Answering The Call

Isaiah 6:1-8 and 1 Corinthians 15:1-11

One of the big sporting events in the United Kingdom each year is the RBS Six Nations rugby championship. Each February and March the home nations of Britain, plus France and Italy, compete in a round-robin series to determine who will be champions of Europe. The British also compete for “the triple crown” and this is awarded to the team that defeats all three of the others. I have always supported England in this competition, but the reigning champions from 2009 were Ireland who won for the first time since 1984, having been runners up in 2007 and 2008. Because the Ireland team is composed of players from Eire (the independent Republic) and Northern Ireland (a province of the United Kingdom), there is no one national anthem. Instead Ireland plays under the anthem “Ireland’s Call” and it goes like this:

Come the day and come the hour,
Come the power and the glory!
We have come to answer our country’s call
From the four proud provinces of Ireland.
Ireland, Ireland!
Together standing tall.
Shoulder to shoulder,
We’ll answer Ireland’s call.

It’s a rousing song and a stirring sound when the full complement of Lansdowne Road or Croke Park stadiums in Dublin belt it out; even as an Englishman I love to hear it sung. Come the day and come the hour, come the power and the glory, we have come to answer....we’ll answer the call.

The lectionary readings for this week tell the story of people being called by God to take His message to the world. Those of you who were here on Sunday will remember Rev Rob preaching from Luke 5:1-11 which is the story of Jesus preaching from the boat, and then of Simon lowering his nets on the opposite side of his boat for a big catch. The story concludes with Jesus inviting Simon to fish for men, and with Simon and the sons of Zebedee leaving their nets and everything else to follow Jesus.

This story, along with the one we have just read from Paul and the call of Isaiah recorded in Isaiah 6:1-8 have several elements in common.
1. God always takes the initiative: Jesus appeared on the beach and climbed into Simon’s boat uninvited. Jesus appeared to Paul on the Damascus road after he returned to Heaven, and Isaiah appeared (in a dream) in the courts of Heaven. We know that the story of grace tells us that God sent Jesus to a world bound up in sin and selfishness: the gospel is always a story where God acts first.

2. The human response to a call is always the recognition of the holiness of God, followed by a sense of unworthiness in the face of the call. Simon and Isaiah both express distress at the sudden realisation that they are sinners in the presence of the Lord. God responds with grace to the reality of human insufficiency; Jesus encourages Simon not to be afraid, and the Lord on His throne sends a seraph with a burning coal to purge Isaiah’s sinful lips.

3. Those who accept the call will agree wholeheartedly to participate in God’s work. “Woe to me,” cries Isaiah, but then “here I am, send me”. Paul who described himself as “the least of the apostles because I persecuted the Church” goes on to describe how he has toiled harder than anyone else in preaching what he believes so that others will come to believe the same. Each of those to whom God issues the call understands that God is calling the people of the world to Himself, beginning with those whom He calls to share the message.

The lives of Peter, Paul and Isaiah in the decades that follow their individual stories of call demonstrate that as men and women of faith our lives are always more productive and imaginative when Jesus is with us in our activities. Simon has caught thousands of fish, but Peter has been the inspiration to billions of people over two thousand years. Saul of Tarsus had been a top scholar in the school of the leading Pharisee Gamaliel, but the Apostle Paul wrote two thirds of the New Testament, planted churches across the known world, and mentored the next generation of leaders in Timothy, Titus, and John Mark. We are at our best when we are embedded in the substance of our call: doing what God has individually called and resourced us to do.

Cafe Agape has returned to serve Port Lincoln in 2010, and we hope that even with the changes taking place in and around Unity Hill in the next year that the fellowship which has taken place here will continue. God has called all of the Church to be His representative in its local community: may we all keep on enjoying each other’s company, cooking, and testimony.
Amen.