“Whom Shall the Lord Send?”

I Corinthians 15:1-11

The risen Lord spoke these words concerning the Apostle Paul in Acts 9:15, 16: “… he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel; I myself will show him how much he must suffer in my name.” Describing Paul’s call to apostleship Biblical scholar N. T. Wright wrote, “The grace that grasped Paul reached out through [him] to grasp others with the good news of God’s victory over evil in Jesus’ death and resurrection.”

At the beginning of his ministry Jesus spoke these words to Peter, Andrew, James, and John: “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.” Jesus was calling them, in the words of Dr. Wright, “… to be God’s [agents] in restoring people to life.”

Centuries before the Lord God called out to Isaiah, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And Isaiah, afraid, trembling, and overwhelmed by feelings of unworthiness replied, “Here am I; send me!”

The Lord God called Isaiah to speak his prophetic word to his rebellious people in Judah. Jesus called his first four disciples to join with him in answering God’s call to seek and save the lost. Lastly the Spirit of the Risen Lord called Paul out of his life as a self-righteous persecutor of the early church to be his disciple to the Gentile world. In each case, again quoting Dr. Wright, these men were called by God “to be the mouthpiece of [God’s] truth…”

I Corinthians 15 is usually read on Easter morning or as a supporting text for the Doctrine of Resurrection. Today’s verses, however, focus us on Paul’s calling to be an apostle. Paul answered that call, and as history and Scripture tell us, became the greatest missionary of all time. But he never lost sight of the reality that he achieved what he achieved only by the grace of God, describing himself in the following terms: “Last of all, as to one untimely born, [the risen Lord] appeared to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.”

Answering God’s call requires a definite sense of calling along with a strong dose of humility. Paul and Isaiah got it right, each in their own way being very up front about their sense of unworthiness. Isaiah described himself in terms of un-cleanliness. Paul did so in terms of unfitness. But each of them, along with Peter, Andrew, James, and John, did mighty works for the Lord. In human terms they were all unworthy. However, when God called they answered, trusting him to equip them for their particular ministries.

Back to the necessity of possessing clear sense of call: One must be able to discern whether or not the call he or she is hearing really is of God. There’s the old joke about the fellow who saw the letters G. P. in the sky. He was certain that God was telling him, “Go preach!” To his dismay, after years of struggle, he finally realized that what God was really saying was, “Go plow!”

When I first entered the process of becoming a candidate for the Ministry of Word and Sacrament in the Presbyterian Church a very wise older minister told me that, if I could be happy in any other vocation, I shouldn’t become a minister. The sense of call needs to be so strong that not answering it will leave you miserable. The prophet Jeremiah stated this in terms of God’s Word literally burning in his bones. He had no choice but to proclaim it.

Years ago as he was being examined for ordination on the floor of Presbytery a young candidate who was the son of a Presbyterian minister recounted his call this way. When he told his father that he was sensing a call to the Gospel Ministry his dad told him to go take a cold shower! In other words, before you get into this pastor business please be sure that this is what God wants you to do with your life.

Parents who love us want to protect us from the results of wrong decisions. Sometimes they even want to protect us from right decisions. My mother was the daughter of a minister. Having seen firsthand the damage that so-called good Christian people can inflict on a pastor, she didn’t want her baby boy to go through that. Fortunately my experience has been much more positive than was Granddad’s.

In then there was the colleague who had come to the Christian faith as an adult, having been the product of a non-churched, non-Christian family. When her father heard that she was applying to seminary he got really upset. That being about the time when the story of Jim Jones and the poisoned Kool-Aid was all over the news, he was afraid that his daughter was being drawn into some strange cult called Presbyterian. He didn’t want his baby girl to follow some ding-dong into disaster.

The Presbyterian Church is not a cult. It can be crazy at times, but no more so than the Methodists, Baptists, or Lutherans. Some Presbyterian congregations are living proof that good Christian people can be dysfunctional in ways that can be dangerous to a pastor’s mental, spiritual, and physical health. And even in the healthiest church there is often that one person who truly believes that it is his or her God-given duty to make the pastor’s life hell.

God’s people can be downright uncooperative at times. Amos, Isaiah, and Jeremiah made that painful discovery early on in their ministries. So too did Peter and Paul. We all know what happened to Jesus when he spoke God’s truth to religious people. Answering God’s call can be dangerous in an increasingly secular world. And it can be just as dangerous in a church that has often been co-opted by that secular world. The Lord made that pretty clear when he said about Paul, “I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.”

We’re not all called to be pastors. We are all called to be disciples. We are all called to the task of telling the Good News about Jesus. We are all called to be God’s mouthpieces of truth. To be a Christian is to be a witness, to be a missionary, to be about the business of restoring people to life in the name of Jesus. To follow Jesus is to share the love of God with one and all, to obediently love the God who first loved us. To be a Christian is to have God’s Word burning in our bones.

I’ll close with these words from N.T. Wright: “… as God’s multi-textured truth thereby takes hold of our hearts and minds, look out: that which God burns into us, we are required to pass on.” Amen.