One snowy day a few years ago, after I had declared the church a "nonessential" business and closed the office for the day, I experienced a luxury I often dream of, but rarely do. I climbed back into bed to read. But dare you think I was totally decadent, what I chose to read was our congregation's Annual Report. It turned out to be more enjoyable than any novel could have been. What a remarkable document - and what remarkable disciples you all have been! Some reports were lyric in their poetry. Some were bursting with compassion and urgency. Some were laced with delightful humor, others warm and gracious in their tone of gratitude. And the final pages were the icing on the cake - healthy financial figures - based on the generous giving and wise management of our financial resources.
I was struck with how little I've had to do with most of what is described in these pages - and how much we are all letting the Spirit of God shape and mold us into a community of faithfulness. There is not much about today's scripture passage that you don't already know as a community called to discipleship in the name of Jesus Christ. But lest we become complacent about the radical nature of God's call, let us hear once more who and what God wants us to be.
In Matthew's Gospel, Jesus' call to ministry through his baptism and his temptation is immediately followed by his call to others - to Simon and Andrew, to James and John. What is clear is that Jesus cannot and does not redeem the world alone. God-in-flesh means God-in-all-of-us.
Just before these first disciples are called, Jesus makes an astounding announcement. "The kingdom of God - the rule of God - is at hand." The time, my friends, is now. This announcement is astounding for two reasons. First, the Jews had always believed that the kingdom would only come at the end of time - as the culmination of all God's work. And the kingdom would mean perfection - the wholeness and integration of all things - immediately. But today Jesus says something very different. The kingdom is not only a vision in the mind of the Creator and a reality at the end of time. The kingdom is also immediately tangible and available in the person, the values, the behavior of those who follow Jesus. In other words, the kingdom is now, here, in this sanctuary - in and among those of us who dare to follow Jesus.
The second astounding thing Jesus says is this: The time which is now is a special time. The word used is not chronos, the Greek word for the steady progression of seconds and minutes, days and weeks, years and decades. Instead the word used is kairos, God's time - a particular moment of God's inbreaking Spirit - a time to accomplish through us what we cannot accomplish ourselves.
"Call" language is hard language to understand. We clergy types are expected to understand it, for we have to articulate our "call" in order to earn the title "Reverend." But that does not let the rest of you off the hook. As our scripture story suggests today, all those who bear the name of Christ are "called" into ministry.
H. Richard Niebuhr has broken down the concept of call into four different categories. First, there is the common call: the invitation to ministry which is central to our baptism - the sense that once we are grafted into Christ through the graceful power of the Holy Spirit, we inevitably get swept up in the ministry of the church. But there is more. A second kind of call, available to all of us, is the providential call, the ministry given to us through our unique talents and abilities. It is by doing what we do best that we honor and serve God, whether it is within the church or out there in the world. The third kind of call is the secret call, that private, personal connection with God's Spirit that is offered to all of us but recognized by only some of us, that kairos moment, when God's need and our willingness meet in an electric moment of commitment. Finally, there is the ecclesiastical call, a call to minister within the offices of the church as a minister of the Word and Sacrament, as a deacon, or as an elder. This kind of call is the only one of the four that not everyone receives. This does not mean that the ecclesiastical call is any better than any other kind of call. It is just more visible, for it places us in a position to be a role model and a witness to all the other disciples of Christ.
For me, the hardest part of Matthew's call story is the speed with which the call is answered. To be a disciple means to learn - that is the literal translation of the Greek word. To be a disciple means to love - according to scripture to "catch people" in the wide reaching net of God's unconditional love. But, in today's text what being a disciple means most is to leave - to abruptly change that which we have been in order to become that which we can still be. In today's scripture story, all four of the fishermen, comfortable middle-class workers like us, respond immediately, leaving job security, family security, turning their backs on previous commitments and responsibilities, letting go of all that is dependable and familiar in order to respond to Jesus. Personally, I much prefer the Old Testament call stories: Moses, Samuel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, all of whom hemmed and hawed, made excuses, moaned about their unworthiness and unsuitability for the tasks at end - all of whom had to be wined and dined by a patient God until they reluctantly said, "Yes!" But not so James and John, Simon and Andrew. For them the urgency of the moment and the authority of the call wiped out any ambivalence or inadequacy they might have felt. It was a kairos moment. God was in charge - and they obeyed.
Kairos moments come to us, too - moments when, instead of counting the cost, we accept the challenge and the risks involved - moments when by saying yes to something new, we are also saying no to something old. I was struck by the comment a few years ago, that of the four men picked up by Time magazine to be Men of the Year, Arafat, Rabin, Mandela, and de Klerk, only de Klerk was going to lose power and prominence by the risks he had taken. De Klerk's vision of the kingdom for South Africa meant the loss of white power, but it also meant the fulfillment of justice. It was his vision that led him to make a kairos commitment - a willingness to give up personal gain for the fulfillment of God's reign.
Several years ago, God broke into the comfort of this community in a kairos moment. By raising the reality of the pain of the children of Anacostia, a call to commitment was made. Twenty people responded to that call and formed an Urban Mission Team. Adding to our already established suburban outreach projects, these folks created ten new hands-on mission opportunities for people to bring about the kingdom of God in the city - through tutoring, through care for the elderly, through a Saturday morning enrichment program for children, through office skills training. Those who responded at that moment had to give up precious time and some sense of physical security in order to venture into the bowels of the city. But for them, at that particular point in their lives, the call was irresistible.
Several of our elders being ordained and installed today said yes immediately, whereas in years past they said no to other invitations to serve. Though external circumstances in their lives may not have changed that much, something in their internal landscape has changed, and any mountains of resistance they might have had have been brought low by the pervasive power of God. Such is the nature of the call; such is the nature of kairos commitments. And they can happen to any of us within any of the arenas of our living - homes, work, church, or community.
The clearest kairos moment in my life - when God's vision and possibility most neatly coincided with my willingness to respond - was years ago when the Pastor Nominating Committee of this congregation first contacted me. It made no sense for this church to risk calling as pastor a young mother who was serving a 250-member, blue-collar congregation, with no experience in a sophisticated metropolitan community - to call me to serve a church as complex and convoluted as this congregation was back then. But then again it made no sense for me to uproot my family, drag my husband away from a job he enjoyed, in order to come to a conflicted, debt-ridden flock that some clergy told me not to touch with a ten-foot pole. Rationally, it didn't make a lot of sense. But spiritually, it felt absolutely right. I knew that the possibilities in me and the possibilities in this gifted, ripe community of faith were being connected by the inbreaking power of God. And in a dim, small way, I felt that for me, and for us, the kingdom of God was at hand. I still feel that way today.
I once read an excellent paper interpreting several call passages. One line jumped out at me. "Leaders within a Christian context are those people who are willing to be led." Leaders are those who are willing to follow - to follow the call, to follow heart and intuition and vision, to follow the prompting and the inbreaking of God's Spirit. My friends, you have been a community of leaders that has answered God's call vigorously and creatively - in many times and in many places. Let each one of us recommit ourselves today and in the days ahead to listen, to respond, to risk, and to follow as we continue looking for the kairos moments of our living.
May it be so - for you and for me. Amen.