Pasadena Presbyterian Church Sermon Text
January 11, 2004

"I Called You By Name, You Are Mine"
Preached by The Rev. Dr. Mark Smutny

Scripture:  Isaiah 43: 1-7 ¥ Luke 3: 15-17, 21-22

"But now thus says the LORD, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine."

- Isaiah 43:1

Quaker theologian Parker Palmer speaks of the Rosa Parks Decision "when people who plant the seeds of great movements decide to make a critical decision.  They decide to live 'divided no more.' They decide no longer to act on the outside in a way that contradicts some truth about themselves that they hold deeply on the inside.  They decide to claim their authentic selfhood and act it out, and their decisions ripple out to transform the society in which they live." (1)

Palmer calls it the Rosa Parks Decision because of the African American woman who on December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama decided to do something the outer world told her she should not do:  she sat down in the front of the bus in a seat reserved for whites, a provocative, dangerous, and courageous thing to do in society that would hate her for it.

Why did she do it?  Forty years later she wrote, "I will no longer act on the outside in a way that contradicts the truth that I hold deeply on the inside.  I will no longer act as if I were less than the whole person I know myself inwardly to be." (2)

Within each of us is a whole person, a beautiful, courageous, delightful, whole person, a creation of God.  The source of this wholeness is the God who created us, claims us, names us, and calls us into service.  Our challenge is to discover that wholeness and let it shine.

In today's Old Testament lesson, Isaiah 43, the audacious claim is made, repeated throughout the scriptures, that the nation of Israel was chosen by God for a particular service: to be a light to the nations, to show the world the claims of a gracious, generous and loving God.  It is a call story.  It is another of those biblical call stories where God calls people to change their lives, to cast off the old way of being and become new persons.  "I created you.  I formed you.  I called you by name.  You are mine."

Israel has been called and summoned by God for a unique service.  The whole world is to be blessed through the election of a particular people who will be summoned not to crow about their own superiority as No. 1 (every culture believes that), but to be a people who will remember that their very existence is the gift of a gracious and loving God and, therefore, they will seek to love God and neighbor as themselves.  Especially, they will care for the widowed, the orphaned, the dispossessed and the stranger among them.  They will never forget that they were once lost, slaves without a home. They will seek, as far as they are able, to love their neighbors and work for the reconciliation of the world. This, according to Isaiah, is Israel's unique identity, her call. 

This sense of Israel's call is the original source of the Doctrine of Election that permeates Presbyterian belief and history.  Israel - and, in turn, the church - is elected by God, chosen, commissioned, compelled to a difficult and demanding call.  Israel and the church are claimed for the difficult and demanding call to love one another as thoroughly as we possibly can, to side with anyone who is cast out or thrown away, to live courageously, to live justly, compassionately and humbly in a world that too often couldn't care less. 

To accept our call is to claim our birthright as creations of a loving God.  We claim our authentic selves.  We no longer live incongruently.  We will live on the outside, what we know to be true on the inside. We belong to God, body and soul.  "I created you. I formed you. I called you by name.  You are mine."  This is living the whole life.  This is our calling as Christians.

Every year at this time of year, we ritually remember this calling.  The second Sunday of every year is always called The Baptism of our Lord Sunday.  Under the current administration we also always ordain and install church officers.  There must be a connection.   Every year at this time of year, we recall baptism as that rite of passage in Christian practice that affirms everyone's calling, everyone's vocation as a precious, whole, beautiful child of God created for service.  Baptism signifies that our lives, and every dimension of our lives, are named, claimed and sent by Christ for service in the world. 

We know from experience that when God calls, people respond in a variety of ways.  Some try to run away, but most respond by trying to live better lives, to be kinder, more spiritual, becoming more involved in meaningful activity in the church or other organizations that better lives. 

Is that what calling is supposed to mean?  Do more?  Work harder at being a Christian?  Am I supposed to change my job if it isn't all that clear how it is a Christian calling?  What if my job is changing diapers?  What if all of my energy is dedicated to holding the family together or paying the bills? What if I'm retired?  If calling is understood to mean doing something more than what you are already doing, doesn't that just sound like a whole lot of extra work?  Who needs more work?

Those of us who have been ordained as Ministers of Word and Sacrament have it easy.  For us call is usually clear.  We have proscribed roles.  We take up residence in the church. We belong in the pulpit.  We study scripture every day.  We think about love,  peace and hope everyday of our lives.  We are here full-time, seeking to fashion a unique community marked by love and prayer, welcome and healing, justice and peace.  We have it easy.  We know who we are and what we are to do.

Most of the rest of you live in the world that isn't always so welcoming to love and peace, joy and justice.  You walk into this sacred space on Sunday and enjoy this community of care.  Strangers are welcomed.  Here the broken find healing.  We pray for peace and justice.  We sing praises to God and go home feeling uplifted, but tomorrow morning the fat hits the pan.  By Monday morning, it's all gone and it will be another six days before there's another fix.  You have it much harder than we in clerical garb.

You know in your heart that in your baptism every dimension of your being is claimed by God, but it is immensely difficult to see how that inward claim can be integrated into everything you do and are.  "I created you. I formed you. I called you by name. You are mine."  You get the words but it's hard to figure it out in the details of your life.

What many Christians are missing is a sense of vocation, of calling.  The Latin word vocare, from which vocation is derived, means call or summons.  It doesn't mean having a job.  It means having a specific call.  It means doing what one is meant to do.  It means what Rosa Parks meant when she said, "I will no longer act on the outside in a way that contradicts the truth that I hold deeply on the inside.  I will no longer act as if I were less than the whole person I know myself inwardly to be."

In religious language it means engaging in the work of God, something that most of you who consider yourself lay folk find it pretty hard to figure out what that Godly work is for you. 

Sometimes you may come to one of your pastors and anguish a little about how your job is relatively meaningless.

"How is this God's work?" you ask.

"How is clocking 9 to 5 God's work?"

"How is washing petrified Cheerios from the kid's cereal bowl?  How is that God's work?"

"How is it God's work being a teenager and trying to sort out what to do and how be and where to go.  How is that God's work?"

"Or being retired?"

"Or working on a troubled relationship.  How is that God's work?"

"Is this what I was born and baptized to do?"

The historic vision of the church set out in the New Testament and later affirmed in the Reformation, where everyone is to be engaged in God's work, is classically  known as the Doctrine of the Priesthood of All Believers.  This doctrine holds that everyone who bears the name of Christ has a calling, a vocation, and is a part of God's work.  All are called. 

At your baptism you were asked, or your parents were asked on your behalf, "Will you be Christ's faithful disciple, obeying his Word and showing his love?" 

"Yes," you said, either at your baptism or when you affirmed your baptismal vows and faith upon uniting with the church.  This "yes" meant that it was to apply not only to some parts of your life, your churchy life, your Sunday life, but to every dimension of your being, at all times and in all places.  It is your full calling.  You are to be a work of God in all times and in all things, every part of yourself.

Somewhere, somehow along the line we have lost the ancient vision of the church as a priestly people of the whole people of God, nourished in worship, sustained in the fellowship of Christ, sent out into the world of business and finance, caked-on-Cheerios and another pile of dirty clothes, the schoolroom, the boardroom, the bedroom, every room and nook and cranny of this broken and fearful world to be Christ's disciples, to be his hands and feet, his heart and soul: the priesthood of all believers.  "I have called you by name.  You are mine."  All of you!

When lay people think that calling means more work, and you already have more than enough work; when you think that calling only means saying "yes" to a role in the capital campaign, teaching Sunday school, or rolling tamales for the next church dinner; when you think that vocation means switching jobs or being more loving, praying harder, or going to church more often, then I fear that you have missed it, as wonderful as those things are and as essential as they are for the church.   I fear that you have missed it.

Living out your call may very easily be doing just exactly what you are now doing with one exception.  That exception is knowing that you belong to God, body and soul.  You have been created, named and claimed exclusively for God's work, "I have called you by name, you are mine."   You are God's person, all of you, in and for the world.

Of course, that changes everything.  Your life is not your own.  There is no dimension of your life that is not claimed.  Your whole being is claimed by a generous, just and compassionate God.  You discover strength beyond your imagining.  What is afraid becomes courageous.  What is hateful is healed.  What is shamed, becomes free.  Because you are not your own, or rather you become what you most fully really are, you are called to shine forth with the full brilliance of the Lord of love.  You are called to service. You work for peace, healing and reconciliation in your family, the church family and in the family of nations.  Like Rosa Parks, you act from within as the whole person you were created to be. "I created you. I formed you. I called you by name. You are mine."  That's who you are.  That's who we all are.  All of us.  Every part of us.  Amen.

 

(1) Parker J. Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, Inc., 2000, p. 32.

(2) Ibid, p. 33.

(c) Copyright 2004 by Mark K. Smutny.  All rights reserved.  Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution.