PRACTICING DISCERNMENT: RESPONDING TO GOD’S CALL
ISAIAH 49:1-7; JOHN 1:35-42
JANUARY 20, 2008
THOMAS H. YORTY, WESTMINSTER PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

            I’d like to conclude our sermon series today. We’ve been talking about practicing discernment. Two weeks ago we said the horizontal plane of discernment is common sense: stepping back asking ourselves and others if a course of action makes sense; is it needed, does it help or hinder, is it something I/we can reasonably accomplish?
            I realize we are also called to be fools for Christ and that the Christian life often goes against the grain of culture and society. But Paul counseled Christians to work within the structures of society as well.
            Common sense, a God-given instinct if you will, is not always but often a key measure in discerning God’s will or call to action.

            Last week we talked about signs from God. We said this is the vertical dimension of discernment. So much of the history of God’s people originates in some sign from above: a burning bush; a descending dove; a transfigured leader.
            I love Thoreau’s comment ‘for the child to grow he requires family and famil- iarity, but for a grownup to grow he requires strangeness and transformation.’1
            Signs from above are often strange, transforming signals in the course of ordinary living. Discerning God’s leading means being open to such experiences.

            Both horizontal and vertical discernment contribute to our ability to perceive God’s leading in our individual and common life. To ignore either is to limit our receptivity to God and our role and responsibility as God’s people.
            Today I want to consider what responding to God’s call looks and feels like having discerned what we think might be a course of action. The current name for what we’re talking about is spiritual formation. Others have mapped out the interior life but perhaps none so comprehensively as Soren Kierkegaard.
            Kierkegaard famously identified spiritual formation as a process of stages in life which we move through one to the next. Each time we hope we’ve found happiness yet, each time we find instead despair. Until at last we find ourselves standing on the precipice of faith—the last stage.

            The stories from Isaiah and John today also give important clues to the question of discerning God’s call and our response to it.
            The beautiful poetry of Isaiah is known as the Song of the Suffering Servant, Israel for Jews, Jesus for Christians. It reveals a process of spiritual formation that moves from awareness to surrender to life shaped and defined by God’s will.
            This is essentially a process of discovery. It begins by claiming my relationship to God then leads to rediscovering myself, my neighbor and the world. The theological word for this movement is atonement, which is the name of a popular movie right now. It refers to being at one with God and God’s purposes as we grow into the likeness of Christ.
            Let’s look at the Suffering Servant in Isaiah today. After those exquisite lines of poetry describing the servant of God as a sharp sword and polished arrow the Servant reports being claimed by God: “You are my servant,” says the Lord, “in whom I will be glorified.”
            And then his own disclaimer in response, “I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity.” As if to say: “Me Lord? I am unworthy of your attention and care.”
            Who among us hasn’t been there? This is the famous George Herbert poem on love: God the lover relentlessly woos the heart of the believer; the believer relentlessly discredits herself; God relentlessly keeps lowering himself; finally the believer gives herself permission to be loved.

            What does responding to God’s call look and feel like? At first, it looks and feels like God is so much higher and purer than I am that I cannot have a relationship with God. I am too sinful; incompetent; or frightened of the burden.
            In many human relationships this self-depreciation works, but not with God. God keeps pursuing us; respecting our freedom of will; but closing off our path of escape until we make a Kierkegaardian leap into God’s claim upon our lives.
            At which point we are willing to say as the Servant does today: “surely my cause is with the Lord, and my reward with my God…for I am honored in the sight of the Lord, my God has become my strength.”

            Did you notice the shift? The Servant moves from seeing himself separate and apart from God to regarding God as the source of his life, not in an abstract way but a deeply personal way. My reward is with my God, my God has become my strength.
            When God gets personal like that the gap between heaven and earth closes. I can appreciate and even relate to God as Creator and Sovereign but until I enter into a personal relationship with God, God remains an abstraction.
            If the first stage of responding to God’s call is marked by self-depreciation and fear; the second stage of accepting God’s claim on my life is about seeing myself and the world anew through my relationship to God.

            The next movement in the response of the Suffering Servant to God’s call is to see his mission expanded. “The Lord formed me,” he says, “to bring Jacob back to him and restore the tribes of Israel.”
            But then God says to the Servant, “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to restore Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”
            God’s purposes invariably transcend our purposes. Martin Luther King, Jr., on this weekend celebrating his birth and life, started out as a prophet for racial justice but evolved into a prophet of justice for all people. He was criticized for this. Many thought his larger focus would dilute his efforts for Civil Rights for African Americans. But for him there was no justice until there was universal justice. He gave himself and was willing to redefine his mission, regardless of the critics, to what he perceived were God’s larger intentions.
            The experience of responding to God’s call moves from despair and fear to surrender to God’s claim upon us to committing our lives to God’s ongoing, ever expanding purposes.
            I say this is a process of discovery because at no point do we have a blueprint for the rest of our lives. Life happens and submitting ourselves to God’s leading is a daily, life-long process.
            Nor do I mean to imply today that responding to God’s call is simple, orderly and free of angst. Maybe you heard the story about the man who fell off the cliff and was holding on to a branch and looked up and prayed for help and a voice said, “Let go.” And after a long pause the man cried out, “Is there any one else up there?”

            What I love about the biblical characters is their utter humanity in responding to what initially feels like the disconcerting presence of God in their lives. Jonah wanting nothing to do with God’s mission to go to Ninevah and preach repentance tries to stow away on a slow boat headed in the opposite direction. So God sends a whale to get his attention.
            My hunch is not a few of us here have tried to slip out the back door or find some way to avoid God’s claim upon us.
            But invariably life keeps presenting situations, opportunities let’s call them, to rely upon our relationship to our Higher Power. I’d wager that if we did a survey we’d find most of us here today are even now facing some opportunity to respond to God’s call and claim upon our lives.

            Just this past week I met one of our neighbors—Henrietta Colvin. She is pastor of St. Mark’s United Church of Christ located at the end of Niagara St. just behind City Hall. Henrietta’s story is a remarkable illustration of how God claims and calls us.
            She came back to Buffalo some years ago fresh out of seminary to visit her parents on the West Side where she grew up. Not long afterward she received an unsolicited call to become pastor of St. Marks.
            Her introduction to the position was to find herself in the middle of a public debate over the future of the Lake Shore apartments—a low income residence across the street from her church. It seems a large developer is interested in the valuable waterfront property the apartments occupy. Henrietta has been a voice for justice in the implied displacement of the residents of over 600 Lake Shore Apartment units. “I knew I’d accepted God’s call when I unpacked my moving boxes,” she said, “which I kept avoiding hoping that He would send me elsewhere.”

            Finally, at the end of the Gospel of John today Andrew, who heard the Baptist identify Jesus then asked Jesus where he was staying and followed when Jesus said, “Come and see” immediately went to his brother Simon and said, “We have found the Messiah.”
            All Andrew did was to bring Simon to Jesus, then Jesus took over, looked at him and said, “You are to be called Cephas,” which was Peter’s call to leadership.
            Responding to God’s call leads us to our families, neighbors and any who are looking but have not yet found him. It is sin of omission not to bring others to the one who claims us and gives our lives meaning. Like Andrew all we need to do is bring them, from there God manages the rest.

            Isn’t that where we are today as a congregation. We have found the Messiah and he is doing marvelous things in our midst—renewing the urban core; delighting the heart with music and the arts; stretching the mind with thoughtful education and discussion; calling us to places like East Sumner, Maine and the Ninth Ward of New Orleans.
            John Bird who was here last week in our preliminary strategic planning said to me before he left after three days of focus groups, he was surprised at how unaware the parents of children at our early childhood programs are of the vital ministry just fifty feet from the school door. When he asked if they might have interest in learning more about this congregation the answer was a resounding yes.
            If that is true for those who come to this campus five days a week, how true is it for others who have not even heard our name but would be eager to join us in Christ’s mission and ministry here?

            Responding to God’s call begins in reluctance and fear and leads to our embrace of God’s claim upon us. In that new relationship to God we find out who we are, who our neighbor is and what we are called to do.
            Where ever else God’s calls leads us it always leads God’s people to extend the invitation to others to come and see the God we have found—not to increase membership or revenue which anyone in their right mind would avoid—
            but so others might refer to him one day like as we are learning to do as,  “our God, the source of our hope and ourstrength.” Amen.