Sunday, February 8, 1998
Joey Noble

"Good News to Tell"

Isaiah 6:1-8; 1 Corinthians 15:1-11; Luke 5:1-11

I am a member of the Church and Ministry Committee of the Potomac Association of the UCC. Our job is to examine those who are seeking to be ordained in the UCC. Part of what each person must provide for us is a description of their call. This description has two parts. The first part describes how he or she came to feel that God was speaking to them, and the second part is a call from a local church to be their minister.

How do we know what God wants us to do with our lives? God makes God's Self known to us in many ways. For some seminary graduates like myself, that call began in childhood, as my parents accompanied me to worship and church school, The call grew stronger over the years, as I read, prayed, developed skills. After our daughters began school, they didn't need my attention as much. I began to focus on finishing the seminary courses I had begun some ten years earlier. With that degree in hand, I went before the Church & Ministry Committee in New Jersey. I wrote the papers they required, including a description of the call I felt from God to be a local church pastor. Additionally, I had to provide a copy of the call I had to be the Minister to Children and Youth at the Glen Ridge UCC Church in N. J, Similarly, when seminary graduates come before the Church & Ministry Committee I serve on here in the Potomac Association, they must have a call to a local church before we can proceed with ordination.

Our committee has been struggling with the notion that our sense of "call" is too narrow. Must a response to God's call always involve seeking employment in a local church? People sometimes ask if my daughters have followed me to seminary. The answer is "no". But if the larger question is have they responded to God's call, - - God's nudging them to speak the Good News of God's love and care for each person -- then the answer is a strong YES!

And what about each of your calls? What brought you to worship this morning? How have you experienced God speaking to you? Is your work a "call"? Are you involved in some volunteer activity that requires compassion As part of our covenant relationship with this community of faith, we are called to hear and absorb deep inside of us the words of the prophet Micah:

The Bible provides many examples of what it means to be called. Our lectionary Scriptures that Ginger read today describe three powerful stories. Isaiah describes his call coming 'in the year King Uzziah died (when he) saw the Lord, sitting on a throne, high and lifted up." Paul describes his call in his letter to the church at Corinth, passing on to them the Good News that he had received. He is amazed that God allowed him, Paul -- one who has spent his life persecuting the church -- to see Jesus in one of his post-Ressurection appearances. Paul acknowledges his own unworthiness: "the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God, I am what I am, and God's grace toward me has not been in vain."

Our Gospel lesson from Luke describes Peter's call. Peter has had a discouraging night as he and his friends have sought to fish the lake in Gennesaret. Jesus tells them to cast their nets on the other side, and when they did so, their nets were so overflowing they began to tear! When Peter, James, and John express their amazement, Jesus says to them:

These three calls describe God quite differently. Together, they give us a more complete picture of this powerful Spirit that breathed life into our very beings. Holiness, majesty, and mystery characterize Isaiah's God. In the presence of such a God, even the seraphs cover their faces and their feet. Isaiah can only say:

This mystery that Isaiah describes is not like a question or problem that disappears when the right solution is found. Rather, it is a kind of amazement that grows as knowledge increases. For example, a nurse may understand every detail of anatomy, genetics, fetal development - and still be amazed by the mystery of childbirth. More information simply enhances the awe one feels while holding a living, breathing human being in one's arms. This kind of mystery has inexhaustible depth. It is complex. It intensifies joy and sadness. It beckons and frightens, and is unlike anything to which we are accustomed.

The other two calls -- Paul's and Peter's -- depict Jesus as revealing qualities of God. As Paul and Peter come to know Jesus, they have a heightened awareness of God in their lives. As Jesus is compassionate, so God is compassionate. As Jesus reaches out to the leper, the tax collector, the unclean, so God cares for the least of these. Further, Jesus shows us that we can have an intimate relationship with God, for God is "Abba" -- Daddy. The response required of us is to open our hearts to God's reality.

There are many ways that we can experience the presence of God in our lives. The two sacraments that we observe in our church - baptism and holy communion - are a means of making the holy accessible. We can taste and touch and smell, taking a part of the Holy into our lives that gives us food, gives us strength, for our journeys.

In his book The God We Never Knew, Marcus Borg says that we are blocked from knowing God by a hardened heart. He describes ways that our hearts can be opened to experience the love of God. As John emphasized last Sunday, performed music can mediate the sacred through the experience of beauty, or by creating the sense of another reality. The absence of sound has also been a way some have experiencing the sacred. When we gather on Sunday evenings in the meditation room, we sit quietly, listening for the still, small Voice. Certain spaces can also enhance our awareness of the holy. A lovely garden, a pool of water, this sanctuary.

Borg also says that there are individual practices that offer ways of becoming more intentional about opening our hearts to God Certainly prayer is one. Verbal prayer addresses God with words. Intercessary prayer involves asking something for another. Non- verbal prayer involves learning how to be silent inside. Time spent with God in prayer transforms those who pray.

A quite different path leading to the opening of the heart is practicing acts of compassion. Compassion is a movement within the self, calling us to care for or to be with others as they live their lives. It is especially associated with feeling the suffering of others.

There are many other spiritual disciplines that nurture the opening of ourselves to the sacred: dream work, solitude, fasting, a spiritual director. These are important means for many people. All have one aim: to be aware of God's Presence with us, through all the days of our lives -- through the joys and the sorrows. As we have a sense of God's presence with us, we want to tell the Good News, whatever our particular situation. As we have a sense of our own calling, we want to reach out to others, helping them to understand that God calls them too. Surely God's beckoning to us may not be the road we would choose for ourselves. Peter responded to Jesus by saying, "Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man". But Jesus replied, "Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people."

"Catching people"? Do we really want to do this? Various boards at CCC have begun this new year by going on retreat. These retreats have focused on building community -- getting to know others and their own sense of call. These boards have also set goals and priorities for the year ahead. Attention has been paid to church growth -- "catching people" with the Good News we have to share. We all desire to have our pews filled on Sunday mornings. We all desire to have a strong financial base that enables us to maintain our building, our programs, our staff. Donna Dunn, our new communications officer, has suggested that we need to let our lights shine, so that our words and our deeds invite others to join us in praising and glorifying God.

Yet, we tend to be a little uncomfortable with the concept of evangelism. For some of us there are too many negative qualities associated with evangelism. The current movie, The Apostle, directed and acted in by Robert Duvall, lifts up some of these stereotypes. Still, it is a powerful movie that depicts people whose religious convictions give shape and meaning to their lives.

We need to tell our stories, proclaiming how our religious convictions give shape and meaning to our lives. We follow Jesus in bringing Good News to the poor; proclaiming release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind; letting the oppressed go free; and proclaiming the year of God's favor." God calls each of us through Jesus Christ, inviting us to be God's channel of grace to others. Let us consider our own individual calls, and our commitment as the CCC faith community, to our call to "catch people".

We will conclude this church service with a blessing that is printed in our bulletin. Listen now as Ginger reads it, and as we prepare our minds and hearts for prayer.

Back to Table of Contents.