David Orendorff·Matthew 4:12-23

After reading today’s scripture I wonder if Jesus knew where he was going. I mean, when he chooses to be baptized does he know how his life will then unfold? Just look at what happens.

At the ripe age of 30 Jesus goes to be a disciple of John the Baptist. All John’s disciples were baptized by John in the Jordan River for the forgiveness of sins. But as soon as Jesus is baptized, instead of becoming a disciple of John, he is driven by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness to face hunger, thirst, wild animals and the devil.

After 40 days of suffering and when it appeared he was going to die the angels come minister to him. When he leaves the wilderness he is on his way to return to John. But that doesn’t happen because John has been arrested. His teacher, mentor, rabbi and friend is now imprisoned and will eventually be beheaded by Herod. So ends Jesus’ career as a disciple of John.

Threatened because he was John’s disciple Jesus fled his home in Nazareth and went to live in Capernaum which is 20 miles to the northeast and on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. We assume he again took up the trade of carpentry, built a home, and had friends and family. It is a good life.

But for some unknown reason Jesus time in Capernaum is short lived. He leaves Capernaum to begin a wandering ministry of teaching and healing. God will not let him rest but keeps changing his life.

Jesus calls men and women he encounters to follow him, to become his students, to believe in John’s message of forgiveness and in a new message of the power of God to make the world again. Perhaps, finally, this itinerant ministry is where Jesus is going. But we know that is not what happens. For when Jesus takes his teaching and healing to Jerusalem he is betrayed by his own disciples and crucified.

So maybe this is it, maybe this is where Jesus was going. You, of course, know that there is one more twist to the story. For death is not where Jesus was finally going at all. After three days Jesus is resurrected by God and raised from the dead.

When Jesus first went into the water to be a disciple of John did he know where he was going? I don’t think he did. It seems to me as I read the gospels Jesus’ life was an unfolding of God’s design and Jesus was again and again faithfully obedient to the unfolding.

I take some comfort in this because for most of my life, I haven’t known where I was going. When I was old enough to make decisions about my destiny I entered college to be an engineer. I was pretty good at it.

But then there was this pretty English teacher who got me interested in reading Hermann Hesse, Albert Camus and others. I switched my major after my sophomore year and became a Drama/English major. But then I had this religious experience and though I didn’t know what I was going to do with it, I went to seminary. I wandered in seminary for four years picking up two master degrees. I liked academia and loved the story of Jesus life in the Gospels and so I thought I wanted to teach New Testament. I went to graduate school for two more years. But I discovered being an academic was not where I wanted (or was designed) to spend my life and having children became of new twist.

To be a parent I needed a real and regular salary. I half heartedly looked for some jobs and then decided to do the only thing I was trained to do and became a pastor. I didn’t particularly want to pastor a congregation but what else was I going to do? And for the sake of Vickie, Erika and then Johanna I would do it. This was not exactly the motivation my ordination evaluators were looking but they were as desperate as I was and so they let me in.

I was first appointed to three very small churches in very small towns on the highline of Montana. To my surprise I liked being a pastor of and I was content to stay there, raise the kids and love the people. But as soon as I thought I knew where I was going the District Superintendent called and sent me to a congregation in Polson, Montana. I thought I was going to be in Polson a long time so we built a house. It was a wonderful house with modern appliances and passive solar heating. We had lived in the house six months when the District Superintendent called and told me I was being moved to Helena.

I liked it in Helena a lot and I thought this was where I was going to stay but I didn’t. The next move took us altogether out of Montana and rural ministry to Anacortes. Again we thought this is where we will be and prepared to buy a house. Two days before we signed on the house the DS called and now we are here.

I am slow but not impossible and now I have given up knowing where I am going. I am sure my life will continue to twist and turn from one revelation to the next. Like Jesus, since I said yes to loving forgiveness, since I accepted God’s love as taught and lived by Jesus as the foundation of my life and the message of my heart, my life has taken surprising and twisting directions until I find myself where I am. I am content to remain here until I am put out to pasture. But I don’t know this is where I am going to be.

Each of us is called by God to follow Jesus. For each of us there has been a voice that calls us to lives of faith and lives of ministry or we wouldn’t be here. We are called to forgive as we are forgiven. We are called to do good as God’s power enters the world through our hands, hearts and minds.

This call may have overtaken us when we were fishing or going about what we normally go about. It may have been the call of a caring voice, bright lights from heaven or shared bread. We may be here because of a deeply moving experience of grace, because of a tragedy that has severely shaken us, because the kids need Sunday school or because we need Sunday school. Whatever the reason, we are here because God loves us and we need that love in our lives.

And we have answered the call by being here and not some place else. We wouldn’t be in this room together if something or someone hadn’t reached out to us and somehow convinced us that we wanted to be with others who were captured by the love of God. We have chosen to be present with others who trust in forgiveness and hope in a new earth. We choose to be in this place, to hear this story, to pray for mercy and for power, to sing hymns of faith, to share in the struggles of the day and the dances of the night.

A voice from some place came to our minds or hearts and invited us to go learn of Jesus and even to become like Jesus. The voice is for some reason irresistible and we must follow. And like Peter and Andrew, James and John, we hardly know what it is we have done, except to know that our lives will from now on be quite different. And to know that as soon as we are almost used to that different, a new different, a new direction, will come.

It is a strange thing, is it not, how this irresistible call to faith invites us to follow without telling us where we are going? When the fishermen are called by Jesus, they leave their jobs, they leave their father, and they leave everything they know to go fish for people, whatever that is. Like Jesus and the disciples our lives twist first this direction and then that. We are led by serendipity and tragedy. A child is born and it is Christmas. A marriage ends and it is the crucifixion. A new friend is found and it is resurrection.

It is a strange thing this call to faith because we follow it not truly knowing what is going to happen to us. We know that we are going to be different, and we pray it is better, but what does better mean? Will it lead to a wedding party in Cana, a desert across the Jordan, or both? Will it save the friendship or will it lead to estrangement? Will it let me stay in my job or will I be led to other work? Will I continue to be here with Bear Creek or will I be led to another place and another people? We simply do not know where we are going in following Jesus.

With frightened souls we are lead by a voice two thousand years old and a spirit that comes and goes wither and whence it wants. We follow because we hear deeply a divine voice speak to our souls and we have no choice. To hear Jesus call us to faith is to leave our nets and our boats, to leave the security of the familiar, and to surrender ourselves into God’s unfolding mercy. With fear and trembling, we walk into a new way, a new world, a new being. Like Jesus, Paul, Peter, Andrew, James, Mary, Martha, Cleopas, and the millions of others who heard Jesus speak, “Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand” we believe, we trust, we are awakened to the voice of the soul and we go off into an uncertain future with only the promise of God’s forever presence.

And like Jesus, the only constant in our following is a passion for the love of God leading us to love and be loved, to respond to grace with grace, and to answer evil with mercy. So though we don’t really know where we are going, we do know what we are becoming. We are becoming those with the mind and heart of Christ. Wherever we go, there is our place to love. Whatever time it is, is the time of our compassion. God calls us to be love here and now, wherever and whenever that is. The details of where will find us.

Shalom and Amen.