A Psalmist/songwriter considers the ways God has protected him all of his life and especially in times of troubles and pauses to remember God as his rock and his salvation. Four fishermen are at work at their craft when Jesus invites them to follow him, and without hesitation, they do.

There is a sense of urgency about the call of God and of Jesus Christ in our lives. Each of the four gospels understands that the ministry of Jesus Christ on this earth will be short, and there is in their message a desire that people respond right now to the invitation to discipleship.

We have gathered here, most of us are baptized, all of us loved by God, and it is time for us to say yes to the church and to the gospel of Jesus Christ. We are, all of us being called to start some things anew. I chose the theme for the January sermons in December. At the time, my thinking was it was a new year, and a new opportunity to do some things. In a new year, the air is fresh, the calendar is clear, we have new energy, a new resolve, and a new hope as we begin the cycle of days and seasons again.

But we know now that we have a new old crisis, a new old struggle, a new awareness that God is calling this congregation to transformation and renewal. What we can do as we respond is discern and move, we can decide and do. We can listen to what God is saying to us and respond with faith and courage. And we can do it now.

But first, we wait. Now we do not like to wait, but here is the kind of waiting I am talking about. It is not about sitting still, doing nothing, or fidgeting with that little buzzer thing so we know when our table is ready at the restaurant. Waiting today calls for active prayerful patience so that we can hear what God is saying to us.

“For God alone my soul waits in silence” (Psalm 62.1). There are two things about this verse. First that word “alone” does not mean all by myself, it means “truly” or “only” “surely”. Truly my soul waits for God. And second, to wait in silence is to wait not refusing to speak entirely, but it means to wait prayerfully (Interpretation series. Psalms. James L. Mays. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1994, p. 215). As we wait we are talking and listening to God. That is what is meant when we are encouraged to, “Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46.10). So we wait, but we wait with a sense of urgency. This morning’s Psalm talks about waiting on God with expectation, as if we are saying, “hurry up and act God, we need you now.’

We know about waiting here. We wait eagerly for all of the sparks around us to catch fire and ignite us, to see if our strategic plan will take hold, to see if we can so own our values of relationships, justice and knowing God that they will influence all that we do. We are waiting for a Pentecost moment. We want our time when the wind blows, the fire falls, and the Holy Spirit descends, we speak and are understood, and our church is changed forever. We are waiting prayerfully for God to do a new thing in us.

We do indeed need God and the newness brings now. In our anxious times, when we need protection, we look to God as a rock, a fortress, and our salvation, and for that strength, especially when we are weak, we can proclaim the goodness of God. You can be sure that someone, somewhere in a church not far from here has stood up and declared that “God is good, all the time, and all the time God is good.”

Now is the time for us to look to God, who is worthy of our trust. It is God to whom we can pour out our hearts, in whom we might even need to hide sometimes. We know it is great to get away – vacations, retreats, “alone days”, where we choose quiet are great. Retreats of prayer and contemplation are a way to recharge the spirit. The elders and board had a wonderful retreat last fall and I expect we will have one or two more this year.

God is our refuge. Spiritually, God can hole the whole world in God’s hands, and we can tuck ourselves into God’s loving arms and feel safe. We can a place of sanctuary with God, a true safe harbor with God, but we cannot stay hidden. We look to God as the place to which we retreat – in prayer and worship and that is good preparation for the work before us. We need God’s protection, it is good to rest in God, but know that we do not live cloistered lives; we are called to move and to act. The cost of not acting is too high. The frustration of inaction leads to doubt, “we can’t”, “we won’t, you can’t make me”; to cynicism, “We’ve heard it all before, nothing will change”; to despair, “there is no hope”. It lowers expectations so that it looks like there is no movement, even when there is.

I know some of you have asked what the EZEKIEL Team does. Members (where are they?) can tell you that the Team’s purpose is to be a think tank and planning group for the church. They helped to develop the process by which we named our core values and strategic plan, and they are working hard to make the strategic plan have lasting meaning for the congregation. The potluck dinner and program we will have next week and a gathering planned for early February, are part of the plan. We have spent the last two or three years talking about what it means for us to be a renewed and transformed congregation. That seems like a lot of time talking, but transformation is a process, it does not happen overnight, it takes time.

Understand that the call to renewal is not a judgment on the past or present. This congregation has done a lot of things right. You built a strong community of faith; you have been active in outreach ministries in Columbus and Ohio. Many of you remember when there were several full Sunday school classes here, and large youth groups, along with all the people and financial resources this congregation needed. Well, we had Sunday school this morning. Several of our young people are at the Mid-winter retreat this weekend. We still support outreach ministries in Columbus and Ohio and beyond. It is true that we do not have the people and financial resources that we once had, but I am not convinced that we can’t have them again.

But what worked decades ago will not work in the same way now and our continued renewal will come as we bring the best of who we are, our compassion, our hospitality, the gift of our diversity, our ability to laugh and cry together, our story into 2006. We cannot go back. I cannot imagine anyone really wants to go back. We do not want to return to a time of black and white television, with three or four channel choices, an un-air conditioned church or home, or car, or wringer washing machines. We surely do not want only AM radio, never mind FM, in an age of I-pods, MP3’s, or satellite radio and television. We can look back, but we can’t go back, because there is a call on our lives from God through Jesus Christ right now.

Now is the time. Listen, God is calling us in this time to believe that while this congregation has had a great past, as did most Protestant churches in the 40’s, 50’s and early 60’s, those days are gone forever. In this moment when we live in an uncertain present, God is calling us to trust God and each other more than ever. Whenever the ground beneath my spirit feels kind of shaky, I ask myself and God a question. What am I supposed to learn from this? Usually, it is a lesson in humility, a reminder that it is not about me and my gifts, but it is about trusting the God who gave the gifts and the Christ who has called me to use them.

He came to Galilee and declared, “now is the time of God, the time is fulfilled, repent, turn around, change your mind, change your life, raise your expectations heavenward. This is a kairos moment, it is one of those moments not measured in minutes and hours, those are chronological moments. Kairos moments are life-changing, God inspired moments, in kairos time, those moments when we know for sure that something has changed forever. “Jesus says that the kairos is fulfilled. The decisive moment has arrived. God’s reign is at hand. Heads up! Pay attention! Don’t miss this one! Your life is at stake!” (www.lectionary.org/English/mark/03-01-26, p.3).

That is what the two sets of brothers Simon and Andrew, and James and John did. They had lives and livelihoods. They worked as fishermen, good hard work by good, strong men. Then one day they meet Jesus who came with the message John had had begun to declare. John has prepared the way, but now he is in jail. Now, Jesus makes the declaration his own. “Mark links the time of John’s arrest with the time when Jesus starts preaching the gospel. The time of John the prophet is over; the time of Jesus and fulfillment has come. A different era begins in God’s dispensation: it is the gospel time. Mark ties the turning point in time to the preaching of Jesus. When the good news of God is preached, it is decision time (Interpretation series. Mark. Lamar Williamson, Jr. Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1983, p.41).

“Come with me and I will make you fishers of people, “I will make you fishers of men”, the older versions of this lesson say. Jesus is saying that when we follow him, what is our lives work, our hopes and dreams and gifts can be used to serve him and the church. If these four were teachers, he would have promised that they would be rabbis. If attorneys, advocates, if physicians, then doctors for the sick. If singers, then they would do what so many of you do so well here, they would be asked to lift their voices to the glory of God. Whatever we are, Jesus can use for the sake of the gospel and to the glory of God. And then Jesus invites us to invite others to join us.

Now is the time to respond. If you are already a disciple of Jesus – now is the time to decide to follow him all over again.

It is time for us to put the nets down and like those brothers, to answer the call of Jesus and follow him now. Mark’s sense of urgency is such that he doesn’t take time to record any conversation. We don’t hear either set of brothers give notice that they are quitting, we just know that Jesus said follow me, and they went with him, and they brought the strength they had to the task of being disciples.

When I was in Texas, I had a conversation with a friend from college and seminary. Both of us left Southern California, where we had grown up more than twenty years ago. His journey has taken him to Kansas City, and Texas, to Arizona, and now back to Texas. Mine has taken me to Washington, DC, Indianapolis, Lincoln, Nebraska, and now Columbus. He asked, “did you think you’d be away from California so long?” We both laughed at the way God had directed our lives and agreed that it has all been good. We thought we would be gone for a year or two, but the ministries we have been called to have taken us many places; and we have known that God was with us every step of the way. So we moved in faith, following the invitation of the one who called us, knowing that the one who called us would travel with us. That is the promise of the invitation to us, and the thing is, we cannot do all that we want to do by ourselves; we need the help of each other and our network of regions and the general church, and ecumenical partners like COMPASS and BREAD to spread the good news.

The conference I attended this past week was called, “Journeying the Good News Road – A Conference on Congregational Transformation”. The title, and the 240 people in attendance, from congregations large and small, and in between recognizes that we are all on this road together.

Several regions, including this one, have formed transformation teams. All of us want the congregations we serve to thrive so that they can be witnesses to the God we love, and so that our love of God will extend to love for all of God’s people. We all heard a lot, and I will be sharing what I learned in the coming weeks. But I want you to know today that I heard a lot of creativity in the face of new circumstances, I heard calls for prayer and calls to hard choices. I heard stories of people and churches pulling back from the brink, but I never heard a word of hopelessness. What I did hear was a renewed call to follow Jesus and to trust God and rely on the Holy Spirit.

We are in this journey together. That is why he chose these four, then eight more, then seventy more (Luke 10.1). Those eighty-two shared the good news they knew, and told the story of his life, his death, and his resurrection.

Jesus is now, right now calling for people to join him on the road, where the gospel is lived. That is the good news we are called to teach and live, right now in this kairos moment. Let’s do it now, accept the invitation to follow the one calling to us, and as we do, may Jesus, the risen Christ be praised.

Dr. LaTaunya M. Bynum
Senior Pastor