Readings of the Day:
Sermon:
Original Manuscript:
When
I was 15 years old, so not much older than some of you here today, I received
my call to ordained ministry.
And I let that sink in a bit because some of you will realize what a terrifying thing that is. To not even be an adult yet and to hear God asking you to serve Him.
At
the time, I was fortunate enough to be traveling on a pilgrimage sponsored by
the Diocese. And as I was reflecting on what had just happened to me, we were
in Taizé, a small monastic community in France. For those of you who have never
experienced a Taizé style of worship, it is a very contemplative form of
worship. There is a great deal of music, but also a lot of silence in which to
be with God. It was a good time to stop and reflect on what had just happened.
What this call meant.
Taizé
is also blessed with having workshops led by the brothers for visitors. One of
these while I was there happened to be about discernment. Which is exactly what
I needed. So I went.
The
brother who led the workshop was not much older than I am now. And he told us
about the time he took to discern his own call to serve at Taizé.
Because
at the time he was working on becoming a brother at Taizé, he was coaching a
team he soon learned had Olympic prospects.
And
then, at the same time, he was told he could become a brother at Taizé. The
catch was he had to decide now. He had a hard choice to make in accepting this
call. He had to give something up. Leave something behind. He had give up the
dream of coaching an Olympic team.
And
then this Taizé brother told us that the choice to do ministry is never an easy
one for any of us. Because it always means giving something up.
Now,
don’t be fooled into thinking that those who have taken religious vows, be they
monastic or through ordination, are the only ones called to ministry. It isn’t
just those who are called, even for a short time, to minister to others, as
those who are getting ready to work at Sawyerville Day Camp are. We are all
called, in our baptism, to “proclaim by word and example the Good News of God
in Christ.”
But
this is not always an easy task. As the brother in Taizé told me, it means
giving something up when we answer God’s call. And that is what our readings
say to us today.
In I
Kings, Elijah tells Elisha to “go back again” to his family, one last time,
before embarking on ministry with him. He knows that this path of serving God
requires sacrifice. He knows, from his own experience, that this path will not
be an easy one.
And
while Jesus seems to respond differently to His would-be followers this
morning, He, like Elijah, is trying to prepare those who would minister in His
name for what that truly entails. It means giving up having the stability of a
place to call home, as He tells the first would-be follower. It means letting go
of the rituals of life we knew before, as he shows the second. And to the last,
Jesus reveals that ministry in His name can only be done by putting the life we
knew before behind and never looking back.
This
is the life we are all called to in our Baptism. To put behind the old and to
look forward to serve Christ Jesus in all that we do. With all that we have.
With all that we are.
And
it’s never easy to give up those things. Those things that we thought defined
us. Those things we thought made us what we are.
As I
said before, the brother from Taizé told us that to answer God’s call means
giving something up. And in his case, it meant giving up the dream of coaching
an Olympic team. The chance many of us would kill for. But he wasn’t bitter.
The hardness of that choice didn’t make him angry. Instead, he smiled one of
the most serene smiles I have ever seen and said that in the end what we get
back is so much more. And that he wouldn’t have changed his choice for
anything.
Because
when we leave behind what we were, we are really becoming who God always
intended us to be. And we see that in the reading from Galatians. Because it is
by embracing the Spirit that we are built up. The fruits of the Spirit: Love,
Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness,
Self-Control. These things bind us together. They lead us away from those
things which tear us down. They make us whole.
Answering
God’s call is never easy. It means leaving something of ourselves behind. It
means abandoning the comfortable for the unknown. It’s a complete shake-up of
what we thought we knew.
But
in the end, like the Brother from Taizé, what we get back is so much more. What
we get back is who we were always meant to be. What we get back is ourselves.
That
doesn’t mean there won’t be hardships on our path. As we see with Elijah and
Jesus today, there always are. And we should know that. But whatever your
ministry is, whether it’s coming to a new place to serve children you’ve never
met or if its just waving at a neighbor as we cross the street, we become
closer to God in whatever we are doing. And so we become more fully ourselves.
And,
we have the hope that no matter what hard times we face, that God is with us in
the midst of them. Because this is the God who chose to come down and dwell
among us. To die so that we might live.
So go
forth, knowing that our baptismal ministry in the world is often filled with
hardships, tough choices, and even putting our former ways aside. But in the end,
we have the hope that God is with us, making us stronger and helping us to be
the ones we truly are. The ones we truly were meant to be.