On Calling

A Worship Service by the Reverends Mark W. Christian and Jonalu Johnstone

First Unitarian Church of Oklahoma City

Sunday October 2, 2005

Reading

Anyone’s Ministry

From "Out of the Ordinary” by Gordon McKeeman

Ministry is

A quality of relationship between and among human beings

that beckons forth hidden possibilities.

inviting people into deeper, more constant

more reverent relationship with the world

and with one another.

carrying forward a long heritage of hope and

liberation that has dignified and informed

the human venture over many centuries.

being present with, to, and for others

in their terrors and torments

in their grief, misery and pain.

knowing that those feelings

are our feelings, too.

celebrating the triumphs of the human spirit

the miracles of birth and life

the wonders of devotion and sacrifice.

witnessing to life-enhancing values

speaking truth to power

standing for human dignity and equity

for compassion and aspiration.

believing in life in the presence of death

struggling for human responsibility

against principalities and structures

that ignore humaneness and become

instruments of death.

It is all these and much, much more than all of

them, present in

the wordless

the unspoken

the ineffable.

It is speaking and living the highest we know

And living with the knowledge that it is

Never as deep, or as wide

or as high as we wish.

Whenever there is a meeting

that summons us to our better selves, wherever

our lostness is found

our fragments are united

or our wounds begin healing

our spines stiffen and

our muscles grow strong for the task

there is ministry.

Prayer and Meditation

Isaiah 61 (adapted)

The spirit of God is upon me, because God has anointed me; And sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken-hearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; … to comfort all who mourn; …to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit. They will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Spirit, to display God’s glory. They shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the devastations;  They shall repair ruined cities, the devastations of many generations…. And I will make an everlasting covenant with them.

On Calling

A Sermon by the Reverends Mark W. Christian and Jonalu Johnstone

Delivered to the First Unitarian Church of Oklahoma City

Sunday October 2, 2005

Calling—What is it?  Mark

Later today, members of the church will exert their freedom of the pew by voting on the question of calling Jonalu Johnstone as a minister of this church.  The observant among you are thinking—isn’t she already our minister?  And yes, you are correct.  Jonalu has been serving as our hired program minister for three full years now.  The operative terms are hire and call.  Today Jonalu and I want to unfold what calling means to us.  What is all this stuff about calling, anyway?

Well, you have heard about the blind men describing the elephant, right?  Describing calling is a good deal like that.  Where you touch it, what your previous experiences are and the kind of language you use will profoundly effect your description.

In the ancient world there were three “callings”—law, medicine and ministry.  These were the three areas where there was a specialized field of study beyond what was expected for an educated citizen.  It was maintained, back then, that the divine hand chose those who would make law heal bodies and save souls.  There is a double sense of calling that I think is important—the first is that one is called out of a larger group and the other is that one is called to a particular task.

Over the centuries, law and medicine have drifted away from the notion of divine selection while ministry has hung onto the religious connotations of being called.  Lawyers and physicians speak of a profession more than a calling these days.  The better physicians and attorneys, I believe, retain something of that sense of calling—even with its divine overtones but for the most part two of the three historical callings have moved on to other self understandings. 

This religious tradition is filled with skepticism about many things, so the idea of continuing to talk about ministers being called by God may seem contradictory.  I know dyed in the wool atheists who speak of the centrality of their call.  The only thing I can tell you for sure is that I feel it.  I have to feel it.  I don’t believe that there is enough of me, by myself, to take on the ministry that unfolds before me without a sense of being called out of—and called to—something larger than myself.  That’s part of how I describe the elephant, if you will.

My Call to Ministry—Jonalu

I’ve often claimed that the first Unitarian Universalist church I belonged to that had a minister, I was it.  It’s more or less true.  Before going into ministry, I belonged to lay-led fellowships.  It was in one of those fellowships that I was called to ministry.

The truth is we did have a minister – sort of.  For one year, we had a one-third time Extension Minister, fresh out of school, still figuring out what a minister was, while serving two small congregations in western Maryland that didn’t really know what a minister was either.  That caused some consternation and even conflict in the congregation.  It also caused some careful thought about what a minister was and should be.

Gradually, during those struggles, my own call was unfolding.  I was working part-time in mental health, taking time and space to figure out what I should be doing with the rest of my life.  Clearly, my passions were going in the direction of religion.  

I don’t think, though, that I ever would have thought of ministry on my own.  I was preaching sermons regularly – that’s how it is in a small fellowship; I was serving on the Board; I was putting a ton of my discretionary time into the fellowship.  And one day, a friend, Elaine, a woman I had brought to the congregation told me, “You could be a minister.”

The thought had never occurred to me.  Well, not since I’d been a child dreaming of being a missionary – but a missionary is different from a minister.  But missionary was as close as I could get, growing up in a culture where a girl couldn’t become a minister, but could be a missionary.

So Elaine thought I could be a minister.  Others in the congregation agreed with her.  They thought I spoke well, that I related with people, that I had some quality – hard to put a finger on exactly – that made them believe I could be a minister.  It’s that elusive “ministerial presence” they talk to you about all through divinity school, never telling you what to do to get it – you just know when it’s there.  Or when it’s not.

The point, for me, is that like the earliest ministers of our tradition, I was called out of a congregation.  In the early days, in fact, a minister, called from amongst the members, was ordained by the church to serve that particular church.  If a minister moved from one church to another, he – always a “he” in those days -- was re-ordained.  That practice didn’t actually last long, and the ritual of installation developed for ministers already ordained.  The majority of ministers, though, were ordained by a church which they served for decades because it was their home church, the people with whom they worshipped, who had agreed that they had a call from God.

People with whom I worshipped set me on the path to ministry.  Through them, in my belief system, God had something to do with it.  The members of that fellowship supported me.  They became my sponsoring congregation, had me return to preach every summer I was in seminary, even gave me some money – not a lot, it was a tiny group of thirty-some members.  I returned to that congregation to be ordained – how could I do anything else?  They were the people who had called me to ministry.

Calling and CALLING—Mark

My call to ministry was gradual.  The skies didn’t open.  Lightning didn’t flash.  God didn’t speak.  Neon lights didn’t appear in the sky saying, “Mark, I have a plan.”  What happened is more that over time I recognized that I had a growing commitment to justice and compassion in the world.  I think I began to realize this when I was about 20.  With the help of friends I was able to discern that a big source of this commitment came from growing up in the church—in the Unitarian Church—in this Unitarian Church. 

I did a bit of checking into it—but decided that I really didn’t want to jump through all those hoops that they put around UU ministry—so I went on to other things.  That is what I had planned but I guess I forgot to tell that calling that was going on inside me—or else I wasn’t clear enough.

For the next 15 years I became increasing active in “doing church” as a lay leader.  What I discovered was that everything I was doing wasn’t enough and that something kept calling me to do more and more.  It was beginning to take over all the areas of my life.  I was beginning to feel called.  I didn’t want to—not really.  At first it was an interesting idea and then not so much and then the damn thing wouldn’t leave me alone. 

On my 35^th birthday, I enrolled in seminary.  I was 40 when I was ordained by the first congregation that called me as minister.  I was 44 when I came here.  I am 49 now—and hope the Spirit keeps me here for the foreseeable future.

I say the Spirit because I believe the Spirit led me here.  As much as my call to ministry was gradual.  My call to come here was anything but.  I came home from leading our two worship services in Las Cruces one Sunday when the phone rang.  It was my mother with the news that Cynthia Johnson had just shocked the congregation with an announcement that she was retiring.  We talked a bit and I laid down for my traditional Sunday nap.

The next day, I left for a ministers' retreat at Ghost Ranch near Abiqu, New Mexico.  That is the Georgia O’Keefe area of New Mexico and is probably the most enchanted land in the land of enchantment.  While I was there, that week, sitting amid the sandstone, blue skies and nearby snow capped mountains—I came to a realization that I could do a kind of ministry in Oklahoma City that I could do NOWHERE else.  This is where I grew up.  This is where I know the people, the town, I have contacts.  It knew then that it went against all conventional wisdom—that it wasn’t, by many standards, the “smart” thing to do—that there was no guarantee that the congregation here would be able to see me as their minister instead of as the infant, toddler, grade-schooler, choir-singer, Junior Higher, LRYer, Young Adult, son-left to do ministry elsewhere…but I felt called.

There was nothing gradual about it.  There is more to the story than that but here I am.

On OKC—Jonalu

Mark’s connection to this church is long and deep.  Mine, much shorter though growing in depth.  In discussing the congregation’s vote on my call to this congregation, my partner, whose agnosticism leans distinctly towards atheism, said, “They don’t need to vote.  God’s already called you here.”

They say God works in mysterious ways.  I got here not in one leap of faith, but in a long journey, a series of tiny steps, small realizations, and minor decisions.  I joined this church without much thought about it.  I was coming to Oklahoma City to work as Growth Consultant for the district – more properly, the Southwestern Unitarian Universalist Conference, a district of the UUA.  Those of you who know the district office is in Fort Worth might think I would have moved there.  But, my partner Jane and I both have family in Oklahoma.  Throughout our years together we had joked, “You know we’re gonna end up in Oklahoma.”  The time had come.  Oklahoma was where we were going.  So we made plans to locate in here in the City, accessible to an airport, a half-hour from my mother, and an hour and a half from her father. 

And since I was coming to Oklahoma City, I would join the church here.  I called Cynthia Johnson, the minister, before I moved, talked to her about my intent, and followed through.  I had attended one Sunday service when I signed the book.  The music seized and soothed me; Cynthia’s prayer touched my heart.  None of that mattered, though.  The point was, I was a Unitarian Universalist, one committed enough to our religious movement to embrace the call to ministry.  There was no question about it; I would be a member, even if most Sundays I was away doing workshops and preaching in other churches. 

When Cynthia retired, she felt the church needed a minister here until an interim minister arrived – kind of an interim interim.  The board hired Scot Harvey and me jointly, both very part-time, to tend to ministerial needs between Cynthia’s departure and the return of Fern Stanley as our interim.  During that time, I taught some adult classes, and with LuAnn Faulkner-Schneider got Covenant Groups seriously started.  I officiated at a memorial service and preached at least once.  I got to know the congregation better, more deeply, and for the first time, in a ministerial role.

Then stepped back.  I cobbled together various part-time ministerial roles and found that satisfying.  As my Growth Consultant job slid to its halt, I contemplated what I would do next.  Mark was serving this congregation in his first year – we talked.  He wondered would I be interested in staying here, working for this church part-time.  Sure.  I really appreciated the directions he wanted the church to move, loved what was going on with Covenant Groups.  The church felt vibrant and had tremendous potential.  This could be fun.

Then, I had an experience that clarified my call.  A visit to preach back at the James Reeb Congregation in Madison, the first church I had served as minister, as their first minister.  I loved going back, seeing folks, marveling at the new paint job, finding ways I had contributed and ways they had moved beyond or away from what I’d done.  And I came back home so pleased to be here because I had remembered how stunningly difficult it was to be the solo minister in a congregation, especially a new church that hadn’t yet found itself.  Being in an established church that knows who and what it is, with a valued and reassuring colleague, felt more than comfortable.  More than that, it felt like what I was meant to do.

A number of times, especially this summer, I have been privileged to stand before this congregation as we mourned the loss of one of our members.  No moment is more somber or significant.  Part of a minister’s call is to be with people in life, and through life’s transitions; the most serious obligation may be to be present to death, to the recognition of mortality.  Whatever else the experience of living through grief and death together does, it powerfully cements a minister’s connection to a church.

What sustains me in my ministry here, finally, is being witness to the transformative winds of the spirit.  As I look around this morning, I recognize people whose stories I know who are different people because they have been here, touched not so much by programs of the church as by being the church, living the church.  I am proud and pleased to watch those stories unfold, to help create the conditions where people live in covenant and love one another enough to support change.  I see this morning other people whose stories I don’t yet know – and even may never know.  But I know the potential exists in this place for their lives, too, to change – to be made better.  I feel called – through the connections, through the dreams, through the spirit of God, if you will; certainly, through the spirit of this people – to be here in this place, this arc of the circle of life, to do what I do and to be who I am in ministry.

Of Call and Obligation—Mark

What does it mean to me to be called?  Called to ministry?  Called to this Church?  I suppose that is ultimately what we are asking today. 

I understand calling as an acceptance of responsibility.  Calling has a sense of the divine attached to it because often I would chose to do other if I were left to my own devices.  Martin Luther, the first of the Protestant Reformers, didn’t want to reform the church.  He wished that it didn’t need reformation.  I used to take his famous quote “Here I stand, I can do no other…” as a triumphant song.  Now I understand it was pain filled cry.  “Here I stand, I can do no other, so help me God.”  He was called.

Part of my experience of being called is that it gives me the strength to stand where I don’t want to stand—where I don’t have the strength to stand.  Sometimes it is a matter of the strength to stay one more minute, or make one more call—because I am called.  I can always choose to do less than the Spirit calls me to do—but I have discovered that those decisions are rarely good.  That I suppose is the test of my calling, if I could do less and walk away and the Spirit left me alone then it would be time for me to find another place to focus my life’s energy.

One of the things we Unitarians tend not to like when we encounter them are hierarchies.  I will tell you though, that my experience is that there is a three-tier hierarchy I feel when it comes to ministerial calling.  I am called to serve individual persons.  I am called to serve this church.  I am called to serve God.  In ascending order.

I am called to offer solace and support to individuals—particularly to the members of this church.  If there are times, however, that I that individual behavior comes into conflict with institutional health, my calling to the Church supercedes my calling to the individual.  The same is true of the church.  I am called to serve this church.  If a time arises, though, that I feel that this church’s actions are counter to the larger good of our movement or of God I am called to stand there. 

First with the person, then with the church, then with the Spirit:  Calling always involves discernment.  I am increasingly clear that there is a line of responsibility of who I serve.  In some ways it is all pretty simple when you frame it like that.

We Unitarians tent to shy away from hierarchies.  We also aren’t fond of obligation—but that is a big part of what it means to call and be called.  That is a big piece of what we are talking about.  I would like to believe that I would do everything I do—to the level I do it—if I were on a year to year contract, but I am not sure I would.  I think part of me would have to always be searching the horizon for new opportunity.  Voting to call is making a commitment by this church.  We WILL fund this position, we WILL do the things that make Jonalu our minister—not for this year but for all years.  If voted and extended and accepted—and I think there is good reason to expect all these things—Jonalu also offers her sense of commitment and obligation to this place.

Call of the Laity—Jonalu

One of the things that Mark and I agree on – and remind ourselves and one another of – is that the ministry of this church is not about us.  In a profound way, the vote today is not about me.  The moment that any of us as ministers slip into believing that the ministry of a church is about us, we have lost the authority of the call.  The ministry is always about the church – and the individual members of the church, and the things of the Spirit.

The church is nothing but the gathered people.  And there is no reason for them to gather unless they, too, are called.  Of course, I’m not speaking here of the call Mark spoke of to specialized fields of study, or even necessarily to career choice at all – though that may be or become one aspect of a call.  Traditional Christians often speak of gifts as the foundation of call.  Paul in I Corinthians devoted a good deal of ink to the acknowledgement that we have differing gifts, but insisted that they were of the same Spirit.  In speaking of these differences, he comes to his famous and best-loved passage about the nature of love.  I don’t agree with all Paul wrote, but the words about gifts and about love underlie my theology of church.

I hope that as Unitarian Universalists, we can hold onto those ideals from the Christian and Jewish scriptures that remind us that – minister or laity – our lives are about more than ourselves.  That our gifts lay a foundation for our service.  That we are called to a higher good.  Isaiah said it in the reading this morning.  The ministers are called to serve the church, and in that part of our job – part of our obligation, part of our call -- is to call you to a profound purpose in life.

Maybe that purpose is expressed in the church – like the teachers and guides we recognized this morning.  Or you may mentor a Coming of Age youth, or facilitate a Covenant Group, or cook a meal for a bereaved family.  Maybe purpose is lived out through your career – teaching children, or healing the sick, or cleaning up the environment.  Maybe it comes in a volunteer capacity – comforting people who are dying through Hospice, sorting food for the Regional Food Bank or knocking on doors for your political candidate or issue.  Maybe you even find it at home – making the world more pleasant and hospitable for your family and guests, raising children to be ethical and responsible adults, easing the way of a parent or grandparent who is moving toward death.  What matters is that all of us find a way to make a difference in the world.

The church is here to help you find that purpose and meaning, to support you in it, and to remind you of the gifts you receive from living it out.  Like my tiny fellowship that told me I could be a minister, this church is here to help you find your calling.  It’s not an easy, one-time answer; it’s an ongoing pilgrimage of discernment, of challenge and of joy.  And it’s worth every tear that’s shed in the process.  Because when you live according to your call, your reward is in life itself.

When you, like Martin Luther, find yourself saying, “Here I stand. I can do no other,” recognize it as a call.  Understand that something higher than self-interest or personal satisfaction works with and through every one of us.  May we all be plantings of the Spirit, upheld, nurtured and loved by one another, so that we might do the work of the world in whatever ways we are called.

So may it be.  AMEN.