In pondering the sermon for this Sunday, I discovered that I actually had two sermons. This is the one that won’t get preached.
Text: Matthew 5:13-16
In the movie Lion King, Simba is born into greatness. A descendant of the king, he is told from a young age that he will one day rule over the pride land. He doesn’t do anything to deserve this honor. It’s just who he is. It’s his identity—not because of who HE is, but because of who his father is. And Simba is raised to be confident and comfortable in this calling. He can sing and dance with his friends, saying, “I just can’t wait to be king,” because his calling is clear to him.
But then he starts listening to other voices. After a serious accident, Simba listens to his uncle who tells him he has failed at life and must run away. And Simba does. He runs away and loses sight of who he was born to be…he loses sight of his calling.
Does this happen to us? In our baptism we are declared children of God and co-heirs with Christ. “You are the salt of the earth,” Jesus says. “You are the light of the world.” In the best of circumstances, when we are children and youth, adults around us help us see the possibilities of our future, even while pointing out the darkness we are to stay away from. And every now and then we are so caught up in the vision of who our Father is, and who we have been called to be, that we might even sing and dance about it.
But then, we make a mistake. We do something or we experience something that crushes our innocence and destroys our confidence in who we’ve been created to be. And we listen to those voices—internal and external—telling us we are no longer children of the king, but instead we are royal failures. Our salt loses its saltiness, our light goes under a basket. We run away. And our true self—our core calling and giftedness—remains unopened.
For Peter, it happened when he denied Jesus and thought he was no longer fit to be called a disciple. For Jonah it happened when he ran the opposite direction from where God told him to go. For David it happened when he let his physical desires cloud his judgment and ended up tearing apart a family. For Simba it happened when he believed Scar that he was responsible for his father’s death and therefore no longer fit to be king. Even for Jesus, it happened when he was in the wilderness and tempted to put his hunger and power before God’s promises.
But in all of these royal failures…all of these demonstrations of people losing sight of their calling and giftedness…the story doesn’t end there. God’s voice comes to Jesus in his baptism and says, “You are my son, with you I am well pleased.” David is reminded that he was chosen by God to be Israel’s king, and Jonah is reminded that he was chosen by God to be a prophet of redemption. Jesus finds Peter in the middle of the night, overwhelmed and exhausted from work, and invites him out of the boat into an experience of walking on the water. And Mufasa’s voice speaks from the cloud as Simba is wrestling with whether he can ever go back to the pride land and says, “Remember who you are. You are my son, and the one true king.”
“Remember who you are. You are my child. With you I am well-pleased. Come. Get out of the boat. Get your feet wet. Claim your gift. Follow your calling.”
Getting out of the boat to follow Jesus into the storm—opening our gifts and following our calling—is about more than just doing what you’re good at and helping people. Sure, that’s part of it. That 3-yr. old who is naturally friendly uses his gifts when he lets another kid play with his toys. That teenager who naturally solves puzzles uses her gifts when she helps her friend make sense of the many college applications and deadlines coming up in their senior year of high school. Adults use their gifts when they work in the kitchen, organize outreach projects, or lead music and worship. Using your gifts, following your calling, is a little bit about identifying where your greatest passion meets the world’s greatest need. But more than that, discerning your call—identifying your gifts and doing something with them—is about hearing and claiming the truth about your core identity. You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world. You are my child, with whom I am well-pleased. You are loved and valuable. You are a child of the King. This is who you are!! Not just your job, but your identity. We said this to Lillie, who we baptized last week… “you are the light of the world. Let your light so shine before others that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” We were saying something to Lillie about her gifts and about her calling. We will say this to the confirmation students next Sunday as their affirm their faith. We are saying something about their identity—who they are and what they’re called to be and do.
Your identity, your calling in life, doesn’t have to do with coming to Sunday School and youth group, whether or not you go through Confirmation, and whether or not you stick around after high school graduation. Your identity—your calling in life—comes from who God has made you to be. You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world. This is who you are. And so, from that grounding, you are free to get your feet wet, to do something with your gifts and calling, to get out of your boat and experience the thrill of following Jesus.
To get out of the boat is to put our deepest trust and confidence in something besides the structure of this world. To get out of the boat is to first and foremost put our trust in Jesus, in whose image we are created, who claims us in baptism and calls us co-heirs to the Kingdom, and who fills each of us—from new born to newly retired and beyond—with gifts. To get out of the boat is to ‘remember who we are.’
This is easy for me to preach, but really hard for me to live. It took me a long time to really claim my calling to work with children and youth—but more than that, to be part of strengthening people of all ages in their faith development. In college I did everything I could to be a good Christian. I joined the Christian student organization and quickly rose to leadership. I led Bible studies, challenged people to think about global mission, and made sure nothing about my life could give God a bad name. But when I was most honest with myself, I was lost. I remember thinking, “If I wasn’t a Christian, who would I be?” “Christian” had become my identity, and if I wasn’t in leadership, or if I wasn’t doing the right kinds of things with my time and following all the right Christian rules, I wasn’t anybody. My core value came from being a Christian. But then a pastor in England my junior year of college had tea with me and invited me to read Luther’s catechism, and I encountered this message of a God who always initiates relationship, always moves towards humanity, always loves unconditionally. I didn’t have to impress God with being a good Christian. In fact, being ‘Christian’–aligning my lifestyle and my convictions with this structure and organization of religion—wasn’t even finally the point. The point was that in Christ, God became man, lived among sinful humanity, conquered death, and claims us—time and time again in spite of our rejection and sinfulness—as beloved children. So I came back to the States, dropped out of leadership and stopped trying to work so hard to ‘be Christian,’ and instead focused on what it meant to follow Jesus. And my senior year of college was leaps and bounds more joy-filled than my first three years. A couple years later I had to acknowledge that working at Panera Bread—where I was working my way up to manager and trainer and which could have been a perfectly decent occupation—was not ultimately my calling. So on good days, my work is a calling. In this work I get to use the gifts God has given me, it doesn’t feel like work, it brings me great joy. But unfortunately, on just as many days, it feels more like a career. And a career and a calling are not the same thing. John Ortberg says it this way: “A career is something I choose for myself; a calling is something I receive. A career is something I do for myself; a calling is something I do for God. A career promises status, money, or power; a calling generally promises difficulty and even some suffering—and the opportunity to be used by God. A career is about upward mobility; a calling generally leads to downward mobility…I know all too well it is possible to turn church work into a career that is about advancement and achievement. It is also possible to make business a calling when it is truly done to serve God and others” (p. 71-72).
Identifying your gifts and finding your calling is not about what job you should or should not do, or what you do with your spare time. It’s not even about being a good Christian. As you learn about your gifts and calling, you might make decisions about your career and your volunteer work, and your life may look pretty ‘Christian’, but ultimately it’s about reclaiming your core self, reclaiming the truth about who you are, and aligning all aspects of your life with who you really are, what God says about you, and how God has gifted you to be part of God’s work in the world. Following Jesus means letting go of the need for gaining safety and security from anything besides the invitation to “Come. Follow me.”
What voices have convinced you of untruths that have resulted in your losing sight of your true self, your core identity, your calling and your giftedness? What are those deep passions, interests, skills and strengths you were aware of years ago that have been pushed aside by the superficial pressure to succeed, stabilize, and sustain? What would it look like in your life to reclaim the statement made to you in your baptism—you ARE the light of the world. Let your light so shine before others that they may see your good works and give glory to your father in heaven? What would it look like for you to get out of the boat and respond to Jesus calling you, “Come, follow me?”
Because you, too, were born into greatness. Your greatness has nothing to do with you, and you didn’t earn it or deserve it. It’s just who you are. It has everything to do with your Heavenly Father. And that makes ALL the difference.