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This past year was no exception. William Buckley, Mr. Conservative. Charlton Heston. Mr. Ten Commandments. Tim Russert of Buffalo fame. George Carlin, whose comedy enticed me as a young teenager, but whose comedy I didn’t really understand until much later. Paul Newman, who was just so cool, and whose salad dressing I now buy because that seems like a cool thing to do as well. And Heath Ledger, young movie star, first a “Brokeback Mountain” cowboy and now the Joker, an iconic Batman role. At the end of every calendar year Christmas cards and Christmas letters come to our home. Some tell us how wonderful their children are, a crop of budding Nobel Prize winners, Hall of Fame prospects, musical virtuosos. And they include other news, the death of a parent or cousin or spouse. Some of the lost ones we know personally, some only through the connection in the letter. Through such a letter I remembered that I officiated at a wedding ten years ago. I met the father of the groom briefly, once, as we rehearsed the choreography for his minor role in his son’s nuptials. You don’t have much to do, I said. Except write the check, he replied. He died, not unexpectedly, as we like to say, but sadly nonetheless. My own list for 2008 carried with it its own bittersweet quality. I don’t have a large extended family, just one aunt and one uncle, two cousins, but there is a vast array of second cousins, my parents’ generation. A second cousin I always liked died, near 90. A sad loss, signaling the further ending of an era. And four others, saints to me in different ways, all who died sooner than they might, though one can never guess. Permit me to tell you about them. You might recognize the name Jack Stotts. He preached here, sometime in the 1980’s. Jack Stotts was a Presbyterian minister who exercised his ministry as a theological ethicist. His first job was as chaplain at the University of Tulsa, a job he promptly lost when he invited a preacher to the campus who happened to be African-American. Jack taught at McCormick Seminary and was later that school’s dean and president. He was one of the reasons I went to that school, which seemed like a good idea until I received a letter several months before I moved to Chicago which told me he was moving to Texas to become the president of Austin Seminary. (I tried not to take it personally!) Later on, in his retirement, he served as a visiting theologian at the Chicago church where I worked, and for a year I had the great privilege of having an office next to his. I bugged him constantly, about all kinds of things. He suffered me graciously and even provided wise counsel as I considered moving to Rochester. He died this past year, older, but seemingly not old enough. A small portion of his legacy is printed in our bulletin, the Presbyterian Brief Statement of Faith. And Rosemary Skinner Keller, Methodist church historian. She came to academics later in life, and ended up putting a few cracks in the glass ceiling of theological education, first as the dean of the Methodist seminary in Chicago called Garrett-Evangelical Seminary and later as the dean of the esteemed Union Theological Seminary in New York City. She was my academic advisor, and supported me graciously as I took nine years to complete a three-year program. She, too, gave me career advice, which I largely ignored, but which nurtured me nonetheless. At a point where I was struggling to complete my work, she rallied me, saying my only job was to get finished, not write the perfect dissertation, so that I could get on with my life. Her volumes of women’s religious history sit on my shelves as a kind of silent witness not only to the women of whom she wrote, but of her, her faithfulness and dedication and commitment. And Charlie McDonald-Zwoyer. I met Charlie when I was a baby minister, not even ordained, working at a very small church in Indianapolis, trying to figure out what on earth I was doing. He was just a young boy, three or four. His family was nice to me, which should never be underestimated, welcomed me in to a new church and city. Charlie was born needing a series of surgeries, and I learned a great deal about pastoral care from him and through him, about how sometimes the best care is simply showing up and keeping your mouth shut. Cancer came to his body some months back, and he fought and he fought, and his family fought and they fought, and then the fighting was over and he died, in his early twenties. And Dana Ferguson. Dana was a Presbyterian minister, who had moved to Chicago from the south, from Memphis. She visited the church where I was working, and soon after the visit she informed me that she wanted my job. That would have been bold even if the job had been vacant, which it wasn’t. But the funny thing was was that she got it, after I shifted to something new at the church. And the funnier thing was was that it happened again, after we moved here. She was committed to the mission of the church, serving the least and lost and lonely and left-out, as we used to say, and she loved Jesus and Jesus surely loved her. She died in October at the age of 42, battling cancer and other health issues. Thank you for tolerating my own little all saints’ observance, which I tell not for nostalgia’s sake, not for personal sentiment. We all carry with us such histories, such liturgies of remembrance and thanksgiving. Rather, I share them because like the ones you have known and now miss, and like all of us, like all of you, those four were called, and while they exercised their calling in various ways, they exercised it, faithfully, hopefully, not perfectly, but faithfully. So more of these strange and wondrous call stories. Last week, we learned of the call of Samuel the young prophet, and Philip, plucked off the roadside by Jesus. And we were reminded that when God calls, God gives the gifts and graces needed to do what God asks you to do. So it was for Samuel and Philip. So it was for Jack and Rosemary and Charlie and Dana. So it is for us. So it was for Jonah and Simon Peter and Andrew and James and John, whose call stories we encounter today and who connect with our stories in surprising ways. We know the Jonah story well, punctuated by resistance and reluctance on Jonah’s part and perseverance on God’s part. In whatever ways we run from the voice of God, the call of God, Jonah did so big time. And in whatever ways that God intervenes in our reluctance and hesitancy, God did so big time here. Whether a whale or a big fish, the point is well-made. Failure to respond to the call is not an option. Jonah got it, as they say, so that Nineveh wouldn’t get it, as they say. But it was not an easy call story, which is a reminder to us that God’s work often involves the road not taken, the lesser path, the harder choice. ”Transformative intrusions,” one biblical scholar calls them, “transformative intrusions.” That was certainly the case as Jesus identifies fishermen, Simon, Andrew, James, John. Follow me, he says to them. And “immediately,” one of the gospel of Mark’s favorite words, immediately they dropped everything to follow. Jonah’s reluctance countered with a breathtaking willingness. This is perplexing, Beverly Gaventa writes. Why do they do what they do? There is nothing to suggest that this is a substantial promotion, a step to bigger and better things. It is not even clear that they believe what Jesus is saying nor understand his mission. “Nothing,” Gaventa writes, “…tells us why the fishermen do what they do…Somehow they are compelled to follow him, a man whom they cannot understand, on a journey that will perplex and confuse them, to a destination as yet unspecified. The fishermen, now disciples, act in faith – not a faith that understands, takes only calculated risks, or seeks after reward, but a faith that responds to a call from outside, a call that must remain clear and even frightening.” (Texts for Preaching, Year B, page 123) Frederick Buechner defines vocation as "That place where your great joy meets the world's great need." I believe that to be, but it is never as easy as all that. Jonah’s vocation filled him with joy only in retrospect, and not necessarily the kind of joy we associate with the movies. Same with the disciples. They would have churches named after them much later, but in the middle of all this, they were confused, conflicted, argueing with Jesus, not getting it, on the run. “Tell me, what is it you plan to do/ with your one wild and precious life?” The poet Mary Oliver asks us. That may be the better question, taking romantic notions out of the equation. It is the theme of great literature and film, from the Man of La Mancha to Forrest Gump to Field of Dreams to the Blues Brothers, who reminded the police officers that were about to arrest them that they were on a mission from God. Such a response, a mission from God, got Jonah tossed over the side of a boat, the disciples persecuted, Jesus killed. But the persistent good news is that when God calls, and God will call, God will not abandon you, leave you without resources, without gifts, without the means to follow that call. To answer the question “what shall I do with my life?” the African-American theologian Howard Thurman, who influenced Martin Luther King, Jr. greatly, wrote this poem. “Give me the courage to live!/ Really live – not merely exist./ Live dangerously, /Scorning risk!/ Live honestly,/ Daring the truth --/ Particularly the truth of myself!/ Live resiliently --/ Ever changing, ever growing, ever adapting./ Enduring the pain of change/ As though ‘twere the travail of birth./ Give me the courage to live,/ Give me the strength to be free/ And endure the burden of freedom/ And the loneliness of those without chains;/ Let me not be trapped by success,/ Nor by failure, nor pleasure, not grief,/ Nor malice, nor praise, nor remorse!/ Give me the courage to go on!/ Facing all that waits on the trail -- / Going eagerly, joyously on,/ And paying my way as I go,/ Without anger or fear or regret/ Taking what life gives,/ Spending myself to the full,/ head high, spirit winged, like a god --/ On…on…till the shadows draw close./ Then even when darkness shuts down,/ And I go out alone as I came --/ Even then, gracious God, hear my prayer:/ Give me the courage to live!” And God does. And God will. * What shall I do with my life? Amen.
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