Scripture: Luke 4:14-21; Nehemiah 8:8-10; Isaiah 61:1-2
True Christian calling flows not from career, success, or ability but from the prior assurance of God’s love, which precedes and grounds our purpose—as shown in Jesus’s prophetic anointing and in John Wesley’s journey from duty to a heart strangely warmed.
Illustrations: wesley-preacher-family, susanna-samuel-amen-quarrel, glorious-revolution-1688, jane-austen-rectors, oxford-holy-club, galen-methodist-insult, wesley-georgia-failure, moravians-storm-ship, peter-bohler-conversations, aldersgate-heart-warmed, nehemiah-structural-engineer
January 26, 2025
The Calling and the Called
Nehemiah 8:8-10
Luke 4:14-21
So they read from the book, from the law of God, with interpretation. They gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading. And Nehemiah, who was the governor, and Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who taught the people said to all the people, “This day is holy to the Lord your God; do not mourn or weep.” For all the people wept when they heard the words of the law. Then he said to them, “Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our Lord, and do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.” - Nehemiah 8:8-10
Then Jesus, in the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding region. He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone. When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” - Luke 4:14-21
You have entered a United Methodist Church this morning. The history of the church connects deeply to this biblical understanding of calling which we find in Luke and in Nehemiah. God has worked throughout history and to ignore that history is to ignore the workings of God. History is particular, not general. This church and tradition has a particular history of calling.
To get to that history, I need to talk about John Wesley.
Wesley was the son of a preacher who was son of a preacher. His mother was a granddaughter of an even more famous preacher. It was the family business. John’s older brother, Samuel, was also a preacher. His young brother, Charles, was also a preacher. In the early 18th century, Anglican priests were not as wealthy as they would be during the time of the regency and Jane Austin novels, (when girls wanted to marry a nice rector with a good pension) but they had a distinct class position in society which allowed them to be educated at a much higher rate than other people. John spent the first years his life in Epworth, a village in the north of England, mostly being raised by his mother. His father was often off to London or busy with his studies. His mother and father had an interesting relationship that had to do with British history.
In 1688, the King of England, James II, had fled after an army landed from the Netherlands. It’s described as the glorious revolution, but it was an invasion. The Dutch had beaten England in two wars over the past 50 years. And then they just took over the country. William, the Prince of Orange, became King William III. He had some English blood going back a little bit, but the rightful king was James and James never abdicated the throne, he fled an invading army.
This was a very important point for some people because they had made a promise to King James. They may not have liked him very much, but they made a promise to him in the name of God, and they felt that if they went against that promise, they’d be going against God.
Susanna, John’s mother, was one such person. She felt that she couldn’t pledge support for King William because she had already pledged support for King James.
The biggest fight John’s parents, Samuel and Susanna, had was about the king. Susanna didn’t pray Amen after Samuel lifted a prayer to the king’s health. They didn’t talk to each other for a week after that night. This is the household where John was raised. His mother was very well read. She pushed him continually. The letters to his mother are very intriguing and insightful and there is interesting theology going on with Susanna. She is not just regurgitating what other people tell her, but thinking deeply about what it means to believe in God, to follow God, to pursue God, and to raise her children to do so. John soon goes off to boarding school, and ends up at Christ Church, Oxford, not quite sure what he is going to do with his life. John was very proficient in Greek and Latin and logic and he stayed on at Oxford as a tutor at Lincoln College. He had to be ordained to do so and for that as much as any reason he received Holy Orders.
This was about the time his younger brother, Charles, came to Oxford. Now, Charles had a slightly different mindset than John had had. He was a little more social and willing to make friends with people. John was a little more of a stick in the mud. If you were going to have a beer with one of the Wesley brothers, it would definitely be Charles. Charles had made some friends at Oxford and they were trying to figure out what it would mean to follow Jesus in Oxford, England in the 18th Century. To help them all, Charles remembered that he had someone he really respected who was living in Oxford and that was his brother John. And so John was invited into the group. John talked with the friends and they decided together that they should meet regularly and share about what God was doing in their life. They didn’t create this form of discipleship. It was a mishmash of a few different religious movements, they kind of mishmash a few different movements, but they honed in on it. They put theories into practice. They didn’t wait around to help others. They went ahead and started to live a Christian life right where they were. The called it the Holy Club.
This is when they are first accused of being Methodists. A Methodist was an insult that went back to classic antiquity. It had to do with ancient medicine. The most famous ancient doctor was Galen. And Galen had a very specific view about what kind of person could be a doctor. The Methodists were a rival medical school and they had a different view. They thought anyone could be a doctor if they were trained in a certain way. They followed a certain method during insult. This is the crux of the insult. “You guys are Methodists. You think anybody can be a Christian.” I mean, they were already visiting folks in prison. They were already spending their time giving to the poor instead of going to the drinking houses. They didn’t separate who was worthy to follow Jesus and who wasn’t. And so instead of being insulted by this name, they took it on. “Sure, we’re Methodists. We believe that God loves everybody and we believe that we need to respond to God’s love diligently, studious, methodically. We don’t need to waste our calling.”
Though at this point, for John, God’s love and God’s calling was still kind of distant. He was more about duty. He was teaching at Oxford. He would preach every once in a while. He would administer holy communion every once in a while, more out of a duty than a calling. The first real calling he had was when he met James Oglethorpe and went to Georgia. He felt like he was called to convert the Native Americans in Georgia. And that calling totally failed. I mean, he barely met any Native Americans first of all when he was in Georgia. Second, he managed to have everybody in the colony hate him. He was arrested for libel after refusing to serve communion to a lady who got married to someone else. He basically fled the colony in which he thought he had been called. The situation didn’t really work.
John got back to England. He was still unsure about what to do and he ran into a man who had known the people he had been on the boat with. Now, one of the more profound experiences of his life was the boat over from England to Georgia. And there had been this great storm and John thought he was gonna die. He had never experienced anything like it. He was scared. There were people who were praying and singing hymns in the midst of the storm. And he thought to himself, what do they have that I lack? It was a group of Moravians. When he got back to England, he met another Moravian, who was also on his way to the New world. This man was named Peter Bohler. Bohler and Wesley had these long conversations over many days and John was stunned by this man’s faith, by his striving for his faith, by his confidence in God’s love, by his assurance of faith. And so then, at the end of May, John is going to evening prayer at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. He goes to a society meeting right off of Aldersgate Street, which is this road right next to St. Paul’s, and he hears a reading from Martin Luther’s Preface to the Letter of the Romans.
John Wesley wrote that he left the society meeting a changed person. In his language, my heart was strangely warmed. I felt that I, even I, was loved by God. Soon after that, the Methodist movement expanded across England and Wales, then Ireland and North America, then the rest of the world. At one point the Methodist denomination was the second largest in the world. It was the largest in the United States. It still is significant. The Methodists, though, started splitting off in 1816 and there have been off shoots ever since.
Quantitative assessment is not a measurement of a tradition’s efficacy. That is, the largest body is not the most true or best.
The question, really, is of your heart. It’s a one of one thing. Has God reached you? And I relay this history of Methodism to look at this text from Luke and from Nehemiah with a concrete understanding of calling.
The way we use calling today is so often connected with career, with externalities. We see Nehemiah, he is called to rebuild the temple. It is a more relatable calling. Especially if you are an engineer. Nehemiah really could be the patron saint of Structural Engineers, but this is not the case with Jesus, that’s not what’s going on here in this calling of Jesus. He claims the mantle of the prophet:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
This is what assurance is. Assurance is this theological concept that is an understanding that God’s love reaches even to me. God’s love reaches even to you. For some of us this may not be a challenge. They’re like, of course God loves us, but others may feel unlovable at times. And here at this juncture, it is important to say, know that you are loved.
As well, the spirit of the Lord is upon you for a purpose. Purpose comes after assurance. We can also be living into the purpose God has for us from before we’re even aware of it. This is one of the things the Methodist movement really points out.
The holy club, John and Charles’ friends meeting together in Oxford, visiting the imprison, feeding the hungry, caring for the sick, praying, worshiping together, fasting together. They did all these things before they were assured of God’s love. They were called to do it but they didn’t understand why or what it meant. Others called them fools. Others called them Methodists. But they still loved their neighbors and prayed together.
Some of you may feel a sense of calling in your life. You may have had that moment where you understood what you were supposed to do. I think the better sense of calling is not what you’re supposed to do, but who are you supposed to be. They go together, but they’re not the same. Because there always comes a point in all of our lives when we can’t, we really just can’t do it anymore. We can’t do it like we used to. That doesn’t mean we’re no longer called. You can never retire from God’s calling on your life as a child of God. Calling is not about productivity or ability. God’s calling on our life is not about our physical abilities or our effectiveness in the world, but about the amazing reality that the God of all creation has seen us, has seen you and loved you, forgiven you, and given you purpose. And our purpose comes out of that. Don’t take it for granted, but our purpose, what we do, how we live, comes out of that amazing reality.
The God of all creation who offered Jesus to save us from our sins, offers us life this day. You are assured of that life. You are promised that life. Live into the promise, to the calling of God. Seek out God’s calling. Start by serving and the purpose will follow.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.