Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Let us pray.
Loving Lord, we do come to you as your eggs, as your people gathered in worship, and now we open our hearts and minds that your spirit would be speaking to us through your word read and your word proclaimed that we might become more like Jesus, especially as we worship and serve together for your glory. Amen.
Our scripture lesson today comes from Ephesians 4116.
Listen for God's word to us.
I, therefore the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.
There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.
But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ's gift. Therefore, it is said, when he ascended on high, he made captivity itself a captive. He gave gifts to his people.
When it says he ascended, what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is the same one who ascended far above all the heavens so that he might fill all things.
The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, all to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up of the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.
We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people's trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming, but speaking the truth in love. We must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped. As each part is working properly promotes the body's growth in building itself up. Love.
This is the word of the Lord.
[00:03:18] Speaker B: So you know one of my favorite things about being your pastor. I'll give you a hint. It's not revising job descriptions or revising.org charts, though that's important to do. And Tom McGinnis, thank you for your help with that. Robin Howard and others. What would I do without you? But what I would call the good stuff is getting to listen, watch, pray, and celebrate as you all attend to the call of God in your lives. That is the good stuff.
In recent months, I've gotten to celebrate students from this congregation or connect to this congregation, graduating and celebrating as they either look to head to a new school or take on some new job.
I get to sit with couples, as I've gotten to do in a number of occasions in recent weeks as they've prepared for marriage, preparing to take on that enormous task, that summons, that call to share their life together. I get to hear how they met and how they sense that call to life together. I get to visit new parents when they've just had a child or are preparing for a baptism. And I get to see in their eyes that awesome responsibility, that opportunity to get to walk with this child in the life ahead and as a church, to get to join with them in that. I get to hear when there's some new project one of you takes on, like, oh, who knows, writing a new film that shows up on Netflix or taking on some other new job or looking towards retirement and thinking what that might mean for your life and identity. In all these conversations, whether you speak explicitly of God guiding you or not, I heard attention to call to call. You and I both heard this question of call considered by a host of people at nearby Fuller Theological Seminary when they've interned with us. You know, just the other day I was counting up how many people during my 17 years with you all have done an internship with us, most for nine months or more. I counted 27. And that's not even considering the many fuller students who have served with us, volunteered with us, or been a part of this community in another way. 27 have done some form of an internship, and some went on to even take on jobs, ministry roles in this church. We've had people like Ali Lee and Heather Thompson and Peter Galbraith not only do internships, but go on to serve in staff roles at Knox. And by way, all three of these have just taken on new church roles in recent months. Allie Lee is the new interim pastor at Fayette Presbyterian Church in greater Atlanta. Heather is the new co pastor at Colbert Presbyterian Church in Spokane, Washington. And Peter, down at the bottom, is the new pastor at Grace Presbyterian Church in Rock Island, Illinois. And that's not all. We've also gotten to have intern with us students who've gone on to be mission coworkers with the presbyterian church. Christy and Bob Rice, some of you will remember. And then Ryan and Alathea White. Christy and Bob served for years in the Congo. Now they serve in South Sudan. Ryan and Alethia serve in Berlin, Germany, working explicitly with an iranian presbyterian church there, and they're going to be in town soon if you'd like to see them. We've had other interns form new ministries during or after their time with us. Some of you will remember James and Rebecca Farlow. James did an internship with us, and during that time he would co found, along with his wife, Rebecca, a new ministry called sanctuary, with its mission of bridge building between churches and the LGBTQ community with a powerful emphasis on welcome. Our session and presbytery joined with them in that effort. So many stories I could tell you of the many who have interned here, and if you want a full list, I can pass it on. I did a little research to find out. Hey, what are they up to now? And I've even asked Evelyn Roper, a current fuller student, to share a snapshot of her story later in the service. She has just been sponsored by our church's session as she goes through the ordination process and prepares to become a military chaplain. Rev. Evelyn has a good ring to it.
It's great to be with people attending to call, listening for that voice, whether because they're considering professional ministry or simply reflecting on what new job or project or artistic endeavor or new service opportunity in the church or out of it they want to take on. Or maybe they're just considering what does it mean to be more faithful parents or workers or friends or spouses or most of all, faithful disciples of Jesus Christ? Hearing someone tell their story of call, it can prompt us to think to ourselves, hmm, I wonder what my sense of call is right now, what it was, what it might be in the future. How am I meant to fulfill God's purposes for me, that question of call that I find so engaging, it's right at the heart of today's passage from Ephesians. In fact, this is probably the most famous statement on call or description of call that we have in scripture, Ephesians chapter four that Karen read for us this morning. And three times in that first verse that begins chapter four, the word call, or call in Greek emerges as if to say, if this were the fourth movement in a musical piece, the motif, the theme to start it all off is call. Don't miss it. You might translate that first verse literally. I call you strongly as a prisoner of the Lord, to walk in a way that's worthy of the calling to which you have been called.
Okay. With that grand opening, here's what I would anticipate would come next. I would expect some sort of a tool or assessment or a means to fine tune where you or I, as individuals, fit in that sense of call. I want the Clifton strength finders assessments, or maybe one of those career assessments that you'll see, like the one two three career aptitude test or the life way spiritual gifts assessment. At very least, I want a list so I can find myself on it, you know, where we can hone down to the individual level, and I can see what my call is. In chapter three of Ephesians, Paul shared his own personal call story. He wrote of how though he was, as he puts it, the very least of all the saints, by the gift of God's grace given to him and the working of God's power in him, he was called to proclaim the gospel to those outside the jewish community. That was his call. He shares his personal call story. So then, with this theme of call, I expect to easily be able to find myself and my story in it. But no, Paul doesn't give such a list until way later in verse eleven. And even there, you'll notice he only mentions a few categories of ways to serve. As if he's saying, well, here are some ways to serve, but there are a host of others. Instead, right after that motif of call or call, we get a second motif. That's not me or my personal call. It's instead unity. Us, one bear with one another in love, he writes, making every effort to maintain the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace. There is one body, one spirit, one hope of your calling, one lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and father of all. I thought I was the one. But no, Paul writes, the one is us.
In many ways, the whole movement of the book of Ephesians goes like this. It moves from God. That's where it starts, God and God's call to us. And only then it finally moves to where the individual fits in. In that grand picture, the great opening of Ephesians, you might recall from chapter one, grace to you and peace from God our father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who's blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless before him in love. The action, the initiator, is God. That's where the book of Ephesians starts.
Carl Jung, famous psychiatrist and psychologist, started with me, and that's how I had often thought of Carl. It begins with me. Why can't Paul do the same? In a piece entitled development of the personality. Jung wrote, anyone with a vocabulary meditation hears the voice of the inner person. They hear call.
He described call as a personal feeling, but also a law from which there's no escape, an internal personal law. That's what I'm looking for sometimes, aren't you? But Paul doesn't give it, at least not right away. First in the book of Ephesians, he pulls my gaze away from me to God and then to us, and only then does it head to me. It's the kind of redirect that I remember experiencing. Years ago. There was a workshop held over at Fuller Theological Seminary when I was a fourth year student there and preparing for the process of seeking out a call with the church. That's what we call, we call it the call search process, where a candidate for ministry who's been through the ordination process gets linked up with a particular church. So I went to this training or seminar where a staff member from our denominations, call search office was going to be there and help guide us, those of us who are candidates for ministry, in preparing the best resume, which is the PIF that we could. And I remember going into there thinking, this is great. I'm going to create a resume that's going to wow them. The churches will look at my resume and it will practically glow with the sense of the Holy Spirit. They'll say, this guy, he's got it. He's got call. It's like God is speaking to him directly.
And then we sit down. This crotchety old guy who's leading this particular seminar begins with this. He says, God calls a people. God calls a people.
It wasn't about me and my resume. And I thought about that afterwards as I began looking at churches and the call search process, and I saw, well, wow, churches have done this work. They've actually listened to what God's call might be on them, what their mission, what their vision, what their direction might be. And then they've identified who they are, and only then do they invite candidates to consider, hey, does this call speak to you? Does it appear? Does it pull you, the focus? It wasn't on me. It was on us. Called by God.
That stuck with me for long afterwards. God calls a people.
I thought about that since, and you can see it all over scripture. The word for call in today's passage, Kaleo, shows up in the greek translation of the Old Testament. So often when God is calling a people, the whole people of Israel and Judah, that ancient people of God, we read in Isaiah 40 812, listen to me. O Jacob and Israel, a larger people whom I called.
I'm God. I am the first. I am the last.
God calls in scripture not principally the inner person, but God. And God calls the people. It starts with God, then moves to us, and only after those first two moves do we finally get to me. Now we do get this great list in verse eleven where we read that some are called as apostles, some prophets, some as evangelists, others as pastors and teachers. And thank heaven for such lists. You can find another one of spiritual gifts in one corinthians. And there are a host of stories in scripture and our lives to remind us how the call of God on a people touches down in one person like you or like me. And those call stories are inspiring. We need them. They could help us identify what another person's call is and what ours is. But it comes out of the broader context of a God who first created, a God who redeems, a God who sustains and how that God called a people, and to serve and love and be a part of that people. God then offers individual callings on our lives.
I don't know about you, but so often I've said, praise God that God calls the people. Praise God that God calls the people. So many times serving a ministry, I thought that if I alone or one elder alone sitting around the table with me were charged with leading a church, lord have mercy. I know I don't have the accounting background, the human resources management background, the engineering background. And there's some engineering needs around here, folks. The child development and childhood education background, the organizational management, the medical background, the music background, the cross cultural background, the technological background. You can see today. We're still working on that technological piece, but we're working on it. The hospitality background, to do all that's required to truly lead the church today. And even if I or an elder had all of that, what would be the joy in a one person drama? The drama is us, a people called by God to love and serve God and one another, and to love and serve our neighbor.
You might have said just this past week, praise God, that God calls a people. You might be parents. And just this past week you thought, praise God. That this task of raising young person in life, in faith, in character, in that whole journey ahead, praise God. I get to do that with the partnership of friends, of family, of school, and of church.
Lucy, my daughter's been so impacted by being a part of this community. Thank you. Maybe you've said, praise God, that God calls the people. When you've sensed isolation, loneliness. And you have yearned for that sense of connection and remembered, oh, yes, I'm part of a people, not one, but linked to a greater one as a body, with Christ at the head. Maybe you were thankful God Paul's a people. When you were confronted with a vast array of concerns before your eyes, and it just seemed way too much. You saw maybe an abandoned sanctuary, as some people saw here long ago, a sanctuary with so few people, and there was an engagement in revitalization. You saw an abandoned sanctuary here or there, and you thought, Lord, the task of bringing revitalization to the broader church of Jesus Christ, it seems so immense. You might have considered the millions who've not heard yet the gospel of Jesus Christ and the gift of grace that he offers. Or you might have lamented the many who've heard distorted versions of that gospel, where the message of Jesus is equated with nationalism or capitalism or colonialism or progressivism or some other ism that just isn't the gospel, you know. And you might have thought, how can I make even a dent in communicating the good news of Christ to the world?
Or maybe you were confronted with the multiple wrongs in the world all at once, wrongs that needed writing. And it felt overwhelming. The task of just loving your neighbor today, just doing that, felt like too much.
Juneteenth came this past Wednesday, and it might have brought to your mind and heart the call in history and scripture to repentance and racial justice. The storing temperatures might have alerted you to the climate crisis, the plight of immigrants near or far away, the humanitarian crisis in the Middle east, the plight of the homeless. You might have thought, so much love is called for in the world, and I'm just one person.
And maybe you thought of the needs right here, too. Members of our community wrestling with health issues, family issues, finding a job, struggling with a job that makes them crazy, that simple commandment, love your neighbor, can seem overwhelming when you consider it as a lone me. But friends, hear the good news God calls a people. Our power lies not in ourselves, but in God, the very one who created, redeem, and sustained the world. And with that power, with God at work and God at work in us, the world, the very world can change. For that, God is at work, not just in you, not just in me, not just in us, but in the greater ecclesia. Ecclesia means the gathering of the called throughout the globe. And while we have local expressions of that ecclesia, like this one, it's one ecclesia that each of our congregations point to one body, one faith, one baptism, with that many different parts and with God, we know Christ with us by the Holy Spirit working in each part. Well, even the world can change.
Well, let me close sharing one last call story. It's one that I got to hear a week ago Saturday.
One of the many issues that just seem overwhelming to me is how to respond faithfully to the horrific history of how indigenous peoples have been treated, the dispossession of ancestral land. How do you love your neighbor? Just love your neighbor, do justice when it comes to an issue as immense as that.
And then last Saturday, a group of Christians from this church and other congregations in the Presbyterian of San Gabriel gathered on a remarkable spot of earth in Altadena, right near where I live. The land where we were gathered was recently returned to a Tongva Gabrielino tribe of Mission Indians. A woman who recently inherited that property, along with six others, knew there was a Tongva fire circle on it, and she knew the property needed a lot of work. So rather than sell or redevelop the land, she returned it as part of the land back program to the Tongva Gabrieleno people.
Well, after our group spent the morning doing some weeding and clearing debris from the property, we sat over lunch and listened as a young Tongva Gabrielino woman named Samantha Morales Johnson shared. And once again, as a pastor, I had that rare privilege of hearing someone attend to call.
Samantha and her family have been an active part of La Verne Heights Presbyterian church for years, and it was clear as she shared how important that connection was for her and for her whole family. She spoke of connection between the presbytery of San Gabriel, that group of churches in the Tongva Gabrieleno tribe, and the power of that relationship. And I heard the call of God who calls a people. But then she spoke of her particular story, and that, too, was moving, as call stories often are. She earned her ba in marine biology. In addition to working as a science illustrator and ethnobotanist, Samantha took on the role of the land back coordinator, adapting her ecological training to working with the Tongva Gabrielino plot of land. As she spoke about the plants and animals of that region, of how and why they named that plot of land in Altadena Hahunga, which means place of the bears. I saw a series of rich connections.
I saw a single person in front of me. Yes, and I got to meet her husband. She's recently married. But I also saw that person connected as with an invisible cord, not just to her husband, but to the Tongva Gabriel people. I saw her linked to the natural world around her, linked to those of us surrounding her as a church, local and global, and together linked to the God who created all things and came to be with us in Jesus Christ. I heard someone attending to call. And as a pastor, that's the good stuff. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, amen.
