This Week's sermon

 

God Still Calls Us

        Last week’s sermon was titled “God calls us; are we listening?”

        This week’s sermon is called “God still calls us….”

        I have some more to say about God’s call to us.

        Let’s begin with the collect of the day. Listen: “Give us grace, O Lord, to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ and proclaim to all people the Good News of his salvation….”

        We need God’s ‘grace’ to answer God’s call to us.

        The ability to answer is also a gift of God—a gift we need to respond.

        Pray always for that gift.

        God called to Jonah to go and preach to the people of Nineveh to change their ways. Jonah doesn’t do what God asks him so God sends a whale to swallow him and spit him up on the shore of Nineveh.

        Sometimes God can bring us kicking and screaming to do what he calls us to do. Stay away from whales!

        Then, what we read today tells how the people of Nineveh listen to Jonah and change their ways. Then Jonah sits on a hill and ponders why God brought him halfway around the world to condemn the Ninevites and then saves them. God makes a Castor Oil tree to give Jonah shade then sends a worm to kill the tree.

        Jonah’s story ends under the ruined tree still pondering.

        Now I think ‘pondering’ is good—but there is no way we can ever understand the ways of God.

        Then, in todays Psalm, we heard these wondrous words: “For God alone my soul in silence waits; truly my hope is in him.”

        That’s a verse to ponder. Our lives are so full of noise, how can we make our souls ‘in silence wait’ for God’s Call?

        Then in Mark’s Gospel today, Jesus calls his first disciples—Simon and Andrew, James and John. They leave their lives behind to follow him and fish for people.

        We’re reading the Gospel of Luke on Wednesday’s and got to the point where Jesus is calling all people he meets. One man says, “I have to go bury my father first” and Jesus says, “Let the dead bury the dead, follow me and I will give you life.”

        It sounds harsh of him, but God’s call sometimes gives us a difficult choice.

        Believe you me, I tried every way I could think of to avoid the priesthood. And here I am today!

        Today is Trinity’s Annual Meeting. We will evaluate how we responded to God last year and try to silence our souls to see where he is calling us, as individuals and as a congregation to follow him This year. Listen well, beloved,    

Listen in the silence of your soul.

Shalom and Amen.