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Bumper stickers and billboards not long ago used to tell us in no uncertain terms that "Jesus is the Answer." Well, apparently Jesus was the answer for Simon and Andrew, because Jesus said, "Come, follow me," and immediately, says Mark, "they left their nets and followed him." And just a moment ago, not more than ten minutes ago, we asked God to give us the grace to do the same thing, that we might "answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ." Like Simon and Andrew. But as Bishop Wolfrum used to ask, "If Jesus is the answer, what's the question?" His is the question I want to explore this morning, the question raised by last Sunday's readings and again by this Sunday's readings. When Jesus calls his disciples in John's Gospel, Andrew has already followed Jesus down the road a bit when Jesus suddenly turns and asks him, "What are you looking for?" And then all the disciples asked Jesus where he was staying, and Jesus said, "Come and see." It is arguable the most important question in life: What are you looking for? What do you want? What are you searching for in life? What ends do you pursue? The sorting out of ends, the sorting out of purposes and aspirations and hopes - it's the most important matter in life. We are a called people, a people called by God to look for something we can discover. That's what today's readings and last Sunday's readings want us to know - that God himself has a purpose for us in life. "Follow me," Jesus says, "and you will see what it is." Vocation is that which God made us for and calls us to, and without which we drift about aimlessly in spiritual limbo. "Vocation,"from the Latin vocare, to call. And that we are a called people is at the very root of biblical faith. The prophets all knew it. "The Lord called me from the womb," says the prophet Isaiah. "From the body of my mother he knew my name." "Paul, called by the will of God to be an apostle," echoes St. Paul as he writes to us "who were called into the fellowship of Christ." And it is vocation that Jesus is talking about this morning when he issues his invitation to fishermen and to us: "Come, follow me." To be called. It used to mean that there is an end for us beyond our jobs, a purpose beyond our careers and beyond earning a living, a meaning God has for us to live out, something we do not decide on all by ourselves but that God has in mind for us and calls us to from before the time we were born, and from the very nature of who we are. Like Isaiah and Paul. Like Simon and Andrew. We now use the word "vocation" carelessly, however, if we use it at all, simply as a synonym for a job or a career or an occupation. Mostly we think of a vocation as a career, as something we create for ourselves, something we decide to do because we think we'd like it or because it pays well. We don't speak much anymore of being called to a particular life or purpose in the world. These days we hear more about "lifestyles" and "preferences." "I prefer this 'lifestyle,' but he prefers that 'lifestyle.' "After all, we are free now," said the folks in the church at Corinth. And so say we in the Church of What's Happening Now, as if God has nothing to do with the way we spend the lives he has given us, or as if there were no God to care how we live and what we do. If Jesus is the answer, what's the question? Part of the question is: Is God dead? Or do you hear God calling you to something? Do you seek what God has in mind for you, what God calls you to? Or do you seek something less than that? What do you seek? What does your life mean? Does it mean? That's the big question. Or do you not seek? Do we not seek at all now, but just drift? That's the question Jesus asks Andrew, and us, this morning. In the collect this morning we asked God to give us grace "to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ." Like Simon and Andrew. And we asked it seeking a particular purpose - that we might "proclaim to all people the Good News of Christ's salvation" so that we and the whole world might know the glory of his marvelous works. A man once approached the evangelist Dwight L. Moody and said, "Mr. Moody, you won't remember me, but I want you to know that I answered the call of Jesus at one of your meetings twenty years ago." "That's good to hear," Moody said, "but what have you been doing since them?" Jesus as answer, Moody wanted the man to remember, is not in doubt. Our salvation is not in doubt. That was accomplished for us by the answer, on the Cross. We "were bought with a price," and there is nothing we can do to undo it. Jesus is not in doubt. Jesus is the one we come here to praise and offer thanksgiving for. The answer is not in doubt. It's the question that's in doubt. And the question is the question of vocation, the question of discipleship. For answering the call of Jesus entails discipleship. Faith implies works. It is precisely because salvation is no longer in doubt that "to be saved" is not the goal of a Christian. The goal, the end, the vocation of a Christian is to walk the path that Jesus walked. For faith without works, the answer without the question, salvation without discipleship is, as St. James insists, quite dead. If Jesus is the answer, what is the question? The question is what do we seek? What do we want our lives to mean? What are the ends, the purposes, of our lives? Are the ends of our lives big enough to be found at the end of the road Jesus takes? All this reminds me of Calvin, in "Calvin and Hobbes" of blessed memory. One day Hobbes found six-year-old Calvin in a philosophical mood. "I've been thinking, Hobbes," Calvin said to his stuffed tiger and faithful friend. "On a weekend?" asked Hobbes. "Well, it wasn't on purpose," Calvin quickly replied. "I believe history is a force," Calvin went on to say. "History's unalterable tide sweeps all people and institutions along its unrelenting path. Everything and everyone serves history's single purpose." "And what is that purpose?" asked Hobbes. "To produce me, of course," said Calvin. "I'm the end result of history." "You?" asked Hobbes. "Yes, think of it," Calvin concluded. "Thousands of generations lived and died to produce my exact, specific parents, whose reason for being, obviously, was to produce ME. All history up to this point has been spent preparing the world for my existence. Now I'm here, and history is vindicated." "So now that history has brought you, what are you going to do?" Hobbes then asks. "Watch television," answers Calvin. The question, to which Jesus is the answer, is: Now that history has brought you, what are you going to do? What do you want your life to mean? What do you seek? "Lord, we want to know where you are going," we say with the disciples. And Jesus says, "Come, follow me, and you will see. Come walk the way I am walking, and bring your skill as a fisherman, and I will show you how to catch something bigger than fish. Come and bring your skill with computers, and I will show you how to do more with them than make more money; I'll show you how to use them for the good of God's people. And bring your skill with brush or wrench or pen or scalpel or hammer or piano, and I will show you how to do more with them than make a living; I'll show you how to use them to make a life. Come with me," Jesus says, "and I'll show you how to offer what you have - your time, your money, your talents, yourself - to God and his people." "Here lies Spuds O'Rourk," the epitaph read in the cemetery. "He was born a man and died a grocer." Andrew's epitaph could have read, "He was born a man and died a fisherman," but Jesus invited him to change and enlarge the possibilities. "Your epitaph, Andrew, can read, 'He was born a man and died a man, and a fisher of men.' And yours, too, Simon. Come, follow me." If you're a young person thinking about your future and about what you're going to be after school or college, think about your vocation. Not just about a job, but about what you want your life to mean. Not just about what you are going to do, but about who it is that God is calling you to be. It's sad when a young man or young woman thinks of the future only in terms of what it will return in money or entertainment or security, or even in power. It's sad because it is a prescription for disappointment, even despair. There is nothing wrong with earning money, of course. Earning a living is good and honorable and necessary work. But in itself, as an end in itself, it is spiritually an insufficient purpose in life. And sooner or later, one finds that out, but often only after much grief and disappointment. Or an old man or woman, for that matter, because vocation is a reality that is as important for those who are old as it is for the young. Those of us at the other end of life also have a future, you know, and the question of how we are going to spend that future is as important to us as it is to the young. Will we spend it only in entertainment, or only in the search for security and the avoidance of pain? Or is there something bigger that God has in mind for us in the years to come? Nothing made this so clear to me as an experience I had several years ago in Wisconsin. I visited a parishioner who was in his eighties and was dying, and, as it turned out, I heard his confession. "Father Casey," he said at the end of the pleasantries and the coffee, "I've had a long life. My work earned me a retirement that is the envy of many. For the past twenty years I have hit a lot of golf balls, traveled a great deal, and have pretty much enjoyed life. But, you know," he confessed with a deep sadness, "I haven't done a damned thing in the past twenty years I can point to with any particular pride." It's as sad when one hears no calling beyond oneself in the later years of life as it is in the early years. Sometimes, sometimes late in life, some find themselves weeping with the prophet that they "have labored in vain" and "spent their strength for nothing and vanity." The question of vocation is a question for every one of us, regardless of occupation or circumstance or age. What is your vocation? What do you want your life to mean? "You were bought with a price. You are now truly free in Christ," St. Paul reminds us. "Do not become a slave to men," or to television, or to bridge or golf, or to any kind of worldly success or power, or to anything else in life. Vocation is a question meant not just for Simon and Andrew. It's not a question meant just for six-year-old Calvin, or for those who are still in school, or for those in this year's catechumenate. It's a question for every one of us: How do you want your epitaph to read? It's a question for those over forty as well as for those under forty, a question for those over seventy as well as for those under seventy: You have heard the call of Christ. Now that history has brought you here, what are you going to do about it? What do we seek? Do we seek our deepest vocation? Or do we seek only a way to get by, only a way to earn a living until death finally catches up with us? We ask Jesus where he is staying. And we know, of course, what Simon and Andrew could only suspect. We know where Jesus is heading. He's heading directly to Jerusalem, to Calvary and the Cross, directly on the path God called him to, directly on the path of self-sacrifice and love, directly on the path of that life lived for others and died for others that God hoped for him and called him to. And that God hopes for us and calls us to. Some follow. And some hang back and say, "But what am I to do? I've married a wife, and I've got a cow to take care of, and I've got to shovel the walk and wash the car. And I've got tickets to the game. And I must earn a living and get ahead...." And Jesus walks on. And his question hangs in the air: "What do you seek?" In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. |