Jeremiah’s Calling...And Yours

I was in conversation with someone earlier this week who was telling me about their new pastor. “We got another older pastor. We’ve been saying for years we want someone younger but we are never given one.”

It’s something I hear often as a bishop. I asked my friend, “When was the last time your church sent someone into ordained ministry?”

There was a long pause. 

“Um...I really don’t know.”

There’s a crisis of call in many of our churches. Not only are we not helping people hear their call into ordained ministry, we aren’t helping everyone hear their unique calling, given by God, to be lived out each and every day. 

Have you claimed your call? 

Jeremiah heard God’s call to be a prophet and balked: “I’m just a boy—I wouldn’t know what to do or say.”

God doesn’t take “no” for an answer, and equipped Jeremiah for his vocation: Go where I send you. Speak what I need you to say. And don’t be afraid. 

Are you living out your call? Or have you, like Jeremiah, made excuses? Don’t you know God created you for a unique purpose and if you reject that purpose, if you fail to claim your call, the world is left hungry for the love of God you could have made visible. 

It’s time to stop making excuses and claim your calling. And it’s time for all our churches to help everyone listen for and respond to their call. 

Don’t be afraid! God will give you what you need!

Exercising Empathy

As I was reading the news this morning, I found a lump forming in my throat and tears filling my eyes. I was reading about the funeral of El Paso shooting victim Margie Reckard. Her partner of 22 years, Antonio Basco, has no family and feared he’d be the only one at her funeral. He put out a simple invitation to the public to join him for the funeral. Hundreds of strangers from across the country came to El Paso to mourn with him. 

The article from HuffPost described the scene, “As the line swelled, Basco came back out to thank attendees personally for coming. People crowded around to hug and touch him. Basco appeared overwhelmed that strangers were now running toward him to show love and offer condolences.”

I am moved by the unbridled empathy of strangers who not only were touched by Basco’s story, but connected so deeply with his grief that they were moved to go to El Paso and companion him during this heartbreaking time. 

This kind of empathy has become exceedingly rare these days. We may still feel deep empathy when our child cries because they’re not chosen for a sports team or when our spouse is once again overlooked for a promotion. But our empathy beyond our family and friends has grown thin and the cost is healthy community. When was the last time a stranger’s pain moved you to action?

As I continue to read the news, it seems that empathy has become an outdated commodity in church and society. We create teams of “Us” and “Them” and keep adding players to each side. Each time we do that, each time we fail to recognize our shared humanity and kinship, walls are built that create boundaries of who’s in and out. And for every border built, we divide God’s family and our hearts harden to those who aren’t like us. 

It’s time to exercise our empathy, flex tendons of tenderness and strengthen our ability to enter into the pains, fears, and despair of those around us, particularly those we otherwise overlook. 

Jesus kept his sights on those pushed to society’s edges. He allowed what he saw to move him deeply and disturb him enough to do something. He healed and fed those in need. He sought justice for the oppressed and challenged those who abused power. 

And he calls you and I to do the same. 

“Stoop down and reach out to those who are oppressed. Share their burdens, and so complete Christ’s law. If you think you are too good for that, you are badly deceived.” (Galatians 6:2-3)

SOCIAL HOLINESS, SPIRITUALITY, AND SHOOTINGS

In the midst of the noise of our day, listening is a deeply spiritual practice. Listening to another person is a spiritual act. Listening to sighs too deep for words is a spiritual act. Listening to the wind blow through the trees is a spiritual act. All this is to assist us as we listen with open hearts for the voice of God.

Saturdays are a day of spiritual listening for me. After reading scripture in the morning, I strain the ears of my heart to hear God’s whisper. Today, I heard bird calls, a child laugh, waves lapping the shore. But where was God’s voice?

This evening, as I looked at my phone to catch up on the day’s news, I heard it: God was weeping. El Paso became the latest community to experience a mass shooting, with 20 shot dead in a Walmart, many buying school supplies. As of today, there have been 248 mass shootings in the United States in 2019. 246 people have been killed, 979 wounded, thousands have experienced trauma.

Tonight, I hear God weeping.

“Thoughts and prayers” ring hollow in the face of these numbers and mock the fact that the life to which Jesus calls us is one of engaged faith. The apostle Paul said, “Faith without works is dead.” John Wesley said, “The gospel of Christ knows of no religion, but social; no holiness but social holiness. Faith working by love, is the length and breath and depth and height of Christian perfection.”

When we bow our heads and pray for those whose lives have been irrevocably impacted by the El Paso shooting, what will we do when we rise from our pews? How will the holy practice we engaged in during worship be embodied social holiness in our daily living?

God weeps tonight. What will you do tomorrow, so that your “faith is working by love”?

We can stop the killings. We can ease the deep pain of those who weep. We can create beloved communities that draw the outcast in. We can work for better mental health access in our communities. We can let our elected officials know that it is past time that this nation passed sensible gun control laws.

We can do all this through Christ, who expects nothing less of us.