Called

Focus Statement

Christ’s call confronts what we have mistaken for faithfulness and transforms us into people who love those God loves.

Point of Relation

POINT OF RELATION

The other day, while Bernie was getting ready for work, she cut her hand.

I felt terrible for her, and immediately my anxiety took over.

I started hovering, asking a hundred questions, questioning what she had done,

and telling her what she needed to do next.

In my mind, I was helping…I was worried because I love her.

Has your anxiety ever played a number on you like that?

You believe you are responding to what is happening,

but anxiety is actually directing the response.

It takes your genuine concern and turns it into questions, instructions, criticism,

or an urgent need to control everything.

As I listened to myself, I began noticing what I was doing.

Bernie needed space to care for her hand,

but I was giving her one more thing to manage: me.

My concern was real, but it was not helping her.

Thankfully, I recognized it and stopped.

I stepped away and gave her room.

By the time I returned,

she had applied a pressure dressing

and had everything under control.

Sometimes our intentions are loving,

but our actions are not helping.

Sometimes love requires us to stop defending what we meant to do

and honestly face what our actions are actually doing.

Things to Consider

THINGS TO CONSIDER

Good intentions do not automatically make our actions good.

Anxiety, fear, anger, pride,

and even religious devotion can convince us

that we are helping while keeping us from seeing the harm we cause.

Sometimes God must interrupt what we have mistaken for faithfulness.

The question is whether we will defend our intentions

or allow that interruption to transform us.

What Scripture Says

Friends, in the Scripture passage we just heard,

Paul is writing to a group of predominantly Gentile churches in Galatia,

a region of Asia Minor where he had previously preached and formed communities.

We do not know precisely where Paul was when he wrote,

though Ephesus is a strong possibility.

What we do know is that Paul had moved on

and at some point down the road troubling news from Galatia had reached him.

Other teachers had arrived insisting that faith in Christ was not enough.

Gentile believers would need to be circumcised

and adopt Jewish covenant practices

to belong fully among God’s people.

They also appear to have questioned Paul’s authority to preach otherwise.

And remember, this is further evidence that this was not yet a dispute between two separate religions called Christianity and Judaism.

It was a struggle within the early a very Jewish Jesus movement

over whether Gentiles had to become Jewish in order to belong.

That is why Paul begins defending both his apostleship and the gospel he preached.

He had not received his gospel from another apostle.

It came through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

Paul does not hide who he had been.

He says he had advanced rapidly within Judaism and was intensely zealous for the traditions of his ancestors.

His persecution of the church was not caused by a lack of faith.

Paul believed his violence was an expression of faithfulness to God.

Acts reveals the terrible truth Christ showed him:

“Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”

Jesus identified himself with the people Paul was harming.

Paul could no longer separate his devotion to God

from its consequences for people God loved.

Then Paul describes his calling using language that echoes Israel’s prophets.

God had set him apart and called him through grace

so that Christ might be revealed through him among the Gentiles. 

The man who had guarded religious boundaries

was called to carry the gospel beyond them.

Paul did not simply change his opinion about Jesus.

His entire understanding of God, faithfulness,

and other people had to be reconstructed around Christ.

Acts tells us that Ananias,

a member of the community Paul had persecuted,

laid hands upon him and helped restore his sight.

Paul’s calling began when Christ confronted the harm produced by his certainty,

placed him in the care of those he had harmed,

and sent him toward people he had once regarded as outsiders.

What This Means for You

Just a little while ago, Levi was baptized.

Before he could understand every promise being made,

God’s grace called him beloved.

His baptism did not complete his journey.

It began a lifetime of discovering who Christ is calling him to become.

The same is true for you.

Your baptism was not merely an event in your past.

Christ is still calling, confronting, and transforming you

for the sake of the people God loves.

What This Means for Us

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR US

We did not simply witness Levi’s baptism.

We promised to surround him with love

and help him grow as a disciple of Jesus Christ.

That promise calls us to become a community shaped by grace.

Paul once guarded the boundaries of belonging.

Christ called him to carry the gospel beyond them.

We are called to do the same, making room for Levi and every person God created and loves.

Amen? Amen.

Written by Rev. Todd R. Lattig with the assistance of ChatGPT (OpenAI).