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Careers: A Sermon by Vicar Mark Jennings
JANUARY 25th, 2015
Mark 1: 14-20
YAHWEH’s most perfect grace and peace to you, in the name of Jesus Christ who calls and chooses you and keeps you forever.
Alleluia, amen!
One of the things I have noticed that is changing or has changed in this great country we live in is careers.
What I mean by this is that it seems that people change careers these day faster than you can shake a stick at.
I remember back in the day that people seemed to find a career or job and they stuck with it, it seemed for their whole careers until they retired, even if they didn’t like it! My grandfather was a gardener for 45 years and my father in law was a teacher his whole career.
You got a job and stayed with it.
But now? That doesn’t seem to happen as much anymore. With corporations downsizing and the economy so fluid, these days you may have to choose another career whether you want to or not. It may be out of your control as outside influences seek to change what you think you want to do.
I speak from experience. If you would have said that I was going to be the pastor at OSLC to me 25 or 15 or 5 years ago I would have looked at you like a bull at a new gate! I didn’t want to work Sundays!
I was trying to climb the ladder as a professional artist and designer with the goal of my name up on the screen with a credit on the next Star Wars or Star Trek movie!
But God had other ideas and it’s just not me. There are guys in the SMP program who came from other backgrounds and careers also. One guy worked in the fashion industry and another owned his own beverage company. Another was a children’s book editor while another ran a very lucrative upholstery business.
My brother was a teacher before a pastor.
All these men giving up their careers to start a second career serving God in a new and unique capacity.
An outside influence affected these men just as an outside influence affected those men in our Gospel reading from Mark today.
These fishermen are doing what they do for a living, they are fishing and they are repairing their nets and probably the boats and whatever else it takes to be successful in their careers.
This is the career they have chosen and they had planned to do this til they retire.
Did they retire back then? Maybe move to Arizona or Miami? Did they have a 401k?
So here comes this rabbi who is proclaiming a message of repentance and a belief in some good news that the promises of God are happening right now!
They probably heard the rumblings and talk of this rabbi but then He sees them and makes like a laser beam to them where He says to them, “Come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men!”
This is the outside influence that changes their career path.
What was their response? Did they look at him and say ohh kayyy and dismiss Him? No, They left their nets at once and followed Him. They repented of their sins and believed the Good News.
This all sounds like they had a choice and chose to accept Jesus.
But listen to what Jesus says in John 15:16 says,” You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.”
Of course, they could choose like Jonah tried to do in our OT reading and you saw how that worked out for him!
He became fish bait!
You could say that we have a choice to reject but really we have no choice as that is our standard human default mode. On our own we can’t accept Christ nor do we want to.
So an outside source made these fishers of….fish now start a second career and become fishers of …men!
This was Jesus calling them and choosing them just as He does to us. This was and is Jesus saying,” Consider a new career!”
“Come to me and I’ll do all the heavy lifting. I will make you a trade and a promise, my blood for yours!”
In this promise or covenant is repentance of sins that calls us and changes us and gives all of God’s people a second career, a new start.
Before this we were slaves to our jobs and if we are honest with ourselves, our jobs were sin and we were and are extremely proficient at it even making it our career.
Job and career are the same but different. You work at a job but a career is something usually planned and prepared for. It might include some kind of schooling and training.
Jesus calls these fishermen to leave their jobs and begin a new career with Him just as He does with you and i.
Leave your jobs of sin and begin a new career with our Savior.
Before this new career offer that you can’t refuse, we had settled in to retire in this life. We had no purpose and the products we made was the results of sin. We worked in the dark and on our own trying to control and run our lives and ways..
But the outside interference of Christ changes that.
You’ve been let go of your position and your services are no longer needed or wanted because you now are employed by the Sovereign King of the Universe who sends His Son to bleed and die for you.
The benefits are perfect and the retirement is top notch!
This repentance of sins is yours and it’s freeee!
This repentance of sins though is more than just saying your sorry for your actions, that is a result and response to what God has done and continues to do. If you look at the Law you realize that you can’t keep the Commandments in thought, word and deed. It really appears hopeless and that is when we hear the good news about the promises of Christ as the Law drives us to the cross.
It is a holistic change and what I mean is that it affects all of you not just a part or section of you but all of you. It is who you become through Christ calling you in baptism. You repent because the Holy Spirit comes to you and you, through the waters of baptism are cleansed and transformed. You have Breen changed and are able to start your second career in service to God through Christ. You are made new.
Remember how it feels when you start a new job? There may be a little apprehension but there is also the fact that you are starting over and starting fresh and new. You have that new car smell not the old fishing trawler smell.
I began the sermon talking about God calling men into a second career as pastors but this calling applies to the entire priesthood of all believers. You all have been called into second careers as you have been repented and transformed by divine love and you now through His work believe the good news.
The good news of Jesus Christ. The very Son of God who came to us and became one of us and died and rose for each one of us and everyone else so that all may live and begin anew!
So consider a new career or better yet, don’t consider or contemplate it, know it through the promises of Christ that you have been called to it and into it.
You have a new career, a second career and what does that mean?
The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few and there are lots and lots of fish to catch.
In your new career you get to fish! My kind of career!
But God has called us to fish for something different and work the harvest for something rather than corn or wheat or grapes.
Our work fishing and harvesting is the sharing of the Word.
Through Christ calling and choosing us which brings the repentance of sins, we can go out and proclaim this same repentance given to us to each other, to family, to friends and co-workers, to our neighborhoods, this neighborhood, to our cities and country.
As we follow Christ in our new and second career, people can see that by our acts of service in response, the repentance and transformation that can be theirs as our Lord calls to us, “Come and follow me and I will make you fishers of men!”
Consider a new career? Instead know that you have one through Christ choosing you like He chose those fishermen!
Alleluia, amen!
Our Heavenly Dad!
Romans 8: 12-17
Daddy!
Greetings brothers and sisters in the name of the Father who created you, the Son who redeemed you and the Holy Spirit who continues to sanctify you.
Alleluia, amen.
Have you ever heard a child when they get into trouble or are told they are not allowed to do something say this?
“I can’t wait until I become an adult so no one can tell me what to do and I can do whatever I want!”
Perhaps if you can remember that far back, maybe you even said it yourself. Maybe you are still saying it!
I chuckle and laugh a little bit when I hear that said and I wonder , when is that going to happen?
The reality is that at no matter what time of life you are in from infancy to retirement and beyond there are obligations, responsibilities and duties that you must perform in order to live in relative complacency in society.
Choose not to make your car payment and what happens? Your car go bye-bye!
Don’t pay your electric bill and you will live in the dark!
Homework, jobs, bills, parenting, blah, blah, blah.
Life is full of obligations, responsibility, requirements and duties unless you want to live in a cave and even then you still have to have food, water, clothing and shelter. I guess clothing could be optional…
That childhood statement of doing whatever you want as an adult is the immaturity of childhood and is not based in the reality of wisdom and the maturity of adulthood.
In order to live in the world of man and get along in modern society and be a productive member and citizen of it, you are obligated and required to do certain things.
Wouldn’t it be nice to be a kid again with none of the obligations and requirements of adulthood? Sometimes….
Well don’t worry because Paul has good news for you in our Epistle from Romans today.
“Therefore dear brothers and sisters, you have no obligation to do what your sinful nature urges you to do.”
Maybe the kids were kinda right.
When I grow up I can do whatever I want!
You see you do not have to be obligated and required to do what your sinful nature urges you to do!
So why do we? Why do we give in and look to the sinful nature?
We pride ourselves on being independent and the whole idea of no one is going to tell me what to do idea but when we give in to the sinful nature, isn’t sin doing just that? Isn’t it telling us what to do? That doesn’t sound too independent to me. In fact it starts to sound like a slave/master relationship. If only the children could see us now being told what to do!
Paul warns in verse 13, “ For if you live by its dictates, you will die.”
If this is the path you depend on to go down, you will be trapped and caught up in these sinful obligations and you will die eternally.
“But if through the power of the Spirit you put to death the deeds of your sinful nature, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.”
Your obligations and responsibilities are not to this sinful world. You re not required to and are under no obligation to do what your sinful nature nature tries to entice and invite and plead for you to do.
That sinful nature was put to death, though no thanks to you! God killed it and you!
And His method of killing was to drown it. “You have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves but instead you received God’s spirit when He adopted you as His own children.”
God killed you in the waters of your baptism as you were called to faith by the sacrifice of Christ crucified. The Spirit brought you to the font of salvation and you and your sinful nature was drowned.
Chapter six, verse 3 says, “ Don’t you know that all who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?”
It doesn’t stop there, Paul goes on to say that if we share death with Christ than we also share in His life. As He was raised from the dead so we are also through the glory of the Father.
And now through Christ live a new life in which we have been adopted as His own children. We through Christ can put these sinful and evil deeds to death.
There was an obligation and responsibility that had to be paid and it demanded blood. The requirement was death. Our sin caused this and it was what we deserved but the Lamb of God took that obligation in our stead. He took the wrath of the Father so that we would and could be made His children, heirs of Heaven.
You don’t have to do anything for what has been freely given to you through His grace.
Sin can no longer tell you what to do. Thanks be to God!
You who are baptized and called in the name of the Triune God share something so incredibly special, you are His. You are His most precious children and our Heavenly Father takes great joy in that newly restored relationship.
So much so, that He says my kids, call me Abba!
This is not a proper title like Father or parental unit but a name that resonates deeper and with great love and intimacy.
He wants your relationship to be so close and familiar that you can call Him, Abba or daddy or papa or as I call my dad, Pop or whatever your custom is for calling your father with affection as a child and maybe even now.
You see He is obligated to you and through your baptism you are obligated to Him, not out of fear and requirement and some kind of duty but out of love and faith and trust given to you by the Holy Spirit in Christ. It is not about fear but confidence in Him knowing that since He has called you to Him and made you His children that you are now heirs to eternal glory just like Jesus. Verse 17 says that just like Jesus and together with Him we are heirs of God’s glory.
It also means that if we are to share in His glory, we must also share in His suffering.
After all through our baptism didn’t we share in His death and in resurrection?
Think about it. What kind of suffering did Jesus endure for the world and by the world? I am not just talking about His physical suffering and death but what about when He came to us in the Incarnation? God descending and living as one of us?
To leave cozy, comfortable Heaven and be born in a feeding trough and then deal with us on a daily basis? No thank you! That had to be suffering right there, have you met us?
But He willingly and joyfully suffered for us, even on a cross.
If we are united with Christ then we are obligated and even required together as the body of Christ in the suffering that this world can throw at us.
Christ came to suffer and die for all, so if you are connected and in union with Him then you will suffer. It may mean death. But, not all suffering in the name of Christ results in death. It can be much more subtle. It does and will most certainly mean persecution and sacrifice.
It is a stigma in the world to call yourself Christian and I don’t mean with just strangers either, but even some friends and maybe even family.
The world doesn’t want to hear the Gospel message of Christ died for all. It is obligated to its sinful nature. It will be and it is suggested that for confessing the name of Christ that you are ignorant or superstitious. You will be made fun of and prejudiced against. You will b called weak.
I am weak and in my weakness God is made stronger!
And if they can get away with it, the world will maybe even try to kill you. We see it happening all over the world and even here. Christians are dying around the world for their confession of faith.
But you see like Jesus who came and suffered and died and then rose again we will do the same. We share in His suffering but again as redeemed children called through baptism we are obligated to suffer with Him. As we suffer with Christ we also like Jesus, through the Father are obligated to share in glory.
As Jesus suffered here what did He do? Did He fight back? Did He assemble a spec ops team of Israeli commandos to take these people out? No, what Jesus did was love them. He did this through depending on His Father in Heaven.
We are called to do the same. That is our obligation
This happens through your baptism. You are obligated to do the same and you can through the Holy Spirit.
You can rest and depend knowing your Father is with you always calling you his children, His heirs.
When suffering comes we can bear it faithfully because we are baptized, we are called now and obligated through the Holy Spirit to be children of God living forever in that relationship of Trinity love.
Fear not little flock.
We got our daddy backin’ us up!
I remember as a kid we would always argue saying that my dad is stronger than your dad. I depended on Him confident that no matter what, my dad was stronger than any other dad in the neighborhood. Maybe it was true and maybe it wasn’t but I believed it was!
Well our Abba, Father is the strongest. He is our Almighty Heavenly Father.
Your faith depends on it. He is so strong that He gives up His only Son without pause so that we can be made sons and daughters, His kids of the kingdom.
He is obligated and responsible for us because He is always faithful.
So go and live in your baptisms knowing that your Father is with you and that all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.
We thank you and love you Abba, Father!
Alleluia, amen.
Us and Them…. both granted by God repentance to life!
One of the greatest blessings I have is to work with men who are in training to serve the church as deacons, some who go on to be trained to serve as pastor. Vicar Mark is one of those. I’ve had the blessing of being his instructor, his supervisor, his mentor – and especially his friend. We work each week through the sermon passage, as we encourage each other to preach Christ crucified – the hope of God’s people to share in His glory. Here is his sermon this week, another look at the passage I also preached on. May both sermons lead you to rejoice in God’s work in our (humanity’s) life.
Getting our of God’s Way
Acts 11:1-18
Greetings in the name of Jesus Christ who fought the fight and emerged victorious over sin and death, winning our salvation through the cross and that open and empty tomb.
He is Risen!
Alleluia, amen!
I was looking online this weekend ay pictures 27 years later of the nuclear accident at Cheyrnobal in what was once the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The cities and the area around the power plant look like a ghost town. It took me back to a time in which the world feared nuclear holocaust or M.A.D. mutually assured destruction.
Them and us or if you prefer, us and them.
As a child growing up in the shadow of the Cold War, this was a frequent term that I remember hearing. It pertained to the former evil empire called the Soviet Union who is the them and the God fearing, freedom loving United States who naturally was us.
If you listened to all the propaganda and rhetoric that spewed forward during this time and watched the finger pointing you would have thought that these people who were ‘them’ were some kind of monsters who rejected God, didn’t believe in human rights and didn’t love their children and wanted to crush us out of existence.
I mean can you imagine a country that doesn’t believe in the Triune God, kills its unborn children, makes certain human beings drink from different water fountains and make them sit in the back of a bus and wants to crush a country out of existence?
Oh yeah, that would be us.
This them and us attitude actually had the world on the brink of WWIII a few times but that was political and governmental. Our countries had vastly different ideologies and political doctrines, but what really separated the people?
There were believers there just like there was here or lack of believers. They loved their children and each other just as much as we did ours. All they wanted like we wanted was to live. Both sides wanted to live in peace free from the threat and actual happening of war.
One other thing that both sides shared is that both sides were sinners in desperate need of the peace that passes all understanding.
Both sides needed Christ.
Them and us.
The attitudes of ‘them and us’ does nothing but cause harm. It produces distance and misunderstanding between the two parties and it manifests pain and hurt.
There was a case of them and us as we read from Acts today. Peter is headed back to Jerusalem after meeting with uncircumsized men or if you prefer Gentiles. He had been sent there to share the Gospel with those unclean Gentiles? Them!
The circumcision party as they are called or Jews who believed in Christ are not happy with Peter. They are the usor I guess for us, the Jewish Christians are the them?
Christ did not come to save these unclean Gentiles, they weren’t born into this, they had no training in the religious ways or Laws of Moses. They probably even ate bacon and ham!
Well, these Jewish believers had heard that Peter had shared the Gospel with a Gentile family and even ate with them they were very unhappy and began to criticize Peter saying, “You went to uncircumcised men and ate with them.”
You might be thinking, “What’s the big deal, so he ate a meal with them?”
A meal was a major deal and if you ate with someone that was interpreted as a mark of acceptance and fellowship. It could have major ramifications if a leader such as Peter were eating with them, the unclean!
Were they thinking that Peter had gone to them and was no longer part of us?
That really was the farthest thing from the truth. Peter was still very much a part of this group but he proceeds to tell them what God gave to him in a vision.
God shares with him that it is ok to eat bacon!
In Peter’s vision he sees animals, beasts of prey, reptiles and birds of th air, all animals that had been considered unclean and unfit to eat. Upon seeing all these different animals, he is then told to kill and eat them!
This is my kind of vision, now if I am only to drink hefeweizan along with it…
But seriously folks, Peter says that he can’t because they are unclean.
The Voice answers him saying, “ What God has made clean, do not call common.”
Scripture says this happened to Peter three times! What is with Peter and groups of three?
All I know is because what was once unclean God made clean. Bacon all around, for everyone!
These things are made clean because of one thing.
He has Risen! Jesus has done what had to be done. He took our sin and carried it to the cross for us!
All things unclean have been washed in the blood of the Lamb and made new. We were unclean in God’s eyes and now we have been cleaned up.
We were unrelatable because of our sin and rebellion and disobedience but because of the perfect sacrifice of Jesus our high priest, we are no longer held to to be unclean and we now have received a relationship wit our Heavenly Father.
This is what Peter is explaining to them about his vision.
Jesus just didn’t atone for the Jews. He did this work for all people, all nations. He did it for them and us. Peter then talks about at that very moment men showed up to take him to the Gentile Cornelius and his family and Peter says the Sprit told him to go with them without making any distinctions. They go and the Holy Spirit comes and this Gentile and his whole family including servants are converted!
Peter’s defense to the Jewish believers didn’t come from himself and what he did but instead from God and what He did and who shows no difference between Jew or Gentile, them or us.
Our Father showed no difference between them and us or us and them because we all need Christ. We all fall short and we all need deliverance and redemption and forgiveness.
But yet like them, those Jewish believers, we can get caught in the ‘them and us’ in dealing with the world around us or even dealing with fractions within the church or our very own church here at Our Savior.
This ‘them and us’ mentality can stand in our way of God and hinder our vision and idea of how, where, when and why of what our Father is doing at all times for His beloved children.
Peter tells in verse 17,
“If then God gave the same gift to them as He gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God’s way?”
How brash and rebellious and arrogant we are to ever think that we can stand in God’s way and hinder Him. But we try consciously and sometimes subconsciously to do just that. How can you possibly stand in the way of God? You might as well stand on the tracks in the path of an oncoming freight train with a paper plate as your shield.
We are like the believing Jews questioning Peter. We believe according to what we determine and we put limits and requirements on things. We receive this incredible gift of grace and love from God but don’t always show grace and love to others.
It becomes that game of them and us and we don’t stand in God’s way but in each other’s way not remembering that God’s gift of reconciliation is for all people, them and us, Jew and Gentile, believer and un-believer.
These Jewish believers had to have known the fulfillments of all the prophecies such as Abraham being promised that His offspring would be a blessing to all peoples and all nations. What about the Song of Simeon that we sing in the Nunc Dimittis, A light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory of thy people, Israel just to name a few but they were standing in the way with their rigid ways.
When we try to stand in the way it does become a them and us kind of thing. But if we trust and have faith depending on our Father and not our own reasoning or scheming, knowing that Jesus sits at His right hand and intercedes and advocates for them and us, His people, and knowing that the Holy Spirit comes to us, sanctifying us and strengthening us in faith through Him then the them and us goes away and we are one people under and through the saving power of Jesus Christ.
As Peter tells the group about the fact of this Gentile family gifted by God with belief and redemption Scripture tells us in verse 18,
” When they heard these things they fell silent. And they glorified God, saying,” Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.”
The them and the us are now the we who are no longer unclean. We are now cleaned up and made righteous, called by Christ to live in a relationship with God and be His forever.
To Him be all glory!
Alleluia, amen!
