January 16, 2011
(Second Sunday after the Epiphany)
(From The Lectionary Page)
The Call
by The Rev. Dr. Michael Johnston, Scholar-in-Residence
Both the Hebrew Bible and the Greek New Testament are preoccupied with the encounters of God and humankind that English-speaking readers know as “the call.” Today’s epistle is a case in point where in but eight short verses there are four references to the Greek word klesis. This noun form of the word carries with it the connotation that “the call” is an invitation to an experience of special privilege and responsibility. Accordingly, in the Corinthians letter, the “call” is first issued by God to Paul, who is “called” to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and then to those at Corinth who are sanctified in the Lord and thereby “called” to be saints.
There is also a reference “…to those who in every place call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ,” thus indicating that “call and response” is actually two-way traffic between heaven and earth. For the moment, let’s sit with that lane which is moving from God toward humanity.
Given the frequency in the life of the faithful that the Deity appears to commandeer human agency for its purposes -- both prosaic and profound -- it is not surprising that over and over again, the biblical writers wrestle with what it means to be called by God and how to respond when God does.
As it turns out, the people of the Bible often respond to God’s call in some fairly formulaic ways: First, they’re incredulous...incredulous that they’re being called at all; then they claim ineligibility--the divine tap on the shoulder is surely for someone else; and finally they protest their incompetence for the invitation extended and the task assigned.
Consider, by way of example, the call of God to Moses: “Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring forth my people out of Egypt." Moses' response is in the threefold fashion I’ve just suggested. He is first of all incredulous: "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the sons of Israel out of Egypt!?" Next he claims ineligibility by virtue of lack of authority: "Behold, they will not believe me." And finally he claims incompetence through lack of verbal skill: “Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither before nor since you have spoken to your servant."
Sound familiar? All of them reasonable excuses for trying to dodge an invitation to the party of the Kingdom.
There is another aspect of the “call stories” of the Bible that seems routine: the full dimensions of the call and the nature of the journey it usually requires are frequently undisclosed when the call is issued.
Take the call to Abraham: "Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to a land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great.'"
Consider the contents of that call: disruption of family and dislocation from place, with absolutely no clue as to where Abram was going--just some vague business about a land that I will show you. And as for the promised blessings, they get worked out only in bits and pieces, which takes up something like fifteen chapters of Genesis. But that, if you will, is the paradigm of call. “Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to a land that I will show you...and I will bless you. “Generally speaking, that's all the information we get. It seems that to be called, as one of my former parishioners used to say, “Is to set out on this weird faith walk.”
In today’s Gospel, the calling of Andrew and Peter, turns out to be an abbreviated version of discipleship gathering. It begins with Andrew and a second, unnamed disciple, who are put out on waivers by John the Baptist to follow Jesus. "Behold the Lamb of God…" says the Baptist. “This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me…’” And hearing this, the pair turned and followed Jesus. Jesus, for his part, when he saw the two now following after him, said to them "What do you seek?" "Teacher," they said in response, "where are you staying." And Jesus said to them, "Come and see."
This is a deceptively spare piece of dialogue, but rich in theological nuance. These are the first words spoken by Jesus in the Fourth Gospel, and they are a question that he addresses to everyone who would follow: "What are you looking for, what do you seek? What do you want?"
And that is not a banal enquiry about why the two of them are now walking behind Him instead of John. It is a question that touches on that basic human need which causes all of us to turn to God. It is the other side of that Corinthian road that runs the traffic heavenward.
The Psalter is repeatedly alive with humankind’s need for Yahweh.
This morning’s opening verse, for example, clearly states the need:
“I waited patiently upon the LORD;
[and] he stooped to me
and heard my cry.”
Other examples abound. Consider also those familiar words from
Psalm 42:
“As the deer longs for
the water-brooks,
so longs my soul for you, O God.
My soul is athirst for
God, athrist for the living God;
when shall I come to appear before the presence of God?”
And reflect also on the poignant elaboration of Psalm 42 in Psalm 63:
O God, you are my God;
eagerly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you,
as in a barren and dry land where there is no water.
In other words, the call is that sense of thirst not quenched and that sense of hunger not satisfied by any of our most prodigious human efforts or endeavors. And the call, as it turns out, is not whispered in our ear. It comes from the thresholds of our being. It is a deep yearning for the Divine One, a flame that flickers within us for intimacy with God.
Accordingly, in John's Gospel, Jesus does not call in the sense of commissioning for a ministry and a mission. In fact, John’s Jesus has no articulated social program and no ecstatic vision for an alternative kingdom. There is no gathering of laborers into the harvest; no two-by-two; no sending-out to teach, to heal and to proclaim; no instruction to baptize all nations.
Rather, John’s Jesus is simply in the world so that the world may come to him. And in coming to him, the world comes to know the Father. That, in fact, is what the prologue to the book tells us up front: He came to his own and his own received him not; but as many as received him and believed in his name, to them he gave power to become children of God.
Becoming children of God is what we’re called to; it is that which we seek; it is the light of desire that flickers deep within the darkness of our souls.
More familiar to us, I imagine, than today’s gospel from John are the stories of the calling of the Twelve in the Synoptic Gospels. Four Galilean fishermen. Andrew and Simon Peter his brother, and James and John, the Zebedee boys, are casting their nets on a lake. And an insignificant, itinerant preacher issues as inscrutable call: “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men. And immediately they left their nets and followed him.”
A clear, blunt, direct command without much shape to it. A simple, unequivocal response without question. No agonizing introspection, no prayerful discernment, no Commission on Ministry, no bishop. No testing, no teasing, no tying up loose ends. No looking back. He calls; they follow. It’s as simple as that. Drop the nets, get out of the boat, and go. And it has never since been so easy!
But in truth, answering the call is really not so difficult. All you need to do is get your head out of the way, and cup your hands in faith and trust around the flame of desire for God...the flame that flickers even now in your heart.
