The Caller And The Called

JOHN 5:1-9 ACTS 16:9-15

Worthing College of Further Education was the place for those who at the tender age of sixteen already found themselves on the intellectual scrapheap of four O levels or less.

I duly enrolled for a one year course there entitled Junior Business Studies.

Nobody much was interested in Business Studies and we were a somewhat badly behaved outfit, none more so than in Mr Page’s English class, where I can’t remember any work ever being done.

The class was a riot from beginning to end.

I was not, of course, one of the naughtier boys. I just sat quietly reading that week’s edition of the New Musical Express.

One day one of the really naughty boys blasphemed at the top of his voice and the normally meek and mild Mr Page was a man transformed.

“How dare you take the name of my best friend in vain” he roared reducing the class to stunned silence.

Then a moment I shall never forget

“Isn’t there anyone else in this class who is offended by this blasphemy, not one of you who would dare to show his face as a follower of Jesus”

The silence continued amidst some barely controlled sniggering.

I lowered my head – for I was a churchgoer, but I was not going to say anything now, not for love nor money. I was not going to be singled out.

Then the crunchline.

“There is someone here” said Mr Page quietly.

I gulped.

“Someone who cannot speak out today but one day he will, I know that one day he will”

I was astonished, embarrassed, wondering.

For he did not know about me at all and he certainly didn’t know that there was this strange feeling of sort of wanting to serve, but not being anywhere near good enough or clever enough due to being on Junior Business Studies because I had not shared it with any living soul.

At the end of this sermon – I predict one of three reactions.

Your heart will be beating just a little faster or you will feel uncomfortable or you will conclude, probably wrongly that this sermon is not for you.

I want to use this morning’s Gospel reading not to marvel at the way Jesus heals people but rather at the way in which he calls people. The way he reaches into a single life amongst many and bestows a unique gift – not that they might just walk again after 38 years – but that there might be a spring in their step as they respond to a surprising call.

Each one of us is called in some way or another and it maybe that you are quietly following that calling or it maybe that today finds you casting around for something to hold on to.

When considered from this angle, a whole jumble of things strike me about this Gospel encounter.

The man who had been paralysed was not expecting a call.

He must have seemed to himself a hopeless case, just one face amongst many gathered round that pool and yet Jesus singles him out, sees an unrealised potential in the man, a vague hope, which no one else had taken seriously. He crosses the stone floor picking his way amongst others who had an equal claim to his attention – and takes the initiative in that man’s life.

Jesus is really asking the man if he is ready to move on, yes if he wants to be healed but more importantly that he is ready to be active.

“Rise up and walk” is His command.

It’s like this man’s very own personal Easter morning.

It’s not very friendly. It’s not hedged about in ifs and buts.

It feels like “Rise up and walk and that’s an order”

Following Christ is a matter of what we believe – it is a matter of the faith that is held – we are not justified by the work we do and yet the grace of God when its standing there right in front of you can only prompt you to action.

Love that is felt but never expressed – soon ceases to be love at all.

The man was reluctant to begin with.

“I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is troubled and while I am going another steps down before me”

Forgive me, but that’s the original lame excuse!

For a moment there, Jesus must have thought, this man is not going to budge.

Then He puts His life into Jesus’ hands and rises up, takes up his bed and walks.

Where did he go after 38 years of lying there?

Did Jesus offer no grand plan of where this restored life would now take that man – no long term vision as to how he would be used no reassurance about the future.

He just takes that one next step that Jesus commanded him to take and trusts himself to it.

It’s my experience that this is all he ever asks.

Finally, this man’s healing and calling stirs up some awful trouble.

The religious people cannot take it and a row breaks out which leads directly to whispering about doing away with a man who turns someone’s life over so dramatically.

God calls us all to service in one way or another and we learn from this story that when He does:

God takes the initiative he puts the idea there.

He calls us from the midst of a whole body of people so that it might seem strange to us that we are being singled out.

He calls us to take some form of action in our lives but it may only be a single step.

He makes the call and then he stands back to see what we might do

And finally if we take the call seriously – there might be opposition – within ourselves or in others.

You might like to have thought that your Vicar’s call to ministry was as the result of a massive blinding flash. That’s not been the case for me, rather a series of funny little instances that have caught me unawares, so that whenever this story comes around and I think of that lame man I see plenty of myself in him, and as you think about the story – I wonder what you see of you.

R 13.5.07