Last week, we began a series on calls in our lives. We are each called through our lives in small ways and in large ways. We are called to listen to what God is telling us, discern our next steps and respond. As we enter this new year and discern how God is calling us now, we are looking at the journeys of Paul as a pattern for how we can hear and listen to God. We began with a call to choose Christ. This week, we look at how God calls us to GO!
Often when we think GO!, we think of a character or experience like Paul. We think of going from one location to another, big swaths of travel from exotic location to unknown location. As we talk about Paul this morning, I want to invite you to open yourself up to how God might move in your heart. Perhaps, you are being called to consider missionary work in Africa or constructive work in Haiti. Perhaps you are being called to work on the Eastern Shore of Maryland or with the needs in Wilmington or the Parrish Foundation in Elkton, where our youth were last weekend. I also want you to tune your ears to hear if God might be calling you to go to your next door neighbor or the cousin you haven’t spoken to in years. Go! Doesn’t always mean the farthest distance; GO! means the greatest impact!
From the passage we heard from Acts, we get a sense that Paul is leaving on his first missionary journey. He will travel prolifically throughout this portion of his life. He will crisscross Asia Minor planting churches and sharing the gospel. Listen and watch Adam Hamilton, author of the Call, which I am leaning on for this series. He has filmed modern images from some of the places Paul walked.
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Paul’s journeys will be many and we will trace them over the next couple of weeks. However, his call to begin is when Paul and others are gathered in congregational worship, and he senses that God is calling him to go. The larger body affirms his call and sends him with blessings. I have suggested that Paul’s model is also a pattern for us. Do you expect the Holy Spirit to speak to you in worship? Sometimes the Holy Spirit moves through the music or through the words. Sometimes the Holy Spirit moves through testimony or preaching, video or images. Sometimes the Holy Spirit moves through our prayer time or in the quiet. Sometimes the Spirit moves in concert with worship and sometimes in spite of worship. Nevertheless, do you expect God to show up? Are you looking for how God might be moving within you? Do you look for how God might be moving you?
In this New Year, still fresh with possibilities, only 10 days into writing 2016. It is not even a habit yet, that takes 21 days – how is God calling you? Where is God calling you to GO? Many among us are starting new roles – job changes, by choice or by someone else’s choice, changes in families as families grow and as families shrink, new ventures – hobbies, passions, and exploring potentials. Some of us are wondering how can we change something for this year in a place in our life that is difficult and needs change. How do we know when and if God is calling us to GO! To get a move on it. The Reverend Dr. Mark Fowler of Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary says this: “Being called by God means getting up every day, believing that God is doing a new thing and that you have a part in it.”
The Bible is filed with stories of those who have heard the call of God, light on the details and followed anyway. Abram and Sarai traveled to a place which God described only as “the land which I will show you.” Moses took the people on a journey to a place entitled “the Promised Land”, no geographical details given. Paul responded to God’s call on his life, not knowing exactly where he was going, but having some sense of what he was doing. In each place Paul visited, he began in the same way. He went to the synagogue and began teaching. He taught the lessons that he had learned well in his educational preparation and then he wrapped into those lessons, that which he had experienced in Jesus the Christ. He taught in the synagogues until they kicked him out. Then, he taught in the marketplaces and other public gatherings. He taught about the life changing power of Jesus as he experienced him, as well as the need to turn your life away from sin and missing the mark.
A lesson he had learned from Jesus. The same lesson that John had been preaching probably ten or so years before when Jesus was baptized by John. Can you get the scene in your head? John by the river, baptizing those who come to him, as he proclaims the need for change, for life transformation. John by the river, taking the people one by one, question by question, comment by comment. Here is the modern day site with people lining up to remember their baptisms. Imagine that the people had gathered, Jesus showed up in their midst. Jesus would not have yet been well known to those who were gathered around. However, he was known to John, his cousin. John, who had been preparing for him and preparing the people for him. The Gospel of Luke concludes the baptism of Jesus with the Holy Spirit like a dove, descending on him, and God speaking aloud: You are my Son, the beloved, with you I am well pleased.
God tells each of us as well that we are each the beloved of God and God is pleased with us. God, who made us and created us, and no thing we have ever done or will ever do is hidden from, claims us as God’s very own. God calls each of us. Not the whole bunch of us generally, but each of us individually. God calls one to go and be a teacher in the heart of need in Roxborough. God calls another to serve the youth at risk in Wilmington. God calls another to care for an ailing parent. God calls another to share skills of technology with a congregation. God calls another to encourage older folks with the energy of their children. Each call is specific and beautiful, unique and shaped by the gifts and graces that are part of the life of that person.
In the United Methodist Church, we call our pastors to be itinerate. In fact, at ordination, it is one of the vows. This means that the clergyperson will go where the Bishop and cabinet discern that God is calling that person. In that vow is an assumption that the Bishop will listen for God, the cabinet will listen for God, the pastor will listen for God, and the church will listen for God. When all of that happens, we can imagine that God’s call for a clergyperson to GO! Might be filled with impact and meaning. GO! Might mean Shamokin or it might mean Nantmeal. GO! Might mean as part of a pastoral team and congregation well established or something broken, in need of repair or ready to be built from the ground up. We ask our clergy to model listening and Going and to share in public worship, to affirmed and confirmed by the body. .
Paul’s commissioning, Jesus’s baptism, and our lives take place in public worship. There have been those who have claimed that they do not need the church for worship. All they need is beautiful landscape or quiet moments. Please hear me to say that I know those to be essential moments of devotion. The connection and reflection in those places is restorative for our souls. However, we also need corporate worship, you and me. Without corporate worship, we begin to believe that we shape God, instead of God shaping us. We begin to believe that we do not need other believers to urge us on when we get comfortable, encourage us when we are downtrodden, steer us back when we have convinced ourselves that we know best.
God is calling you, and God is calling me. God is calling each of us this morning. Some of us are being called to keep on keeping on (even when it is impossibly hard) and others of us are being called even this morning to something brand new to us! Where did your heart move this morning? Where did your excitement sit? Where did your mind start to figure out a new path? Those are places where Go might be calling you to GO! Whether you GO! To Jennersville or to China, there is God’s work for you to do and God’s message for you to share! May you hear the movement of God, know the blessing of community, and seek the future unafraid.
This is the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, thank be to God, Amen. !
New Testament Lesson: Acts 13:1-4
Barnabas and Saul Commissioned
Now in the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen a member of the court of Herod the ruler, and Saul. While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off.
The Apostles Preach in Cyprus
So, being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Seleucia; and from there they sailed to Cyprus.
Gospel Lesson: Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
The Baptism of Jesus
Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
Meditations For Your Week
Sunday, January 10 ~ Saturday, January 16
Sunday: “Now in the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen a member of the court of Herod the ruler, and Saul.” Acts 13:1. The church is full of people with various calls from God. We are the best representation of God when we give each other support to answer those calls. How are you supporting others in answering their calls from God?
Monday: “While they were worshipping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.’” Acts 13:2. Discerning God’s calls comes out of the fasting, worship, and prayer. Have you spent time recently putting yourself before God in fasting, worship, and prayer?
Tuesday: “Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off.” Acts 13:3. The mission of the apostles was bathed in the prayers of those whose call was not to cross the sea, but to get on their knees in prayer. Is God calling you to be in prayer for someone?
Wednesday: “So, being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Seleucia; and from there they sailed to Cyprus.” Acts 13:4. The work of the Holy Spirit crisscrosses the book of Acts as the Spirit does our lives. Spend some time today in the presence of the Holy Spirit.
Thursday: “As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah,” Luke 3:15. Whenever the people of God gather, may we be filled with expectation. Gather near to people of God today and be filled with expectation that God will show up!
Friday: “John answered all of them by saying, ‘I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” Luke 3: 16. John’s call was to prepare for Jesus. Are you preparing for who comes after you?
Saturday: “Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’” Luke 3:21-22. You, too are the beloved of God. God is pleased with you!