David A. Renwick
Second Presbyterian Church
Sermons: May 28, 2006

A Community of Believers: II
"Called by Jesus Christ"

In these few weeks together in May and June, we’re considering the mission of Second Church, and the focus statement of our congregation adopted about six or seven years ago as part of our Long Range Plan of 2000 and reaffirmed in our recent plan, Plan of Action 2005.

I’d like us to read this statement in unison together:

"Second Presbyterian Church is a community of believers.
Called by Jesus Christ and led by the Holy Spirit,
we aspire to love and glorify God within and beyond the Church
through worship, study, fellowship and service."

This is a wonderful statement that has been our guide in past years and I trust will be in future years. "Second Presbyterian Church is a community of believers. Called by Jesus Christ and led by the Holy Spirit, we aspire to love and glorify God within and beyond the Church through worship, study, fellowship, and service."

Last Sunday we considered together the opening words of this statement. We considered our life together as a community: "Second Presbyterian Church is a community of believers," with an inward focus and an outward focus: strengthening our fellowship within, but being equipped for service beyond the church as well. And we saw how the Bible always holds together the importance both of our individuality and of our life together. So we find in the Bible a myriad of saints, like those in the windows around about us. And we know their names. They are individuals known and loved by God and Jesus, and they remind us that even the very number of hairs on our head are known by God: we are known by God that intimately and that individually.

But we’ve also been called to come together, to live out our lives together. That is, the Bible is not only the story of individuals, but it is also the story of two communities: (1) the community of ancient Israel, the nation of Israel, the descendants of Abraham in the flesh; and (2) the descendants of Abraham by faith, the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ. Indeed, I think it’s fair to say that unless we live out our Christian faith, unless we live out our baptism as individuals within a community together, then we cannot live up to the teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ. We cannot live up to the example he sets. We cannot live up to the demands that he places on us.

He doesn’t just call us to be nice people. Maybe we could do that by ourselves, though some of us need some help even with that!

He doesn’t just call us to be good people, though he does call us to be good people.

Rather, he also calls us to feed the hungry. To clothe the naked. To care for the sick. To visit the oppressed. To welcome the stranger. To love our neighbors and to love our enemies. And I, for one, need your help if I’m going to do that. I can’t do that by myself. None of us can do these things by ourselves. These are community activities which we do together, helping each other to be faithful followers and disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ. Together in community as the church we can follow in a way that we cannot follow by ourselves.

So, first of all, we are a community of believers with our individuality intact, yes, but immediately Jesus comes and he takes us as sheep and brings them together into a flock. He calls us by name. . . called by Jesus Christ. And that’s what I want us to think about today: that we’ve been called by Jesus Christ.

You and I have been called by Jesus Christ. Our church has been called by Jesus Christ. This church is not ours. This life we have is not ours. Our agenda should not be ours. But rather our agenda, our lives, our church, should all belong to Jesus Christ. Should all flow from Jesus Christ. Because Jesus Christ is the one who has called us into existence and keeps on calling us along the way.

Do you know this? Do you sense this? Are you listening, constantly listening, for this call? It’s not just a call for ministers. It’s not just a call for clergy. It’s a call for everyone who is a follower of Jesus Christ.

This sense of God’s call not being directed just to the clergy, but to all followers of Jesus Christ, was a critical element of the reformation of the church in the 16^th century. And I believe it’s a critical component of every reformation of the church. Whenever the church is filled with God and life and energy, it’s because a myriad of people have sensed God’s call in their lives. Back in the 1500's, in the days of the reformation, a great theologian, John Calvin, wrote these words, as true today as ever they were when he wrote them. He says this,

"The Lord bids each one of us in all life’s action to look to his calling. For he knows with what great restlessness human nature flames, with what fickleness it is borne hither and thither, how its ambition longs to embrace various things at once . . ."

It’s true of many of us, I think. You’ve seen reports that speak about the age group of those who have just finished college, in their twenties. Many, many finish college and they have no clue what they’re going to do with their lives. I suppose that’s always the case, but at this time, with so many options, I think it’s especially true. Part of the reason may well be that hardly any are asking as previous generations did, "What’s God call in my life? What is my vocation? Not just ‘my job,’ but ‘my vocation’ from Jesus Christ?" Calvin goes on,

"If we know that the Lord’s calling is in everything the beginning and foundation of well-doing, then the magistrate will discharge his functions more willingly; the head of the household will confine himself to his duty; each person will bear and swallow the discomforts, vexations, weariness, and anxieties in his own way of life, when he has been persuaded that the burden was laid upon him by God. From this will arise also a singular consolation: That no task will be so sordid and base, provided you obey your calling in it, that it will not shine and be reckoned very precious in God’s sight."

You know, these words are really important to me as I try to sell my house just now! There’s a lot to do, in a short period of time, and the market is down: it’s no fun! But if I believe that God has called me to move on, then I must also believe that God is also in the details, in the buying and selling and moving and painting . . . Just as God is in the ramifications of my move for you all at Second! My call is also your call! But how easy to lose sight of God’s call. To lose sight of the fact that God is a God who calls. How easy to become all caught up in all kinds of activities that may not be wrong in themselves, but they’re not central to God’s calling. And how easy it is to lose our energy for what Christ wants us to do and be, and forget that in all of those details of life that none of us can escape, God’s call is at work. Easy to forget the call.

I don’t know if you heard a parable, a story not in the scripture, but a parable or story that has probably been used in every youth group in this country. It’s called the "parable of the life-saving station." It speaks about losing our way, forgetting the call. It’s goes like this:

"On a dangerous seacoast where shipwrecks often occur, there was once a crude little life-saving station. The building was just a hut, and there was only one boat, but the few devoted members kept a constant watch over the sea, and with no thought for themselves they went out day or night tirelessly searching for the lost. Many lives were saved by this wonderful little station, so that it became famous.

Some of those who were saved, and various others in the surrounding areas, wanted to become associated with the station and give of their time and money and effort the support of its work. New boats were bought and new crews were trained. The little lifesaving station grew.

Some of the new members of the lifesaving station were unhappy that the building was so crude and so poorly equipped. They felt that a more comfortable place should be provided as the first refuge of those saved from the sea. They replaced the emergency cots with beds and put better furniture in an enlarged building. Now the lifesaving station became a popular gathering place for its members. Less of the members were now interested in going to sea on lifesaving missions, so they hired lifeboat crews to do this work.

About this time, you can figure out what’s going to happen here, a large ship was wrecked off the coast, and the hired crews brought in boat loads of cold, wet and half-drowned people and the beautiful new club, as it was now called, was considerably messed up. At the next meeting, there was a split in the membership.

Most of the members wanted to stop the club’s lifesaving activities as being unpleasant and a hindrance to the normal pattern of the social calendar. But some members insisted that lifesaving was their primary purpose and pointed out that they were still called a lifesaving station. But they were finally voted down and told that if they wanted the save people who were shipwrecked in those waters, they could begin their own lifesaving station, thank you very much, down the coast. This they did.

As the years went by, the new station experienced the same changes that had occurred in the old. They evolved into a club and yet another lifesaving station was founded. If you visit that seacoast today, you’ll find all kinds of clubs scattered down the coast, one after the other. There’s only one of them, though, that remains in the business of saving lives.

It can happen so easily! So easy to forget that our agenda is not our own, that our church is not our own, that our lives are not our own, that they belong to God and that one of our primary duties, first of all, before we do anything, is to listen for God’s call made known through Jesus Christ.

One of my favorite authors is Harvard child psychologist Robert Coles. In a great book called The Secular Mind, he quotes his friend, poet and physician Dr. Carlos Williams, whose practice is in Patterson, New Jersey. Dr. Williams looks at society from his perspective as a doctor dealing largely with immigrant communities, many of them from the Mediterranean region, many of them faithful Catholics. And as he looked at them, over the years, he saw them wrestling with their sense of God’s hear call as they adapted to their new life in this country; a new life with all its blessings and with all its curses as well. He says,

"I’ve seen this happen, I’ve watched people who have just come here, figure out how to be a Christian, lots of them, and be an American. At first, it’s hard, they see the conflict, and they’re torn. But it doesn’t take long: the church bells are there but there is a lot of other noise in the air, voices with messages about buying and selling, callings at us from every direction, spend and get and work hard, so you can spend more, get more, and hey, that’s life" . . . "You want an example of what I mean?"

He tells the story of grandmother, a young one, who was born in Italy and came here when she was fifteen, and married and brought up a family, and now is helping her daughter bring up another one.

"She told me a few weeks ago that it’s become different going to church here than it was when she was in Italy and when she first came here. She used to sit there and talk to God, and try to figure out what He wanted, and try to please Him. Now, she says, she mostly thinks about what’s going on in her life, in her kid’s lives, and she asks God to make it better.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with that, but what I want you to see is that there is a little twist that’s going on here.

"She said, `It used to be I prayed to God that I would learn what God wanted from me, and how God wanted me to behave. God is here and she is below and she’s asking what God wants. I wanted his help to be that kind of person, the king God wanted, but now I pray to God that God help us with this problem and the next one. It used to be when I prayed to God, I was talking to God. Now it’s me talking to myself and I’m only asking God to help out with things."

See the little twist that’s happened? Here’s God, the conversation is, "Lord, what do you want me to do?" and God is God. Then it twists around and it’s, "God, I think I need you now. Most of the time I don’t but help me out with all these things." Now, please do not mis-hear me! God wants to help us out! But the real question is: are we also listening to God calling us to help God out? That’s God’s call up top, way before we call on God. That’s God asking us first, way before we ask God for anything. Do you see the difference?

How easy to reverse things and to make God our servant in a way that is not ultimately the case, (though God does serve us). Instead, it’s vital that we allow God to remain God. But we forget it. And when we do, we forget the importance of God’s call.

Jesus’ first followers, of course, couldn’t escape the call of Jesus in their lives. They listened for God’s call through Jesus, quite naturally: the call was audible. There they were, gathered around Jesus, and he spoke, and they asked questions and the gospels are filled with those questions. They didn’t get it the first time, so they asked again. What are you saying? What does this mean for me? When you lay your example before me? What am I now supposed to do? What is your call within my life?

And the Apostle Paul, in our passage of Scripture in Ephesians, conveys this sense of being called by God through Jesus Christ. It permeates that first chapter of Ephesians, a sense of God’s call. All the way through it.

"Listen, says the Apostle, God has blessed us. He’s lavished his blessings upon us. Christ died for us. He’s forgiven our every sin. God wants to come to live in us by the Holy Spirit and more than that, he’s called us to be children of God. We need to live like it. He’s called us to be holy and blameless. Not just to be "good a little," but to have a goal which is enormous. We may not get there in this life but we are to strive for that. He calls us to live for the praise of God’s glory. It’s not my kingdom come, but it’s thy kingdom come. He’s called us to a have a sense of hope when we are in bleak despair, one that nothing can quench. The kind of hope that comes from knowing that the death of Jesus Christ, even such a bleak event as that, ends up in resurrection. God wants to share that power with us, that call above all, to be the body of Christ in this world. Christ’s visible presence on earth when we can not see him with our eyes, how are people to see him? Through us? Through our community? To this, we have been called.

"I pray," he writes,

"that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him so that with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches or his glorious inheritance among the saints. And he has put all things under God’s feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, for us, which is his body, the fullness, the manifestation of him who fills all in all."

What an amazing calling we have from God. What possibilities there are in life when we sense that God is behind us, calling us to move on; and in front of us, calling us to come forward and inside of us. Calling out to our consciences:

"Hey you. David . . . Currie . . . Don . . . Donna . . . Hey you! I have a calling for you."

"Hey you, Second Presbyterian Church, consider your call, do not forget, do not be sidetracked, but listen now more than ever."

We are a community of believers, called by Jesus Christ.

Let’s bow before God in prayer.

Give us ears to listen, living God, for your call together and by your holy spirit, equip us to follow that call and to see your work done in ways beyond our imagination in and through us even us. Amen.