CALLED TO BE
A sermon preached by
Rev. Dr. Randle R. (Rick) Mixon
First Baptist Church, Palo Alto, CA
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Text: Ephesians 4:1-7, 15-16
It is not we who shape God,
it is God who shapes us.
If then we are the work of God,
await the hand of the Artist who does all things in
due season.
Let us offer the Potter our hearts,
soft and tractable,
and keep the form in which the Artist has fashioned
each of us.
Let our clay be moist,
lest we grow hard and lose
the imprint of the Potter’s fingers. Amen.Adapted from Irenaeus, 2nd century
“…I want you to get out there and walk—better yet, run!—on the road God called you to travel. I don't want any of you sitting around on your hands. I don't want anyone strolling off, down some path that goes nowhere.” Well! those are some pretty strong instructions from Paul, at least they are in Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase. If Paul was writing to us today, we might hope he would be gentler in his instruction for how to get on down the road. I don’t see many of us running much anymore. In fact, some of us have been reduced to relying on our energy reserves not to mention canes, walkers and wheelchairs. Our resources are not unlimited. What are we to make of this word? How do we take heart from Paul’s instruction to the church?
Well, the truth is there are many ways to travel the road – walking, running, biking, driving, being pushed along in a wheel chair or towed in a little red wagon. The method of movement is much less important than that we are on the way – in this case, God’s way; not on a path to nowhere but on the path to glory, God’s righteous realm, where all dwell in peace and justice, in righteousness and equity, held in arms of everlasting love.
For the past three weeks we have been wrestling with our calling. God calls us to dream, visions that make ears tingle and lives vibrate with holy power. Christ calls us to follow, to let go of and leave behind all that does not serve the reign of God and walk boldly with him into that reign. Today we consider how the Spirit calls us to be all that God has made us to be, to live into the fullness of having been created in the image and likeness of God in order that we might exist in eternal communion with God.
“You were all called to travel on the same road and in the same direction, so stay together, both outwardly and inwardly,” Paul tells the church. “Stick together, ‘travel the road, sharing your load, side by side.’” “Remember,” he says, “you have one Master, one faith, one baptism, one God and [Parent] of all, who rules over all, works through all, and is present in all. Everything you are and think and do is permeated with Oneness.”
“Everything you are and think and do is permeated with Oneness.” Do you think this is so? Is it true for you? This is the great challenge of being called to be. We are not just called to be who we are in some natural (or unnatural) state. It’s not, “What you see is what you get!” Though, in one sense we are loved and accepted just as we are; in another, we are called live our lives, to shape our very being, in the likeness of the one who has gifted us with that being. We are called to think, to feel, to act, to be permeated with the Oneness that is the Godhead; to be in concert with the One who is present in all, works through all, rules over all. How does that feel inside your skin? Can you feel yourself being permeated with Oneness? What would it be like for Christ to be alive in you? How would your life be different if you were filled with the Spirit? It is no small thing - to be God’s people, Christ’s body, fruit of the Spirit.
This sort of being requires an intentionality on our part, a desire to live in intimate relationship with our Creator, a discipline that will not allow us to stroll off, “down some path that goes nowhere.” It asks of us a certain alertness, an attentiveness to how and where God is working in the world, to how and where Christ is leading his followers, to how and where the Spirit is moving in our midst. Paul says this sort of being will be marked “with humility and discipline,” that we must move “not in fits and starts, but steadily, pouring [ourselves] out for each other in acts of love, alert at noticing differences and quick at mending fences.” We are called to be those who pour their lives out for one another – and the wider world, the whole of creation – in acts of love, who listen attentively, alert to the things that make for diversity as well as those that pull for unity, who understand the healing power of forgiveness and are quick to mend fences. Does this sound at all like us, like you and me, like the First Baptist Church of Palo Alto? Sit with that for a minute. Where would it be most challenging for you to pour out your life in love? Where would it be most difficult to accept difference and see unity? Where in your life would forgiveness and fence-mending be hard?
I have been making the case, indeed have lifted it up as our theme for this year, that we are a caring and generous people. I believe that this is so. We may not be caring and generous in an ideal sense, maybe not even in the fullness of our own possibilities, but we are on the road that God has given us to travel. We may not be running down that road. We may not even be walking very fast, but we are traveling - in whatever shape we’re in, with the ability that God has given us to move on. That’s the wonder of this relationship we have to the Oneness. God not only calls us to be; God accompanies us, empowers us, uses us with whatever gifts that we have.
The second text for today is the quotation from Richard Rohr found in our Words of Preparation: “People’s willingness to find God in their own struggle with life—and let it change them—is their deepest and truest obedience to God’s eternal will. We must admit this is what all of us do anyway, as ‘God comes to us disguised as our life’! Remember, always remember, that the heartfelt desire to do the will of God is, in fact, the truest will of God. At that point, God has won, and the ego has lost, and your prayer has already been answered” (Richard Rohr, Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps, p. 103.)“God comes to us as our own life” – perhaps as great a gift as we could imagine – God in whom we live and move and have our being; God “who rules over all, works through all, and is present in all. Everything [we] are and think and do is permeated with [that] Oneness.”
There is an old tale from the Jewish tradition that goes something like this. Simon had a deep desire to be like Moses, the great law-giver, prophet and hero of his people. Simon fretted and worried, struggled and strained in his desire. Over and over he consulted the rabbi with the same keening complaint, “Rabbi I must lead my life so that I live more like Moses did." Finally, the good rabbi looked deeply into Simon’s desperate eyes and said, “Simon, my son, God will not ask you why you were not more like Moses? God will ask you why you were not more like Simon?” (Francis H. Wade, “Gifts,” July 27, 1997, dayone.org.) Why is any of us not more herself, embracing the gifts God has given us, allowing us to be person we are called to be? Our willingness to find God in our own unique struggle with life, as that struggle transforms us from the inside out, is our “deepest and truest obedience to God’s eternal will.”
In a little while we will go into a church business meeting. It’s not unusual to separate the business of the church from its spiritual life. I want to challenge us all to live beyond at that today. Indeed, we need to be true to ourselves and the gifts God has given us. But we also need to be God’s people, listening for God’s voice, looking for God’s way, opening ourselves to God’s will. Whenever we repeat the Jesus’ Prayer, as we did earlier today, we bow our heads and say to God, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” “Dear, God may your reign be fulfilled and your way be walked, right here, right now, by us today.”
We all know this is no easy thing to ask. We all know that discerning God’s will is incredibly challenging. We all know the minute we assert that we have determined God’s will with any certainty we are headed for a fall. Ronald Goetz argues that “The truth that alone can redeem our theological certitudes, posturing and chatter from utter insignificance is finally not combative but conciliatory.” He says, “If God is indeed agape, then we have reason to hope that God will look mercifully when viewing our woefully inadequate insights and self-interested truths and make far more of what we say and believe than we have any right to hope for” (Ronald Goetz, “Heresy, Diversity and Grace,” The Christian Century, July 16, 1997, p. 653.)We need to be marked by “humility and discipline…steadily, pouring [ourselves] out for each other in acts of love, alert at noticing differences and quick at mending fences.” That’s why I am so drawn to Richard Rohr’s insight that it is in our very honest, open human struggle to discern the will of God that it is most present. It is the “heartfelt desire to do the will of God [that] is, in fact, the truest will of God.”
As we go around the circle and share our thoughts and feelings in the business meeting, I hope that whatever we share will be grounded in a “heartfelt desire to do the will of God.” I don’t know what any of us will say. I have no way of predicting any particular outcome of our conversation. I know it is a crucial conversation for the life of our congregation. I hope it will also be a holy conversation, a spiritual conversation, one that flows deeply from our calling to be God’s people, Christ’s body, fruit of the Spirit. I pray that we will be caring and generous to one another in our sharing. I believe that “God wants us to [keep] growing [toward full maturity], to know the whole truth and tell it in love—like Christ in everything.” And I hold fast to the affirmation that “We take our lead from Christ, who is the source of everything we do. [Christ] keeps us in step with each other. [Christ’s] very breath and blood flow through us, nourishing us so that we will grow up healthy in God, robust in love.”
Called to be – a caring and generous people, robust in love, seeking to do God’s will and walk in God’s way in every aspect of our lives. What more could we ever want? So,
Let us offer the Potter our hearts,
soft and tractable,
and keep the form in which the Artist has fashioned
each of us.
Let our clay be moist,
lest we grow hard and lose
the imprint of the Potter’s fingers. Amen.
Ephesians 4:1-7, 15-16 (The Message)
In light of all this, here's what I want you to do. While I'm locked up here, a prisoner for the Master, I want you to get out there and walk—better yet, run!—on the road God called you to travel. I don't want any of you sitting around on your hands. I don't want anyone strolling off, down some path that goes nowhere. And mark that you do this with humility and discipline—not in fits and starts, but steadily, pouring yourselves out for each other in acts of love, alert at noticing differences and quick at mending fences.
You were all called to travel on the same road and in the same direction, so stay together, both outwardly and inwardly. You have one Master, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who rules over all, works through all, and is present in all. Everything you are and think and do is permeated with Oneness.
…that doesn't mean you should all look and speak and act the same. Out of the generosity of Christ, each of us is given his own gift…
[Now] God wants us to grow up, to know the whole truth and tell it in love—like Christ in everything. We take our lead from Christ, who is the source of everything we do. He keeps us in step with each other. His very breath and blood flow through us, nourishing us so that we will grow up healthy in God, robust in love.