The Transforming Call of Christ

3 Epiphany B  January 22, 2012

Jonah 3:1-5, 10 Psalm 62:6-14

1 Corinthians 7:29-31 Mark 1:14-20

Lectionary Link

   Jesus said to the fishermen, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.”

What if Jesus walked onto the football field at Candlestick today about 3:30 p.m. and said to the professional football players, “Follow me and I will make you score touchdowns for all people.”  What do you think that they would say?  Perhaps, one would say, “Jesus could I have the same deal that the Denver quarterback, Tim Tebow has?  He gets to keep his day job and moonlight as a Jesus representative; could I do that too?”

  For the fisherfolk of Galilee, the call of Jesus meant that they left their day jobs to follow the itinerant Rabbi Jesus on the road.  You really can’t do too much fishing on the road and so one wonders about how those disciples and Jesus were fed and clothed.  If their message was successful, then their audience probably fed them.

  The call of God in Christ has as many scenarios as it does people who have actually heard the call of Christ and who have responded to it.  Historically, we have given a distinction to the call of Christ for those who enter the priestly or pastoral professions.  The contexts of the call of Christ have changed as well.  The years around the time of Jesus of Nazareth were apocalyptic times; that is, many people believed that the end of the world was drawing near.  And they believed God’s great interventionist, the Son of Man and Messiah would appear to establish a different kind of order in this world.

  If this catastrophic intervention was about to happened, then who needed families?  Why have children if the world order was going to drastically interdict all personal and family lifestyle.

  The method of the call was to recruit an itinerate group of on-the-road preachers to get the message out as quickly as possible and to cover as much territory as possible.

  And now about 2000 years later we can say that the catastrophic intervention did not happened but the Gospel message of Jesus Christ catastrophically intervened in the entire history of humanity.  The Gospel message and the call of Jesus Christ has become much more than what was intended by the apocalyptic preachers who surrounded the itinerate Rabbi Jesus.

  The direct and catastrophic intervention of God has turned out to be the imaginations of deliverance by peoples who faced incredible suffering and needed intervention narratives of hope as a way of coping with their dire circumstances.  There was no catastrophic ending of the world in the years after Jesus appeared but the life and the call of Christ has had a catastrophic effect upon the peoples of this world.  That little seemingly insignificant mustard seed of Jesus of Nazareth is now seen as a towering tree that has taken over people and cultures.  The intervention of God has not been a catastrophic ending, it has been the consistent and gentle call of God as the Holy Spirit active in the hearts and lives of people.

  And this inside job of the Holy Spirit of God in the world is the universal call of God to all people.  This universal call sounded most clearly in the life of Jesus Christ whom we know to be God with us in human experience.

  And what does the call of God in Christ offer to us today?  The call of God in Christ is a baptismal call.  It offers us the process of burying in death all that is past and a resurrection to a new moment and a new future where we can surpass ourselves.  This death/life process that is ritualized in the baptismal event is the process of the continual renewal of our lives through repentance: Leaving old states of mind to take up new ones with attending behavioral consequences for our lives.  Repentance and renewal is also what we call transformation.

  The promise of the call of Jesus Christ is to transform our lives.

  The early suffering apocalyptic people of the Jesus movement desired a catastrophic transformation of life as they knew it.  What actually happened has not been a one event catastrophic intervention; it has been a subtle and drawn out process of the call of God at work in this world.  Transformation has not been sudden and dramatic, it has been subtle because it involves the Godly lure to humanity to choose what is good and better and not be forced into some catastrophic outcome that did not involve genuine freedom in the world.

  How do you and I approach the call God in our lives today?  How is God seductively luring us into the gradual transformation of our lives?  How are the interior sweet spots of our lives being touched and registering what is sublime in our lives?  The call of God is everywhere and can become evident at any moment; a laughing, playful child, a sleeping baby, a sunset, falling rain, pride in the achievement of one’s child, the discovery of friendship and the endurance of a friendship, the joy of creativity and the sense of being useful to the lives of others, the looking back in gratitude at events, and wondering, “How did I get through that?”   On and on the events of the call of God in Christ break into our lives, if we are but ready to switch our method of reading the events of lives and begin to interpret God’s loving involvement with us.

  And what is outcome of the call of Christ?  Our lives get transformed and God takes our natural gifts and makes them supernatural when complemented by the Holy Spirit who gives us a different kind of motive for living our lives.

  Transformation means that a football player can have a calling from Christ and still play football.  So too a banker, a lawyer, a teacher, a mason, a builder and a hedge fund manager.  Once we perceive the call of Christ we begin the transformation of our lives into the Gospel motives and Gospel purposes of life.

  Learning to understand that all that we do is ministry is the result of God’s call being successful in our lives.  Often the call of God is promoted as great sacrifice and giving up lots of things in life.  Seeing and understanding life differently may at first seem like a sacrifice, but once we are converted by the call of God and once the Gospel motive comes to our lives, the transforming effects of God’s Spirit pay us great reward.  There is a great relief and peace that comes when we adopt the Gospel motive for everything that we do in our lives.  Saying “yes” to God’s call makes us wonder why we ever wanted to ignore God in our lives.  God is going to accompany us in our lives whether we want God to or not, so it is much better to just surrender to the fact of God’s call.

  We can indeed change our lives by taking on the Christ-motive, the Gospel motive for everything that we do.  And the end result is that we will enjoy what we have and are in a more appreciative way.

  I would invite each of us to listen closely for how the call of God in Christ has been given to us.  Let us not fret about what we might have to give up; let us with hope look to how the call of Christ will work transformations of our lives to our own benefit and for the benefit of the people in our lives.  Amen.