3 Epiphany B January 21, 2018
Jonah 3:1-5, 10 Psalm 62:6-14
1 Corinthians 7:29-31 Mark 1:14-20
A calling from God can bring significant changes in one's life. Remember Abraham? His calling took him from Ur of the Chaldees to the far way land of Canaan. And Jonah, his calling to go to Ninevah brought him a detour of being fish food in the belly of a big fish at the bottom of the sea.
America is a nation of immigrants. Only the Native Americans are original residents. People from all across the world seem to think that they have been called to be here, and often for economic reasons. I ask a Danish American why his father came from Denmark to South Dakota? He said that his father was one of many brothers, and his grandfather had only one farm in Denmark, and that farm went to the oldest son. So, his dad came to South Dakota for land to farm on.
Imagine St. Peter in Rome, on his way to his own upside-down crucifixion. Can you imagine Peter thinking, "Wow, Peter you've come a long way from fishing on the Sea of Galilee. This call to follow Christ and spread the Gospel has brought me to threaten the Emperor in the city of Rome." Peter could not have imagined the changes and the adventures which came to him because of the call of Christ.
The call of Christ sometimes, is reduced to a religious vocation or specific ministry, or ordained ministry. And it is that, but it is much more. Peter would probably say, “the call of Christ is going to knock your socks off if you embraced the holistic life transformation of the call of Jesus.”
To have a holistic spiritual calling from Christ is to begin a path of social, vocational, geographical, and intellectual path of mobility.
Why weren't the fathers of Peter and Andrew and James and John upset about Jesus stealing their sons from the family fishing business? Well, it could be that there were too many brothers for the business and so if a couple of brothers found something else to do, then that solved the passing on of the family fishing businesses.
Think about the social and intellectual transformation of Peter and his fellow fisherfolk? Following Jesus made them into public speakers; it gave them the opportunity to travel and to use and develop people gifts which they did not know that they had. It maybe gave them the opportunity to become literate, able to learn how to read and write.
When one thinks about the call of Christ, one should think about holistic mobility. The Holy Spirit means mobilization in one's life. The call of Christ is the holistic educational program of repentance. Repentance is the translation of the Greek word, "metanoia," which means the renewal of one's mind. This is what mobility means; it means perpetual change toward becoming more like Christ, and change may mean doing some things which may not be in logical continuity with what one has been trapped in. I imagine that many people are "burned out" by their jobs because they feel locked in with no possibility for the kind of mobility that one needs to surprise oneself in personal and social development towards excellence.
We might be afraid of what changes the call of Christ might instigate. I had a parishioner who grew up in a small town in Texas. He thought that he would be stuck there forever. But he became a glider pilot in the Second World War. He landed those flying plywood boxes on rough fields at Normandy and in the Netherlands, and he survived. And he was grateful that his military call him got him out of that little town and allowed him to see the world and he saw open to him many new directions for his life and business opportunity.
This illustrates something of the kind of mobility that the call of Christ can offer to us. The call of Christ invites us to surprise ourselves in what we never thought possible.
We now seem to be locked in as individuals, families and as a parish by all of the restrictions of our pandemic. And yet we pray afresh to Jesus, let your call come to us even in the middle of our dire circumstances. Let your call come to us with spiritual wisdom for creativity in how to remain connected as a parish family and how we can best share the good news of God in Christ.
Our nation has just experienced the change of administrations; we do not need to be political to interweave Gospel values of binding wounds and bringing good tiding to the oppressed and the suffering with what our governmental organizations are trying to do for the health of the people of our country. Let us respond in new ways to the call of Christ and perhaps we can know future amazement with the new life mobility that will come from responding to the call of Christ.
I hope and pray that the call of Christ will surprise us in new ways today. Amen.
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