Feb 06, 2022 |
It’s Time to Say “Yes!” A Sermon Preached by the Rev. Ledlie I. Laughlin
| The Rev. Ledlie Laughlin
It’s Time to Say “Yes!” A Sermon Preached by the Rev. Ledlie I. Laughlin
It’s Time to Say “Yes!”
A Sermon Preached by the Rev. Ledlie I. Laughlin
February 6, 2022 ~ Luke 5:1-11
The problem with waiting for the pandemic to be over is that we risk putting life on hold. We tell ourselves, because it is not safe to do x, y, or z, I’ll just stay here for a little while longer. But, over time, does “just staying here a little longer” become the lens through which we live, the determining posture for our choices, inhibiting life itself – leading as one parishioner recently commented, to “a meager and disconnected existence.”
That is not the life to which we are called. I have come that you may have life, said Jesus – life abundant..
Well before this pandemic, Jungian James Hollis stated that, “life’s two biggest threats we carry within: fear and lethargy.” Says he, “Every morning we rise to find two gremlins at the foot of the bed. The one named Fear says, “The world is too big for you, too much. You are not up to it. Find a way to slip-slide away again today.” And the one named Lethargy says, “Hey, chill out. You’ve had a hard day. [Treat yourself to something special.] Tomorrow’s another day.” Says Hollis, “Those perverse twins munch on our souls every day. No matter what we do today, they will turn up again tomorrow.” Living An Examined Life
So, each day, we must start afresh.
The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius chose to sleep not in his palace but with his troops on the battle field that each day he would awaken with a sense of call and purpose. Aurelius wrote, “At day’s first light, have in readiness, against disinclination to leave your bed, the thought that “I am rising for the work of man.” Must I grumble at setting out to do what I was born for, and for the sake of which I have been brought into the world? Is this the purpose of my creation, to lie here under the blankets and keep myself warm? “Ah, but it is a great deal more pleasant!” said he. Indeed. The call of the cozy blanket.
I pray you not take offense that I cite an emperor, a warrior, one who had little regard for the God of love and those who seek to follow Christ. For I appreciate the image of rising each day, aware that despite the beckoning blanket, each day offers the opportunity to say, yes.
Like you, I have my morning routines. In recent months, I have been attempting what is often called “morning pages” – writing several pages first thing, stream of consciousness, while still on the cusp between sleep and waking. Most mornings I begin, “Hello God. Hello world. I am alive to love.” And then go from there.
In a variation on that theme, our parish staff has been reflecting on and discussing the proposition that, “for our ministry, today is the new baseline.” While we may return to much of what nourished us in church, a lot of patterns have shifted and we’re not going back. So, what does today offer? What is God’s preferred future from this point forward? What opportunities do we now see to Live God’s Love?
Our readings this morning tell stories of those who unexpectedly say “yes” to God. In this hour and in this season of our life, I invite you to consider how it is that God may be inviting you to say “yes.” In what ways have you been waiting, keeping your life on hold? This is the day the Lord has made. In what ways might you say yes?
In the biblical literature, these are stories of “call.” Since the beginning, God calls God’s people: to lead, to follow, to teach, or heal; to give, or sacrifice; with humility, with courage; for love. From Abraham and Sarah, to Isaiah; from Mary and Joseph, to Peter, Paul, and the disciples of every generation.
We know this, but it helps to remember some of the characteristics we see in all the biblical stories of call. Let me recount:
No one is ready. No one earned it or started out deserving.
It is never convenient.
It is always costly.
God’s call can come anytime, any where, through any means. In dreams, through angels, at work, in the kitchen. In the temple or in a prison cell. In a storm, in blinding light, or in silence.
While God’s call may come in a single moment, almost everyone who is called finds her or himself wavering, needing to commit and recommit to this newly called life, time and again.
By definition, call involves an insistent reorientation from a life that is self-referential to a life that is oriented toward others, toward God, towards love, towards the least and most vulnerable among us. Not as Marcus Aurelius, for Empire. Rather, for beloved community.
While the price is high, sometimes even one’s life, the gift is life, new life.
The call of the prophet Isaiah is set before the very throne of God in a vision as awe-inspiring as any in literature. Amid six-winged seraphs, “holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.” “Woe is me,” says Isaiah. But once cleansed with hot coals upon his lips, says, “here am I. Send me.” Poor Isaiah. Little could he know that while he would one day prophesy restoration and redemption, the opening charge is to proclaim a message that no one will want to hear: “Say to the people, listen, but do not comprehend. Make the mind of this people dull! Until cities lie waste, without inhabitant. And vast is the emptiness.”
To be called by God to the task of striving to bring about the world as God would have it be is to join God in dismantling the structures that oppress – in order to plant new seeds or build a new community. There is a hinge, a point of turning – for the individual and the community – that entails freedom from to enable freedom for. Freedom from this construct, that we may be free to live for and toward this new life.
This is made explicit in Jesus’ call of his first disciples. Jesus meets these fisherman right in the midst of their labor.
The biblical stories of call are special, memorable; they stand out. But given how unlikely most of the characters seem to be, the stories are not meant to signal the individuals are special, or different from you and me. The whole point is to let us know that God calls anyone, each of us, all of us – in the temple, or the boat, or the kitchen, or at school. When we’re in prayer, or at work. When the stories are written and we look back at them, the outcome seems inevitable. Of course Moses said yes, as did Isaiah, and Mary, and Peter. But in the moment, they had no idea what they were getting themselves into, no idea where that yes would lead.
Maybe a disciple is just someone who says yes – everyday until it sticks, until it redirects their path. So we go to the place where fear or lethargy are most likely to take hold. And from there, say yes. We are saying yes to the challenge of creating affordable housing, yes to examining systems of racial oppression, yes to uncharted paths of carrying out parish ministry. Let’s say yes to life, yes to being in-person, yes to laughter, yes to joy, yes to love, yes to you, yes to most any invitation that comes our way. For some of these invitations may be coming from none other than the living loving God.
In J.D. Salinger’s, Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield is telling his sister Phoebe what he wants to be when he grows up. Holden reminds Phoebe of the song about “if a body catch a body comin’ through the rye.” Phoebe corrects him. It’s a poem by Robert Burns, she says, that goes “if a body meets a body comin’ through the rye.” She’s right, he admits.
“I thought it was “if a body catch a body,” I said. Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around – nobody big, I mean – except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff – I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be. I know it’s crazy.”
Then Jesus said, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.” It may be crazy, but it’s time to say yes. Say yes. Amen.
A Sermon Preached by the Rev. Ledlie I. Laughlin
February 6, 2022 ~ Luke 5:1-11
The problem with waiting for the pandemic to be over is that we risk putting life on hold. We tell ourselves, because it is not safe to do x, y, or z, I’ll just stay here for a little while longer. But, over time, does “just staying here a little longer” become the lens through which we live, the determining posture for our choices, inhibiting life itself – leading as one parishioner recently commented, to “a meager and disconnected existence.”
That is not the life to which we are called. I have come that you may have life, said Jesus – life abundant..
Well before this pandemic, Jungian James Hollis stated that, “life’s two biggest threats we carry within: fear and lethargy.” Says he, “Every morning we rise to find two gremlins at the foot of the bed. The one named Fear says, “The world is too big for you, too much. You are not up to it. Find a way to slip-slide away again today.” And the one named Lethargy says, “Hey, chill out. You’ve had a hard day. [Treat yourself to something special.] Tomorrow’s another day.” Says Hollis, “Those perverse twins munch on our souls every day. No matter what we do today, they will turn up again tomorrow.” Living An Examined Life
So, each day, we must start afresh.
The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius chose to sleep not in his palace but with his troops on the battle field that each day he would awaken with a sense of call and purpose. Aurelius wrote, “At day’s first light, have in readiness, against disinclination to leave your bed, the thought that “I am rising for the work of man.” Must I grumble at setting out to do what I was born for, and for the sake of which I have been brought into the world? Is this the purpose of my creation, to lie here under the blankets and keep myself warm? “Ah, but it is a great deal more pleasant!” said he. Indeed. The call of the cozy blanket.
I pray you not take offense that I cite an emperor, a warrior, one who had little regard for the God of love and those who seek to follow Christ. For I appreciate the image of rising each day, aware that despite the beckoning blanket, each day offers the opportunity to say, yes.
Like you, I have my morning routines. In recent months, I have been attempting what is often called “morning pages” – writing several pages first thing, stream of consciousness, while still on the cusp between sleep and waking. Most mornings I begin, “Hello God. Hello world. I am alive to love.” And then go from there.
In a variation on that theme, our parish staff has been reflecting on and discussing the proposition that, “for our ministry, today is the new baseline.” While we may return to much of what nourished us in church, a lot of patterns have shifted and we’re not going back. So, what does today offer? What is God’s preferred future from this point forward? What opportunities do we now see to Live God’s Love?
Our readings this morning tell stories of those who unexpectedly say “yes” to God. In this hour and in this season of our life, I invite you to consider how it is that God may be inviting you to say “yes.” In what ways have you been waiting, keeping your life on hold? This is the day the Lord has made. In what ways might you say yes?
In the biblical literature, these are stories of “call.” Since the beginning, God calls God’s people: to lead, to follow, to teach, or heal; to give, or sacrifice; with humility, with courage; for love. From Abraham and Sarah, to Isaiah; from Mary and Joseph, to Peter, Paul, and the disciples of every generation.
We know this, but it helps to remember some of the characteristics we see in all the biblical stories of call. Let me recount:
No one is ready. No one earned it or started out deserving.
It is never convenient.
It is always costly.
God’s call can come anytime, any where, through any means. In dreams, through angels, at work, in the kitchen. In the temple or in a prison cell. In a storm, in blinding light, or in silence.
While God’s call may come in a single moment, almost everyone who is called finds her or himself wavering, needing to commit and recommit to this newly called life, time and again.
By definition, call involves an insistent reorientation from a life that is self-referential to a life that is oriented toward others, toward God, towards love, towards the least and most vulnerable among us. Not as Marcus Aurelius, for Empire. Rather, for beloved community.
While the price is high, sometimes even one’s life, the gift is life, new life.
The call of the prophet Isaiah is set before the very throne of God in a vision as awe-inspiring as any in literature. Amid six-winged seraphs, “holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.” “Woe is me,” says Isaiah. But once cleansed with hot coals upon his lips, says, “here am I. Send me.” Poor Isaiah. Little could he know that while he would one day prophesy restoration and redemption, the opening charge is to proclaim a message that no one will want to hear: “Say to the people, listen, but do not comprehend. Make the mind of this people dull! Until cities lie waste, without inhabitant. And vast is the emptiness.”
To be called by God to the task of striving to bring about the world as God would have it be is to join God in dismantling the structures that oppress – in order to plant new seeds or build a new community. There is a hinge, a point of turning – for the individual and the community – that entails freedom from to enable freedom for. Freedom from this construct, that we may be free to live for and toward this new life.
This is made explicit in Jesus’ call of his first disciples. Jesus meets these fisherman right in the midst of their labor.
The biblical stories of call are special, memorable; they stand out. But given how unlikely most of the characters seem to be, the stories are not meant to signal the individuals are special, or different from you and me. The whole point is to let us know that God calls anyone, each of us, all of us – in the temple, or the boat, or the kitchen, or at school. When we’re in prayer, or at work. When the stories are written and we look back at them, the outcome seems inevitable. Of course Moses said yes, as did Isaiah, and Mary, and Peter. But in the moment, they had no idea what they were getting themselves into, no idea where that yes would lead.
Maybe a disciple is just someone who says yes – everyday until it sticks, until it redirects their path. So we go to the place where fear or lethargy are most likely to take hold. And from there, say yes. We are saying yes to the challenge of creating affordable housing, yes to examining systems of racial oppression, yes to uncharted paths of carrying out parish ministry. Let’s say yes to life, yes to being in-person, yes to laughter, yes to joy, yes to love, yes to you, yes to most any invitation that comes our way. For some of these invitations may be coming from none other than the living loving God.
In J.D. Salinger’s, Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield is telling his sister Phoebe what he wants to be when he grows up. Holden reminds Phoebe of the song about “if a body catch a body comin’ through the rye.” Phoebe corrects him. It’s a poem by Robert Burns, she says, that goes “if a body meets a body comin’ through the rye.” She’s right, he admits.
“I thought it was “if a body catch a body,” I said. Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around – nobody big, I mean – except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff – I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be. I know it’s crazy.”
Then Jesus said, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.” It may be crazy, but it’s time to say yes. Say yes. Amen.
