Second Sunday after the Epiphany - Part 1

Second Sunday after the Epiphany (B)

January 17, 2021

Text: John 1:43-51

            When God calls you, it is an objective, external thing.  It is not an ambiguous feeling deep down in the pit of your stomach.  It is not simply a thought captivating your mind and heart, or an inner voice, or an inclination of the will.  When St. Paul talks about the qualifications for pastors, he says the desire for the task of ministry is noble (1 Tim. 3:1).  But it does not yet qualify a man for the Office, and it is not a call.  A call does not come from within you, as desires do.  It comes from outside of you.  When I was eleven years old, in Catechism class, the desire was born in me to be a pastor.  I wanted to be just like Pastor Wellman.  And that desire was nourished by the Word of God, and it grew, and I began to prepare for the task.  But none of those stages of development were yet a call.  That had to come from outside of me.  In the case of the ministry, God calls through His people, the Church.  When I was called here to be your pastor, there was no mistaking it.  Because it came in a packet of papers duly signed by the officers of this congregation.  And that was God’s call.  Now, in Christian freedom, I could have returned it and stayed in Michigan where I also had a call from God, but the point is, it was all external.  It wasn’t just something in my mind or my heart.  The same is true for Pastor Taylor.  He knew God called him to our Church because we voted on it and issued him the paperwork.  That was how God called him here.  And now, thank God, after due deliberation and prayer, he has accepted that call.  The process may not seem spiritual enough for our pious sensibilities, but those sensibilities are really creatures of the Old Adam in us.  Old Adam is super-spiritual.  He just isn’t scriptural.  As Lutherans, we shouldn’t be surprised that God always works through external means: The Word, water, bread and wine, a congregation of redeemed sinners.  Call documents.  To say that God’s call comes from the outside is to say that it is His work, and not ours.  Or, perhaps another way to say it is, God’s call is by grace, not by works.

            Those of you who aren’t pastors are not called into the ministry.  But you do have a call from God.  For most of you, you first felt this call, not in your heart, but on your skin, and it made you cry.  It was the water splashing against your infant head, the water included in God’s command and combined with God’s Word spoken by the startling voice of the pastor.  In Baptism, Jesus says to you, “Follow me” (John 1:43; ESV).  And that is the ultimate call.  That is the call that envelopes all other calls, and it is their source.  That call is your identity: Baptized into Christ!  Sometimes you feel it in your heart, but oftentimes you don’t.  But it doesn’t matter.  It isn’t defined by your feelings.  It is defined by what happens outside of you.  It is an external and unmistakable act of God.  By grace, not by works.  Water and Word, in the fellowship of the congregation.  It is all quite regular and proper.  In fact, it is the custom of the Church that witnesses are enlisted, certificates issued, records are kept, so that there is no doubt.  You are called by God to be His own.

            So it happens for those who are called as infants or young children.  But older children and adults are called in another way, and this also is external.  It is not to the exclusion of Baptism, but leading to it.  And that is when one who is already a follower of Jesus speaks the Word of Jesus to a person, and bids him come and see.  This is what Christians do.  Faith spills over into confession of the Gospel.  You tell someone what Jesus has done for you and for all sinners in His sin-atoning death and resurrection, and invite that person to Church to meet Jesus for himself.  “Come and see,” you say, like Philip to Nathanael (v. 46).  And sometimes, like Nathanael… even sometimes in spite of objections like, “Can anything good come out of a Christian Church?”… they do just that.  They accept your invitation.  They come and see.  And it even happens (and it is always a great surprise) that sometimes, in coming here, where Jesus is, to welcome sinners, and forgive sins, that the person you invited finds a home.  And then his life is never the same.  It leads to catechesis and Baptism and full Communicant membership in the congregation.  Now, it doesn’t always work out that way, as you know.  And you are not to worry about that, because the results aren’t up to you and they’re not your problem.  That all rests with God.  But you speak Jesus, and you invite people to Church to come and see, and sometimes they do, and it’s wonderful.  People come to faith by means of the Word confessed and preached.  It is an external call.  You spoke, and the Spirit entered the person’s heart by means of the ear, by means of the external Word of the Gospel.  Jesus said, “Follow me,” and so the person does.  Perhaps that is your story, how God brought you here, when you came to faith because someone spoke the Word of Christ to you.

            It is always by the Word.  So it was with the Prophet Samuel, the Word calling from the Most Holy Place, and so it was with Philip.  In their cases, Jesus (and it is Jesus in both cases) called them immediately… that is, without a mediator, by His own voice.  But then Jesus called Nathanael (also known as Bartholomew) mediately, through the confession of Philip.  Philip and Nathanael, He called them both to follow Him, to be His disciples, which is to say, Christians.  But now, in their particular case, Jesus also called them to be Apostles.  That call happened sometime later, after Jesus had spent all night in prayer, and then called to Himself twelve specific men out of His disciples to be His Apostles, which is to say, His authoritative sent ones (Luke 6:12-16).  Not every disciple of Christ was to be an Apostle.  But they were all to be Christians.  And this teaches us that from our overarching call to be Christians, flow our other callings in life.  There are specific roles and relationships to which Jesus calls us.  And every one of us has such callings.  Now these don’t define us in the same way the call to follow Christ does.  That call is our identity.  But these other callings flow out of our identity.  These are our vocations (vocation is just a fancier word for “calling”).

            This is important.  Your vocations from God are holy.  You don’t have to be a pastor.  You don’t have to be an Apostle  As one baptized into Christ, which is your overarching vocation, you are called into holy relationship with your neighbor, to love and care for your neighbor in what Luther rightly called “masks of God.”  That is, God loves and cares for your neighbor hidden under your vocation.  And God loves and cares for you hidden under your neighbor’s vocation.  Your vocations are God’s external means.  So what does this mean, practically speaking?  Well, many of you are called by God to be spouses.  How do you know that?  I don’t mean to spoil your romantic notions of love at first sight, falling helplessly into passionate romance, thunderstruck by the fateful appearance of your soul mate…  Well actually, I do mean to spoil it.  Because none of that is love.  At best, it is attraction and infatuation.  But at worst, it is lust, which is sinful.  Repent.  Love is commitment and action for the good of the other.  Love is not a feeling in your heart.  The good feelings that go along with love can be wonderful, but they are not love, they are not the thing itself.  If you’ve been married any length of time, you know such feelings wax and wane, and other-than-good feelings sometimes come into play.  So if not by your feelings, then how do you know if you are called to be a spouse?  You don’t look within.  You look outside yourself.  Was there a ceremony, with an officiant, where vows were made before God Himself?  Were there legal witnesses, and were contracts signed?  When you wake up in the morning, is there another person there, to whom you promised your lifelong love and fidelity?  Congratulations!  You’re married!  You are called to be a spouse, to care for that person in love and faithfulness.  That is your vocation. 

            Maybe you are called to be single.  If so, that is easy to know, because there isn’t another person there.  Now, that calling can change, and for those who are single and don’t want to be, don’t lose heart.  Your Father knows what you need, whether that is to remain single (which is a high and holy calling from God), or to provide you with a loving spouse (which is also a high and holy calling from God).  But if you are single, then, in this moment, you are called by God to be faithful and chaste in that condition.  That is your vocation. 

            Are you called to be a parent?  You’ll know it if there are children in your house, needing to be fed and clothed and taught and cared for, and most importantly, raised in the Christian faith.  And then that vocation is modified as they grow into adulthood, but it continues nonetheless.  Are you called to be a son or daughter?  You’ll know it by the parents God gave you to honor, to serve and obey, to love and cherish.  Are you called to be a citizen?  You will know it by the governing authority God has placed over you.  And you’ll know to whom you are called to be a neighbor when you realize you live in a specific place.  You’ll know to whom you are called to be a fellow Church member when you look around you in the pews.  You’ll know what your job should be when you’re offered it, and you accept.  And if you’re blessed with the option between this job or that, thanks be to God.  You have Christian freedom to make a decision that fits you best.  God has called you to work.  And so it goes in all your stations in life.  God calls by external means.  You’ll know it by your circumstances.  You’ll know it as you open your eyes to take stock of who is around you, the relationships you’ve been given, your commitments, the location and time in which God has placed you, the gifts He has given you to use for the sake of others.  And you’ll know how to serve faithfully in those vocations as you examine your place in life according to the Ten Commandments… as you look to God’s external Word.  And then also as you look at Jesus, who was faithful in His vocation as God’s Son, and as your Savior, to deliver you from all your unfaithfulness in your vocations, to forgive you all your sins. 

            Our vocations are not all the same.  Most of you are not called to be pastors.  And by the way, pastors are not called to be Apostles.  That was a special Office in the early Church entrusted to very few, with very particular qualifications, not the least of which is being an eyewitness of His resurrection.  And even then, only a few received that call, and it was immediate, from Jesus Himself.  Philip and Nathanael were among them.  And Philip and Nathanael were called to be martyrs, Philip reportedly by crucifixion (upside down, like Peter), and Nathanael by being flayed alive.  None of us knows yet whether we’ll be called to shed our blood for Jesus, but we’ll know if He calls us, and so we should be prepared.  By the way, I am not called to be a doctor, or an engineer, or a mother (which is a biological impossibility for me), or a grandparent.  It is a good thing that we don’t all have the same vocations.  The Lord has ordered the members of His Body with varying gifts and callings according to His wisdom (Cf. 1 Cor. 12).  But you and I, and Pastor Taylor, and Philip, and Nathanael, do all share one common vocation.  And that is the overarching one.  It is the call, in whatever we do, to follow Jesus.  It is the call to be a Christian.

            And it is to look to Jesus, crucified for our sins, and risen from the dead, and see heaven opened to us.  It is to see the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.  Jesus is Jacob’s ladder.  It is to see in Jesus our whole salvation, our purpose in life, our very identity, and to confess with Nathanael, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God!” (John 1:49).  God calls you by Baptism and by the Word.  And all your vocations flow from this.  The call is by grace, so you need never doubt.  God calls you, objectively, into the life of His Son.  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son X, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.