Current and Call

Current and Call--January 8, 2018

"Jesus went out again beside the sea; the whole crowd gathered around him, and he taught them. As he was walking along, he saw Levi, son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, 'Follow me.' And he got up and followed him. And as he sat at Levi's house, many tax collectors and sinners were also sitting with Jesus and his disciples--for there were many who followed him. When the scribes of the Pharisees saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, they said to his disciples, 'Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?' When Jesus heard this, he said to them, 'Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous by sinners'." [Mark 2:13-17]

I remember a childhood visit at my grandparents' house when my grandfather taught me about the compelling power of grace without either of us knowing that was the lesson for the day.  

Neither of us knew that there was theology going on at the time, because my Grandpa hadn't broken out the Bible for a sermon.  He was teaching me how to build an electromagnet.

I can still picture the wires, the 12-volt battery for the day's project, the large metal nail that became our electromagnet, and the handful of paper clips we tested it out on.  I remember my grandfather carefully showing me what he was doing, as he wrapped the wire in coils around the nail, and gave me the elementary-school version of what was about to happen.  I remember seeing this plain metal nail all of a sudden have a power to it that drew all sorts of objects toward it--paper clips, nails, iron filings, screws from the workbench, and more.  And I remember having at least a basic grasp of what I was witnessing: the invisible presence of an electric current was creating a magnetic field, and that had an attractive power that pulled on the metal in the paper clips for as long as the current was flowing.

Something curious and significant happens in a moment like that, when your homemade electromagnet starts attracting whatever is around.  The current itself is invisible, but clearly has a power, a force to it that pulls things toward it.  The paper clips weren't generating their own thrust to get closer to the magnet--they were being pulled, drawn, by the invisible compelling power of the electromagnet.  And yet, the paper clips, the iron filings, and the rest, they weren't resistant to the pull--in fact, something deep within them was compatible with the drawing power of the magnet. The pull was coming from the magnet, and the paper clips seemed designed to allow that power to draw them in.  And with a certain indiscriminate recklessness, the magnet just pulled all kinds of things in closer--paper clips, staples, iron filings, whatever.  The magnet did the pulling, but all sorts of objects were made--designed--to be capable of being pulled by an electromagnet.

And that, with a little bit of hindsight, is where I learned theology from this childhood science moment with my grandpa.  

This is how the call of Jesus--the compelling summons of grace--works among us, too.  Jesus has this way, like a homemade electromagnet, of pulling us toward himself, regardless of the baggage we bring, the tangles we are in, or damage we have already suffered.  And that pull includes not just us (after all, we each have  way of imagining ourselves on Santa's list of Good Boys and Girls), but others, too, even folks that I don't think are "worthy." Jesus' own presence, his voice, his summons, carries its own authority that just draws us in closer when he calls us.  

That's how it goes with Levi, this guy who would have been seen as a sell-out, a fraud, and a traitor to his own people, when Jesus just up and calls him to join his movement with the words, "Follow me," here in Mark's gospel.  Levi isn't looking for a rabbi to follow.  He's quite probably not even looking for a messiah to come, because most people's expectations of a future promised messiah in Levi's day were that he would root out all the people who had sold out to Rome and destroy them.  Folks who had signed up to do the Empire's dirty work for them were not too keen on the idea of a new king who would end the Roman occupation, after all.  Levi wasn't looking for Jesus... but that never stopped Jesus from looking for Levi.

And that is the power of Jesus' way of calling us.  Jesus, like the homemade electromagnet my grandfather demonstrated for me in his family room thirty years ago, brings his own invisible compelling pull, and Jesus' pull draws in all kinds of people. Not just the well-behaved and respectably religious, but the people who had been told they were unacceptable, unworthy, unreachable, and irredeemable, too.  Not just the churchgoing Gallants, but the notorious Goofuses--the sell-outs, the sinners, the cheats and the chaff, the left-out, the lost, and the least.  Jesus' call draws them all, since every last one of us is made to be capable of being pulled.  Jesus doesn't have to advertise his credentials, or promote his own best qualities, or demonstrate his messianic bona fides to get Levi to follow him. Jesus doesn't have to tell Levi, "You really ought to want to follow me--I'm a very important rabbi, and in fact, I'm the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.  There will be rewards later on for the ones who get in on the ground floor, so I'd take this offer to come and follow, if I were you.  I'm the best."  Just the call itself has the authority, the compelling power, the pull of grace. Jesus doesn't have to persuade or puff himself up to make himself look more appealing or prestigious.  An electromagnet doesn't have to show off, after all--it just pulls things in with an unseen power.

Really, it's all Jesus--his indiscriminate, unconditional, irresistible pull--that draws us close.  It's Levi, and it's Zacchaeus, too.  It's an anonymous woman at a well in Sychar, and Mary and Martha as well.  It's a band of illiterate fishermen (we'll hear their stories, too, in due time), and it's you and me.  It's an unexpected band of twelve, who include everyone in the social and political spectrum of Jesus' day, from a sell-out like Levi who had bought the party line about Rome to ex-Zealots who hated the Empire in power with every fiber of their being.  What held them together was not their like-mindedness, their worthiness, or their potential.  It was the pull of Jesus.  

That's where everything begins for us.  All that we call the Christian life.  Your and my whole lives of following Jesus.  Anybody who ever walked to the end of the aisle in an altar call, prayed a prayer to accept Jesus into their hearts, went down in the water, went up at a revival, felt a strange warming in their heart, and a whole slew of folks whose faith story doesn't include any of those tropes, too--even when we thought we were taking the first step to "come to Jesus," we were being pulled by him all along.  The call has the power.  Jesus' summons has the sheer authoritative force.  Jesus' voice, making us acceptable in the act of his calling us, is what draws us.  Jesus is the electromagnet, and we have been re-aligned, re-oriented, re-arranged, in the field of his indiscriminate drawing-in.

That means in a very real sense, Levi's story is yours and mine, too.  Before any one of us gets too big for our britches and starts telling ourselves, "I was the one who came to Jesus!  I was the one who took the first step and invited Jesus into my heart!  I was the one who made Jesus my 'personal Lord and Savior'!" we should be honest about where the power lies among the iron filings, paper clips, and coils of wire.  The power that pulls resides in the electromagnet, drawing into its grip whatever metal is around. All the paper clip brings to the equation is the capacity to be held.  And that's you and me, too.  What we bring to this relationship we call faith is our capacity to be held.  Jesus does the pulling.  Jesus does the calling.  Jesus does the holding.  We, to be honest, find ourselves found.

And once we are clear about that, all of a sudden it changes the way I see everybody else around me, as the same compelling grace of Jesus sweeps them up in his grasp, too.  It becomes clear that others who are drawn to his Christ don't have to meet my prior approval--they are being pulled by Jesus, not by majority vote of all the other paper clips.  And it becomes clear that each of us sticks to the magnet, each of us holds on to Jesus, not by our own sheer willpower, personal strength, or moral character, but because Jesus is the one whose call pulls us in close.  We find ourselves found. The quicker we are clear about that, the sooner it will dawn on us that our belonging doesn't depend on our own personal goodness or badness, our respectability, our resume, or our reaching out to Jesus--it depends on his hold on us, which, fortunately, is the "love that will not let us go," as the old hymn puts it.  And that realization will disarm and short-circuit our judgments about the other riff-raff Jesus is letting on his team.  The people I don't think are worthy, or don't look like me, don't think like me, and don't act like me--they belong, too, because belonging to Jesus was never up to my picking them--it has always been about the pull of Jesus.

Whether that dawns on you from reading the story of Levi, being called to follow right from his tax office, or from watching a mix of metal fragments pulled into alignment by the invisible pull of a magnet, or however else you might learn it, know it is true.  We didn't audition or apply or even ask for Jesus first--his call comes first, like the hand offered and extended to pull us out onto the dance floor--and the next thing you know, by the compelling grace of Jesus' call, we find ourselves found.

Lord Jesus, draw us.  Draw us all.  Hold us, and hold a whole world full of people you have made, created capable of being held. All praise to you for the pull of your grace.