Sunday, January 26, 2014

Made for a Purpose (January 26 2014)

Homily.  Yr A Proper 3.  January 26, 2014.  St. Albans
Readings:  Isaiah 9.1-4; Ps 27.1,5-13; 1Cor 1.10-18; Mt.4.12-23

The Lord is my light.  So begins Psalm 27 that we read together this morning, and that’s where I want to begin this morning.  We are in the season of Epiphany, and one of the central images of Epiphany is the light that comes into the darkness.  It’s an image that’s picked up in both our Old Testament and our Gospel readings this morning.  Isaiah, in the 8th century BC, longs for a light to come into the darkness of the lands of northern Israel, the first of the lands of Israel to be conquered, the first of the people of Israel to suffer military oppression, hunger, forced exile and depopulation.  Isaiah longs for light to come into this darkness, much in the same way that millions of people in Syria, and in the Central African Republic long for light to come into their darkness at this very moment.

For people in ancient times, in the days before electricity, there were two very different ways of picturing the light that comes into the darkness.  One image is the sun.  At the dawn of each new day, the light of the sun overcomes the darkness and chases it away.  It is a powerful image of light, a bright light that makes everything visible.  The sun is one way to imagine God as light, as the light that comes into the darkness.  That’s what Isaiah was hoping for in his day, that’s how Matthew, with the benefit of hindsight, sees Jesus:  a great light, a new dawn. 

But there’s another way we can picture light, and that is the light of the small clay oil lamps that were the most common way of generating a little light at night in biblical times.  The oil-lamp gives us a different way of imagining God as light.  The oil-lamp creates a small circle of light in the darkness, warm and reassuring, just enough to light up our hands and our faces and the immediate surroundings, but certainly not enough to dispel the darkness. 

It’s enough light to move around, to take a step.  But the light of an oil-lamp doesn’t light up very much of your path, maybe only the next couple of steps.  It’s not like the sun, which chases away the darkness and lights up your path as far as the eye can see, revealing any obstacles and twists and turns along the way.  No, with the oil lamp it’s just one step at a time.

And so I think it’s interesting that when we say things like, “The Lord is my light” and “the light that comes into the darkness”, depending on whether we’re taking the sun or the oil-lamp as our image of light, we are talking about two very different experiences.

With the sun as our image, we’re talking about an experience of illumination, of truth, of certainty, of knowledge.  We can see what lies ahead of us, the doubts and fears of the darkness have been cleared away.  But with the oil-lamp as our image, things are a bit less certain.  We have enough light to take a couple of steps, but beyond that, it’s still dark. Uncertainties and questions remain, and to take those first steps requires an act of faith.  Maybe Martin Luther King Jr. had the image of the oil-lamp in mind when he defined faith by saying that “faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”

I think that responding to God’s call is a lot like that.  When God calls, usually we only get an oil-lamp’s worth of light, just enough to see a few steps ahead but not enough to see the whole path.  And that makes responding to God’s call an act of faith.

Our gospel reading today begins in darkness.  John the Baptist has been arrested, and John’s followers, including Jesus, are immediately put at risk.  Jesus withdraws from Judea to go back to his home region of Galilee.  His life is in turmoil.  He leaves his family and his hometown of Nazareth.  Why does he leave?  Is it to avoid arrest?  Is it to protect his family?  Don’t know.  He heads north to make a new home in Capernaum.  And yet in the midst of this flux, this turmoil, this darkness, Jesus is aware of God’s call.  And in an act which is surely a gesture of defiance at the forces of darkness, Jesus begins to proclaim the exact same message that got John in trouble:  “Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”  

And at that moment, as Jesus launched his ministry, I don’t know how far ahead he could see.  I don’t know if the full extent of his journey was visible to him, whether he’d already worked everything out.  I tend to think that, like the rest of us, the light that God gave him was more like an oil lamp than the full-on sun, and that those first few steps were taken without knowing where the rest of the journey would lead him, and that making that initial, dangerous proclamation was an act of faith.  Faith is taking that first step, even when you don’t know where the path is leading.

The gospel continues with the calling of the disciples.  Jesus walks by the Sea of Galilee, sees Simon and Andrew, calls to them “Follow me and I will make you fish for people” and immediately they leave their nets and follow Jesus.

As Matthew records it, it’s a pretty stripped down story.  Not many details.  I’d like to know some of those details!  Was this the first time that Simon and Andrew had ever met Jesus, or had they known each other for a while?  Did they know what Jesus was all about, had they heard him teach in the synagogue?  Was this the culmination of a series of planning meetings and discussions or did it really happen as suddenly as Matthew is suggesting?  When Jesus said to them “follow me”, did Simon and Andrew start running through a check list of pros and cons, did they ask any questions, did they take any time to think about it, or was it really a spur of the moment decision? 

That’s the sort of stuff I’d like to know!  But Matthew doesn’t give us any of that, just the stripped-down, bare-bones version.  Why?

I think it’s because Matthew wants to make it clear that responding to God’s call is an act of faith.  The Lord is my light, but I don’t usually get that as full-on sun.  I get the oil-lamp, just enough light to see one or maybe two steps ahead, but not enough to see the whole path.  We don’t always get the details, we can’t always see too far ahead, heck, most of the time we’re not even sure whether God’s calling us or not.    We don’t know anything about why Simon and Andrew, and then James and John respond to Jesus’ call.  But we do know that their response is an act of faith.

And how we respond matters.  Two weeks ago I talked about our altars in the world, the place where each one of us responds to the purpose that God is calling us to.  It was an idea that found some resonance here, and generated some questions and insights that some of you have shared with me over the last couple of weeks. 

For some of us, talking about our altars in the world helped us realize that what we do matters and what we do is sacred.  That is no small thing.  The Lilly foundation did a survey amongst church congregations in the US recently, and they discovered that most people in the pews don’t feel called, and they don’t feel that what they do outside the church is worthy of God’s attention and interest.  I want to say just the opposite.  God sees, God cares, and God calls us to participate in the work of his kingdom wherever we are.  Your altar in the world can be anywhere, but wherever it is, it is sacred.

For some of us, the image of an altar in the world resonated strongly because we were at a point of transition in our own lives, and because our lives seem to be so often in transition, and because transitions bring questions of meaning and purpose to the fore.  UCLA did a survey recently in which 4 out 5 US College students stated that “finding my purpose in life” is an important part of the college experience.  However that same survey indicated that only 1 in 5 college professors ever raised questions of meaning and purpose in their courses!  We need a place and we need images and metaphors that help us to talk about questions of meaning and purpose, especially when our lives are in transition.

For some, the immediate question whenever we talk about call and vocation, is how can I know what God is calling me to do?  To that question, which is a good question, the best I can offer from my own experience is that we don’t know.  Instead, we trust.  Most of us want the bright light of the sun that reveals the path that lies ahead.  Some people get that.  Many of us get the oil-lamp that allows us to see only a few steps at a time.  Taking those steps requires us to trust, and sometimes might even require us to back-track when we choose the wrong path.  Responding to God’s call is an act of faith.  But it’s not blind faith.  When Jesus is asked for guidance on how to live, his response is straightforward.  Love God, and love you neighbor as yourself.

For some people this whole conversation is difficult, because too often we associate  vocation with employment, and many people don’t find their jobs to be meaningful.  We spend a lot of time at our jobs, and if you are in a job that provides you with a sense of meaning and purpose, you are blessed and should give thanks every day of your life.  Many people are in a different situation, where work, is well, work.  But vocation is not the same thing as employment.  Vocation is at its core relational.  God calls us to be in relationship with others, to serve others and especially to respond to the needs of those who are oppressed or vulnerable.  Your work is just one of the places where you have the opportunity to be in relationship with others.

And finally, at least for this morning, one of the things that I find the most amazing is the radical inclusiveness of God’s call.  All of God’s children are made for a purpose.   Ordinary fishermen like Simon and Andrew are called to follow Jesus.  From the surgeon doing a heart-transplant to the infant with disabilities, all of God’s children are made for a purpose and called to that purpose.  Our purpose is grounded in our identity as God’s children, not in our giftedness, nor our abilities, nor in the situation in which we find ourselves.   Our gifts and abilities and situation will certainly shape our purpose and mission; everyone’s altar in the world will look different. 

But the truth that each one of us was made for a purpose is grounded not in what we are, nor in where we are, but in who we are:  children of God, loved by God, made for a purpose.


Amen.

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