May 11, 2014 – John 10:1-10
John 10:1-10
He Calls his Sheep
4th Sunday of Easter – May 11, 2014
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
He calls his own sheep by name and calls them out.
He calls them out, Jesus says.
The shepherd calls the sheep out of the sheepfold.
I’ve been invited by our national church to preach today on the importance of call and of calling.
This Sunday has been designated by the ELCIC as Vocational Sunday.
Vocation is a word that means “calling”: it’s related to the word for “voice.”
The church understands this call from Jesus to be a call to serve other people.
Unfortunately it has come to mean “the calling to ordained ministry” or
“the calling to be a pastor.”
But it would be a mistake to narrow the meaning of calling to just that.
For one thing, our church has not one but two ways of serving publicly and accountably.
We have two streams of rostered ministry: the ordained ministry of pastors,
as well as the ministry of diaconal ministers.
But more important than that, the shepherd calls all of us – every single baptized person –
into a life of service.
We all have callings – most of us more than one.
But today the church wants me especially to reflect on the calling to rostered ministry,
because our church has great need of pastors and diaconal ministers.
So I do this with some hesitation.
But I’ll do it – and then I’ll undo it!
Okay: first for the doing.
It was suggested that I speak a bit about what call means to me.
It was suggested that I speak a bit about my own call to ministry.
I don’t think I’ve ever done this before.
Again, I hesitate to do it because I don’t want the emphasis on me:
I want it on the Great Shepherd of the Sheep – that would be Jesus.
Nevertheless, one of you did ask me the other day how I became a pastor,
so I’ve been thinking about it.
In any case, many of you know that I never planned on being a pastor.
My mother thought I would be a good pastor, but you know how that is:
when you’re 15 or 16 you don’t put a lot of stock in what your mother says!
Nevertheless, I never forgot what she said.
Later, others would suggest I would make a good pastor.
I didn’t put a lot of stock in that either.
I just didn’t really see myself that way.
And the reason was this: my dad was a pastor and a very effective one.
But we are very different kinds of people in some ways.
It was difficult for me to imagine being the kind of pastor he was,
and, after all, he was really the only pastor I had any great exposure to for
the first 17 years of my life.
I just couldn’t be a pastor like that.
And that is true.
So, for all you folks at home, the first lesson is: if you think God is calling you to be a pastor,
you have to know that God will work through whatever personality you’ve been given.
You don’t have to become someone else first.
But it took me a long time to discover that.
I’m glad I did.
Well, I wasn’t interested in being a pastor, but I was interested in religion.
So I studied world religions: that way I could learn about religion without committing to it.
And that was a wonderful experience.
I learned two things: first, that the religions are very different from one another and
can’t be reduced to the same thing.
But I also learned that they have some things in common that need to be celebrated and that
that we can talk to and learn from one another: that was a valuable lesson.
For I learned that God is at work in many places we would never expect –
and that was somehow very comforting.
As I learned more, I became more interested in Christianity’s relationship with other religions.
That meant I would have to learn more about Christianity, which I didn’t really know a lot about!
So I went to theology school.
Lots of people there thought I should be a pastor.
Predictably I said No thank you! But I kept studying.
No in order to complete a theology degree, you have to do an internship –
that is, you have to be a student pastor for a year.
For this I was sent to Edson, Alberta.
I was kind of dreading internship, but the thing is, I had a wonderful time!
Who knew! God has a tremendous sense of humour, right?
The work went well, I really enjoyed it, and the people there – you guessed it – told me
I should really be a pastor.
After that I continued to study world religions for a couple more years,
but I didn’t get the same sense of engagement that I had when I was a student pastor.
So after those two years I took the call here – and the rest is history!
The thing is: many of my gifts were engaged by this particular kind of.
And that’s part of figuring out whether the shepherd is calling you to this work.
In a famous definition of how you know whether or not God is calling you to something,
Frederick Buechner wrote, “You can be pretty sure God is calling you to something if
the world needs the thing you feel called to, and if you get a kick out of doing it.”
That’s not bad, and I think it’s true as far as it goes.
It’s a kick to use your gifts in ways that are needed, that’s for sure.
But sometimes God calls you to things that need to be done that you will not get a kick out of.
I can say that 95% percent of the time, maybe 97 or 98% of the time,
I get a kick out of what I do, even though this work often seems very difficult to me.
But occasionally God has called me to some work over the years that I have not wanted to do.
Deal with conflict, for instance.
Yet, I’m sure God called me to that, at least looking back on it.
Another thing I want to say is this:
I’m not one of those people who has a great passion for being a pastor.
It’s not something I’ve always wanted to do.
It’s not like it was my dream job.
When I was a boy I didn’t have Ken dolls that I dressed up like pastors.
My whole identity is not wrapped up in being a pastor.
I don’t really have a passion for being a pastor.
But I do have a passion for Christ, and I have a passion for God’s mission to love, bless, heal and
set free this whole world and every person in it – it’s that big drama that excites me.
I think my particular limited gifts suit the role I’ve been called to play in that much larger drama.
Some of you sitting here this morning
(or some of those in the Sunday School, either students or teachers) will be
called to this role too –
but only if we help them hear that the Shepherd is calling them –
by saying to them what all those people said to me over the years:
I think you’d make a good pastor. This is important!
Our church desperately needs good pastors and
good diaconal ministers for the sake of its mission.
But – and here’s where I want to undo what I’ve said – it would be a mistake to
privilege that call over any other call.
When Jesus calls the sheep out – out into the world – he doesn’t just call the sheep
that are wearing the cute little sheep clerical collars.
He calls all the sheep out into the world to extend his work and his mission to love, bless,
and heal and feed this whole world and every person in it.
What I love most about being a pastor has nothing to do really with the office of pastor itself:
what I love most is working with you, engaging with you, my fellow sheep,
in that mission, in that much larger drama in which we all have callings.
What I love most is the partnership we share in feeding the hungry and caring for the vulnerable.
That’s what excites me.
The lay assisting minister and I model this, right, by leading worship together?
We model it by serving one another and by sharing a book and holding it for each other.
And the lay leaders and I engage in this partnership together at council by
working and talking and discerning together what God is calling us to do.
What I love about being a pastor here is that we are discovering what God is calling us
all to do together – and engaging in it!
I think God calls us to very concrete things.
At the end of the service, the assisting minister will send you out to the places
the Good Shepherd leads you out to:
to serve every person you encounter in whatever calling God has called you to.
When the assisting minister declares,
“Go: Share the Good News! Go: Remember the poor! Go: Serve the Lord!” it is as if
the Shepherd himself were calling you out!
I am actually envious of the lay people.
As a pastor I am kind of a pariah on society:
I don’t really produce anything and I don’t really make anything.
I am dependent on all of you sharing your income from the things you’ve made and
from your labour so that I can put a roof over my head and food on the table.
You are really the ones the shepherd “calls out.”
Whatever you do, wherever you are when you leave this place,
you must understand that the shepherd is calling you to those things and those places
in order to serve his mission to love, bless and
heal the whole world and every person in it.
Whether as a grandparent changing diapers. Or as a parent raising children.
Or as an educator. Or as a parent council member at your kid’s school.
Or as a person working retail. Or as a student. Or as an accountant. Or as an engineer.
Or as a tradesperson. Or as a friend. Or as a person who opens their home to a person in need.
Or as one who cooks meals for the hungry. Or as a volleyball coach. Or in countless other ways.
You must understand that you can serve Christ and his mission by bringing healing, and dignity,
and well-being, and companionship, and usefulness to all these arenas.
You must understand that when the Good Shepherd calls you out he calls you out to
serve the mission in all these places and in all these ways.
Helping you hear that and helping you discern that is what is exciting about being a pastor.
See: what excites me personally about being a pastor can’t be separated from what
God is doing among all of us here in worship – feeding and inspiring and equipping us –
and what God calls you out from here to do out there.
And the great good news is that the Good Shepherd goes ahead of you.
And is there, wherever he calls you.
You are not alone – I have discovered that in spades in my own calling here at FLC.
Every one of you in some way has made his presence manifest to me.
The shepherd was as good as his word:
he goes ahead of us, and meets us in the places he calls us.
So: on this Vocational Sunday, ask yourself: what is the shepherd calling me out to?
What are you already doing that the shepherd is calling you to understand as a calling?
And who among us right now is the shepherd calling into rostered ministry in our church?
Let’s tell them, because they won’t hear the shepherd calling them if we don’t help them.
At convention a couple of weeks ago I had this word of advice to a new pastor:
I have learned that the most important thing in being a pastor is this:
you have to trust the people.
You have to trust the lay leadership, and you have trust the people.
Love Christ, love scripture, and love the people – which is my mantra – but above all,
trust the people:
trust the people to hear when the Good Shepherd calls them into mission,
and trust the people to follow.
Jesus trusts the sheep to hear and to follow,
Jesus trusts the baptized people of God to hear and to follow – and so should we.
It is a privilege to trust you and to work with you and together to discern how
the Good Shepherd continues to call us into the great good mission to
love, bless and heal this world and every person in it.
So together let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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