Called (Hebrews 5:1-10)

In the first week of October this year, delegates from Lutheran congregations across Australia and New Zealand met in Sydney to discuss and decide on proposals made by member churches. The biggest item on the agenda was whether women and men can be ordained as pastors in the Lutheran Church of Australia (LCA). We have been wrestling with this question for a long time and people on both sides feel very passionate about what they believe God wants for the LCA. Leading up towards convention, it seemed to me that whichever way the vote went, there would be people who will be hurt, disappointed and unhappy with the result.

A few weeks prior to convention, I was preparing the themes for my messages during October when I came to Hebrews 5:1-10, the Epistle reading for last Sunday. Verse 4 jumped out to me, which says that

no one can become a high priest simply because they want such an honour. They must be called by God for this work, just as Aaron was. (v4 alt)

As far as I understand, this text has played an important part in the Lutheran understanding of the role of pastors since the Reformation. In the Old Testament, people didn’t volunteer to be a high priest. They needed God to call them. Similarly, Jesus didn’t wake up one morning and decide that he wanted to be the saviour of the world. God called him to that (Hebrews 5:5ff). Following the example of Scripture, then, it has been the Lutheran position since the Reformation that ‘no one should teach publicly in the church or administer the sacraments unless properly called’ (Augsburg Confession Article XIV).

So how does God call people?

One way we can answer this question is to think of a ‘call’ having two elements. The first is an ‘internal’ call, something God places on our hearts that we feel called to do. The second is an ‘external’ call where God works through people and circumstances to open doors and bring us to where he’s leading us. For God to be calling us to something, both need to line up. Sometimes an internal call might come first, or it might be something from outside us that leads us in a certain way. What can be difficult is when an internal call and an external call don’t match up, and either we feel called in a direction where the doors are closed to us, or God opens doors for us that we really don’t want to go through.

I have known people over the years who have really struggled with a disconnect between these internal and external calls. For example, I know people who have felt called to be pastors, both men and women, but for a range of reasons they haven’t been ordained into the public ministry of the church. I have also known people who have had opportunities open to them which they really didn’t want to embrace. Personally, I have had times when I have felt called in certain directions but they didn’t work out, or I have thought that God was leading me in directions I really didn’t want to go. So to a degree I can understand the turmoil and anguish that people can experience when an internal call isn’t in synch with events and circumstances that are happening around us. To be honest, I don’t really have an answer to offer when that happens, other than to keep praying and seeking where God may be calling us.

However, there was something else in Sunday’s readings that I think can help us understand the nature of God’s call a little better. In Mark 10:43,44 Jesus says,

Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must be the slave of everyone else. (NLT)

Pastors are called to be servants, not to exercise power or control. We don’t decide to be pastors to find a sense of importance or value or identity. God calls people to serve communities of faith by shepherding them, watching over them, caring for them, and feeding them with the good news of Jesus’s death and resurrection for them. It’s not up to me to walk into a congregation as a new pastor and start telling people how things will or will not be done. Instead, pastors are called to be the servants of God’s people so they will encounter the love and grace of Jesus in us. That doesn’t mean always doing what the congregation wants, because sometimes what we want isn’t good for us. However, it might mean giving up our own rights, our preferences and sometimes even our opinions in order to serve the people God has placed in our care, in order to build them up in faith and love, and equip them to do the good God has planned for all of us to do.

One of the greatest legacies of the Reformation is the idea that God doesn’t just call people to serve him in overtly religious ways. Instead, God calls us to a variety of vocations so that we can serve each other, and so his goodness can grace can flow through us to the people around us. God might call us to be parents, children, grandparents or grandchildren. He might call us to be husbands, wives, or possibly even to serve him and others as a single person. The work we do in our places of employment, our homes, our churches or community organizations, both paid and unpaid, are all callings God places on our lives so we can be his salt and light in the world, and so other people can meet Jesus in us.

Paul’s discussion of the body of Christ in 1 Corinthians 12:12-31 reminds us that every part is needed for the whole body to function properly. One part isn’t more important or less important than any other. In the same way, the call to be a pastor is no more or less important to the body of Christ than a fulltime, stay at home parent, or the people on the toilet cleaning roster. We’re all vital parts of the body of Christ because we are all called to contribute to the mission of God in the world in different ways.

I honestly don’t know where the LCA will go from here as we continue to struggle with who we believe God is calling to be pastors in our church. I continue to pray that the Spirit of God will pour wisdom into the hearts and minds of our bishops and other leaders as they keep wrestling with this question.

What I do know, though, is what it’s like to struggle with where God may be calling us in our lives. Whatever we think God may be calling us to, and whether the doors are opening for us to follow those calls or not, we need to be listening to each other, praying for each other, and walking together with each other as the body of Christ. No matter where God might be calling us to serve him in our lives, one thing we all have in common is that God calls us his children whom he loves.