“In the eleventh century, King Henry III of Bavaria grew tired of court life and the pressures of being a monarch. He made application to Prior Richard at a local monastery, asking to be accepted as a contemplative and spend the rest of his life in the monastery. ‘Your Majesty,’ said Prior Richard, ‘do you understand that the pledge here is one of obedience? That will be hard because you have been a king.’

‘I understand,’ said Henry. ‘The rest of my life I will be obedient to you, as Christ leads you.’

‘Then I will tell you what to do,’ said Prior Richard. ‘Go back to your throne and serve faithfully in the place where God has put you.’ When King Henry died, a statement was written: ‘The King learned to rule by being obedient.’ When we tire of our roles and responsibilities, it helps to remember God has planted us in a certain place and told us to be a good accountant or teacher or mother or father. Christ expects us to be faithful where he puts us.”

We often view the idea of calling as directed only at a select few…those chosen for a very specific purpose…those chosen for a role in ministry. But all of us who’ve chosen to follow Jesus and his teachings are called…just like King Henry III of Bavaria. The question then is “How will we respond to that call?” In our passages this morning from Jonah and Mark, we see a contrast of two responses to the call of God. In the Old Testament, we see Jonah reluctantly accepting the call to prophesy to Nineveh. Prior to our reading for today, Jonah had actively resisted the calling. In contrast to that, Simon and Andrew and the sons of Zebedee welcome the call of Jesus without question. They simply step out of their boats, leave their families and lives behind, and follow Jesus. You couldn’t get two much more different responses to the call of God than that. Reluctance on the one hand and eagerness on the other.

This leads me to ask two questions. First, which am I? Maybe you are asking yourself that same question. Am I serving God reluctantly or eagerly? And if you are anything like me, the answer to that question often varies by the day…sometimes by the moment. And perhaps like Jonah, those times of reluctance come when God calls us to do something that we really don’t want to do. Jonah did not like the Ninevites. They were Gentiles and, more than that, they were enemies of Israel. They represented everything that Jonah disliked, everything that was opposite of who he was. So, when God called him to go to Nineveh and prophesy to the Ninevites, Jonah resisted. In fact, Jonah ran away from God’s call. What could we be called to do that would make us run the other way?

When I was first called by God to become a pastor, I ran. Maybe not as far as Tarshish, but I did not want to be a preacher. And I fought that call for a while. I remember when I was in college and the college chaplain came up to me and asked me if I’d ever thought about becoming a pastor. I quite literally laughed in his face and said there was no way I was becoming a pastor. That just was not my calling. Boy, was I in denial. Interestingly enough, only two years later when I was asked a very similar question by my pastor at the time, I had a very different answer. I don’t think I even chuckled that time. God had worked on my reluctance and changed my heart. Jonah never really lost the reluctance, but he did eventually succumb to God’s call on his life. And God changed the hearts of the entire city of Nineveh because of it. It says in the text, “And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.” And “when God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.” When we follow God’s call on our lives, whether reluctantly or eagerly, God can do amazing things through us.

That brings me to the second question I asked myself as I studied these passages this week. How do we know what God is calling us to? This is a question I’ve watched a lot of friends and family members wrestle with over the years. And one thing I’ve come to realize from those experiences, that I think our text from the gospel of Mark confirms, is that God usually calls us to things that are not all that different from what we are already doing. In Mark 1, Jesus calls four fishermen to follow him. And he says to them, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” Jesus is not calling them to change professions or to do something completely unrelated to what they have spent their lives doing up to that point. Jesus simply calls them to follow and says that HE will transform what they are doing into something new. Instead of merely fishing for food, these disciples will now fish for people. It is different, yes. But it is not entirely removed from who they are and what they know.

God does not call us to be who or what we are not. God calls us simply to follow as we are. And God will take our gifts and our skills and use them for his purpose and will. “Follow me and I will make you fish for people,” Jesus says. If Simon and Andrew had been carpenters, perhaps Jesus would have said something like, “Follow me and I will make you build bridges to connect people to me.” It’s not quite as poetic sounding perhaps, but my point is that Jesus did not call them to be something other than what they were. But he formed their gifts in ways that expanded the kingdom of God and furthered his mission of love. I think God even used Jonah’s reluctance for a higher purpose. If the Ninevites felt toward the Israelites the same way Jonah felt toward them, then perhaps it took receiving the message from an Israelite who very clearly didn’t want to be delivering that message to them for them to see that the message itself was true. Maybe Jonah’s reluctance helped solidify the truth of his words for the king of Nineveh and his people.

Many times, as Christians, we get really wrapped up in discerning “how” God wants to use us, when perhaps what God is calling us to do is simply to follow him and live the lives into which we’ve already been placed to the best of our abilities. And maybe as we do that, God will make us into something new.

So what does it mean to follow Jesus? For those first disciples, the meaning was obvious. They were to literally get out of their boats and follow him where he went. For us, the meaning is similar, yet a little more subjective and more difficult to discern. But I believe that essentially it comes down to what Jesus proclaimed when he was asked what the greatest commandment in the law is. Jesus said, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” So what does it mean to follow Jesus? It means to love God and love our neighbor. When we do that, we follow in the footsteps of Jesus, whose whole mission on this earth was to show the love of God for God’s people.

Following Jesus, may then lead us to a different calling. The Apostle Paul talked about this in his letter to the church in Ephesus. He wrote, “But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift…The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.” It seems to me that what Paul is saying here is that when we follow Christ, our diverse gifts are brought together in unity for the kingdom and for building up the body of Christ. I am reminded of the words of youth poet laureate Amanda Gorman at the inauguration earlier this week. She talked about unity and diversity and she ended her moving poem with these lines:

When day comes, we step out of the shade of flame and unafraid.

The new dawn balloons as we free it.

For there is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it.

If only we’re brave enough to be it.

God has called each of us. That calling is both the same and different. It is a calling to follow Jesus. Yet that calling looks different for you than for me because each of us has different gifts and skills and passions. Listen to God, open yourself to wonder about the calling God has placed upon your life, and then live into that calling using whatever gifts and skills you have. And see how God will use you. If he can use Jonah to save a city and the disciples to begin his church, then God can use any of us for wonderful things…even in the times when we are reluctant. Thanks be to God! Amen!