Called to Rise

A Sermon for Sunday, January 23. Text: Mark 4:12-23

There are no prerequisites for discipleship. That’s what today’s gospel lesson is about. It’s totally an entry-level position. No educational requirements, no pre-certification. If those fishermen were qualified, then so are you.
There are no prerequisites, but there are expectations, great expectations. The expectation is that when we are called we will rise up and follow.
Disciples are called to rise. Called to rise to the occasion. Called “for such a time as this,” or for such a time as will be.
Moments of decision come while we are mending our nets, washing our dishes.They come when we are on our way to important meetings, or going nowhere in particular. There is a call, a plea, a searching look, and we can return to our nets, our sink full of dishes, the business of the day, or, we can rise to the occasion, and be someone we did not think we could be.
Rosa Parks, the woman whose arrest in 1955 sparked the Montgomery Alabama Bus Boycott, rose to the occasion by remaining seated. Now, when I was a child, I learned in school that Rosa was tired from working all day, and just decided right then and there that she had had enough. I got the idea that it was social change through weariness. Well, a few years ago when I was visiting the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, I learned that that is not the whole story. Rosa Parks had been a member of the NAACP for a more than a decade. She had participated in voter registration drives. She had attended training sessions on civil disobedience. She was prepared for the occasion. She had practiced, and role-played so that when someone said to her, “If you don’t get up out of that seat we are going to call the police and they will arrest you,” she was ready to say, simply, “You may do that.”
What we are about in the church is practicing faith. Practicing for the occasions to come, so that we will be ready to rise. One of my summer jobs when I was in college was camp lifeguard, and one of the responsibilities of the lifeguard is to train, every day, in order to be ready when the occasion comes. So I swam a half-mile every day and occasionally a mile. With the other lifeguards I participated in search and rescue drills, and we practiced carrying people to safety. Most of the time, lifeguarding is about watching. In three years, I never had to rescue anybody. But I had to be ready, should the need arise.
We might never be called to greatness. We may never be called to save a life or start a movement. Or, we might. Unless we are ready we won’t know what God may do through us. We may have a role to play in someone else’s greatness, like Mother Pollard, a woman who encouraged Martin Luther King, Jr, when he was frightened and his faith was failing. You can read about her in Dr. King’s book, The Strength to Love. The story leaves me wondering if Dr. King would have been Dr. King without the encouragement of this elderly, poor, uneducated but profoundly wise woman, who offered encouragement to the struggling young pastor who led the bus boycott in 1956.
Here we are. Practicing the faith together, that we might be ready to rise when the occasion calls us, with words of encouragement, acts of love and justice. New life begins here, with the call to rise, where it might lead, God knows.