294 We Are Whose We Are

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “We Are Whose We Are”, originally shared on January 17, 2024. It was the 294^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   We are often confronted with choices in our lives. How do we know how to go in the right direction? Today, we’re going to find out.

   Can you think of a time when your life was suddenly changed? A time when it seemed to take an entirely new direction? When everything up to that point seemed to have been preparation for what was about to happen? 

   That’s where both Jesus and some of his first disciples are in Mark 1:14-20.

   And that’s where we find the answers for how we find the right direction for our own lives. But it’s challenging.

   People sometimes say that “When one door closes another will open.” It’s a way of dealing with disappointment, but it isn’t in the Bible. It’s a quote from Alexander Graham Bell.

   I saw a meme this past week that showed a picture of the hole in the side of the Alaskan Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 airplane that said the same thing, “When one door closes another will open,” but its meaning wasn’t as inspirational as the first one. 😊

   We need more than just opportunities in life. We need more than just open doors. We need wisdom to decide which opportunities, or open doors, to take, and which to avoid.

   How do we know?

   Let’s look at the first part of this week’s reading from Mark 1:14-15,

14 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, 15 and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

   God promised his people that he would send a deliverer for 1,000 years before Jesus was born. God ended the last three hundred years of prophetic silence with the appearance of John the Baptist. There had been no word from God through a prophet for all of that time. And then almost immediately John points to Jesus as the sacrificial lamb of God, John baptizes Jesus, and then John gets thrown in jail and taken out of the picture! And later he is executed! St. Mark tells us that the imprisonment of John was a turning point for Jesus in Jesus’ life, and his public ministry began.

   Jesus moved. He changed his place of residence to fulfill the prophecy from Isaiah that we read last Christmas.

   He proclaimed the good news of God saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

   He proclaimed that it was time for a change! Change was coming through Jesus, and the Christian Church would be born with the Holy Spirit.

   To encounter Christ is to be transformed. His age is not important. His being is. He is fully God and fully human being. Everything is made new in Him, and what does he call us to do? He calls us to repent.

   What is repentance?

   Repentance doesn’t just mean to say “I’m sorry.” Repentance means to turn around, to receive an inner reorientation, not by our own strength, but by the power of the one true living God in the Holy Spirit. We receive the gift to repent and to become a new creation in that living relationship with God. We are a new Creation!

   That is exactly what happens when Jesus calls Simon, Andrew, and James and John to follow Him. It’s exactly what happens to us.

   Watch how long it takes for those four fishermen to consider what to do with their lives once they have received the call from Jesus to follow him, continuing in verse 16,

16 As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen. 17 And Jesus said to them, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” 18 And immediately they left their nets and followed him. 19 As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. 20 Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him.

   They left their work “immediately” to follow Jesus! Even though they remained in touch with their families, and they went back to their work after Jesus died but before he rose and appeared to them, it’s still shocking. How could that happen?

   When Apple Computer was getting started Steve Wozniak was the tech guy and Steve Jobs was the visionary/marketer guy. As the company began to grow, however, it became obvious that they were going to need a highly able CEO to run the business side of the company. Steve Jobs was focused on recruiting Jim Scully, the CEO of the Pepsi Corporation, one of the largest multi-national corporations in the world.

   John Scully was reluctant to say yes to this little tech start-up. Until one day, Steve Jobs turned to him and said, “Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or come with me and change the world?”

   That was convincing. He relented and helped grow Apple Computer into a major corporation and social transformer.

   Jesus’ disciples would help to change the world, but Jesus didn’t make them any promises when he called them.

   And every one of the disciples would die a violent death because they followed Jesus. But God changed the world through them, through their faithfulness, even unto death.

   The invitation to follow Jesus is what we refer to as a “call”. The English word “vocation” comes from the Latin word “vocare”, which means “to call”.

   The Lutheran understanding of work is that we all have a vocation. It’s our job.

   Every job is what we do in answer to God’s call and to glorify God in it.

   Some people are called to be teachers. Some are called to be artists, or lawyers or nurses or electricians or businesspersons or homemakers, or shoemakers, or athletes, or pastors.

   We live our Christianity in our daily lives by being good at what we do and, thereby, glorifying God.

   The disciples were called to literally follow Jesus as their primary jobs for a particular reason. They glorified God by their obedience. Nothing else qualified them.

   Have you ever been a team captain, taking turns picking the players for your side? What kind of players did you choose? What if you were an employer, what kind of person would you be looking for? When it’s time to vote, what characteristics to you look for when you decide who to vote for?

   Jesus doesn’t seem to look for any of the qualities that we would choose when he selects his disciples.

   Of all the people God could have called, he did not choose the rich and powerful, the well-known and respected, the popular or the influencers.

   God called regular people. Their only distinguishing trait seems to be their willingness to say “yes”. Remember the rich young ruler that Jesus called to follow Him? He said “no”.

   God has called each and every one of us to be his disciples. Each of us is called to serve God in the work to which we have been called, every day.

   And God has God’s own standards for who he calls to do what. As has often been said, “God doesn’t call the qualified. God qualifies the called.” God often sees things in us that we don’t.

   What is God calling you to do today?

   I have been studying Mandarin for the past year or so. I don’t know why, except to say that I believe that God has called me to do it, and that anything that we do to increase understanding among people, especially in times of global tension, is time well spent.

   I have to say that it has been difficult. In fact, the hardest part has been dealing with discouragement.

   But I learned how to deal with discouragement when I was running Marathons. I’ve run two 26.2-mile marathons in my life, but I think that one of the reasons that I ran the second one was that I forgot how bad I felt after I ran the first one.

   There are times when you are training for a marathon that you don’t feel like you are making any improvement. But, if you keep going, your body adjusts, and you will get better.

   The same was true of learning Biblical Greek, the original language of the New Testament.

   I took some Greek in seminary, but I started up again a few years ago to help me with understanding the Bible better. I partially think that I started again because I forgot why I didn’t continue the first time. I knew enough to study the scholarly texts, but I would never know enough to have a scholarly opinion of my own. I just had to decide who among the scholars I would trust.

   But I continued learning this time for a while and was encouraged when, near the end of the sixth chapter of the textbook I was using (Basics of Biblical Greek Grammer by William D. Mounce), the author wrote,

   “You are now entering the fog. You will have read this chapter and think you understand it-and perhaps you do-but it will seem foggy. That’s OK. If living in the fog becomes discouraging, look two chapters back and you should understand that chapter clearly. In two more chapters this chapter will be clear, assuming you keep studying.”

   Jesus’s disciples always seem to be in the fog. They never seem to understand what Jesus is teaching them, and they were with him for three years! They don’t seem to understand until after he dies and is resurrected and appears to them. And then they don’t seem to know what to do until the Holy Spirit appears 50 days later, on the Day of Pentecost.

   But they are not discouraged. Why?

   Because they were in the presence of Jesus. We were created for a living relationship with the one true living God. The presence of God is transformational, and it has been given to us by the grace of God. And Jesus is God.

   The Bible is as authoritative in Mandarin as much as it is in English, or in Greek or in Hebrew. Why? Because it’s not just words on a page. It’s the Holy Spirit speaking, resonating with you as you read it, as a whole person: body, mind, spirit, culture, language.

   The Holy Spirit speaks to us through the Bible. That is what helps us understand which direction to go in our lives.

   We can know what God is calling us to do because God has revealed to us what God is calling us to be.

   We are alarmed because of rising tensions throughout the world, including with China. Will war come, and how will it affect us?

   Our family watched a movie set in 2016 called “Last Christmas” recently. In it, the main character’s mother, who is a political refugee who has fled the violence in her home country, the former Yugoslavia, has sought refuge in England but some there have not made her feel welcome, and she is worried.

   She says, ““I know how it starts,” she says. “They point the finger. They say, ‘These people, they are the reason your life is bad.’ And people, they believe them.”

   We don’t know what the future holds, but we do know Who holds the future.

   That’s how we can learn to live, even when we are discouraged.

   As Peter reminds us in 1 Peter 2:9-10,

9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

   Our lives have been radically changed in out Baptism, in receiving the gift of faith, and in our vocation. We are God’s people. We have received mercy. We have become a new Creation!

   The only voice we need to listen to is the voice of God. The path in life we need to take is the one the Holy Spirit calls us to take.

   Jesus only called 12 people to be in the inner circle of his disciples.

   Margaret Mead, the anthropologist, once said, “Never underestimate the power of a small group of committed people to change the world. In fact, it is the only thing that ever has.”

   We don’t need large numbers of people. All we need is the voice of the Holy Spirit showing us the way. And our willingness to follow its direction.

   We discover who we are when we know whose we are.

   Jesus is looking for followers whose lives begin with the transformation that comes when we encounter Jesus. When we receive the gift of faith and are baptized.

Jesus is looking for followers whose eternal life begins when we say “yes” to God’s gifts.

   Jesus is looking for followers whose commitment comes every day in response to what Jesus has done for us on the cross.

   Jesus is looking for you.