Scripture: Mark 1: 16-20
What is your calling? Many of us might respond to this question with what we are dong vocationally, or what we dream of doing as a job someday. We often associate “calling” with our life’s work.
Jesus uses it a different way in our story today. In verse 20 Jesus calls brothers James and John to him. The Greek word attributed to Jesus is kalew. It means to call or summon in the literal sense, as in, “Son, come here. You’ve got to get your homework done”—that kind of call. Kalew also retains a deeper meaning though, in Greek. It can mean the giving of an attribution to someone, also translated to mean “giving a name.” What Jesus did to those fishermen by calling them to follow him was to give them a new name—disciple. This calling, this naming, changed the trajectory of the rest of their lives. Peter, Andrew, James, and John stepped into a new life story when they decided to follow Jesus. Jesus named them, and they couldn’t resist the loving power behind such an adoption. Fishing nets drop from their fingers. They step out of the boat, mud gushes between their toes, and they turn to follow the one who named them.
How then, do we follow Christ? How do we follow in the footsteps of the disciples—who had as much or more than we have to lose by dropping their nets–and live into the name of “disciple?” Our own nets of obligations, commitments, and just plain stuff entangle us; we drag our feet in following because we think we might need some of that old baggage on our new journey with Jesus.[1] How do we live into his call, his naming of us?
The founder of Methodism and one of my own spiritual fathers, John Wesley, teaches that the call to follow Jesus can happen in a moment on a lakeshore, but more likely is to be the work of a lifetime. A distinctive mark of the Wesleyan heritage is the understanding of life as a spiritual pilgrimage deep into the heart of God.[2] For Wesley, the life of faith consisted both of significant “lakeshore moments” in which we offer our lives to Christ—moments of justification—AND daily ongoing times of commitment—moments of sanctification. Wesley understood his following of Christ best as a journey of a lifetime that he committed to walk daily. Wesley wrote in one of his letters on the kalew, the calling of Christ on our lives. He stated “the hope of our calling [is] to know that our hope is sincerity, not perfection; not to do well, but to do our best.”[3 As Wesley understood calling, the attempt to “drop the nets” and live into the name of “disciple” is both lifelong, and a daily commitment to do our best—such a following of the call ultimately brings great gladness.
The well-known pastor and episcopal priest, Barbara Brown Tayor, writes of a time in her life when she was struggling mightily with how Christ might be calling her. She simply didn’t know what she was to do and be. So one midnight, in great frustration and exasperation she fell to her knees in prayer and said, “Okay, God. You need to level with me. What do you want me to be? What do you want me to do? What are you calling me to do.” She says that she felt a powerful sense of God saying “Do what pleases you. Belong to me, but do what pleases you.” She says it struck her as very strange that God’s call could actually touch a place of greatest joy within her, that she could be called to do the thing that pleases her the most. Following God’s call means doing that which brings us the greatest gladness. Joy is the biggest measure of how we discern our calling, of how we are to use our gifts.[4] As Wesley understood it, our calling is the journey of our lifetime, made up of daily commitments to do our best with joy.
Another Christian writer, Frederick Buechner says, “Our calling is where our deepest gladness and the world’s hunger meet.” Think about that. “Our calling is where our deepest gladness and the world’s hunger meet.” Jesus’s call to you on the lakeshore is ultimately about bringing you into joy as you serve this church, this community, this world. Perhaps deep gladness is what made Peter, Andrew, James, and John drop their nets. Perhaps deep gladness is what could make you drop nets, too. Pull your feet out of that mud. Step into Jesus naming you as a disciple. Christ is calling you into joy.
[1] Cynthia D. Weems, “Reflections on the Lectionary” Christian Century January 11, 2011, 21.
[2] Richard Heizenrater, Wesley and the People Called Methodists (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995), 321.
[3] John Wesley, Letters, 25: 318.
[4] Rev. Dr. Thomas Long, “ Where You Never Expected to Be” 30 minutes.org aired on Oct. 22, 2006. Accessed on January 17, 2012.
Yoga
Backbends bring a sense of joy. Ustrasana, or camel pose, is a backbend with varying degrees of challenge, so even newcomers to yoga can explore some form of it. The description below is from yogajournal.com, accessed January 14, 2018.
Ustrasana
Step 1
Kneel on the floor with your knees hip width and thighs perpendicular to the floor. Rotate your thighs inward slightly, narrow your hip points, and firm but don’t harden your buttocks. Imagine that you’re drawing your sitting bones up, into your torso. Keep your outer hips as soft as possible. Press your shins and the tops of your feet firmly into floor.
Step 2
Rest your hands on the back of your pelvis, bases of the palms on the tops of the buttocks, fingers pointing down. Use your hands to spread the back pelvis and lengthen it down through your tail bone. Then lightly firm the tail forward, toward the pubis. Make sure though that your front groins don’t “puff” forward. To prevent this, press your front thighs back, countering the forward action of your tail. Inhale and lift your heart by pressing the shoulder blades against your back ribs.
Step 3
Now lean back against the firmness of the tail bone and shoulder blades. For the time being keep your head up, chin near the sternum, and your hands on the pelvis. Beginners probably won’t be able to drop straight back into this pose, touching the hands to the feet simultaneously while keeping the thighs perpendicular to the floor. If you need to, tilt the thighs back a little from the perpendicular and minimally twist to one side to get one hand on the same-side foot. Then press your thighs back to perpendicular, turn your torso back to neutral, and touch the second hand to its foot. If you’re not able to touch your feet without compressing your lower back, turn your toes under and elevate your heels.
See that your lower front ribs aren’t protruding sharply toward the ceiling, which hardens the belly and compresses the lower back. Release the front ribs and lift the front of the pelvis up, toward the ribs. Then lift the lower back ribs away from the pelvis to keep the lower spine as long as possible. Press your palms firmly against your soles (or heels), with the bases of the palms on the heels and the fingers pointing toward the toes. Turn your arms outwardly so the elbow creases face forward, without squeezing the shoulder blades together. You can keep your neck in a relatively neutral position, neither flexed nor extended, or drop your head back. But be careful not to strain your neck and harden your throat.
Step 5
Stay in this pose anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute. To exit, bring your hands onto the front of your pelvis, at the hip points. Inhale and lift the head and torso up by pushing the hip points down, toward the floor. If your head is back, lead with your heart to come up, not by jutting the chin toward the ceiling and leading with your brain. Rest in Child’s Pose for a few breaths.
Ground of Grace 