God On Line 2
1Samuel 3:1-10, John 1:43-51
HW in HI

If you try to reach St. James’ now by phone, it is more likely that you will get through. We found when we added youth ministry that the phone began to ring off the wall, or off the hook, or whatever. So we added a line. We use it to call out, or for faxes or the internet. We try to keep the other line open. When we signed up for the added phone line, we signed up for the same phone carrier we’ve been using, because our rate is pretty good. What we didn’t know was that we needed to call the carrier, not just the phone company.

We couldn’t figure out what was going on. If we called from line 1 we were paying maybe 10 cents a minute. But line 2 was over 40 cents a minute. We were pretty upset. Like everyone else in America, we’ve learned to make cheap calls.

When I was a little kid we called the grandparents and aunts and uncles on Christmas Day or Christmas Eve, every year. It seems comical now. Everyone had to be gotten together. I come from a family of five children, so that took some doing all on its own. And then everyone had to be within maybe two feet of the phone. Then we passed it like a hot potato. Hollis, say hello to Grandma. Hello Grandma! Ok Roz’s turn. Say hello. And so on. One other thing. We talked really loud. Shouted, I guess. Those calls were made on a great big rotary dial phone by calling the long distance operator. They usually lasted three minutes each. The cost of a phone call was very different in those days. Those were expensive calls.

We don’t worry so much about phone calls now. Lots of people put in a second line just so that their computer can talk to another computer. Lots of people take little phones with them in their pockets. We talk a lot. Talk is cheap.

This morning we’re going to talk about the kind of calls reserved for line 2, before we got a cheaper rate. Expensive calls. The calls that come from the deep, from beyond, from a still small voice.

The prophet Samuel is called by God: Samuel, Samuel. Jesus calls to Philip, “Follow me!” That is a call not just for the elite. Not just for Samuel and Philip and the apostles. That is a call for all of us. God on line 2.. But what does it mean?

Perhaps the best explanation of discipleship I have ever seen was put together by Doug Stevens, a pastor in Walnut Creek, California. He writes of Christianity as having varying paths of orbit. He calls it the Cosmology of Discipleship. The center of the orbiting bodies was the Son. Which is to say the Son of God.

O The outer-most orbit is by someone who knows a Christian or is looking for “something.” That level is called Friendship. This person can be knocked out of orbit very easily.

O The next closer level of orbit is called Exposure. At this point we are willing to hear the Good News of Christ Jesus. We’ve moved a little closer, We know there might be something there. We go to church and we listen.

O Eventually we become sure that there is truth in Christ, truth in scripture. We struggle, perhaps, with the incredibly imperfect people in church. We watch people bicker and wonder why these people, if they live lives committed to God – we wonder why the people inside the church so often say hurtful things. We wonder why the joy of God hasn’t permeated their souls. Still God beckons to us, saying something like, “Remember, I forgave Peter who denied me in my darkest hour. I also forgive my followers who forget and say hurtful things. I will forgive you, too. Follow me!” And somewhere around this time, one makes a Decision. It may come like a flash of light, or take years, with a feeling that one is being nudged. However it happens, this is the orbit of Decision. Some might call it conversion.

O The orbit moves even closer. Faith and knowledge grow. The believers who form the Body of Christ, those people whose wounds and pain were so obvious earlier – they become the people we know and care for. Stevens calls this orbit Implantation. There is probably a better name for it somewhere. Perhaps we should call it Following. Because by this time we follow Christ. Sometimes intensely, sometimes weakly. But we are Following.

O The closet orbit he calls Ministry. This is where we find Disciples. The on-fire Christians and the slowly simmering Christians. Those are the people that have heard the call. It is not imagined, it is real. They are ordinary, every day folk. Like you and like me. There are probably some in this church right now. Before I go any further, I just want to offer this one thought from Sister Katherine Theiler: the worst sin is spiritual pride. That’s when you think you’ve really got your Christian act together and that you moving ever closer to God. That you’ve almost achieved Christian “nirvana”. She said that when you start to experience spiritual pride you have opened the door for evil. So, while there may very well be some true disciples here this morning, let’s not guess who they are, and let’s not hope its us. God knows.

Tomorrow we celebrate the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. He was a huge Christian – but please, don’t tell the government or they’ll take the holiday away. You’ll notice that at present the government believes it allows for two Christian holidays. Christmas and Good Friday. But there is a third: Martin Luther King, Jr. day. Most people think he was just a really good man. But he was a huge Christian! He didn’t start out that way. The Rev. Dr. King started out as a pretty regular African American child in 1929. His father was a Christian preacher, so he might have skipped right past that outer-most orbit and moved immediately to exposure. I’ve been told that when one of your parents is in ordained ministry, you get a lot of exposure to the faith. His faith grew enough to make a decision for Christ, to become a follower. He majored in sociology and received a PhD in philosophy before entering ordained ministry in 1954. He was 25 years old. A kid, really. A year later Mrs. Rosa Parks was coming home from a long hard day at work and she didn’t want to give up her seat on the bus to a white person. Martin Luther King, Jr. was 26 years old. The same age as our youth minister. A bus boycott happened in Montgomery. The local clergy were scared. African Americans had very little power. There was a pretty good chance the whole thing would blow up in their faces. They asked the youngest, newest clergy person in Montgomery to be their spokesperson. Maybe the Holy Spirit whispered in their ears. Maybe they were scared for their families. Whatever. Martin said, “Yes. Sure. OK – I guess.”

Somewhere along the line Martin became a disciple. Martin was on fire for God. The government thinks he was just a good man. The first speech of his professional life was a sermon, and the last speech of his life was a sermon. The last one was recorded for history. It was delivered at the headquartyers of the Church of God in Christ, at that time it was the largest African American pentecostal denomination in the country. He spoke of Jesus’ parable of the good samaritan: a man was robbed and beaten by thieves and left to die. No one helped. Not the levite, not the priest. They were afraid. It was a dangerous road and they wondered, “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me? But the samaritan came by and asked, “If I don’t stop to help this man, what will happen to him?” That is one of the questions that true disciples ask: If I don’t, who will?

Following God to the point of discipleship changes our lives. Most of us haven’t the temerity to act as King acted. Probably when he began, King didn’t either. The year 2000 demands something more from us than nominal Christianity. Because God asks it of us: Discipleship. But discipleship costs. Must cost. Always costs. Consider Mother Teresa. She lived to a ripe old age working with the poorest of the poor on the streets of India. Consider the disviple Paul 2000 years ago – a tireless evangelist. In the end he was crucified upside down. Joan of Arc. Bernard Mizeki (martyred in Rhodesia 1896) The list goes on and on: six Franciscan Friars who were crucified in Nagasaki in 1597, Polycarp – Bp and martyr of Smyrna 156, Alphege, Bp of Canterbury maryred 1012; Justin, early Christian author, martyred 167 32 martyrs of Uganda, 1886 Boniface, missionary to Germany, mrtyred 754

Barbara Brown Taylor wrote the story of Katybelle, a woman who cared for the children in her family when she was young. One afternoon she had them draw pictures. “First you draw a yard with trees and flowers. Now you draw a pretty white house right in the middle of it, with a red chimney and little children playing in the yard.” “Now what?” they asked. “Now you put a picket fence around the house to keep the dogs out, and don’t forget a gate.” Then she said, “You think you’re through? You girls ain’t through! Now you draw that whole sky on fire and that pretty house going up in flames because that’s how it’s gonna be at the end of time.” Taylor says, “Maybe she knew something I did not. Maybe God tricked people with pretty pictures and set them on fire; to teach them a lesson about what was important and what was not.”

The point I am trying to make is not that following Jesus means you will lose your life. Although you may. And it is not that following Jesus means becoming ordained. Although it could. But following Jesus means something. It means putting your life in God’s hands, and letting God set you on fire. There is something compelling, isn’t there, about those words of 2,000 years ago: follow me! When we hear those words, God is calling on line 2. Once we answer it’s an expensive phone call. A heavy, old, solid gold rotary dial phone. And somehow I don’t think God is about to switch carriers!