Call of God

Matthew 4: 18-22; Jeremiah 1: 4-10

FPC; 9-28-08

          Jeremiah is minding his own business when the word of the Lord comes.  The word tells Jeremiah that the Lord has called Jeremiah to begin minding God’s business.  God has some major business, some big work, for Jeremiah: to be a prophet to the nations… 

          Jeremiah’s response is honest.  “I am only a boy. I don’t know how to speak.”  Besides, there probably were plenty of middle aged prophets who lived in that region, people with more experience.  From the description, it sounds like a job for someone much older than Jeremiah, someone who’s been around the block a few times.  Certainly, a prophet has to have the ability to speak.   

          But as one scholar says, “The call from God is based on God’s free and gracious choosing rather than on any deserving virtue or quality (or qualification) found in human beings.”

          When God called…

          Mary was just a poor, adolescent girl.   

          Moses was an ordinary sheepherder and also a known murderer.

          Not one person whose call from God is recorded in the bible was qualified. 

The call Jeremiah receives from God is in two parts.  Jeremiah is to build and to plant, to give hope and comfort to God’s people, which he does after the Fall of Jerusalem in 587 B.C.  But he also is called to pluck up and break down, to utter the Lord’s words of judgment, to deliver the word that will up root, destroy and overthrow the status quo of God’s covenant people.  It is a call filled with risk and difficulty; and so, also, are the calls that we receive from God.

          I think of nurses that work in pediatric intensive care units and I think, also, of parents of disabled children who believe God has called them to do what they do. 

          I think of the man in his late forties, whose climb up the ladder of the company was swift.  He had a nice corner office.  His salary was lucrative.  He lived in the most upscale neighborhood of the city. 

          He became convinced that God wanted him to become a high school teacher, teaching math to young people. 

          When he first told his wife about the call, she thought he was kidding.  His friends thought he was crazy. 

          He took about a 60 percent cut in salary, but he never stopped believing that making such a change in his life was anything but the right thing to do. 

          I think, also, of Peter, Andrew, James and John.  To heed the call to follow Christ was to take a risk.  As they dropped their nets, all that gave stability to life-the family business, family relationships, life as they knew it-all of that also was dropped. 

          Grace Hopper, the woman who retired as a high ranking officer in the Navy some years ago at age seventy-nine remarked:  “I have a saying: ‘a ship is safe in port, but that is not what the ship was built for.’”[1]

          A call from the Lord is a call to leave our ports of comfort, to risk being viewed as a square peg in a round holed world, to risk being viewed as irrelevant. 

          It was the difficult and challenging nature of the call, and, also, his feeling of inadequacy that caused Jeremiah to be hesitant and resistant to the call.  

          “I’m only a boy and I don’t know how to speak, Jeremiah responded.

          When God called Moses to deliver the Israelites, Moses said, “But, Lord, I am not eloquent; I am slow of speech and slow of tongue; send somebody else.”

          When Gabriel visited and extended God’s call to Mary to bear the Savior of the world, Mary responded: “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” 

          Those are all credible reasons for resisting the call of God.  Let’s not minimize the reasons that are given.  And, let’s not minimize many of the reasons we sometimes present for not doing what the Lord is calling us to do.   

          My plate is too full.  I’m busy with the kids, taking them to soccer practice, making sure I spend enough time with them.  I’ve got two children in college, so it is really not a good time for me to consider bringing my pledge up to a tithe.  Those are all credible reasons, reasonable reasons for not doing what God is calling us to do.

          We all have limitations.  None of us is adequately qualified or equipped to do the Lord’s work.    

          God knows our limitations and lack of qualifications better than we do.  That is why God includes the promise of his presence as part of his call to Moses, Jeremiah and Mary, to you and to me.

          God always gives sufficient equipment to his followers.  As Paul, the Apostle once said: “God’s grace is sufficient for us, and his power is made perfect in our weakness.”  (2 Corinthians 12: 9)

          God doesn’t call us to be successful.  Surely, God uses even our failures to accomplish his purposes.  He doesn’t call us to be successful.  But he does call us to be faithful. 

          What are some of the ways God seems most likely to deliver his call into your life? 

          May I suggest, the next time you listen to a sermon, resist the urge to ask whether it is entertaining.  Instead ask what you hear God saying through the words of proclamation. 

          The next time you read the bible, don’t just look to be instructed.  Listen for God’s voice calling you. 

          The next time you look upon serious human need, people struggling with their circumstances, ask if you have some talent God would like to match with that need.

          In all the call stories cited in this sermon, the one being called ultimately accepts the call and embraces God’s promise of presence given not only to each of them but also to each of us.