Psalm 62:5-12
Mark 1:14-20

Does a revolution begin as a revolution? I don’t know of a revolution that began with someone saying, “We need to start a revolution and here is what it is.” The revolt of the colonies against Great Britain did not start out as a revolt. It began as a disagreement and then became a protest and evolved into a revolution. The Industrial Revolution began with an invention or two and then seemed to explode. Martin Luther did not decide that he would start a different religion. There were some things about the Catholic Church that he thought needed to be changed. His concerns became 95 theses and they became protests and the protests evolved into a movement that became know as the Protestant Reformation.
The story is told that someone approached Jesus and asked him what his plans were for sharing the message of God’s love with people. Jesus said that he had chosen twelve disciples and that he was helping them to discern what it meant to be loved unconditionally by God and they in turn will help others to discern God’s love. The inquirer responded, “What if they fail? What is your backup plan? And Jesus replied, “I have no other plan.”

No one changed the way people understood and related to God more radically and dramatically than Jesus. It was not his intention or purpose to start a revolution or a new religion. Yet, Jesus revolutionized the understanding of God being personal and present.

The brief story in our text from Mark tells how simply this process began. The passage has a remarkable number of sharp details that make it easy to visualize. The five personal names, the Sea of Galilee, the nets, the boats, the hired servants, the action of casting, mending, following—all of these elements give us a sense of participation in the scene.

In Mark’s Gospel this is the first encounter between Jesus and his disciples. No prior contact explains the immediacy of the fishermen’s response; no earlier failures cloud their spontaneity.
Jesus calls; they follow. We are not told whether these fishermen had previously enjoyed their work or detested it, whether they were prosperous or impoverished. We do not know how the two pairs of brothers got along with each other, nor how the sons of Zebedee related to their father. The sun may have been bright and the breeze off the lake fresh, but Mark does not say.

In two successive encounters Jesus appears to four ordinary men who are engaged in routine activities. He calls and they follow. Later they will calculate the effect of their obedience and admire their own virtue (10:28); they will perceive where Jesus is going and tremble (10:31). But in this first encounter the interaction is reduced to the essentials: What does Jesus say, and how will they respond?

The literal meaning of the words translated “Follow me” is “Come (plural) after me.” The story has a two fold function. It calls to commitment those have had no faith relationship with God and made no commitment of their lives to that relationship. The story also calls us to ministry.

Jesus’ statement, “Follow me,” confronts us all with a decision that lies deeper than the question of earning a living. His call to discipleship focuses on the question of life’s ultimate loyalty, a question more basic than that of vocational choice. It speaks to us, any of us whose lives are humdrum, whose discipleship has degenerated into a preoccupation with things like nets and boats and hired servants.
When the fishermen hear Jesus’ invitation, they immediately turn their backs on their past and follow him. It does not mean they forget their past. It doesn’t mean they ceased being fishermen. Actually they continued to earn their livelihood by fishing. It means they moved in a new and different direction. Their focus was out in front of them, not behind them.

When Jesus called to Simon and Andrew to "follow me," it was an invitation that enticed them out of their familiar paths, out of the fishing boat, and into a world full of problems and possibilities. The same invitation is offered to us. To accept this invitation will take us down unfamiliar paths and into a world of great difficulties and fabulous possibilities. As we travel these unfamiliar paths we will be amazed at the places we will go, the challenges we will experience, and the serenity that will dwell in our lives.
Cotton Mather, one of the leading Puritans in New England, suggested there are two callings for a Christian, a general calling to discipleship and a particular or personal calling of employment. Glenview Community Church is part of that Puritan tradition tracing our roots through the United Church of Christ back to Plymouth and the Puritans who were part of the experiment that became a revolution. The Puritan culture encouraged people to make connections between their faith and their work. We must seek to do this continually. There must be continuity between what occurs on Sunday in the worship place and what happens on Monday in the work place.

Our work may be the biggest bore of our lives or it can be the highest form of prayer and praise to God. Work is a form of prayer and praise and discipleship when we see it as an act of service to God and to our neighbors. In this sense our work takes on meaning, value, and purpose. This approach and attitude help make the distinction between work being a job or a vocation. When work is a job only, we are interested in making a living. When work is a vocation, an act of service to God then work is an integral part of making a life. As we go about doing our jobs--whatever they are-- (teacher, coach, police officer, street repairer, mail carrier, firefighter, minister, child care provider) are we making a living or making a life? There is a direct correlation between our internal motivation and our external behavior. Attitude and action are inescapably intertwined. Whether we are making a living or making a life is determined by what attitude motivates our action.

Vocation means calling. It is a concept suggesting that a person is led or drawn into one's life work because of the essence and importance of the task. A calling can be revolutionary if it causes a person to turn around, have a fundamental change in the way the person uses power. When a person has the conviction that s/he has the skills and interest to contribute significantly to the betterment of human beings through the calling, that person has become part of the revolution. This calling combines giving attention to one's gifts and inclinations, with a careful listening to the Christian story and vision. Vocation, then, is not so much found as it is negotiated.1 Paul suggested in writing to the Romans "we are to use our different gifts in accordance with the grace that God has given us” (Ro. 12:6).
Vocation is the response people make with their total selves to the address of God and to the calling to partnership. The shaping of vocation as total response of oneself to the address of God involves the orchestration of our leisure, our relationships, our work, our private life, our public life, of the resources we steward, so as to put it all at the disposal of God's purposes in the services of God and neighbor.2 Vocation is calling by God to love the world and that is revolutionary.

The perceptions we have about our vocations are related to our views about work. Is there meaning in the work that we do? If there is, what is the source of the meaning and if our work is meaningless, why is that? To identify the work we do as a vocation is to give a spiritual and religious dimension to our jobs. A question that every person needs to ask in deciding on the kind of work we will do and that each of us needs to ask periodically in reexamining and evaluating our job choices is, "In what type of work can I best use my gifts as a human being to love God and to love my fellow human beings?" All people have gifts and all people are responsible and accountable as stewards of the gifts that they have. How we can best utilize our gifts is a probing journey.

This seems to have been the concept of calling that Jesus had with regard to his disciples. He invited people to follow him in the sense of joining with him and learning from him. He gave no indication what form their discipleship would take. Many people have an image in their minds of the disciples becoming preachers, very few of them did. Jesus had 120 disciples most of whom we do not know their names. Of the few names we have Peter became the best-known preacher. James and John may also have preached some, as did Philip. What work the others did, we don't know. Some remained fishermen. Matthew, Mark, and John became writers much later, but that was more avocation than vocation.
In a vocation, the primary concern is the use of one's abilities serving God for the benefit of other people. Jesus can be our model for this. He was clear about the beginning and destination of his life when he said, "I know where I came from and where I am going" (John 8:14).

There are those who suggest that God has a specific and definite design for each person's life and that each person must determine what that design is. Implied in this suggestion is that God is an architect who has drawn a set of blueprints for each of us. If we can just find our sets of blueprints, then all of life will be mapped out for us. At least two traps are in this line of thinking. First, it is contrary to the nature of freedom with which God created the universe and the freedom that God gave human beings to think and to make decisions. Second, this attitude turns life into a game of guessing what is in the mind of God. It suggests that if you guess right, life will go smoothly. This is a contradiction to what has happened in the lives of people through the centuries who have sought to follow God. Many of those who seemed to have followed God the most closely have had the greatest problems and difficulties in their lives. No one served God any better than Jesus did and no one had any greater difficulties, disappointments, and mistreatment than did Jesus. Jesus’ ministry was a strange way to run a revolution but he seemed to have no other plan than to love and accept everybody. Don Harbuck said that to love everybody is a revolutionary idea. If you don’t believe just try it sometime and see what happens.

Sometimes the suggestion is made that certain jobs or professions are off limits to Christians, and even that some "Christian" professions are off limits to certain Christians, like women being pastors. We are continually narrowing the realm of possibilities while God is continually expanding the realm of possibilities for options of God calling us to the world. Our sense of calling, our understanding of vocation gives us the motivation and insight to commit ourselves to travel one way. The motive for service determines whether what we do is a ministry. Elton Trueblood has given us insight into the meaning and motive of calling by writing, "In the basic Christian pattern there may be a division of labor, and there may be a conductor, but all play, all are performers rather than auditors or observers.”3 To say no vocation is off limits to any person because of sexual identify, racial identity or religious belief is a revolutionary statement.

There are, in essence, at least two steps in a calling or a vocation. The first step is the conviction people have that they should use their gifts and abilities in a particular type of work. The second step is for an individual or organization in that particular type of work to offer a person a job doing what the person considers to be her calling or vocation.

Our relationship as congregation and Senior Minister is based on this approach. It is my clear conviction that the best way for me to use the gifts and abilities that God has given me and helped me to develop is to serve as a Senior Minister. That was a first, important step. However, the second step is just as important. As a congregation you decided that I was the person you wanted to serve as your Senior Minister. Here we are serving God together through Glenview Community Church and we have been doing this now beginning our eighth year together.

Very few people have completely smooth journeys in their vocational pursuits. I suspect many of us have had some very turbulent and stressful times in our jobs. Some of you are in the eye of such a storm right now. We cannot be involved in a revolution without it causing turbulent and stressful times in our lives.

The New Testament is clear about vocation. In a sense all people have the same vocation. All of us are called to love the world for God’s sake. That is revolutionary. Initially, we don’t think so because the words are so familiar. But the actions are not. To love the world is, as one of the Psalms states, to trust God more than violence and to depend on God more than the latest gadgets we can accumulate. Exactly how we do that is as varied as there are people. Disciples of Christ are invited to develop their lives, every aspect of their lives to love and care for the world for God’s sake. The best model of how to do that is demonstrated for us in the life of Jesus. Just as the human body has numerous and various parts and it takes all of them to make the body a whole, living organism, so it is with us who are part of the body of Christ. The body of Christ identified as the Church is made up of numerous, various people. There is tremendous diversity in the church that contributes to the life and aliveness of the Church. This contributes to turbulence and stress and it contributes to joy and peace.
When we think about what Jesus did, inviting ordinary people to follow him and work with him to care for the least, the lowest, and the lost in life, that was no way to run a revolution. But a revolution is what occurred. Perhaps no one has had a greater impact on the way people thought about and related to God and the world than Jesus did. And those who took Jesus seriously began to identify gifts that people had that strengthened people’s lives and made life and the world a better place. And the revolution was underway.

The highest calling in life according to the letter to the Philippians is the call to discipleship. The highest aim in life is to do the will of God, which is to love God with all our hearts, minds, and souls and to love our fellow human beings as we love ourselves. Therefore, all of us have the same vocation but different professions, the same calling but different responses, the same destination but different routes to travel. All of us have the same vocation: to love the world for God's sake. To do so is revolutionary.

Some will love the world for God's sake as child care providers, some as musicians, some as artists, some as ambulance drivers, some as care providers for people with AIDS, some as fire fighters, some as ministers, some as teachers, some as carpenters, some as clerks, and some as physicians. What about you? How do you love the world for God's sake? What role will you play in the revolution?