Epiphany 5C – 2-7-2010 3 of 3

I Hear You LORD;

Now What?

Isaiah 6:1-8

Ps. 138

Luke 5:1-11

A Sermon

by

The Rev. Lynda Tyson

February 7, 2010

Saint Luke’s Parish

Darien, Connecticut


"O Lord, your love endures forever; do not abandon the works of your hands;

The LORD will make good his purpose for me.” (Ps. 138.9)

Our readings today are all about divine Call and human response – Call, with a capital “C.” Discernment of Call is a central theme, not just today but in all of scripture, because experiencing God’s Call is part of the hardwiring of our human condition. At one time or another, one way or another, we all know God calls us. Why else would you or I be here this morning, when we could otherwise be lighting the fire, brewing another pot of coffee, and nestling in with The New York Times?

The first question people almost always ask about Call is, “How do I know it’s God calling? What if it’s just my imagination, or my own desire, or some other person’s desire for the way I should live my life?”

Well, unless we are kidding ourselves (which we are wont to do) we know when it’s God calling. God’s is the voice that doesn’t go away; and it’s everywhere. You know what I’m talking about – that nagging, persistent message you can’t get away from. You see it in a magazine or on a billboard, you hear it in a line of a song or movie or a TV show, it pops up in your dreams, your barber or your neighbor is chatting along and just comes out with the same remark totally out of the blue...as if they could read your most private thoughts. God is the voice that cannot, the voice that will not be silenced, at least not for very long.

One day, about a year before I finally found the courage to apply to seminary, and I was still in denial of the Call I was hearing, I was picking out kitchen tiles for the dream home we were building in Maine – this was the home we eventually abandoned in response to a Call. Well, that day I happened upon a scrumptious white sculpted tile that looked just like thick sour cream frosting on a mouth-watering cake. “This is it!” I said to the tile store owner, “What’s the name of this tile?” He said, “It’s called Divinity.” Okay, I hear you Lord.

There’s a bigger question than, “How do I know it’s God calling?” After we figure out it’s God tapping us on the shoulder, the bigger question is “What?” “I hear you Lord; Now what?” “What is it God is asking of me? What is God telling me to do with myself, with the gifts I have been given, with my life?”

We just prayed together in today’s Collect: “…give us the liberty of that abundant life which you have made known to us in your Son… the liberty of that abundant life” Obviously this prayer is not about monetary abundance or the physical stuff in our lives. The prayer is about the abundance of spiritual gifts. Maybe not so obvious, is the liberty of that abundant life in Christ may be a gift, but like a lot of gifts, abundance can also be its own kind of bondage. We’ve all heard the saying, “Be careful what you pray for.” For many of us, it’s our abundance of God-given gifts that poses the problem, creates the dilemma in answering that question, “What is God asking of me; what should I do with the gifts I have been given?”

A couple of weeks ago I received an email message from a mother in her early 40s. She has been working part-time and now, as her children are becoming more independent she finds herself, ironically, both free and lost – freed-up to invest herself in a more full-time vocation, but what? She wrote: “I'd like to find my calling… The trouble is,” she said, “I'm called ‘Mom,’ ‘Teacher,’ ‘Librarian,’ even ‘Artist.’ So I'm a bit confused right now. I wish I could make my life simpler. I just don't know which is my favorite name. I like them all.” Call that a dilemma of abundance.

Caroline Westerhoff writes about living into our baptismal promises, and she tells a similar story about a mother who says she doesn’t have difficulty discerning between things that are clearly “good” or “bad.” Her problem, the woman says, is choosing between “things that all seem good.” [i] Call that a dilemma of abundance.

When one of our nieces was in middle school she was already checking out veterinary schools. Then, in high school she won a national award for a medical science project and decided she would rather take care of people than animals, so she started college in a pre-med program. Her abundant list of gifts got a little shorter when she bumped into organic chemistry, so she then decided she was destined instead for the legal profession, another way to take care of people. Bur in her senior year, while preparing to take the LSATS, she rediscovered her faith in a big way (that actually happens to a lot of college students), and a few months before graduation this now young woman announced instead of applying to law schools she was discerning a Call to ordained ministry. What did I think, she asked? When I suggested she might combine her passions and consider a bi-vocational life in law and ministry she said, “No, I think law would be way too stressful.” I just smiled to myself and didn’t say a word.

Simon answers Jesus, “…"Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets." And then comes the miracle of the abundant catch. On the first day of Vacation Bible School a couple of years ago we acted out this very lesson in the Drama tent on the lawn. One of the children was Jesus, and four of them were the fishermen (soon to be disciples), and we created parts for the rest so everyone could participate – the rest of the children were the crowd, the people Jesus promises the disciples will catch when they are no longer catching fish. So, in our drama, the new disciples threw out the big nets over the crowd of people, this sea of children. And I said to the children, caught in the nets, “I wonder what the people caught in the disciples’ nets would be saying…” One little boy who was completely tangled up in the mesh shouted out, “Jesus, what the hell am I doing in this net?” What a great question, “Jesus, what am I doing in this net?” “I hear you Lord; Now what?”

Luke’s story is intended to introduce the prospective disciples (and us) to Jesus’ divinity, his ability to make anything happen against all earthly odds. But when you tell this story to children they immediately identify with the fishermen and they have very practical questions, questions like “So, what are they going to do with all those fish?”

What happens when our nets are so abundantly full we can barely lift them and they are starting to break, when our boats are so loaded they are actually starting to sink? And when we get to shore, if we get to shore, what will we do with such a catch as all that? They are perishable – fish. There is no freezing them at sea, not these fish. We have a short time, at best, to salt and dry them for another day, but with a catch of such abundance can we even do that? Hear “fish,” think “gifts.” Our God-given gifts are perishable, too. Whether we use them today, or not, we lose them, eventually, those gifts. There is nothing inherently shameful about abundance. What was it Jesus advised the man with many possessions who sought eternal life? “Go and sell what you have, give the money to the poor, come back and follow me.” We are only charged to renounce the abundance in our lives when it stands between us and the baptismal promises we have made.

Most of us don’t see our baptismal promises guiding our everyday experiences. Instead, we fall into the trap of seeing ministry as a role and a function rather than understanding baptismal promises as a basic orientation for our lives. Well, what about living a public life that is informed by Christian faith? [ii]

At this past week’s Diocesan Clergy Conference our new Bishop-elect, Ian Douglas was asked about his vision for the church in Connecticut, and he responded with what he called the fundamental question: “Where do we meet God; what does God want us to do? What is God’s mission?” And he answered, “Baptism is our common call to mission, a mission to restore, reconcile, and unite us to each other and to God…We need to ask ourselves,” he said, “How do we live our lives in service to what God is already doing?”

One of my favorite fortune cookies says, “You don’t need to know where you’re going… to go in the right direction.” We have been given the direction. Thank you, Jesus. Call is not about accomplishment or performance. It’s not a contest. We are measured against ourselves. So, when we find ourselves asking, “Jesus, what am I doing in this net?” or, “I hear you Lord; Now what?” We might remember, Call is not about abandoning any pieces or parts of ourselves. In order to answer God’s call, we just need to ask, “Which among the abundant gifts I have been given can I use, today, to help restore, reconcile, and unite us to each other and to God?”

[i] Caroline A. Westerhoff, Calling, A Song for the Baptized, New York: Church Publishing, 2005, p. 42.

[ii] Ibid. p. 48.