Launching Forth

 

Mathew 3:13-17

Epiphany 1 / Year A

Recent studies reveal these are the top five career choices today’s kindergarteners dream of having when they grow up: Astronaut, Teacher, Doctor, Firefighter, and Veterinarian.  I am pleased to learn this because it suggests small children still dream big dreams – exploring outer space – and want to help other people or creatures.  I am very pleased to find nowhere on this list software developer, hedge fund manager, or (worst of all) social media influencer.

There is no record to indicate what five-year-old Jesus dreamed of doing with his life.  We can only speculate how much his parents shared with him about the details of his birth.  Did they remind him constantly that he was going to be a king and savior or did they keep this angelic message private – after all, how do you enforce a bedtime with a child who constantly reminds you one day he is going to be the ruler of all creation? 

Not only do we have scant information about what Jesus was told, we know little of what he sensed about himself.  Other than staying behind in the Temple as a 12-year-old and amazing the teachers there with his knowledge, we don’t know if he was good at sports, preferred reading over math, liked to draw, or played a musical instrument.  He must have had something stirring deep within which he struggled to understand; just as we all have to walk a mysterious (and sometimes torturous) path through adolescence to figure out what we enjoy, what we are good at, what we value, what we believe… essentially discovering who we are and then discerning what we want to do with our life.

Given he was God’s only begotten Son, Jesus had one more layer of identity to sort through... his divinity.  From what we know, Jesus works at least fifteen years as a carpenter or perhaps a stone mason; today we would say he was in construction.  He is educated, can read, is fluent in the Hebrew Scriptures, is well-known and positively regarded throughout the small community in which he is raised.  He is the oldest of at least five siblings.  It is fair to say it takes him three decades to discover his true calling, his mission, his purpose.

Theologians ponder this process using the term “God Consciousness.”  This notion explores a basic question: How does Jesus come to know who he is and when does it crystalize for him?  While there is much scholarly debate about this, one thing is clear: When he rises from the baptismal waters of the Jordon River it all falls into place.  This moment thrusts him into his life’s call. 

We preachers throw around the word ‘calling’ a lot.  I’d wager it makes its way into a sermon on average once a month.  You may be interested to know if by calling, we mean a clear, direct, unmistakable instruction from God, only about a hundred or so people in the entire bible are commissioned in this way.  Moses, Jeremiah, Amos, and Paul might be the most prominent examples.  For most people, then and now, a ‘calling’ comes about in ways significantly less dramatic and much more banal.   

Reflecting on my own journey, I don’t ever remember having a specific vocational dream as a child.  If you had asked kindergarten Keith what he wanted to grow up to be the answer would have been a question mark.  As a middle schooler who admired my youth pastor, I began to see myself as an ordained minister.  I enrolled in college as a religion major and became deeply involved as a leader in Youth Life, an outreach ministry to highschoolers.  By the time I graduated, however, I was not so sure about pursing ordination and had no real sense of what I wanted to do in life. 

I guess I would say God was not done with me yet.  I found myself attending an Episcopal Church, working part-time on the staff as a lay person, and falling in love with the Anglican tradition.  After a year, the rector told me I needed to go to seminary and figure out what God was calling me to do.  And so I went.  At some point in my final year, the chaplain at the school said to me, “Keith, it is easy for God to get people like me and you into the priesthood because we don’t have any other options!”  I realized he said this not because I didn’t have the aptitude to do anything else, rather it was the only thing I had a heart for.  This is the first time I remember truly being ‘called.’ 

Little in my story is wonderous.  God never spoke directly to me.  It came through the example of one person, the encouragement of another, and the affirmation of still another.

Most of us here this morning are near to completing our life’s work or have retried from it.  But, I wonder, if like me, you can discern in the pattern of Jesus’ journey how your own mirrors it.  Early on you had an inkling or two.  At some point, perhaps over time or maybe at a specific moment, it all came into focus.  Once launched, you went through something like Jesus did when, after his baptism, he entered the wilderness to be tempted; a period early on when your training and skill was tested and honed by the reality of the real world.  From this experience you went forth fully prepared to make your mark.  Yes, there might have been some ups and downs – there certainly were for Jesus – but for the bulk of living into your calling you accomplished much which contributed in some way to the common good.  Then, in certain aspects, your retirement was a kind of Golgotha, a death.  And yet on the other side you experienced resurrection; a rebirth into a new life with new opportunities and new purposes. 

If I was a college chaplain preaching to a congregation of students, this sermon would focus more keenly on the moment of baptism, the moment of launching forth.  But most of us here this morning are well past that time.  So, I encourage you to think about resurrection, about what comes next after you wrap up your life’s main calling.  Have you experienced rebirth?  Have you found or fallen into what comes next?  I hope so, but if not, I encourage you to go back to your kindergarten dreaming self.  What inking do you have?  What stirs within you?  You may be done with your life’s work, but you are far from used up!  God has a new dream for you.  Can you see it?  Have you embraced it?  It is where life in all its fulness waits for you.