3 Epiphany B January
21, 2018
Jonah 3:1-5, 10 Psalm 62:6-14
1 Corinthians 7:29-31 Mark 1:14-20
Lectionary Link
There is some irony in reading about the prophet Jonah and the Gospel call to the fishermen since Jonah was the one who caught by a big fish.
Remember the story of Jonah? He was told to go preach a message of repentance to the foreign city of Ninevah, but Jonah believed that the message of the Torah only belonged to his own people of Israel. He knew it to be such a good message, he knew that if God treated the people of Ninevah like God treated obedient people everywhere, they would embrace the good news of God.
What did Jonah do when he was first called? He ran away and took a slow boat in the opposite direction. And nature was used by God to perform an intervention in the flight of the disobedient prophet. A storm arose and threated the life of all on the ship; and finally Jonah confessed about how his disobedience was the cause of the storm. So, he convinced them to throw him overboard to make the storm cease. And what happened to Jonah?
He was swallowed by a big fish. He spent three nights in the belly of the big fish and he prayed while in the belly of the big fish. He made the big fish sick that the big fish spit him upon the beach. And Jonah received a second call to go to Ninevah and he obeyed and sure enough Ninevah received and obeyed his message.
Peter, Andrew, James and John were fishermen who got caught. They were not caught and swallowed by a big fish; they were caught by this charismatic rabbi Jesus who was preaching on the shores of the Sea of Galilee.
They liked the dynamic of being "caught" by Christ; finding the best teacher of their lives must have been exciting. And Jesus told them that he would help them catch others in a similar way. They became his students in his school of discipleship. They wanted to learn from Jesus how to activate their wisdom and their personal charisma in a way that would help them to reach other people. The call of Christ involves each of us learning how to help people activate their call to the goodness of God.
The Call of God is a multi-faceted; it involves how each human being can understand the purpose of his or her life.
The Call of God needs to be understood in its fullness. 1-the Pre-Christian Cosmic Call. 2-The personal call by Jesus. 3-The institutionalization of call in baptismal practice and ordination. And 4-Call as the complementing vocation in everything that we do.
The PreChristian Call is articulated in our Creation belief that we are made in the image of God and so the homing device of God's image within us is always already trying to lead us back to God. The law, the sages, the prophets all came as ways to assist us in restoring the best performance of the image of God in our lives. The limitation of the call to just the people of Israel and to certain religious parties, such as happened in the life of Jonah, meant that a new call had to be made explicit. And so we have the personal call of God to humanity in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus came to be the Image of God in a human person to model how the image of God on humanity is to be lived out. And God became known as a specific person in Jesus of Nazareth and Jesus of Nazareth attracted people to find their purpose of life. He built a Movement and a community to gather to model and live out these behaviors of good news, the good news of love and kindness and justice. And this message of Jesus became so successful that it caught on, not only with Jews but with Gentiles.
And when something is a really successful social phenomenon what has to happen? Organization has to arise to help to consolidate people in the message. Christianity went from being a small charismatic movement meeting in private homes with very informal structures and it became a massive cultural force taking over the Roman Empire and so it needed the same structures of law and order found in the Roman government and military. The call of God in Christ received institutional meaning and definition. The informal and personal charismatic gifts of the church become regularized in structure of ministry in the four orders: Lay, diaconal, priestly and episcopal. The main call of God is regularized in baptism. The Lay order is the main order of ministry shared by all Christ. Baptism is an event which expresses that God's grace calls all us at all ages to activate God's image in our lives and accept ourselves as God's children. This is the basic call and it makes us all equal in grace. The orders of ministries as deacons, priests and bishop are callings for some as specific ways to articulate baptismal grace and calling. A baby is equal in grace to a bishop, priest or deacon. And that brings us to the call as the complementing vocation of everything that we do. If you are baptized and you are a lawyer, you have the call of Christ. If you are a doctor, teacher, mother, father, engineer, business person, landscaper, you have the para-calling of Christ that means you bring the values of Christ into all of the behaviors within one's career. The call of Christ is alongside everything else that we do in our lives.
So, where does that leave us today? Don't be like Jonah. Don't try to avoid the particular call of Christ upon your live to express and live out the good news about God's love. You cannot use the busy-ness of your career as being an excuse to say, "I am not called because I have never been ordained."
Do not let the church uphold bishops, priests and deacons as being the main persons called in the church. The ordained ministries are only particular kinds of baptismal calling. We have bishops, priests and deacon as signs and symbols within church announcing that all people are called by Christ. All people are ordained in their baptisms to share the message and life of Christ in all that they do.
The call of Christ is equally given to us of us in our different life circumstances. May God help each of us to honor the call of Christ in our lives. Amen.
Jonah 3:1-5, 10 Psalm 62:6-14
1 Corinthians 7:29-31 Mark 1:14-20
Lectionary Link
There is some irony in reading about the prophet Jonah and the Gospel call to the fishermen since Jonah was the one who caught by a big fish.
Remember the story of Jonah? He was told to go preach a message of repentance to the foreign city of Ninevah, but Jonah believed that the message of the Torah only belonged to his own people of Israel. He knew it to be such a good message, he knew that if God treated the people of Ninevah like God treated obedient people everywhere, they would embrace the good news of God.
What did Jonah do when he was first called? He ran away and took a slow boat in the opposite direction. And nature was used by God to perform an intervention in the flight of the disobedient prophet. A storm arose and threated the life of all on the ship; and finally Jonah confessed about how his disobedience was the cause of the storm. So, he convinced them to throw him overboard to make the storm cease. And what happened to Jonah?
He was swallowed by a big fish. He spent three nights in the belly of the big fish and he prayed while in the belly of the big fish. He made the big fish sick that the big fish spit him upon the beach. And Jonah received a second call to go to Ninevah and he obeyed and sure enough Ninevah received and obeyed his message.
Peter, Andrew, James and John were fishermen who got caught. They were not caught and swallowed by a big fish; they were caught by this charismatic rabbi Jesus who was preaching on the shores of the Sea of Galilee.
They liked the dynamic of being "caught" by Christ; finding the best teacher of their lives must have been exciting. And Jesus told them that he would help them catch others in a similar way. They became his students in his school of discipleship. They wanted to learn from Jesus how to activate their wisdom and their personal charisma in a way that would help them to reach other people. The call of Christ involves each of us learning how to help people activate their call to the goodness of God.
The Call of God is a multi-faceted; it involves how each human being can understand the purpose of his or her life.
The Call of God needs to be understood in its fullness. 1-the Pre-Christian Cosmic Call. 2-The personal call by Jesus. 3-The institutionalization of call in baptismal practice and ordination. And 4-Call as the complementing vocation in everything that we do.
The PreChristian Call is articulated in our Creation belief that we are made in the image of God and so the homing device of God's image within us is always already trying to lead us back to God. The law, the sages, the prophets all came as ways to assist us in restoring the best performance of the image of God in our lives. The limitation of the call to just the people of Israel and to certain religious parties, such as happened in the life of Jonah, meant that a new call had to be made explicit. And so we have the personal call of God to humanity in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus came to be the Image of God in a human person to model how the image of God on humanity is to be lived out. And God became known as a specific person in Jesus of Nazareth and Jesus of Nazareth attracted people to find their purpose of life. He built a Movement and a community to gather to model and live out these behaviors of good news, the good news of love and kindness and justice. And this message of Jesus became so successful that it caught on, not only with Jews but with Gentiles.
And when something is a really successful social phenomenon what has to happen? Organization has to arise to help to consolidate people in the message. Christianity went from being a small charismatic movement meeting in private homes with very informal structures and it became a massive cultural force taking over the Roman Empire and so it needed the same structures of law and order found in the Roman government and military. The call of God in Christ received institutional meaning and definition. The informal and personal charismatic gifts of the church become regularized in structure of ministry in the four orders: Lay, diaconal, priestly and episcopal. The main call of God is regularized in baptism. The Lay order is the main order of ministry shared by all Christ. Baptism is an event which expresses that God's grace calls all us at all ages to activate God's image in our lives and accept ourselves as God's children. This is the basic call and it makes us all equal in grace. The orders of ministries as deacons, priests and bishop are callings for some as specific ways to articulate baptismal grace and calling. A baby is equal in grace to a bishop, priest or deacon. And that brings us to the call as the complementing vocation of everything that we do. If you are baptized and you are a lawyer, you have the call of Christ. If you are a doctor, teacher, mother, father, engineer, business person, landscaper, you have the para-calling of Christ that means you bring the values of Christ into all of the behaviors within one's career. The call of Christ is alongside everything else that we do in our lives.
So, where does that leave us today? Don't be like Jonah. Don't try to avoid the particular call of Christ upon your live to express and live out the good news about God's love. You cannot use the busy-ness of your career as being an excuse to say, "I am not called because I have never been ordained."
Do not let the church uphold bishops, priests and deacons as being the main persons called in the church. The ordained ministries are only particular kinds of baptismal calling. We have bishops, priests and deacon as signs and symbols within church announcing that all people are called by Christ. All people are ordained in their baptisms to share the message and life of Christ in all that they do.
The call of Christ is equally given to us of us in our different life circumstances. May God help each of us to honor the call of Christ in our lives. Amen.
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