2025-07-29
Brooke Strong
Sermon Text...
My husband always tells people that he knows I was called to ministry because I waited six years to go to seminary. And then he says, with a smirk on his face, “I know it was a call from God because Vicki normally doesn’t wait six minutes for things once she makes up her mind about something!”
I truly did sense that I was called to ministry by God . . . and that sense of call has continued with regard to everything I have done in ministry. When I accepted the call to my last church, I spent years asking God why I was there. I am a person who cherishes diversity and broad, justice-oriented thinking. Yet the church to which I was called was an all-White, suburban church full of people I loved dearly but who were committed to living in their comfortable enclave, following the rules of faith but not venturing too far into challenging themselves.
It took a number of years, but I finally began to realize that God called me to that place to push the congregation, to afflict their comfort as Judy noted last week. And during my time as the pastor, the church became open and affirming and extravagantly welcoming of all people, committed itself to doing justice and grew with more than 140 new members joining in the decade I was there. Of course, we lost a significant number of folks as well, people who just couldn’t be comfortable with the transformations that were happening.
In a similar way, although I never intended not to work any more when I retired in May of last year, my plan was to do consulting that would give me more flexibility in my schedule. Yet when I received a call to serve as your interim pastor, I knew it was something to which I should say yes and I’m so very glad I did! Serving with all of you has been such a huge gift and privilege!
Of course, one of the most difficult parts of being called by God is discerning what is actually a call from the Divine and what is our own desire. The ability to carefully and honestly parse these often-competing thoughts is always a challenge and something about which we can never be fully certain. But speaking from my own experience, when I have determined that God is calling me to something, a sense of deep peace comes over me, replacing a conflict that had been roiling in my heart.
As the Psalmist notes, God knows us in profound ways and loves us just the way we are, always having our best interests at heart. But then author goes on to write, “In your book were written all the days that we formed for me, before they existed.” For many people, this verse stands against the idea of humanity’s free will and self-determination. Oh, the bible can be so messy sometimes, can’t it?! Is the Psalmist suggesting only that God knows the length of our lives? Or does it mean God has determined every single detail of every single day?
This is a great mystery about which both Christians and non-Christians have argued for millennia. But the Psalmist doesn’t claim to understand such knowledge . . . and I am in the same camp when he says, “How precious are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they are more than the grains of sand.” In other words, completely comprehending God is not the key to life. Rather, the key resides in God’s knowledge of us.
So where does all of this leave us? Let me preface my response by repeating what I always share with confirmands and others with whom I lead faith formation conversations: there is no one who knows the full revelation of God. So what I share today is simply my understanding, not the capital “T” Truth!
Based on my own encounters with God, I do believe that God has things we are called to do. God’s presence is always with us offering direction if we pay attention. But God doesn’t get immersed in the minutia of our lives. We can pray for a parking spot to open up near the door on a rainy day, but I don’t think God is intervening for us. We might ask God to bring a buyer quickly when we list our house for sale or to ensure our favorite sports team wins a big game, but again, these are not matters on which God weighs in.
Let me also be clear, though, in what I am NOT saying: I do not believe that God controls all the things that happen in our lives that are hard to understand. When children are starving in Gaza, I don’t think God has determined that they can be sacrificed and so that is okay. When someone we love suffers or dies at an age that tears our hearts apart, it isn’t because God decided that they really didn’t deserve to live a full life or because God needed another angel in heaven. They also don’t happen because we weren’t faithful enough or because we did something to anger God.
When bad things happen, I believe God mourns and cries with us, holds us close and gives us the strength to move forward with our lives, even in the midst of overwhelming grief. And I return to my earlier comment: fully comprehending God is not the key to life. Part of faith is trusting in a mystery we cannot fully understand.
I do believe that God gave humans free will, the freedom to make our own choices. But this is a freedom that comes with some strings attached! As a culture, we think of freedom as the ability to do whatever we want, as having license to act without caring about anyone else. But this understanding misses the fact that there are always consequences to our actions and choices. Pure self-indulgence never results in true freedom. And we can never be truly free when we keep in step with a culture that demeans Christ-like attitudes and actions, that glorifies vice, and encourages division.
Free will comes with responsibility to understand and embrace it in ways different than from how the world interprets and uses freedom. God has given us this sovereignty not for our self-indulgence but rather, as Paul notes in his letter to the Galatians, to be poured out continually in love for God and neighbor.
Several prominent 20th century theologians offer great insight into free will. N.T. Wright notes “Part of the ‘freedom’ Paul so cherishes is freedom from the enclosing, sometimes claustrophobic, inward-looking communities that serve only their own interests. Being set free from those restrictions opens up a wide field in which love can seek out those whom it will serve.”
Reinhold Niebuhr says it this way: “Basically love means being responsible. Responsible to our families, toward our civilization and now, by the pressure of history, toward the universe of humankind.” In other words, to truly live with free will means moving beyond the concerns of self to risk love and give oneself to the demands of service. To be free is to be free for responsibility rather than from it.
Frederick Buechner suggests that empathy for others is where free will leads. He wrote, “If you have not cried for someone other than yourself in the last year, then chances are that you are already dead.” Paired with Paul’s teaching that the only thing that matters is faith working in love, it seems that we need to pair our tearful empathy with action. We need to make a call, bring a meal, offer comfort or stand up for someone whose voice is not being heard.
Does all of this talk about free will conflict with the idea of God’s call on our lives? Perhaps. But this is the very nature of faith. Often, we come seeking not just answers to difficult questions, but we want a formula. If we just follow these steps or live according to these rules, we will find the salvation and peace that we seek.
But our faith in God as exemplified in the life of Jesus is so much more complicated than that. As those seeking a mature faith, we need to look beyond easy answers to instead make decisions, ask more questions and not be afraid to raise doubts. Given our free will, faith in God was never meant to be easy, and certainly was never intended to be reduced to a formula or to a simple set of rules to be blindly followed.
For those who had hoped at the beginning of this sermon for a clear answer to this question, I’m sorry that you are disappointed. But the question of God’s plans for our lives is a complicated one. Although there is a part of me that agrees with Judy that there is relief that today is the last day of our “Ask the Pastor” series, I am also grateful for the challenging questions you have posed and for the opportunity that we might otherwise avoid to address some difficult questions of faith.
Friends, I leave you with this challenge: in these difficult times in our country and our world, determine to respond with love in the face of everything that comes our way. In so doing, we will exercise our free will to be the hands, feet and heart of Jesus in the world . . . just as God call us to be. May it be so. Amen.