Call and Response
Sermon delivered at University Church on February 9, 2025
Good morning Church.
Our scripture reading today comes from the Gospel according to Luke, Chapter 5, verses 1–11.
Word of God for the People of God.
I was in Philadelphia this week for a big staff meeting at my organization’s headquarters. It was a good visit. Everyone’s really excited for the game this evening, we had a lot of conversations and meetings planning for the rest of 2025, and by putting in some extra hours I was able to not fall too far behind on actual work outside of all the meetings. By Thursday afternoon, I had clocked my 40 hours, felt over-socialized, and was very much ready to enjoy a glass of wine and my book at the airport. But, I hadn’t written a word of this sermon yet. All this to say, I was really relating to Simon Peter on Thursday evening.
In Luke’s telling, this is Simon Peter’s origin story. We find him exhausted after a long night of hard and fruitless labor, cleaning his nets before he ends his shift. Simon hadn’t really asked for this, he wasn’t among the crowds that followed Jesus to hear his sermons. And for whatever reason, this preacher gets into Simon’s boat and Simon is gracious enough to push out from the shore. And then a miracle happens. And then Simon becomes Simon Peter. And later he will become the “rock” on which Jesus says he will build the church. And Peter spends the next 30–35 years in ministry, starting new communities of Christ in Judea and Rome. We as readers have the privilege of knowing how the story is going to unfold; Simon doesn’t. When we first encounter Simon, he has absolutely no conception of how his life is going to change and no idea what he’s actually capable of. I don’t know if many of us would be able to relate to Simon Peter at the end of his life and ministry, but we can definitely relate to him at this moment, when he first hears Jesus’ call.
Now this is a very rich scene filled with a lot of good imagery and themes around call stories. It’s been preached a lot over the past 2,000 years. The most interesting aspects to me, this time around, is the divine il-logic of who is being called and the il-logic of the response. As we know, Simon Peter, James, and John, will become three of the Twelve Apostles; this is also the origin story of that group of companions that Jesus gathers to continue his ministry. If you were going to draft a fantasy-disciple team for the Messiah in 1st Century Judea, well Simon and these guys don’t look so hot. Uneducated, questionable understanding of religious texts, poor, tied down to their work and their families. And this is a theme we will see repeated as Jesus continues to cultivate his community of Apostles; he doesn’t go for religious leaders, elites with wealthy connections, or the other street prophets who were numerous at the time. He calls fishermen, tax collectors, carpenters, and even a guerilla fighter. All of this underlies the truth that anyone can be called to the project of God’s love and liberation. I would go so far to say that everyone has some gift or skill that is needed for building the kin-dom on Earth. But this went against the logic of Simon Peter’s time, when religious leadership was very prescribed and reserved for specific family lineages. This is what Simon Peter believes — he falls on his knees and says, “go from me, I am a sinful man.” I am not worthy of you. This also goes against our logic of a time in which we have over-professionalized ministry.
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There is this term in church leadership, you’ve probably heard it, the “executive pastor” — I hate this term. But it is helpful as an illustration of how many churches function and our more recent evolution as organizational structures. The term started in the Evangelical mega-church space in the 1980s and the basic idea was that the pastor should function like a CEO because churches are really just businesses by another name. This was a popular concept at the time, that good business management translated into good church management and so congregations should restructure themselves around best business practices. Pastors became CEOs, elected lay leaders became Board Members, and congregants became consumers. This is the language that’s used. It seemed to work, for a while. As long as a church could pay staff to take on every aspect of church leadership and organization. The administrative work, then the mission work, then the educational work, then the liturgical work, all became professionalized and commodified with staff assigned to each of these responsibilities all overseen by the Executive Pastor. One of the many, many negative results of this model is that it requires ministry to have formal training and certification; only capital M Ministers can do ministry. So it becomes much more difficult for everyone else to hear and respond to a call.
And back to Peter, Jesus didn’t need a Levite Priest; he needed a fisherman. And not just any fisherman, he needed Peter. There is something that Simon Peter has, there is something James and John have that Jesus needs for his group of Apostles; something that is essential for the establishment of the Church. Maybe it’s something to do with their profession, Jesus does seem to allude to that. Maybe it’s a personality trait. Maybe it’s emotional intelligence. We don’t know.
All we know is thatxs Jesus extends an invitation, and Simon Peter, the first disciple, responds. As we see in this origin story, discipleship as a dynamic of call and a response. Within 11 verses, Jesus calls and Simon responds three different times. The first, the request to be pushed out from the shore; the second, to let down the fishing nets; the third to join Jesus and become a fisher of people. In each case, Jesus presents an invitation that Simon Peter must choose to respond to. And in each case, it’s not the most logical response. Simon agrees to go back out into the water for some guy that stepped into his boat, even though he’s been working all night and was about to go home. Then, he goes against all his years of experience about fishing to cast nets — that had already been cleaned — in water that he knows is empty of fish. And then, he leaves his entire life to follow a guy he met only a couple of hours ago, having professed that he is unworthy to do so. It’s an illogical choice. Why did Peter do any of these things?
Why in the Philly airport, at 6pm after a 10-hour workday waiting on a delayed flight, would I crack open my notebook and start reading through Biblical commentary? Why would I sign up to preach on a Sunday I knew was right after a long work trip? Why would I take on a role that demands I do this multiple times a year when I already have a 9–5? It’s a really good question.
My number one reason why I still wrote a sermon this week is because I’m an Enneagram 9 and the last thing I was gonna do is put the burden of writing it onto someone else. My other reasons point to the underlying logic of this entire story, what Peter and the Apostles and all the disciples since come to know. Remember, this isn’t just Peter’s origin story; in Luke, this is also the origin story of the group of apostles, the genesis of the community that will continue Jesus’ ministry and spread out all over the ancient world. And from their examples, disciples across 2,000 years and all 7 continents have continued that work. This is, in a way, our origin story. Jesus needed Peter to establish the church, he needed each of those Apostles to spread the Gospel, he needed every disciple that has lived since. Every single one of them, every single one of us, had something that the Kin-dom needs. That our church needs.
We could leave all of the work of ministry to our staff and we would be poorer for it. Julian is a fantastic preacher, and every other person who has given a sermon from this pulpit brings a new understanding that he might not. Jeremy, you can tell, has a gift for youth ministry; and there are going to be some activities he doesn’t have the skills to lead. Allen has cultivated a wonderful community of religious exploration, and Julie Less’s series for God Talk were some of the most popular sessions. Vince and Danielle have done an excellent job overseeing our property and financial assets, and they could not run the resale shop or take care of the families who have lived in this building without the passion and the skills of our volunteers. Responding to God’s call, however small it may be, is only illogical if our work isn’t worth it; if the larger project isn’t worthy of us. Within this short scene, Jesus showed Simon Peter that God’s project was worth the talents and skills he would bring, it was worth his time and his labor. I wrote a sermon this week because I had faith that the work would be worth it. For me, and for my church.
Now it is pretty rare that God’s call to ministry manifests as an invitation to leave everything behind — “maybe I should quit my job and go to seminary” or “maybe I should sign up for a couple of years of mission work in Central America.” In my experience, it’s something much more akin to Jesus’ request to Peter to push his boat back from the shore. “Maybe I should come and volunteer one Saturday at the Resale shop” or “Maybe I should check out that film that the Black Lives Matter Committee is hosting” or “Maybe I should call some of the folks in the hospital that have asked for prayers.” Or even, “Maybe I should volunteer to be Board Moderator.” Roisleen — salute. These are opportunities that are more manageable but still require time and labor. I wish that responding to God’s call didn’t require more work; I really do. I’m a recovering Calvinist; I have to remind myself that burnout is not a badge of honor. But response does require work. It’s physical, emotional, labor. It’s time. And in a capitalist system that is built to extract every ounce of labor that it possibly can from us in our jobs, “extra” work is a challenge.
The work of the church, both this church and the Church Universal needs each of us, and so God will continue to present us with invitations to all kinds of ministry. And we will have to make a choice, individually and collectively on how to respond. We can make the choice most behavioral economists would predict and consolidate the labor into the employees of an organization that will produce only as much as we will consume. We can make what looks like an illogical choice and offer our skills and labor on the faith that the work is worthy of us. We can build a place that is richer because of us.
In the silence of the next few moments I invite you to reflect on the invitations, the calls, to ministry that you may have heard recently. And consider, what would it mean if you were the person that was meant to be called?
