Worthy of the Calling--January 31, 2024

Worthy of the Calling--January 31, 2024

"I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." [Ephesians 4:1-3]

Jesus doesn't call anybody to "be a success."

For that matter, you'll never find Jesus calling someone with the sales-pitch, "Come follow me, and I'll make you win more in life." You don't hear a single Bible story where Jesus says, "Join my team, and I'll make you richer than everybody else around," and you don't find Jesus calling people with a promise of what the world calls "greatness."

In fact, usually in this life, Jesus says, the voices who lure you with talk of "winning," "success," "bigger wealth," and becoming greater and greater...if only you'll pledge them your unquestioning loyalty, are the voices who have nothing to do with him, or with the Kingdom he represents. They are, to borrow a word from another New Testament writer, "anti-Christ" voices.

There is no calling to "look successful" on the lips of Jesus. And there sure-as-heaven is never a time where the actual, living Jesus calls anybody to put themselves, or their group, first, ahead of everybody else. It just ain't what Jesus is about.

On the other hand, when voices like these verses from Ephesians describe Jesus' call on our lives, they immediately start talking in terms of "love," "humility," "gentleness," "patience," and "peace." And that, dear sisters and brothers in Christ, is what it looks like to "live a life worthy of the calling" to which we have been called.

A life that is "worthy" in Jesus' book doesn't mean bigger profits or higher market closes. It doesn't mean looking "respectable" in your religiosity or public with your piety. It does not consist in being the envy of your friends or fawned over by neighbors. Jesus looks at the way the big-wigs and so-and-sos of our era brashly call attention to themselves, or boast about looking out for themselves first, or pass the buck in blame to avoid responsibility for their own mess-ups, and Jesus just simply says, "That isn't worthy of the Kingdom I represent. That kind of life has nothing to do with me. Those kind of values have nothing to do with the God I have come to reveal." Jesus has called us to something else, something more, far beyond, "Me-and-My-Group-First!" thinking. Jesus has called us to a life like his.

It's funny--well, "funny" in that way things can be called funny when they are really disturbing and sad--how often the talking heads, demagogues, celebrities, and pundits of our day avoid answering questions about what is good or noble or worthy in their actions or words, and instead shift the conversation by talking about what is "successful" and "polling well," or calling themselves and their side the "winner," or, most popular of all, calling those they don't like "losers." And I don't know--maybe they really think they are fooling people, or maybe they have fooled themselves, or maybe they just don't care, but it just seems so cartoonishly obvious that those voices sound nothing at all like the way of Jesus. It doesn't seem like the point could be any clearer than it is here in Ephesians: the followers of Jesus have been called, not into a club, or to a religious "winner's circle," or to the top of the Forbes 500 list, but to a way of life marked by selfless love that doesn't have to call attention to itself or put someone else down in order to puff itself up.

That is, quite literally, what these verses are all about. Words like "humility" and "gentleness" actually mean something for the followers of Jesus. And it is worth noting that in the first century, in the Greek and Roman world in which Ephesians was written, "humility" (literally "lowliness" in the Greek) was not considered a virtue. The Greeks and the Romans thought that putting yourself lower than others was scandalously bad PR. You were supposed to flaunt your strengths, leverage them to get people to give you what you wanted, and at the very least find someone else you could blame or put beneath you to make yourself seem better, more like a "winner," by comparison. That was the stock-in-trade of Caesar and his Empire, and maybe of every empire and every new Caesar since. So when Ephesians describes a "life that is worthy," it was radical to hear such a life described, not in terms of "winning," or "success," or "greatness," or military wins, or money accumulated, but in terms of putting ourselves lower so that others can be raised up.

I will tell you something. I am tired. Tired of all the usual talk from the talking heads on television and their Greek choruses on social media, who use the same tired, worn-out old talk of who's "winning," who is "greatest," who is the "loser," and of how the key to success is in putting Me-and-My-Group-First. I am just done with it all, and it leaves me with nothing but disgust.

What does invigorate me, though, is this surprising, life-giving, unexpected picture that Ephesians gives us... which is really no different than the picture Jesus has been sketching out for us all along. What gives me genuine hope and real newness on the days I need it is this vision that Ephesians says we have already been called into: a life lived together where we don't try and climb over each other or step on others to put ourselves ahead, a life in which I am willing to bend lower for your sake and you do the same for me, a life in which nobody has to go around tooting their own horn or labeling somebody else the "loser," because we have all just grown tired of the childish games of making some winners and some losers. Whether that way of thinking really ever satisfied the Caesars or not I could not say (although, honestly, I rather suspect that history's long line of Caesars all went to bed at night insecure, alone, and afraid that someone would see through their self-aggrandizing bluster), but what I am certain of is that such talk and thinking never had anything to do with the way of Jesus. The Me-And-My-Group-First mindset is, to be blunt about it, unworthy of Jesus.

You and I have been called into the life that really is worthy--and to be clear, Jesus does not seem to think it is optional whether we will adopt his view of the world or not. Jesus calls us, and his voice carries authority--which is to say, Jesus is convinced his call itself is enough, not only to draw us to his side, but to get us to let go of our sweaty, little fingers from their clenched grip on the old "success" way of thinking. Jesus calls us into a new life, one which means surrendering the old neediness for attention and blue ribbons and ego-stroking, so that our hands will finally be free to hold one another's... and his.

There is no option of getting to wear the name of Jesus and keeping the old mentality. It is simply unworthy of Jesus and his people. So maybe this is a moment for us to decide which is more important to us: the call of Jesus... or the endlessly annoying chatter of the loudest shouters.

Which way of life is worthy of you giving your minutes, your mind, and your heart to on this day?

Lord Jesus, call to us again, and lead us into lives worthy of the living: lead us to love like you.