divine call, returns to his hometown where he meets resistance. “We remember this guy. We know his family, but who does he think he is to come back home as some great healer and savior.”
Jesus sends the disciples out two by two. They are to travel light, not weighed down with possessions. What is their mission? To call people to repentance. To cast out demons. To anoint the sick with oil and to cure them.
It’s hard to relate personally to that agenda. Most of us probably do not feel a call to be an exorcist or faith healer!
As much as we talk about some folks having a specific call to ministry, everyone has a call, in their baptism. And Lutherans revel in Martin Luther’s quip, paraphrased a bit, that changing diapers or sweeping the floor is as holy as preaching a sermon.
So what is calling you? Maybe it is one of the big callings before you. Or maybe it simply what is calling you at this time of your life, in this context, in these days.
One of the most well-known quotes on vocation comes from Frederick Buechner: “the place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”
African American theologian and mystic Howard Thurman offers a variation: “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do it. Because what the world needs is more people come alive.”
Helpful. When we find what makes us come alive. When we find our deep truth. Our gifts, our passion, our vocation. It will likely intersect with the world’s great need. Whether we are an artist, a parent, a public servant, a teacher, a friend, a volunteer.
One writer, Deanna Thompson, living with stage four cancer, relates that sometimes our calling doesn’t come out of deep gladness, but deep sadness. Vocations we would not have chosen. Illness. Grief. Suffering. Injustice. Racial reckoning. Poverty. In other words, sometimes we don’t choose our vocation, it chooses us and comes out of our own weakness or vulnerability, or the deep sadness of the world.
Every once in a while, consider writing down your life goals, or callings, or priorities. Monastic orders have guides to their life together, such as the Rule of St. Benedict. Some people write down their own personal Rule to help them reflect on what is most important to them in their lives. Think of it as your personal mission statement.
Holy Trinity will be rolling out its new mission statement and strategic plan in the coming weeks. In the past year—as we celebrated our 150th anniversary—we have been discerning what is calling us and the priorities and initiatives that will receive focus in the coming years.
Our denomination, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America—is a way that we as the larger church consider our calling and the things that we can do together that make our witness stronger. “God uses our hands, through direct service work, and our voices, through advocacy efforts, to restore and reconcile our world.” (ELCA website) Through political channels we address peacemaking, hospitality to strangers, care for creation, poverty, hunger, and disease.
One timely topic is the crisis in the Middle East. Clearly, people of faith look at the war in Gaza very differently. Certainly, the message of Jesus was considered radical and was rejected by many, so it’s no surprise that the ELCA position on the current war, or other social issues, is not welcomed by all.
What is calling us as the wider church? Our presiding bishop, Elizabeth Eaton, urges us to pray for lasting peace, and to seek justice and human rights for Palestinians and Israelis. She also advocates 1) an immediate, bilateral cease-fire and a halt in U.S. arms transfers to Israel, to prevent further loss of life; 2) the release of all hostages and uncharged prisoners; 3) unimpeded humanitarian aid for all in need.
The ELCA initiative for justice in Palestine and Israel is called Sumud, an Arabic word meaning “steadfastness.” We have a strong relationship with Christian Palestinians in the Holy Land and Jordan. The term sumud is used by Palestinian theologians to signify resistance to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and peoples.
Though many today resonate more with the plight of the Palestinians or Israelis, all people are created in God’s image, regardless of race, religion, or ethnicity. One can speak out against the Israeli government and at the same time guard the safety and dignity of the Jewish people, recognizing their suffering over centuries. At the same time, what I and others experience in visits to the Holy Land is the cry of the Palestinian people after decades of displacement and Israeli settlements, and the staggering death of over 35,000 in the current war.
What is calling you? What is calling us as a church? What is calling us as a congregation?
Christ comes among us this day, in word and meal, as healer and liberator. Freed by the gospel, we now follow to places of sadness and loss and despair. Traveling light, we march for justice. We plant gardens. We compost, recycle, and walk gently on the earth. We embrace those whose hearts are breaking, whose minds are faltering, whose bodies are failing. We stand with those grieving, displaced, and exiled, trusting that God’s grace is indeed sufficient. That even in weakness, the strength of God is revealed. Amen.