Rev. McLeskey gave me a number of options for what I could speak about today. I ended up with ‘calling.’ It wasn’t a quick decision, but it came with a certain sense of inevitability. I’ve been thinking about the idea of calling a lot lately. I’m a senior, so I’m trying to figure out what my future should look like. I’m also engaged, so I’m thinking about what it means to be a husband and a (step)father quite a bit as well. When we think about calling as a set of certain things that God wants us specifically to do, it’s rather terrifying. Sometimes, it feels like we’re supposed to mystically search them out of the patterns we find in our lives. In the midst of my own search though, I have been anchored by the fact that there are certain callings which are universal—certain things which we are all called to do. If we pay attention to those things, I think we end up most fully utilizing the individual opportunities that God presents us with.
The Scripture I’d like to start with is not an obvious choice for the topic of calling. It’s from the Gospel of John (Ch. 14, v. 1-3):
Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.
We’ve been singing a song in university choir that ends with us chanting the first part of the second verse of this passage. I’ve always loved this verse primarily for the first part—because it reminds us that Jesus told the truth first, whether it was comforting or not: If it “were not so,” he would have told us what was so instead. But the part I’d like to draw your attention to today is after that: I go to prepare a place for you. We are called to ground ourselves both in the generality and the personality of the love of God: Jesus Christ loved and atoned for all, and he went to prepare a place for all. But the mansions, the dwelling places, he speaks of are not Sears & Roebuck, mass produced; they are bespoke for us. The first thing we are called to do is to believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and his Gospel is this: That you are loved by God, that Jesus lived for you, that Jesus died for you, that Jesus rose again and went to prepare a place for you. We talk about this a lot—but necessarily. These verses are not simply Christ’s farewell to his disciples; it is the message he charged them to carry to the ends of the world. As the apostle John writes (in his First Epistle: Ch. 2, v. 2), “[Christ] is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.” Mindfulness of Christ’s love for us is the necessary foundation of the Christian life. Paul prayed for Christians:
That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God. (Epistle to the Ephesians: Ch. 3, 17-19)
To be filled with the fullness of God, we must be filled with love—for God is love. And we cannot be filled with love if we do not know what love is. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the revelation of pure and perfect love.
The second calling is connected and will also lead us first to the Gospel according to John (Ch. 13, v. 34): “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.” This command is especially remarkable because most of what Jesus taught was not new. Jesus recalled people to the Law of Moses and the testimonies of the Hebrew Prophets, and he illustrated their words with his life. However, here, as he is preparing to die, he leaves a new command. It is not simply to love; that command is old. His command is to love “as I have loved you.” That is why it is so essential that we are grounded in God’s love for us; it is the only way we will understand this commandment. Here is the fullness of what is suggested in “love thy neighbour as thyself” and “love your enemies:” Love as God loves. “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” (Gospel according to Matthew: Ch. 5, v. 48) The apostle Paul instructs us (in his Epistle to the Colossians: Ch. 3, v. 14) to “put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness.” Sinners though we be, we may achieve perfection in love, and whether we achieve it or not, we must pursue it. We are called to do it by him who loved us. Why does Christ love us? Because we are worthy or admirable? No—because we need love. Why does a parent love their child? Because it is strong or skillful? No—because it is weak, because it is dependent. You are called to love others not because they are lovable but because they need love. They need God’s love just as you do, and through Jesus Christ, you are empowered to be that love. In the same way that Christ took up the bread, saying, “[T]his is my body, which is broken for you,” and the cup, saying, “This cup is the new testament in my blood,” Christ places his hand upon you and his whole Church and says, This is my body, this is my blood, bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh; this love is mine. It is a mystery, and yet it is true. If you accept God’s love for you, you are called to be a vessel, a conduit for God’s love for others.
The last calling I would like to touch on is a necessary counterpoint to this second point. We are called to be the love of God in the world, to be a part of Christ—and that is amazing but also frightening. How could we ever fulfill such a calling? As Paul says (in his Second Epistle to the Corinthians: Ch. 3, v. 5), “our sufficiency is of God.” In his First Epistle to the Corinthians (Ch. 7, v. 17-24), Paul explains:
But as God hath distributed to every man, as the Lord hath called every one, so let him walk. And so ordain I in all churches. Is any man called being circumcised? let him not become uncircumcised. Is any called in uncircumcision? let him not be circumcised. Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping of the commandments of God. Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called. Art thou called being a servant? care not for it: but if thou mayest be made free, use it rather. For he that is called in the Lord, being a servant, is the Lord’s freeman: likewise also he that is called, being free, is Christ’s servant. Ye are bought with a price; be not ye the servants of men. Brethren, let every man, wherein he is called, therein abide with God.
Regardless of how insufficient or unequal to our task we may feel or others may make us feel, God calls us, exactly as we are. Young or old, Jew or Gentile, male or female, city or country, poor or rich, regardless of our culture, our life experiences, our feelings, our identities, our faults—God’s calling is for you. He does not love you only on a good hair day; he is not with you only on the smooth roads. The apostle Paul likens the Church to a body in his First Epistle to the Corinthians (Ch. 12, v. 13-27). In this passage, he says that it doesn’t matter whether we feel worthy of Christ’s sacrifice or of the callings with which he has entrusted us (Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians: Ch. 12, v. 15-17). He says it also doesn’t matter what others might think of us (Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians: Ch. 12, v. 19-23). We end chapel services with a call and response: “You are loved,” the chaplain says; “And there is nothing you can do about it,” the congregation responds. That isn’t nicety; it’s sound doctrine. God loves you, and there is nothing you can do to change that fact. God loves you, and there is nothing anyone else can do to change that fact. Some people may reject that love, but that doesn’t mean they’re loved any less. It just means they won’t benefit from it as they could have if they accepted it. But it is easy to accept: “[I]f thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” (Paul’s Epistle to the Romans: Ch. 10, v. 9) “[W]hosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall saved.” (Paul’s Epistle to the Romans: Ch. 10, v. 13) “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.” (The Acts of the Apostles: Ch. 16, v. 31) These instructions aren’t given to us for exclusion. They aren’t a checklist that we have to make sure we fulfill in all points lest we slip though the cracks and be lost. That was the Law which Christ came and fulfilled in our place. These passages are invitations. In them, God is saying to us, There are so many ways to approach me in faith through Jesus Christ; the only way to fail is never to try.
I think these three specific callings suggest something that is generally true of all calling: It is constant and ever-present. God doesn’t only call us on certain days or in certain places or by certain situations. He calls out to us each day, all day, and we are always able and invited to respond. The apostle Paul wrote (in his Second Epistle to the Corinthians: Ch. 6, v. 2), alluding to a passage in the Book of Isaiah (Ch. 49, v. 8), “[B]ehold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” God is calling out to you in this moment, in this place, and you can respond in this moment, in this place. You can pray silently or aloud—in this chapel or in your car or under a tree. You can be present with your neighbor here or there. You can be present with God anywhere and at all times. The call will always be there on a thousand days and in a thousand different ways, asking us to respond.
Photo by Shane Hoving on Unsplash
Comparing Notes 