Your Calling and Mine--January 30, 2024

Your Calling and Mine--January 30, 2024

"Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes, to the church of God that is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." [1 Corinthians 1:1-3]

Just so we're clear, the call of Jesus is not like getting to the Super Bowl.  My calling from Jesus does not knock yours out of contention, and your being called by Jesus is not a threat to my belonging, either.  It ain't like the play-offs, where I have to root for your team to lose if there's any hope of my team advancing.  We would do well to remember that.

After watching over the last several weeks of football playoffs how a field of teams has been winnowed down to just two, it is a powerful thing to realize that this is not the way Jesus calls people to himself.  Jesus doesn't pit people against one another to compete for a spot in the next set of brackets or the next round of a tournament.  His calling to you is not exclusive of his calling to me, or to people half a world away who are strangers to us both.

I don't think I ever noticed before how clear that point is here in the opening of Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, for as many times as I have read it.  Over the course of just these three verses that make up Paul's salutation and greeting, he stresses just how wide Jesus' calling extends.  There are at least three different groups Paul mentions here in connection with being "called" by Jesus, and none of them exclude the others from that calling.  

For starters, there is Paul himself--he introduces himself to his readers with the description that he has been "called to be an apostle."  In other words, Paul didn't come up with this bright idea himself, and he didn't apply or try out or audition.  He was called by Christ himself.  That by itself is actually a pretty big deal when you think about it, because Paul would be the first to tell us that he wasn't worthy of Jesus' calling.  He was the one dead-set against Jesus and the budding movement of his followers. He was the one holding the coats and nodding with approval when the lynch-mob came for Stephen, the church's first martyr.  He was the one headed to Damascus, "still breathing threats and murder" (Acts 9:1) with warrants to arrest and bind anybody--men, women, or children--who belonged to the Christian community, when the living Jesus appeared to him on the road, knocked him off his high horse, and changed everything.  Here was the enemy, not only of Christianity, but of Christ himself, and Jesus called him and brought him into the embrace of love.  Not only that, but the living Christ commissioned him to become one of early Christianity's most prolific and daring messengers.  The call of Jesus included the likes of Paul--and changed everything for him, and for us.

But that's just the tip of the iceberg, because this same Paul who is writing to the Corinthians in our verses for today describes them as "called to be saints."  These people, too, are called by Jesus, and Paul doesn't seem threatened by that notion at all.  Paul doesn't think there's only so much "call" to go around, like it's a scarce resource,.  There's no worry that if Jesus has called some of the Corinthians there might not be a spot on the team for him anymore.  Instead, Paul sees the whole congregation in Corinth as "called" by Jesus, in their own ways and to their own roles, using the same wording for "calling" as he had described his own calling to be an apostle.  And mind you, the folks in Corinth were pretty messed up--to read the rest of the letter we call First Corinthians is to uncover a laundry list of failures, sins, and dysfunction that boggles the mind.  And yet--Paul doesn't blush to remind them that they have been called by Jesus, and called to be a holy people (which is what "saints" means) no less.  But notice that from Paul's perspective, that calling isn't contingent or conditional upon their measuring up first.  It is the calling that comes first, and the way they live is always at most a response, like light coming into existence at creation when God calls it into being.  But to be clear, the same living Christ Jesus who called Paul to be an apostle also called all those folks at First Church of Corinth, and there's no worry at all that Jesus will run out of room on his roster.

In fact, that's the third audacious turn in this passage: Paul moves from just the one congregation in Corinth to the ever-widening circle of Jesus' followers everywhere in this same passage.  Paul reminds his readers in Corinth that they aren't the only people Jesus has called, but in fact, the beloved community includes "all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ," and that this Jesus is "both their Lord and ours."  In other words, Jesus' calling stretches out to include people the Corinthians hadn't met--or even that Paul hadn't met yet!  That also means Paul realized that Jesus didn't not need any of their permission, not Paul's nor the Corinthian Church's, to include that whole wide world full of other "saints."  That might be the most provocative realization of this whole passage: Jesus doesn't need my permission or seek my approval before calling somebody into his movement.  Jesus doesn't need to run his list of names past me, and he doesn't have to check with any committee, council, or congregation to make sure they're acceptable.  It is Jesus' calling itself that makes us acceptable, by definition, because it is Jesus' calling that declares we are accepted.

Wherever you find yourself in today's passage, Jesus' call can reach to you. Any time we picture Jesus' call as a narrow, restrictive VIP list (and especially any time we blatantly mis-use that verse about how "many are called but few are chosen"), we're getting it wrong. Jesus' calling extends to us even when we are barely holding it together, to countless faces far away who we've never met, and even to enemies dead-set against Jesus at the moment. Jesus' calling is scandalously inclusive that way.

That runs completely counter to so much of the world in which we live and work.  It's not just the Super Bowl (where your team making the cut means that mine didn't get a ticket to the Big Dance), and it's not just March Madness that will be on the sports page before long, too.  It's at our workplaces, where only one person can get the promotion.  It's the gated housing developments that market their exclusivity--only so many lots available, you know!  It's a whole mindset that sees the world as a zero-sum game where my group winning can only come at the cost of your group losing.  And over against all of it is Jesus' way of calling to us prodigally, widely, and extravagantly.

Today, what if we recognized that our own calling from Jesus comes alongside Jesus' calling to other people, regardless of our approval or vote? And conversely, what if we found confidence in knowing that nobody else's approval or permission is needed for Jesus to call you?  You, indeed, are called by Jesus.  Me, too.  And a whole world full of people who might be labeled mess-ups, failures, sinners, losers, and even enemies. Turns out there are more than two tickets to the Big Dance....

Lord Jesus, let us hear your calling to us and also recognize your call to others beyond us as well.