{"id":2610,"date":"2020-01-26T11:00:48","date_gmt":"2020-01-26T16:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=2610"},"modified":"2021-01-19T10:51:09","modified_gmt":"2021-01-19T15:51:09","slug":"vocation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2020\/01\/26\/vocation\/","title":{"rendered":"Vocation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Click here to hear the full service<\/a><\/p>\n

Isaiah 9:1-4<\/a><\/p>\n

Matthew 4:12-23<\/a><\/p>\n

Click here to hear just the sermon<\/a><\/p>\n

Today we see Jesus walking the shore of his beloved Sea of Galilee.\u00a0 He sets out at dawn, as the fishermen begin, casting and mending.\u00a0 This stylized memory from the mind of Matthew kindles our own memory and hope, too.<\/p>\n

That first light of the day, daybreak, carries a power unlike any other hour\u2019s hue.\u00a0 The excitement of beginning.\u00a0 The promise of another start.\u00a0 The crisp, cold opening of the year in January.\u00a0 Like the skier, mits and poles at the ready, we adjust our goggles, and we lean, and\u2026<\/p>\n

Here is Jesus, midway from Christmas to Easter, from manger to cross, from nativity to passion.\u00a0 Along the shoreline he strides, one foot in sea and one on shore.<\/p>\n

He meets two brothers at first light, and they meet him, God\u2019s First Light, the light that shines in the darkness.\u00a0 Notice how Simon, called Peter, and Andrew, his brother, are sketched.\u00a0 There is little to nothing of history here, but what there is says so much!\u00a0 There is no parental shadow lying on their fishing nets.\u00a0 One hears no maternal imperative, no paternal dictate.\u00a0 These boys are on their own.\u00a0 They have left home already, maybe leaving the city to the south to find a meager middle-class existence farther north, with their own means of production.\u00a0 They are small business men, boat owners, fishermen.\u00a0 Neither the amhaaretz<\/em> nor the gentry, they.\u00a0 Not poor, not rich.\u00a0 Working folks.\u00a0 Young, young men.\u00a0 Simon already has a nick-name.\u00a0 A sign of joviality, of conviviality, of gregarious playful fun.\u00a0 Peter, the Rock.\u00a0 Is this for his steady faithfulness or his failure to float?\u00a0 On this rock\u2026Sinks like a Rock<\/em>\u2026You sense that these brothers play in the surf a little, kick up the sand a little, flirt with the Palestinianas, take time to take life as it comes.\u00a0 Brown are their forearms, and burnished their brows.\u00a0 They love the lake and life, and have made already their entrance into adult life.\u00a0 For they have left home.\u00a0 One envies their youth and freedom.\u00a0 They have taken to the little inland sea, and with joy they meet each dawn, like this one, at first light, as they see Light.<\/p>\n

You can feel the sand under their feet as they take a moment to play and laugh.\u00a0 You can feel the chill of the water as they swim, while breakfast cooks over the fire.\u00a0 You can feel their feeling of vitality and joy as they greet another day at first light.<\/p>\n

I wonder whether we allow ourselves to drift a little too far from that sense of vocation, that first light feeling.\u00a0 Those nearly pure dawn moments of almost rapturous illumination.\u00a0 Those moments of connection.<\/em><\/p>\n

The day your BU acceptance letter came.<\/p>\n

The afternoon of BU Commencement, four fast years later, 25,000 in attendance.<\/p>\n

The evening you came out to your parents.<\/p>\n

Your first child, tiny, red, crinkled, fists waving, crying and then asleep, literally in your hand.<\/p>\n

Your daughter, or son, taking the vows of confirmed faith, in the church\u2019s chancel.\u00a0 Yes, there was some part child and another part adult in what was said.\u00a0 But they were there, in tie and dress.\u00a0 They were there, in public and in church.\u00a0 They murmured, and they murmured piously.\u00a0 And how did that feel Dad?<\/p>\n

Your day of matrimony.\u00a0 Down the aisle they come, or you come, father and daughter.\u00a0 Do you? Do you?\u00a0 I do. They do.\u00a0 And what was once a simpler world, now has further complexity and creative power.\u00a0 A new creation.<\/p>\n

Your retirement party.<\/p>\n

There must have been some moment, sometime, when you felt an intimacy with the universe, a closeness, a sense of purpose.\u00a0 That too is a kind of daybreak, dawn, first light.\u00a0 That is an inkling of vocation.<\/em><\/p>\n

A simple trust, like theirs who heard beside the Syrian sea.<\/p>\n

Our denomination once had a thriving ministry in China.\u00a0 When we forced out of China in the 1940\u2019s, something vital left our church.\u00a0 But you can still feel the first light of mission in the halls and rooms at Scarritt in Nashville.\u00a0 Oriental ornaments, paintings, sculpture, gifts, symbols of connection and love.\u00a0 We grew up with the family of Tracy Jones, who himself had been raised as missionary child in China.\u00a0 As had Huston Smith. Our first parsonage, in Ithaca, had once housed Pearl Buck while she and her husband were back on furlough, from China.\u00a0 Have we begun with the Spirit to end with the flesh? \u00a0Have we forgotten the love we had at first?\u00a0 Have we stayed close enough to that dawn light, and those first light experiences, to stay fresh?\u00a0 Have we an inkling of vocation?<\/p>\n

Our malaise, our ennui, should we have such, our \u201cacedia\u201d\u2014spiritual sloth or indifference, literally, our \u201cnot-caring\u201d\u2014so often is due to our turning away from the dawn, daybreak, that elemental experience of love that energizes everything else.<\/p>\n

Peter and Andrew, of course, are casting, casting nets.\u00a0 They have no furrowed brows, no endless worries, no pessimism, no angst.\u00a0 They probably have left unattended some holes in their nets, these two happy brothers.\u00a0 They are willing to accept that their casting will be imperfect, as all evangelism is imperfect.\u00a0 But that imperfection will not keep them from enjoying the labor of casting.\u00a0 To miss the dawn, the first light, is to miss the fun of faith!<\/p>\n

Invite that neighbor, the one across the street whose porch light is always on, to come along to worship with you.\u00a0 Do you enjoy, benefit from, appreciate worship here, come Sunday?\u00a0 Then, of course, you will want to share that enjoyment, benefit and appreciation, by inviting someone to come too.\u00a0 Here at dawn\u2026those first stirrings, first longings, first intimations of something new and good\u2026.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, back on the beach, Jesus heads south, cove by cove, with Andrew and Peter frolicking in tow.\u00a0 They had already left home.\u00a0 They are ready to take a flier on some new trek, not fully sure how it will work out.\u00a0 It is a miracle that they are remembered, perhaps with a little hagiography, as having responded \u201cimmediately\u201d.\u00a0 Still, every little scrap of memory of these two brothers tends in the same direction\u2014full of vim, vigor, vitality and pepperino.\u00a0 Yes, they will follow!<\/p>\n

But down the shoreline a little, there rests another boat.\u00a0 A different story, a different set of brothers altogether.\u00a0 James and John.\u00a0 Known as the sons of Zebedee.\u00a0 Simon has already earned his own name and nick-name.\u00a0 But these two are known by their father\u2019s name.\u00a0 They haven\u2019t left home.\u00a0 They have not yet acquired that second identity.\u00a0 When you won\u2019t leave, won\u2019t move, you won\u2019t find, you won\u2019t grow:\u00a0 you\u2019ll miss vocation. Here they are, as usual at dawn, stuck in the back of the boat.\u00a0 All these years they have watched the Peter and Andrew show.\u00a0 All these years they have envied the fun and frolic down the beach. \u00a0The late night parties.\u00a0 The bonfires.\u00a0 The singing.\u00a0 The swimming.\u00a0 And here they sit strapped to the old boat of old Zebedee.\u00a0 They are covered with the ancient equivalents of chap stick and Coppertone.\u00a0 And they are trapped. \u00a0Under the glaring gaze of Zebedee, whose thunderous voice has so filled their home that their own voices have not even emerged.\u00a0 Every day, in the back of the boat.\u00a0 And what are they doing?\u00a0 Why you could have guessed it, even if the text had not made it plain.\u00a0 Are they casting? \u00a0No.\u00a0 Are they fishing?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 Are they sailing?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 They are mending.\u00a0 Mending.\u00a0 Knit one, pearl two\u2026 Their dad has got them into that conservation, protection, preservation mode.\u00a0 Mending.\u00a0 At dawn!\u00a0 Of course nets need mending, but the nets and the mending are meant in a greater service!\u00a0 The fun is in the fishing!\u00a0 The joy is in the casting.\u00a0 The happiness is in the evangelism.\u00a0 And there they sit, sober Calvinist souls, mending.\u00a0 Deedle deedle dumpling, my son John\u2026<\/p>\n

Today we are mid-way between Christmas and Easter. \u00a0This passage has a little passion (the Baptist) and a little nativity (Nazareth). The two stories of Jesus, of his birth and of his death, are meant to complement and interpret each other. \u00a0As our colleague Milton Jordan put it this week: \u00a0Matthew attempts to soften this story of Jesus’ flight from the threat of arrest. He and other disciples of the Baptizer flee from Herod Antipas’ region to a border town where escape to another country is not as difficult.\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0We have, too often overlooked – if not intentionally obscured – the harsh political\u00a0realities of Jesus’ flight to the border.<\/em><\/p>\n

Here is a pronouncement of a broad peace, on earth.\u00a0 On earth.\u00a0 With Gandhi along the Ganges.\u00a0 Beside Tutu on the southern cape.\u00a0 Along the path of the Dalai Lama in farthest Tibet.\u00a0 In Tegucigalpa with our missionary friends Mark and Lynn Baker. This is no predestinarian quietism, which has taken over parts of non-Catholic American Christianity, from its seedbeds in the Orthodox Presbyterian and Anabaptist communions:\u00a0 cold, careful, efficient, first mile, changeless, fearsome, depressed grace.\u00a0 No, this is Christmas:\u00a0 warm, open, effective, second mile, free, growing, angry, and hopeful!\u00a0 Augustine:\u00a0 Hope has two beautiful daughters:\u00a0 anger and courage.<\/p>\n

The early church told two stories about Jesus.\u00a0 The first about his death.\u00a0 The second about his life.\u00a0 The first, about the cross, is the oldest and most fundamental.\u00a0 The second, about the manger, is the key to the meaning of the first, the eyeglasses which open full sight, the code to decipher the first.\u00a0 Without Christmas you can\u2019t see Easter right. \u00a0Jesus died on a cross for our sin according to the Scripture.\u00a0 That is the first story.\u00a0 But who was Jesus?\u00a0 What life did his death complete?\u00a0 How does his word heal our hurt?\u00a0 And how does all this accord with Scripture? One leads to the other.<\/p>\n

This second, second level story begins at Christmas, and continues in Epiphany, and is told among us to interpret the first.\u00a0 Christmas\\Epiphany is meant to make sure that the divine love is not left only to the cross, or only to heaven.\u00a0 Epiphany is meant to open out a whole range of Jesus, as brother, teacher, healer, young man, all.\u00a0 Christmas is meant to provide the mid-course correction that might be needed if all we had was Holy Week.\u00a0 And the Christmas\\Epiphany images are the worker bees in this theological hive.\u00a0 Easter may announce the power of peace, but Christmas names the place of peace.\u00a0 Jesus died the way he did because he lived the way he did.\u00a0 Jesus lived the way he did, and so died the way he did. <\/em>\u00a0That is, it is not only the Passion of Christ, but the Peace of Christ, too, which Christians like you affirm.\u00a0 What lovely news for us at the start of a new decade.\u00a0 The passion too of Christ.\u00a0 Theologically, globally, politically, militarily, ecclesiastically \u2014we have seen passion this year.\u00a0 Now comes dawn, the light, Epiphany, Christmas\\Epiphany again to announce that there is more to Jesus than the passion.\u00a0 There is the matter of peace as well.<\/p>\n

The real miracles of this account lie in the second invitation to the second set of brothers.\u00a0 It is a miracle that Jesus stopped and invited them, so somber are they.\u00a0 I wonder if he took in the timbre of Zebedee\u2019s voice, and saw them quaking in the back of the boat.\u00a0 Perhaps his heart went out to James and John.\u00a0 So, he stops, and he asks.<\/p>\n

That is the great thing about an invitation.\u00a0 All you can do is ask.\u00a0 Do ask.\u00a0 Ye have not because ye ask not.\u00a0 And for the first time in their lives, James and John are invited to live. Too many people live half asleep.\u00a0 Too often we don\u2019t live life, life lives us.\u00a0 Like these two knitting in the back of the boat.\u00a0 Half asleep.\u00a0 Then dawn comes, and day breaks, and that first light shines!\u00a0 And a voice like no other, so equanimous and so serene, casts its spell upon them.\u00a0 Maybe upon you, this morning.\u00a0 Watch.\u00a0 It is a first light moment.\u00a0 First one, then the other, stands and moves.\u00a0 Under the shadow of that paternal presence, under the sound of that maternal imperative of home.\u00a0 They rise.\u00a0 And they move toward First Light.\u00a0 They are about to grow up.\u00a0 AND THEY LEAVE HOME! Wonderful!\u00a0 And what do they leave behind?\u00a0 You would have known even if the Scripture had not laid it right out.\u00a0 They leave behind the boat\u2026and their father.\u00a0 We best honor the adults in our lives when we become adults ourselves. (repeat)<\/p>\n

Will this world grow up? Will we find a way to live together, all seven point five billion of us, and to drink from the same cup? This text, strangely like John, claims for Jesus that Jesus is light.\u00a0 Not color, now.\u00a0 Light.\u00a0 Color is great, and good.\u00a0 But we all want finally to be able to drink from the same water fountain, we want our children in one school, we want to sit at one table, we want to drink from one goblet.\u00a0 It is light that we will need into the 21st<\/sup> century.\u00a0 We finally all drink from the same cup.<\/p>\n

I am told of a man who stopped in his new neighborhood to buy lemonade from a freckle faced 7 year old girl and a mahogany skinned 6 year old boy.\u00a0 He paid his dime and drank his beverage and stayed to talk.\u00a0 After a while the girl asked if there was anything else he wanted.\u00a0 No, he said, why?<\/p>\n

Well sir, we are running a business here, and we have had a busy morning, and we hope for a busy afternoon, but that cup you are holding is the only one we have, so if you don\u2019t mind, we\u2019d like it back.<\/em><\/p>\n

We all finally drink from the same cup. We forget it at our worldly peril.\u00a0 If we <\/em>walk in the light as He is in the light we <\/em>have fellowship with one another.\u00a0 We have more in common, as climate change, nuclear danger, governmental malfunction, denominational turmoil, and personal angst remind us, all around the globe, than we do in difference. Give us light.\u00a0 Give us light.\u00a0 Dear God, give us light.<\/p>\n

Have you faith?\u00a0 You are going to need some this coming year, 2020.<\/p>\n

At first light, at dawn, we may with happiness remember this.\u00a0 The protagonist of M Robinson\u2019s Gilead<\/em>, an old pastor in the Iowa town of this name, spends Sunday mornings, at dawn, praying alone in his church.\u00a0 He loves the morning hour.\u00a0 He waits with baited breath for the church to begin to fill up, to fill in.\u00a0 He basks in the first light of day.<\/p>\n

He knows, you do too, that we are going to need some faith this year. \u00a0Others will, too.\u00a0 How will they find faith in Christ without a church family to love them, without a church home to nurture them:\u00a0 without you taking a moment to say, \u2018I will be at Marsh Chapel on Sunday at 11am\u2014why not meet me there?\u2019<\/p>\n

That is the dawn, Peter and Andrew, real joy of faith:\u00a0 sharing it.<\/em>\u00a0 Would you like to have some fun this week?\u00a0 Look around for dawn breaking, and kick up some sand.<\/p>\n

-The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Click here to hear the full service Isaiah 9:1-4 Matthew 4:12-23 Click here to hear just the sermon Today we see Jesus walking the shore of his beloved Sea of Galilee.\u00a0 He sets out at dawn, as the fishermen begin, casting and mending.\u00a0 This stylized memory from the mind of Matthew kindles our own memory […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2679,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2610"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2679"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2610"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2901,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2610\/revisions\/2901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}