Why Can't We All Be So Lucky

Preached 19 August 2010 at Asbury Grove by Cassie Helms
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With thanks to Kelly, Andrew, and Lourey, who all acted as God's media of inspiration.

Prayer
Lord, bless these words that I am about to say, that they may deliver your will and not my own. Bless the hearts and minds of those listening, that they may be open to your message, and your call. In your name, Amen

Random Chatter from Me

Intro
We heard two lessons today of men who were called into God's service Samuel, an eventual seer, prophet, judge in Ancient Israel, is called to God while still young – called verbally, and reaffirmed in this call by his mentor, Eli. Matthew the Tax Collector is called in person, by Jesus himself. Despite Matthew's sinfulness, or even because he was a sinner, Jesus chose to call him – to eat together, and eventually to partake in God's grace. Stories like these appear throughout the Bible. We know many of them well. We see Moses and the burning bush, we see Paul being struck blind. And moving beyond the scope of the Bible and into the last 2000 years, the men and women who make religious history are most often those who report having an overwhelming conversion experience and call to Christ – St Augustine, St Francis of Assisi, Martin Luther.

So why can't we all be this lucky?

Story Time
Many of you know that I spent the first three weeks of my summer in the Ukraine and Russia. A class from the BU school of theology went and met up with students from the Methodist Seminary in Moscow. We traveled, experiencing the ministry the Methodist church is attempting to bring to the former Soviet Union, and learning from fellow students about the role Christianity has in each of our lives – and what roles we have in the church. Though there were other people who had grown up in the Eastern Orthodox Church, all of the seminary students we met were first generation Christian. Some had grown up in Communist families; one had converted from a rather confusing combination of Islam, Buddhism, and ancestor worship.

One of the favorite questions from everyone we met – as all were, at the very least, first generation Methodists – was regarding personal testimony and call to Christ. “When did you first experience your call? How did you choose to answer it?” One young woman we met – a former Muslim – grew up in Kazakhstan. She was hired to translate at Methodist Conferences, and wound up traveling the former Soviet States with several Methodist pastors for almost a year. During that time, she felt called to convert to Christianity – and Methodism – because what she was translated meant so much to her on a personal and spiritual level. She remained in the Ukraine, becoming active in ministry to the poor, the elderly, to TB orphans, and to families with children suffering from cerebral palsy.

Those of us from BU had all grown up in Christian churches – be they Catholic, Baptist, or Methodist. I had the fortune – though it sometimes felt like misfortune at the time – to be surrounded by folk who had also experienced profoundly moving calls within their Christian faith. Even the Americans had answers to the question of when and how they'd experienced their call. They had detailed and moving testimonies to share. I did not. I was, to put it mildly, a fish out of water. All of this lead me into a summer full of pondering my call, which is, in large part, culminating in this message. Not the call, but the ponderings.

My father was Methodist, my mother Southern Baptist. When I was five, we began attending a non-denominational service at the navy base where my father was stationed. At age seven, just before we moved to Nebraska, the Children's Church leader bought me a book to congratulate me on “accepting God into my heart.” Honestly, I thought she was weird. At nine, I was baptized in a midwest Methodist Church. I was enough of a church dork to think this was really cool, but mostly because no one else I knew could remember their baptisms. At thirteen, I went through United Methodist confirmation – and at the same time started private high school, which included a Catholic Christian Doctrine course taught by a Benedictine Monk who informed us how wrong the Protestants were about a variety of topics. Nevertheless, four years at a Catholic high school influenced my appreciation of many “high church” rituals. So it wasn't all bad.

In my home church, I was involved in chancel choir, praise choirs, bell choir, and youth group. I was an acolyte, a liturgist, a VBS teacher, and, during youth services, a “preacher.” I went off to college, joined the Wesley Fellowship – or United Methodist Campus Ministry – for which I was on the student leadership team, and eventually the treasurer and president. I graduated, moved to on to teach at a small Christian school that was, in name, non-denominational, but in practice, belonged to the Presbyterian Church of America.

There's no question that I was always in the church – or a church, but if you can find the well discerned call in that brief history of my life – please. Pull me aside after the service and point it out to me. I know it took me a long time to find anything, and I still have questions.

Hear the Call
We live in an era of science, and an era of instant gratification. We like to know that our car is going to work because the science that put it together makes sense. When said car breaks down, there's a reasonable explanation. We like to know that, when watching a TV show, the world's problems will be neatly wrapped up and solved in a half hour or an hour. It's almost intolerable to see that dreaded “To be continued” at the end of an episode.

I was and am absolutely a product of this culture. I hated that I couldn't figure out immediately what my calling was by the time I was supposed to declare a major in college. I grew up with video games, with sitcoms, with quick-read novels, and then I graduated college with a science degree. When, after a year of teaching I knew that I was “almost happy” - but not quite – I went back to school for a Masters. Within three weeks of making the decision to do so, I had taken all entrance exams and fully applied to four schools. I got my degree in 12 months, from May to May, student teaching during the week, taking classes at night, and working at a science museum on the weekends.

I took a job teaching science in an inner city Atlanta high school, but I still wasn't satisfied, and, for a time, I didn't know what would make me happy – or more importantly, what would be “right.” Eventually, I made a decision that, to my coworkers, my family, and some of my friends, appeared to be another one of my random flights of fancy. I started applying to seminaries.

Faith
Sometimes, if we're lucky, we're like Moses, or Samuel, or Matthew, or Paul, or any of the other biblical figures who are called specifically and directly by God. We know, in our ministry as God's people, what's expected of us and when. For me, and probably many of you? Not so much. Looking back, I probably felt the call to youth ministry as early as high school, when I watched the youth group at my own home church begin to implode. My love of science, however, and my ability in the classroom, made it easy for me to ignore that tug from God. I toyed with the idea of seminary in college... I toyed with it again in my first round of teaching. I suppressed the call though, as many of us do, because I was good enough, and kind of satisfied maybe, when doing other things.

Sometimes, too, if we're UNlucky, we're like Moses, or Samuel, or Matthew, or Paul. There's little room for deviation, for personal exploration – and certainly no room for excuses. The young woman I met in the Ukraine was facing the expiration of her Visa towards the end of June, and the government was refusing to renew it. She was stuck with two tough choices: to remain in the Ukraine illegally, which the Methodist Church could obviously not support, or to return home, where she would be shunned by her family and face potentially dangerous and violent persecution from former friends and neighbors. She had received her call, and she had no question that it was the right one – but she had her cross to bear because of it.

The “problem” of call always comes back to one thing. Faith. One of the youth told me the other day that they like to have proof about things. And, Amen – saying that to me is preaching to the choir. I'm all for scientific experimentation, repetition of data, so on and so forth. Why can't God just contact us all in a moment of prayer? Or, better yet, through a miraculous burning bush? Why, if we do get a special call, must we face such struggles to answer it? Why, for the vast majority of us, must discernment be so hard? These questions are what make faith important – after all, as the Lord's prayer tells us, we are doing God's will on Earth, not our own. If these choices were easy, pleasurable, obvious – well, we'd already be making them, and making them for ourselves, not avoiding the cross Jesus asks us to bear.

Where will your call come from? Or, if you're one of the lucky ones, where did it come from? How do you respond to it? Do you have the faith required to recognize God's call – whether it's within or outside of organized religion? Do you have the faith required to fulfill it?

Pray with me:
Prayer
Lord, we ask, today, that you open us to hear your call, that you make us ready to do your will. We ask that you strengthen us against any hardships we may face, preparing us to fulfill our roles in your church. We give thanks that you are with us, and always ready to welcome us back after we've turned aside from your call. In Jesus' name, Amen.