Call and response
Reflections on following Jesus
“Give us grace, O Lord, to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ.”[1] There is the call, and there is the readiness to answer the call. Sometimes, we are not aware of our calling, or we forget. At other times, the call is clear, but we are not ready to respond. We discover and live our vocation when call and response are in sync.
What is the content of Jesus’ call? It is a call to proclaim good news: the invitation to experience a transformation of mind and heart that allows us to perceive the reality of God’s presence within us and around us. It is an invitation to become transparent to God’s loving presence for the sake of the healing of the world. This is the salvation that Jesus brings. But he needs followers to experience it so that they can share it.[2]
In this sense, following Jesus means becoming a leader. It means learning to do what he does. Jesus shared everything with his disciples. He is clear about this.[3] He taught them everything he knew. He shared his power with them, so that they could be agents of healing and forgiveness. The disciples were amazed to discover their capabilities,[4] and Jesus said, “You ain’t seen nothing yet. You will do even greater things than me.”[5] They may not have always understood what he taught (they were frequently clueless) or used their power well, but Jesus trusted them to learn and grow into the fullness of life and leadership that he models for us.
Do you believe that Jesus trusts you? Do you understand that you are called to share his way of life, the way of love, to be healed so that you can be an agent of healing? As church, as a community faithful to Jesus’ call, we must be committed to developing every member as leaders. Jesus saw the potential in everyone, and in calling them, he called forth their gifts.
He did this by inviting them to undergo a conversion, a transformation of consciousness, a turning toward God, a turning toward the divine that is immanent in our hearts and in our relationships. Jesus touched our true identity, and released our capacity for service to the earth community. Once we are in touch with our desire for God, we begin to change. We begin to embody the values of “human human beings,” as Meg Wheatley puts it.[6]
Developing the gifts of every member is rooted in claiming of our true identity as God’s beloved. When we know that we are loved and begin to intuit our capacity to love, then we can begin to act out of this identity. We will embody the values that bring healing to relationships and communities.
It is here, at the interface of our core identity and the world’s brokenness, that the value of individual and collective discernment comes into play. In the face of the massive suffering that we experience and witness in our world, it is tempting to close ourselves off from the world, to put up walls and retreat into self-absorbed security or the familiarity of the way we’ve always done things. Alternatively, we can become self-righteous and fanatical in our attempts to change ourselves and others – for their own good, of course.
The challenge and opportunity of living into our calling, is finding the balance between the preservation of our identity and values, and our openness to the ever-changing reality around us. Are we open to receiving new information? Are we capable of growing, changing, and adapting to reality without sacrificing our core identity and values?
This is where the way of Jesus becomes the way of the cross, the way of sacrificial love; not because we wish to be martyrs, but because integrity demands fidelity to God’s call even in the face of apparent failure and defeat. Because even here, especially here – in such moments of existential decision – we witness most powerfully to the truth – not by our success, but by our willingness to fail. It is through our apparent failures that we plant seeds of love and healing whose growth and blossoming we may never see, but others will enjoy.
In a letter to his friend, Jim Forest, Thomas Merton wrote,
“Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything.”[7]
As church, the call of Jesus requires us to develop leaders, deeply rooted in their identity as God’s beloved, and discerning together right action in fidelity to that identity. The most important act of Christian leadership is to preserve our identity with Jesus, and to remain open to the adaptive changes that will preserve that identity and keep us open to the needs of the world. Our mission is to be faithful to the call; not successful in the terms of the dominant culture.
There is the call. And there is our response to the call. Are you ready to follow Jesus? What keeps you from a deeper commitment to your identity and vocation? Perhaps, like Jonah, you have been running away from God’s call. But like, Jonah, and like the people of Nineveh, God is persistent, offering second and, I daresay, third and fourth and fifth chances. It is God’s nature always to have mercy.[8]
Maybe, like Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John, you are ready to go![9] You are all in, willing to make significant changes in your life to follow Jesus, without, like them, really understanding what this will entail. Don’t second guess your desire, your “yes” to Jesus. It will not all be clear, but Jesus trusts you. He trusts us to grow into the fullness of the call. And we can grow into the call if we are willing, and our hearts are open.
Let us pray, drawing again from the wisdom of Thomas Merton,
“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following Your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please You does in fact please You. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that, if I do this, You will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust You always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for You are ever with me, and You will never leave me to face my perils alone. Amen.” [10]
[1] From the Collect for the Third Sunday after the Epiphany, Book of Common Prayer, p. 215.
[2] Mark 1:14-15.
[3] John 15:15.
[4] Luke 10:17.
[5] John 14:12.
[6] Meg Wheatley, Who Do We Choose To Be? Facing Reality, Claiming Leadership, Restoring Sanity (Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2017), p. 166-167.
[7] Thomas Merton, in a letter to Jim Forest dated February 21, 1966, reproduced in The Hidden Ground of Love: Letters by Thomas Merton (W. Shannon ed. 1993).
[8] Jonah 3:1-5, 10.
[9] Mark 1:16-20.
[10] Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude, p. 76.
I really appreciate you articulating in new ways what IS the good news. Love this description:
“ It is a call to proclaim good news: the invitation to experience a transformation of mind and heart that allows us to perceive the reality of God’s presence within us and around us. It is an invitation to become transparent to God’s loving presence for the sake of the healing of the world. This is the salvation that Jesus brings.” That’s something to ponder this week!