2-10-2019 “Calling the Least Likely”

Sunday, February 10, 2019 ~ Epiphany V

Sermon: “Calling the Least Likely”

Epistle Lesson: 1 Corinthians 15:1-11

Last week we talked about Jeremiah — actually, I showed you how Daniel 8:5-8 foretold that the Patriots would beat the Rams in Super Bowl LIII, and I was right. Never doubt anything I say! We talked about Jeremiah and Jesus preaching in his hometown synagogue. Jeremiah felt unworthy and local familiarity with Jesus drew contempt from his fellow Nazoreans. We also talked about Paul’s love poem — 1 Corinthians 13 — and how the prophetic task, to which we are all called, is to preach God’s Word of love.

I want to touch upon last week’s passage from Jeremiah again today, especially in light of this week’s lesson from Paul.

As you may recall from last Sunday, Jeremiah feels as if he is unable to be a prophet of God, because he is unworthy. He feels unqualified, because he is so young. God places his Word in Jeremiah’s mouth and sends him forth. After all, God preordained Jeremiah for this task, knowing him before he was even in the womb. Jeremiah thinks that God has made a mistake, but we quickly learn that it is Jeremiah who is mistaken.

“God’s choice is not unique to Jeremiah,” Philip Graham Ryken writes, “it is true for every believer.”[1] Ryken goes on to say this is what the doctrine of divine election is all about: being called and consecrated (or set apart) for a particular ministry. Remember what Jesus said in John 15:16? “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit.” And this is true for us as well: we are chosen by God in spite of our shortcomings. John Goldingay talks about this in his book Jeremiah for Everyone. He writes,

Last week I took part in a conference on God, the church, and disability. One participant was a woman who has been an ordained priest, but she has a speech impediment that makes it hard to understand what she says, and she has had difficulty finding a position in a parish. Another was a paraplegic man who spends much of his time selling candy in the street, but he has raised thousands of dollars by doing so and has supported five needy children in India and Africa with the proceeds; he’s also visited India and Africa to meet them. He was hard to understand, too, but he had a vibrant testimony mostly given through his father.[2]

Goldingay concludes asking, “How could these people have the courage to believe they had a ministry to exercise?” He doesn’t give the answer to this rhetorical question, but the answer is obvious: God set them apart for a particular ministry and empowered them to fulfill it despite the physical drawbacks they faced.

That bring us to the Apostle Paul and what he says at the beginning of the fifteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians.

First Corinthians 15 is interesting. Paul spends a great deal of time in this chapter defending belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ and, therefore, our future resurrections. But before he jumps into this lengthy theological reflection, he enters a sort of confessional mode. The very definition of an Apostle is one who not only followed Jesus, but was chosen as a witness to his resurrection. Paul met the ascended Jesus in a vision on the road to Damascus. He didn’t know Jesus during Christ’s earthly life. Not only that, but before he was a disciple of Christ, Paul persecuted the Church! He acknowledges this, saying, “For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle.” Therefore, what business does he have preaching the resurrection? Wouldn’t that be like the President naming his failed assassin to his cabinet?

Again, we know the answer. Paul is chosen in spite of himself, in spite of his unworthiness. And it isn’t just Jeremiah and Paul. As I’ve mentioned before:

Moses was a murderer who had a stutter.
Abraham and Sarah were in their 90s.
Jacob was a liar.
Rahab was a prostitute.
David was an adulterer.
John the Baptist ate bugs.
Mary Magdalene was demon-possessed.
…and if you still feel unworthy, just remember, Lazarus was dead! (You have no excuse.)

We have life all figured out, don’t we? Success is based on how much money you have or how good-looking you are. We emulate the Kardashians, not the people who give of themselves to feed the hungry or shelter the homeless, but that’s a sermon for another time. My point is simply that we feel we have to rise to a certain bar, achieve a certain standard in order to be commendable, let alone acceptable. The Scriptures make it plain: this is not how God selects those whom he wants to serve. You can be called into the ministry even if you do not possess a graduate degree in theology. Your “value” in God’s eyes has nothing to do with how wealthy, strong, or attractive you may be. It isn’t even based on piety: how holy you are — because he qualifies the unqualified; he makes the unrighteous righteous; he makes the unworthy worthy. If you apply human standards to God, you’ll never measure up.

Thankfully we do not have to, because God is the one who decides. God is the one who calls. God is the one who ordains, which simply means to “set-aside” for a particular purpose. By virtue of your baptism, you have been ordained. Remember the words of the legendary Christian devotionalist Oswald Chambers, who wrote, “The call of God is not just for a select few but for everyone.”[3]

If nothing else, I want you to use this Sabbath to think about your gifts and your calling. Think big, and think beyond the limits you impose on your imagination. We are our biggest critics, whereas God is our biggest supporter. Try to see yourself, if only for the moment, the way God sees you. God stands before you in awe; you are a masterpiece, a work of sacred art. God longs for you to respond to the call he has placed in your heart, to serve him in the service of others.

Let us conclude by going back to the text for a moment. In analyzing today’s passage from 1 Corinthians 15, Bible scholar Simon J. Kistemaker references Galatians 1:15-16, in which Paul states, “when God, who set me apart from my mother’s womb and called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son in me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles.” Kistemaker claims that “God had appointed Paul from his mother’s womb to be an apostle.”[4] This brings us back to Jeremiah — how God knew him before he was in his mother’s womb and appointed him to be a prophet to the nations. Maybe that’s why you are here as well. Before you were a twinkle in your earthly father’s eye, you were a prophet in your heavenly father’s eye. Marion L. Soards claims that Paul “understood [God’s] grace to be unmerited and transforming.[5] Let that unmerited grace transform you as your respond to God’s call with an Amen and an Alleluia! Amen.

[1] Philip Graham Ryken, Jeremiah and Lamentations: From Sorrow to Hope (Wheaton: Crossway, 2001), 21.

[2] John Goldingay, Jeremiah for Everyone (Louisville: Westminster John Know Press, 2015), 9.

[3] Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, January 14 entry.

[4] Simon J. Kistemaker, 1 Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1993), 534.

[5] Marion L. Soards, 1 Corinthians (Peabody: Hendrickson’s Publishers 1999), 320.