“All of you people, now come along, hear Jesus calling and join his song.” The children led us this morning in Philip Orr’s arrangement of “Follow Me.” The gospel reading from Luke tells of the disciples washing their nets and Jesus teaching them and then telling them to cast those nets out in the deep water. They had been fishing most of the night and had caught nothing, so when it came to the advice from Jesus, the disciples weren’t so sure. But there came a miraculous catch and they were all amazed, probably a bit scared. And Jesus said, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.” Jesus and the call of the disciples.

A long time ago I was leading a children’s time in worship. I invited the kids to sing with me “Fishers of Men”  “I will make you fishers of men, fishers of men.” After the song, as I offered some profound conclusion I’m sure, a little girl sitting on the floor raised her hand to ask a question. “Don’t you think Jesus would have called girls too?” I think of her when I find myself in a conversation with someone about language and gender, a conversation that I thought was finished twenty-five years ago. Her question went beyond gender, though. The wheels of her mind must have been turning. “Can I play?” Can I fish too? I’ll try to catch people? Would Jesus want me?” Fill in the blank of the question of five or six year old trying to make some sense of Jesus and the call while the church just keeps singing “I will make you fishers of....”

A mom once described to me the experience of walking past her young son’s room and hearing him engaged in some imaginary play. Of course that wasn’t so uncommon for a five or six year old. She paused at the door and peaked in to see him up on his bed in a bathrobe pretending to preach a sermon. The towel draped over his shoulders was meant to be a stole. He was playing church, playing preacher, playing minister. The boy would be a man now but I have no information on his occupational endeavors, or how he scored on occupational surveys that the school probably started to give to him in about the third grade, or whether he knew what he wanted to be when he decided whether or not to go to college, or if his path was all planned when he declared a major. Notions of a life’s work or spreading the gospel probably weren’t foremost in the child’s imagination that day in his room. But I bet he was trying to figure out something about Jesus and the call.

You don’t want me to get going this morning on the failure of the church in general to be encouraging and recruiting the next generation to consider what used to be called “full-time Christian service.” And my thoughts are admittedly a bit edgy when it comes to the startling decline of the numbers of folks graduating from institutions like Princeton University and heading out to work in the church. All of that is another conversation. God’s call to us in Jesus Christ goes far beyond occupation and career planning and expecting that a 6 year old knows what he wants to do when he grows up. Discerning God’s call. Collectively discerning God’s call. Together trying to figure out some sense of Jesus and the call. It’s part of what it means to be the church.

You remember God’s call of Moses. Moses was tending the flock when the angel of the Lord appeared in a burning bush. A bush that was on fire but not burning away. “Moses, Moses” God called to him. And the young boy Samuel was trying to sleep one night when the voice of the Lord called to him four different times. “Samuel! Samuel.” The prophet Isaiah had a vision of a heavenly throne room with angels all around. An angel took a hot coal and touched Isaiah’s mouth while the voice of the Lord asked “Whom shall I send, and who will go for me?’ And the prophet Jeremiah tells of the Word of the Lord coming to him and appointing him a prophet to the nations. Jeremiah responded to God, “I can’t speak, I’m only a boy.” And then Jeremiah describes the Lord putting out the Lord’s hand and touching Jeremiah’s mouth, saying “I have put my words in your mouth.”

A burning bush. A voice calling in the night. An angel with hot coals. The hand of God touching a mouth. The stories in the bible that talk about people being called by God aren’t all that easy to understand when it comes to relating to our lives. We probably ought to give honorable mention here to Jonah and his experience in the belly of the whale. Sometimes call stories are hard to relate to, especially in church school round about the 3rd grade.

In his novel Jayber Crow, Wendell Berry describes a less than stellar call story. Jayber Crow is the main character. As a young boy he finds himself living at an orphanage called The Good Shepherd. Jayber tells how “the possibility of being called” by God began keeping him up at night. “I knew the story of the boy Samuel, how he was called in the night by a voice clearly speaking his name. I could imagine, so clearly that I could almost hear it, a voice calling out of the darkness: ‘J. Crow.’ And then I thought maybe the voice had called, and that I had almost but not quite heart it. One night I went to the window. The sky over the treetops was full of stars.  Whispering so as not to waken my roommate, I said, ‘Speak Lord; for thy servant heareth.’ And then, so help me, I heard the silence that stretched all the way from the ground underneath my window to the farthest stars, and the hair stood up on my head, and a shiver came into me that did not pass away for a long time.”

Jayber goes on to admit though he heard absolutely nothing but silence, he couldn’t rule out the possibility that a voice had spoken and he had just missed it. In dealing with God, he concludes, you better give God the benefit of the doubt and he decides to “accept the call that had not come, just in case it had come and he had missed it.” What follows in the book is a mistaken trip to seminary and thoughts of “full time Christian service” and then a wonderful story of Jayber’s life of ministry behind the barber chair in the town of Port William. God did call Jayber, but not in full voice in the dark of night, but in relationships, in community, with a gift for listening, and the gift of love, and through all of the valleys and mountaintops of life.  God did call and was at work all through Jayber’s life. His life as a barber.

Discerning God’s call together as a community of faith. It’s not about giving God the benefit of the doubt. It is about living life with an increasing awareness of God’s presence amid the joys and the sorrows, God’s presence in loving one another, God’s presence in our service to others. It is about our life in God.

From the prophet Jeremiah come these words to the community of faith in exile. The people of God who were struggling in a foreign land to maintain their life of faith, their identity as God’s people. People struggling to figure out the call of God in a not so certain time and place. The Word of the Lord through Jeremiah. “For surely I know the plans I have for you says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.”  A future with hope. A future in the care and the embrace of God. A future in God’s hands. A future in the light of God. A future in the love of God.

Maybe the first step when it comes to people in the church helping one another to discern the call of God is to remind each other who is calling. Which means helping each other to learn about God and God’s love. To look around and to tell each other about over and over again about the love of God. To share stories over and over again about a kingdom world where the hungry are fed, and all who suffer are cared for, and the nations forget how to do war. To look into the eyes of fifth grader, or a second grader, or 3 year old and to tell them will all the assurance you muster, God loves you and you will be now and forever held close to the very heart of God. Yes, Jesus calls girls and boys and men and women. And the very first thing you should hear in that is God’s love. By God’s grace, and in the power of the Holy Spirit, assisting the next generation to see that they have a future with hope. God’s future. God’s hope. It’s part of what it means to be the church.

When I was in junior high, I spent many of night over at Jeff Muehlbauer’s house for dinner. His mom, Rosie, loved to cook. Jeff didn’t have any brothers or sisters, so Mrs. Muehlbauer didn’t get to cook as much as she wanted (I mean abundance not opportunity). When Jeff had a few friends over, food was in abundance. And if you didn’t take seconds, or thirds, Mrs Muehlauur would look you in the eye and ask, “What you don’t like my cooking?” Or sometimes, it was, “O come on David, you know I love you, eat more..”

Here at this Table there is a message that is proclaimed. It’s not really like that of a mom who cooks to much and sounds a bit threatening, but there is a message, and it comes from God. Because Jesus, on the night he was betrayed took bread and after giving thanks, he took it and broke it, and said take, eat, this is my body broken for you...do this in remembrance of me.

Or to say it another way, come and eat, know that I love you.

Here at this table, eat, taste of your life in God. And know that you have future with hope. Today, Tomorrow. Everyday. Every year. Even forever.

 

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