I Kings 19:15 – 16, 19 – 21 / Psalm 16 / Galatians 5:1, 13 – 25 / Luke 9:51 – 62
This
is the homily given at St. John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania by Fr. Gene Tucker on
Sunday, June 26, 2022.
“GOD’S CALL AND THE REST OF LIFE”
(Homily texts: I Kings 19:15 – 16, 19 –
21 & Luke 9:51 - 62)
A
common theme ties together our Old Testament reading from First Kings and our
Gospel reading, from Luke, chapter nine. That theme has to do with God’s call
to service and ministry, first to the prophet Elisha, and then, in Luke, to
Jesus’ call to go to Jerusalem, there to confront the powers that existed in
that time and place.
In
each case, Elisha’s and Jesus’, God’s call meant the abandonment of all that
had gone before. In Elisha’s case, we are told that he was plowing with the
prophet Elijah found him. When Elijah called him into God’s service, the plow
and the oxen went away. When Jesus set His face to go to Jerusalem (Luke’s way
of describing God’s call), the Lord set aside everything that had preceded that
call. In the Lord’s case, His journey toward Jerusalem is marked by encounters
with various persons along the way. In each case, the interaction between the
Lord and these others tells us something about the Lord’s singular
determination to do God’s will in Jerusalem. In essence, the Lord’s responses
to these various persons (which must surely qualify as hyperbolic speech –
speech that is deliberately exaggerated and meant to shock or to surprise)
indicate that, to follow God’s call, everything else must be put in place
against that call, with God’s call coming first.
In
the years that have followed, numerous persons have followed God’s call by
abandoning all that comprised their former lives before God’s call came. Some
have become monks or nuns. Others have become missionaries, or have gone to
faraway lands to proclaim the Good News of God in Christ. (Most of the original
group of disciples who became apostles fit into this category.) Some who’ve
been called into ordained ministry become itinerate in their places of
ministry, moving from parish to parish, oftentimes leaving extended families
behind.
But
for most of us, God’s call doesn’t mean a total change of location, or of
occupation.
Most
of us will continue to live our lives pretty much as we’ve done, in the
locations in which we’ve lived, and following the secular callings we’ve been
engaged in.
How
then, do we fit God’s call into that sort of a pattern of life, a life that
asks us to pay attention to God’s call and God’s will, as we also pay attention
to the everyday expectations and duties that life puts in our pathway?
We
might begin by reminding ourselves that each and every one of us has a call
from God. God’s call doesn’t come to or apply to only those who’ve been called
into ordained ministry, or to some radical change of occupation or location,
like monks, nuns or missionaries. By virtue of our baptisms, we are, each one
of us, called by God into service.
Perhaps
it would be good for us to recall that each and every action and word we do or
say potentially constitutes a witness to God’s indwelling presence. It is for
that reason that we promise, in our Baptismal Covenant, that we will “proclaim
by word and example the Good News of God in Christ”. (Book of Common Prayer, page 305.)
In
practice, this means that we would seek out the best interests of all with whom
we come into contact. Yes, even those whom we might find difficult to be around
or to interact with. Yes, even those who differ from us in some sort of a way.
At
this juncture, I am reminded of the nature of the world in the time when the
early Church went out into the world, carrying the Good News (Gospel). That
Greco-Roman world of the Roman Empire was a deeply stratified society, one
which demanded that people stay “in their own lanes”, whether they were noble
persons, slaves, or something in between. The Church set aside all those
distinctions that separated people from one another, as they met to praise God
in worship, and expected that noble persons would sit next to a slave, each one
calling the other “brother” or “sister”. To the secular society of the time,
this was an affront and a scandal (and one of the reasons the Church butted
heads with the secular society).
Our
society today is deeply stratified, with people being categorized by any number
of markers, all of which are secondary aspects of who they are as persons,
persons who are created in God’s image and who are worthy of God’s love and
ours.
If
God intensely loves each and every person (for that is the essential nature of
each person, a person who is deliberately created and loved by God), we, too,
are called to do the same. Even to those who seem to be entirely unlovable.
Even to those who differ from us, yes even to those who differ from us in
significant ways.
Loving
those others with whom we have contact doesn’t mean that we are to be
proficient practitioners of gentile manners, or of polished social skills. Our
love for others goes deeper than that, and it must abide even if we find we
don’t necessarily like something that that other person we’ve encountered does
(there is a difference between loving someone and liking what they do).
One
final word: This is hard work. It will require – with the help of God’s Holy
Spirit – the transformation of our default expectations and practices. We won’t
be able to love as God loves without that divine assistance.
But
we are called to this ministry. There is no dodging this call from God.
AMEN.
