Faith, Fear and the Kingdom of God
“Will he stay or will he go?” It’s a question one hears often in a university town like ours, especially after a great win and an alma mater comes courting for your coach’s services elsewhere. So, I’d to thank Bill Self and his Jayhawks for making this day easier than it might be ordinarily. Both their victory and his decision to remain at KU has been helpful, hasn’t it?
Texans, as you must certainly know by now, revere Davey Crockett, James Bowie, and William B. Travis and other heroes as we “remember the Alamo.” Now, you Kansans will forever “remember the Alamo-Dome” with Mario, Brandon, and Darrell. I am so happy for all of you in the celebrations after Monday night’s historic victory.
Then, predictably, moments after the game the questions came…Will he stay or will he leave? It is the kind of question, beyond a fan bases curiosity or a journalist’s scoop, that involves deliberate discernment, professional growth, timing, and…call. But now I’m not speaking of Bill Self but my-self (you like that? You’ll miss that!). I can assure you there’s no T. Boone Picken’s luring me to Austin; though if he would want to join the church that’s fine by me!
Today I want to speak to you about the call and my response to Highland Park Baptist Church in Austin, Texas. There are two primary calls in a minister’s life: the first is that first tug in one’s inner being that God has laid claim (later clarified and confirmed by a congregation) on their life to do ministry as a Pastor. I heard and experienced that call first as a student at the University of Texas while attending the First Baptist Church in Austin. I’ve told you my story many many times. The second call is the ecclesial call when a congregation feels led by God to extend an invitation to a particular minister at a particular time…and the minister senses the leading of Go to say “yes.”
This convergence of inner and ecclesial call happened in my life over 10 1/2 years ago when you voted to call me as your Pastor and I accepted. I believed I was saying yes to you and to God. And now I believe that these two calls have come together again, and I begin a move to a new place of service. I have had other opportunities to have discussions with other churches across my time with you but none had the force of a call or even interest really, though many were for much larger churches. But no call.
A minister lives and dies by the sense that he or she is led by God to particular places and in particular ways. Even today, especially today, I could not stand in front of you and say that God has called me to a new place of service without the sure and certain conviction that God was in this move.
Now, of course, we are---all of us included---human finite beings. How can we presume to know God’s will for sure? Scripture speaks of God’s ways and thoughts not being our thoughts. But we do our very best to discern God’s will for us and go out in faith, a la Abraham and Sarah, the disciples of Jesus, you and me.
There are some dimensions of this call that makes good human sense, and some are cleverly disguised as of yet to be revealed. There are some who think I might be crazy to leave this wonderfully healthy and vital church, FBC Lawrence, Kansas. There are dimensions of our life together that I never expect to experience again. So why leave?
I have chosen to frame my call and experience from the passage we read earlier this morning, Acts 16 as it describes the stop and go character of God’s leadership of Paul and his missionary journeys. In the text from Luke twice Paul says that where he wanted to go he was prevented from going into those areas. Forbidden by the Holy Spirit? Why? I don’t know and neither did Paul…until he had that famous vision.
So, passing by Mysia he went down to Troas. And a vision appeared to Paul in the night: a man from Macedonia was pleading him and saying ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us.’ And when he had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go into Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the good news to them.
Sometimes God puts a red light before us on our path and at other times God green-lights a process to go forward. Stop here, go there. Doors open, doors close. Outer doors opened and closed; inner doors opened or closed. We try as best we can to interpret the moves of God in our lives and even though we can never fully understand we go forward in faith, in trust that God is at work.
I’ve often told you how Frederick Buechner says that God often speaks to us as in the Hebrew language: a language made up of consonants but no vowels. God supplies the consonants and we the vowels with all the faith, imagination and hope we can muster. So here comes the consonants God provides: S T P. Are we to place an O between the T and P, God saying STOP. Or do we place an E, God saying STEP?
So we pray, think, listen, discuss, discern---seeking to figure out where God is leading, calling, and we fill in the vowel and trust in God wherever that path leads. Earlier doors have opened and I sensed God’s word to me to be STOP. This day, to the best that I can know, what I believe is that God is saying STEP.
We do not know what the factors were that prevented Paul from entering Bithynia as he had planned. But in some ways he sensed that God was saying, “Stop…not Bithynia, not now. Your plans are not in my plans.”
The alternative path wasn’t revealed to him until the vision: Come over and help us.
That is what I have heard from the people of God at Highland Park in Austin: Come over and help us. It has been three years since they have had a senior minister. They are attempting to be a progressive voice of Christian practice in Texas; they desire to be a church whose doors are open to all and closed to none; they want a pastoral leader who will help them interpret the faith in new and faithful ways. They want to be shaped by the spirit of Jesus in ways that mirror, in part, some of what we’ve done here.
However, they already are as missional a bunch of Christians that I know. Highland Park participates, for example, in a ministry to border towns west of Laredo in Mexico that constructs churches, medical clinics, schools, and orphanages. The stirrings of my heart have centered in greater investment of time and self in mission and service, to residents legal and otherwise. My first attraction to them came in the form of their deep involvement in being on mission for Christ and incarnating the grace of God to all persons. HPBC is a leading congregation in Austin’s version of Interfaith Hospitality Network, the same ministry you will soon embrace as your own.
I have always wondered if a Baptist church in my home state could be liturgically shaped, ecumenically active, prophetically poised, and mission-minded…attempting as best it could to be the body of Christ to her context, time and place. And not just “barely making it” but as a thriving, significant house of meaningful and thoughtful worship where head and heart are kept together in education, mission, and service. As best I can discern, Highland Park is such a place for this to be tried. This is part of the vision, Come over and help us. I want to try and help them, as they help me become a more faithful Christian and minister.
This vision, mine and Paul’s, is not enough to be go on though---they had to “conclude” that God had called them in that vision to preach the gospel there. This too is what I have concluded. We have prayed, cried, discerned that our desires are true and have matched up with God’s good desires for us…and we go forward in faith. They are convinced and so am I that our lives should be together. It will be different; it will be demanding; there is much work to do there so I count on your prayers for me and for them. They are praying for you in earnest.
Sometimes God calls through a man of Macedonia, a church saying “Come over (come back) and help us.” Asking, receiving, offering assistance is complex and we are often perplexed over when, where, and how to help. And…reasons to offer help aren’t always selfless and we can be misunderstood in our attempts to help. But here is this church in Austin and they have said to me that they want and need me to lead them in some of the ways God has led us together this past decade, especially in the cultivation of covenanted community. No other congregation does that as well as you, FBC Lawrence, Kansas.
Is there a measure of fear in all of this for me, for us? ABSOLOUTELY!! Let me be very honest with you. Leaving you is the most difficult thing I have ever attempted. I depart with a heavy heart and I need you to know this. I am aware, keenly, that many of you are saddened and discouraged by my news. I understand completely. You are the reason Lawrence became a place intimately known, profoundly felt, and deeply loved. You never turned me away as pastor, but welcomed me with trust. I never took this for granted and I have loved you so much for all you’ve given me. Although I brought what I could to you, I will recall more of what you gave to me.
Fear creeps in when I wonder: Will HPBC embrace us over the long-haul as you have? Will they afford me the freedom in pastoral ministry, particularly freedom of the pulpit as you have? Will my leadership be as valued and received as here? Is there fear, yes. But if I follow obediently, prayerfully, faithfully I will discover that place and why I am called there. They have said to the questions just voiced, come and help us…and we are counting on their truthfulness and readiness for our ministry there.
So paralleling the season of grief here, however, is an anticipation of things to come at Highland Park. Hellos (o.k. howdy’s ) await me in Austin.
Some of you have wondered if now is really the best time for me to leave; the church is so well placed, postured to live into God’s good future. Aren’t there some things left yet to be done here, you’ve asked. Always. A little book I re-read recently puts pastoral ministry in perspectives that serve us all well: “Even as you plan for a long pastorate, realize that all ministers are interim. There’s a certain peace to recognizing that fact.”
(Kurt Schuerrman). The great Baptist minister Carlyle Marney, who helped to found Highland Park in the 1950’s, once remarked that he always went to bed with a measure of guilt; there was always one more call to make, parishioner to visit, strategy to revise, etc.
The work of the kingdom is always incomplete and partial but we do what we can, where we can, while we can.
Now a word about the Providence of God as I have come to understand such a thing in the midst of it all. Jesus invites us to be free from anxiety about the future because of who God is—not who the minister is. God’s providential care watches over all of us and is working for my good and your good and Highland Park’s good, and the good of this great church in Lawrence. If we continue as those called according to God’s purpose, we will see the goodness of God worked out in all the circumstances of our lives.
I believe that God led me to this place and to you and had spiritual lessons for us to learn, and ministries to do together, namely campus ministry to all those Jayhawks just two blocks away. God has been good to bring the kingdom close to us in some remarkable ways in this past decade, at moments and times closer than I’ve ever experienced before and I fear closer than I may ever experience again. But there is more of the Kingdom that God wants to give to you and to me in the days ahead. So, Jesus says, “fear not, little flock, for it is God’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom.”
I trust that God will provide, for me and for us all. It is my deepest conviction that God is already working, and planning, and seeing ahead regarding our futures. You have often heard me tell you how I regard being able to see and discern (often later) God’s will. I like the analogy of seeing God’s will from a higher plane as one might view a parade. There’s a parade today isn’t there, later this afternoon through downtown Lawrence to honor the basketball team.
Where we view the parade makes all the difference. From curbside, at 9th and Massachusetts let’s say, all you get is what is passing by you at that moment, immediately in front of you. The clown with floppy shoes, the horses, the trumpets and trombones, the floats, the individual players on the team riding in cars. But your view is too limited, too close.
But if you go to the top of a building, say the tip-top of the Douglas County courthouse, you can see the entire parade route, all the parade entries, all the bands, all the animals, all of the National Champions! Everyone, everything…from a higher place, a google-earth perspective, a heavenly plane.
One thing is certain: at both the curb and at skyscraper level, God is good.
In time, we will see…the vision and perhaps we too will hear, Come over and help us. The voice I’ve heard has a Texas twang to it and I’ve concluded that God has called us to preach the gospel to them.
Thanks be to God. Amen and amen.
"My thanks to H. Stephen Shoemaker for his assistance in discerning vocational call."