1-17-2021 -- Called to be a Disciple

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WELCOME AND DATE

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WELCOME AND DATE

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GREETING

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ANNOUNCEMENTS — listed by date

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ANNOUNCEMENT — Make a Difference 2 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 19, at Lorenzo FUMC

Make A Difference is now meeting on the first and third Tuesdays of each month at Lorenzo FUMC. Call Donna Campbell for details.

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ANNOUNCEMENT — Men’s Breakfast — Lorenzo

The men of Lorenzo FUMC will have their Men’s Breakfast at 6:30 a.m., Wednesday, January 20, in the Fellowship Hall

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ANNOUNCEMENT — Let pastor know of changes

illnesses, deaths, prayer requests, or announcements that need to go on the prayer list,

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CENTERING OUR HEARTS ON WORSHIP

GATHERING PRAYER

Awesome God, you knew us before we were born. You love us into life. Open our hearts and our spirits today to hear your word for us. And, upon hearing the word, may we be convinced of our call to ministry and mission through the church. Bless us with your presence and your powerful love, for we ask this in Jesus’ Name. AMEN.

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CALL TO WORSHIP

PASTOR: Come joyfully before the Lord!

PEOPLE: God has seen us and known us from before the beginning.

PASTOR: Come prayerfully before the Lord!

PEOPLE: God sees our concerns, our fears, our sins!

PASTOR: Come hopefully before the Lord!

PEOPLE: Christ proclaimed God’s love and forgiveness for all God’s people!

PASTOR: Know throughout all of your being, that God absolutely loves you!

PEOPLE: How precious and powerful that knowledge is! Thanks be to God!

The lectionary is in the Gospel of Mark for this year, but as we’ve said in the past, Mark is shorter, has less details, and doesn’t begin at all until shortly before He begins His ministry. In fact, Mark begins with John the Baptist, not Jesus, and he gives little more than the calling of Peter and Andrew, James and John, which are mentioned in our reading today in John. The Gospel of John is used at different times throughout the three-year cycle of going through the Old and New Testaments, primarily during special seasons such as Advent and Lent but is used more in the Mark year to fill in some of the blanks in Christ’s ministry that

Calling is a central theme in our Old Testament and Epistle readings, as well. It’s clear in the story of how the little boy Samuel was called to be one of the greatest judges of Israel. It is less clear in the Epistle reading — that is, God is not calling a particular person to a particular task, but He is calling people to a particular way of life. He is reminding us that we have been bought and paid for through Christ’s death and that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit and are to be used to honor God.

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FIRST HYMN — “Jesus Calls Us”

introduction

If being called is a central theme today, then it’s appropriate that our first hymn is “Jesus Calls Us.”He calls to us IN the tumult of whatever is going on in our lives, whether its joys or sorrows, toil or times of ease, and He calls us FROM worshiping the things that would keep us from following Him. Jesus calls us to love HIM more than all these other things. We’ll sing the first three verses.

Verse 1

Jesus calls us, o'er the tumult

of our life's wild restless sea.

Day by day His sweet voice soundeth,

saying: "Christian, follow Me."--

Verse 2

Jesus calls us from the worship

of the vain world's golden store,

from each idol that would keep us,

saying: "Christian, love Me more."--

Verse 3

In our joys and in our sorrows,

days of toil and hours of ease --

still He calls in cares and pleasures:

"Christian, love Me more than these.--

When the song is over, change slide to Old Testament reading and leave up during the introduction to the passage, which is fairly long usually ends with something like, “Let’s listen to the book/chapter/verses, reading from the Common English Bible.”

OLD TESTAMENT READING — 1 Samuel 3:1-10 (11-20) (CEB) .

Our Old Testament lectionary lesson is about a single incident in the life of a little boy’ named Samuel. But the lectionary jumps around in the Old Testament a lot for the next several months, and we won’t come back to Samuel until June, and then to a much later part of his life, so I want to give you some context for today’s reading.

Samuel is one of those miraculous babies born to a woman who had been childless her whole life. Hannah had prayed and prayed for a child, and God answered that prayer. In response, she dedicated the child to God, and when he had been weaned, she took him to the Temple to serve God. She never forgot her little boy, and she made him garments every year and took them to him at the Temple, where he was raised. and where he served under an elderly priest named Eli, who was a good man and faithful in his service to the Lord.

But it’s important to note that this was a period when God was relatively silent, so the little boy Samuel didn’t understand at first what was happening to him when God began calling him in the night. In fact, he thought it was old Eli. After three times of hearing his name called and going to Eli and Eli telling him that he had not called Samuel, Eli realizes that it is God who is speaking to the boy. Eli tells the boy what to do, and he does it. We’ll read that part of the story in just a minute.

However, the lectionary includes some additional verses of explanation. I’m not going to read them, but I do want to tell you about them. Although Eli was a good man, his sons were evil, and Eli turned a blind eye to their actions. God had warned Eli that the priesthood would be taken away from his family if he didn’t get his boys straightened out, but he apparently couldn’t rebuke them or punish them. God is about to finally take action, and He is going to use the boy Samuel to convey that message — a hard task for a little boy and one that Samuel did not want to do. The next morning, Eli asks Samuel what God had said. He knew something was up, and he told Samuel that he must tell all of it to him, which Samuel did. Recognizing the inevitability of his fate, he says, “He is t he Lord. He will do as He pleases.”

Samuel goes on to be the last judge of Israel and the one who anoints Saul as Israel’s first king at God’s direction and then anoints David as king, who will be the greatest king Israel ever knew and an ancestor of Jesus. So let’s hear about his calling from 1 Samuel 3:1-20 in the Common English Bible:

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1  Now the boy Samuel was serving the Lord under Eli. The Lord’s word was rare at that time,

and visions weren’t widely known. --

2 One day Eli,whose eyes had grown so weak he was unable to see, was lying down in his room. --

3 God’s lamp hadn’t gone out yet, and Samuel was lying down in the Lord’s temple, where God’s chest was. --

4 The Lord called to Samuel. “I’m here,” he said. 5 Samuel hurried to Eli and said, “I’m here.

You called me?” --

“I didn’t call you,” Eli replied. “Go lie down.” So he did. 6 Again the Lord called Samuel, so Samuel got up, went to Eli, and said, “I’m here. You called me?”--

“I didn’t call, my son,” Eli replied. “Go and lie down.” 7 (Now Samuel didn’t yet know the Lord, and the Lord’s word hadn’t yet been revealed to him.) --

8 A third time the Lord called Samuel. He got up, went to Eli, and said, “I’m here. You called me?” --

Then Eli realized that it was the Lord who was calling the boy. 9 So Eli said to Samuel, “Go and lie down. If he calls you say, ‘Speak, Lord. Your servant is listening.’ ” --

So Samuel went and lay down where he’d been. 10 Then the Lord came and stood there,

calling just as before, “Samuel, Samuel!” --

Samuel said, “Speak. Your servant is listening.” --

11 The Lord said to Samuel, “I am about to do something in Israel that will make the ears of all who hear it tingle! --

12 On that day, I will bring to pass against Eli everything I said about his household—every last bit of it! --

13 I told him that I would punish his family forever because of the wrongdoing he knew about—how his sons were cursing God, but he wouldn’t stop them. --

14 Because of that I swore about Eli’s household that his family’s wrongdoing will never be reconciled by sacrifice or by offering.” --

15 Samuel lay there until morning, then opened the doors of the Lord’s house. Samuel was afraid to tell the vision to Eli. --

16 But Eli called Samuel, saying: “Samuel, my son!” “I’m here,” Samuel said. --

17 “What did he say to you?” Eli asked. “Don’t hide anything from me. May God deal harshly with you and worse still if you hide from me a single word from everything he said to you.” --

18 So Samuel told him everything and hid nothing from him. “He is the Lord,” Eli said. “He will do as he pleases.” --

19 So Samuel grew up, and the Lord was with him, not allowing any of his words to fail. --

20 All Israel from Dan to Beer-sheba knew that Samuel was trustworthy as the Lord’s prophet.--

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CENTERING OUR HEARTS IN PRAYER

Emilie Cook has been on the LORENZO prayer list for months now, but I hear she is chomping at the bit to get home, and will be able to go home as soon as they can wean her off the respirator; she still has a traq tube, however.

We’ve added Evelyn Brockett to the RALLS prayer list. She was taken to Covenant Hospital this weekend for appendicitis, and doctors will be doing the surgery Monday. Continue to pray for Angela Arthur who is still pretty much homebound with her foot surgery.

I try to keep the prayer lists updated on our website. If you go to https://fumc-oc.faithlifesites.com, you’ll come to a page with the United Methodist emblem on it and the words “As t he Hands and Feet O Jesus, We Are the Body of Christ.” Click on the three horizontal lines in the blue triangle to get to the menu and then click to “Prayer Concerns” at the bottom. You’ll see the two lists. Incidentally, you can also find old sermons on the website under “Sermons” on the menu.

If there are names that can come off either prayer list, let me know, and of course, we can add names to it, as well.

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PASTORAL PRAYER

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THE LORD’S PRAYER

Our Father, Who art in heaven. Hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.--Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

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TITHES AND OFFERINGS

Where to send regular offerings

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EPISTLE READING — 1 Corinthians 6:12-20 (CEB)

If you take it out of context, the Epistle reading comes almost off the wall, as in “Where on earth did that come from?” But Paul is writing to address issues having to do with the social context of the city of Corinth, where temple prostitution was common among Greeks. That is, what we would call immoral was considered “normal” and part of how many of them worshipped. He is in full-on teaching mode here, as Paul teaches them t hat the body is a temple for the Holy Spirit and how we care for ourselves and care for our relationships with others is also how we care for God within us. Paul quotes Genesis 2:24 about two becoming one flesh. In Paul’s view, those who engage in relations with the temple prostitutes are not caring for their temple for the Holy Spirit: their body. They are worshiping other gods in their sexual relationships. But there are also other ways that as Christians, our earthly bodies are dwelling places for the Holy Spirit and act accordingly. We don’t belong to ourselves, and we can’t just do anything we want to do. We’re reading 1 Corinthians 6:12-20 from the Common English Bible:

12 I have the freedom to do anything, but not everything is helpful. I have the freedom to do anything, but I won’t be controlled by anything. --

13 Food is for the stomach and the stomach is for food, and yet God will do away with both. The body isn’t for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body. --

14 God has raised the Lord and will raise us through his power. 15 Don’t you know that your bodies are parts of Christ? --

So then, should I take parts of Christ and make them a part of someone who is sleeping around? No way! --

16 Don’t you know that anyone who is joined to someone who is sleeping around is one body with that person? The scripture says, The two will become one flesh. --

17 The one who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him. --

18 Avoid sexual immorality! Every sin that a person can do is committed outside the body except: those who engage in sexual immorality commit sin against their own bodies. --

19 Or don’t you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you? --

Don’t you know that you have the Holy Spirit from God, and you don’t belong to yourselves? --

20 You have been bought and paid for, so honor God with your body.--

After the Scripture, change to SECOND HYMN slide, which gives the name of the hymn and stays up for a short introduction of the hymn . After the hymn introduction, change slide to words to the second hymn, which will look like a single slide, but will include several slides, depending on the number of verses, etc. If a verse is broken up into more than one slide, the signal for the slide change is a dash (—)

SECOND HYMN — "Open My Eyes that I May See ”

Part of the trick to answering the call is seeing the call and hearing the call, which requires us to open our hearts and opening our mouths to share what we know and feel and the implied need to open our hands. For reasons totally un-understandable to me, the singer who is leading us has chosen to not sing the second verse about opening our ears, so we’ll just sing the first and third verses that talk about eyes, hands, mouth and heart.

Open my eyes that I may see

glimpses of truth Thou hast for me.

Place in my hands the wonderful key

that shall unclasp and set me free.

Silently now, I wait for Thee,

ready my God, Thy will to see.

Open my eyes, illumine me.

Spirit Divine.

Open my mouth and let me bear

gladly the warm truth everywhere.

Open my heart and let me prepare

love with Thy children thus to share.

Silently now, I wait for Thee,

ready my God, Thy will to see.

Open my eyes, illumine me.

Spirit Divine.

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CENTERING OUR HEARTS WITH THE WORD

Called to be a Disciple

John the Baptist has baptized Jesus and the very next day, Jesus calls the first of His original 12 disciples. That number grew to 120 and more while He was still alive, and there are now more than 2 million people in the U.S. who call themselves “Christians,” and some 2.4 billion in the world, or about a third of the world’s population. We, too are disciples, which means WE have been called. So this morning, we’re going to be talking about the calling of the first disciples and what we can learn from that about our own discipleship.

The lectionary for today begins with Andrew, but I want to go back just a few verses before to put it all in context and explain who Andrew was and how he was the first disciple to answer the call. So let’s just start out reading our Gospel lesson, remembering that it is the day immediately after Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, and it is John the Baptist who is talking with some of HIS disciples. Listen to John 1:35-51, reading from the Common English Bible:

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GOSPEL LESSON — John 1:35-51

(CEB)

35 The next day John was standing again with two of his disciples. 36 When he saw Jesus walking along he said, “Look! The Lamb of God!”--

37 The two disciples heard what he said, and they followed Jesus. 38 When Jesus turned and saw them following, he asked “What are you looking for?” --

They said, “Rabbi (which is translated Teacher), where are you staying?” 39 He replied, “Come and see.”--

So they went and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon. --

40 One of the two disciples who heard what John said and followed Jesus was Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter.--

41 He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which is translated Christ).--

42 He led him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, “You are Simon, son of John. You will be called Cephas” (which is translated Peter). --

43 The next day Jesus wanted to go into Galilee, and he found Philip. Jesus said to him, “Follow me.” 4 Philip was from Bethsaida, the hometown of Andrew and Peter. --

45 Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law and the Prophets: Jesus, Joseph’s son, from Nazareth.” --

46 Nathanael responded, “Can anything from Nazareth be good?” Philip said, “Come and see.” --

47 Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said about him, “Here is a genuine Israelite in whom there is no deceit.” Nathanael asked him, “How do you know me?” --

Jesus answered, “Before Philip called you, I saw you under the fig tree.” 49 Nathanael replied, “Rabbi, you are God’s Son. You are the king of Israel.” --

50 Jesus answered, “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these! --

51 I assure you that you will see heaven open and God’s angels going up to heaven and down to earth on the Human One” (or the Son of Man.)

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JOHN POINTS HIS DISCIPLES TO JESUS

We often think of disciples as being followers of Jesus. But, in fact, it was common for teachers to have both followers and disciples — think of it like this: a follower is somebody who hears and ascribes to a teacher’s point of view but then goes back to his regular life, whereas disciples were more like learners who were very close to the teacher, sometimes perhaps even living with them. So John the Baptist had disciples, and he’s walking along with two of them when Jesus approaches. “Look! The Lamb of God,” he says to the two men, as he points to Jesus. It’s interesting to note that John knows he is pointing away from himself. He surely understood that his disciples would follow this one he has so pointedly directed their attention to. But that was always John’s job --- to point people to Jesus.

We know who one of those two men was — Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter, who he would introduce to Jesus the next day. The other man is not named. Some scholars think it was John, the writer of the Gospel of John. He is noted for not naming himself and putting himself forward in certain accounts, although he does apparently indirectly name himself as “the disciple whom Jesus loved” and the “beloved disciple” who played prominent roles in Christ’s life, such as Jesus asking him to take care of His mother and him being the one who Mary Magdalene went to first to tell about the empty tomb.

The two men are impressed with the Baptist’s statement, and they began following Him — not as in being a disciple but simply following at a respectful distance. Of course, Jesus knows they’re there, so He turns to them. It’s not a confrontation — it’s Jesus being Jesus, making things easier, opening doors that others can walk through. And William Barclay calls that a “symbol of the divine intervention.” “It is always God who takes the first step,” Barclay says. “When the human mind begins to seek and the human heart begins to long, God comes to meet us far more than half way. God does not leave a man to search and search until he comes to him; God goes out to meet the man. As Augustine said, we could not even have begun to seek for God unless he had already found us. When we go to God, we do not go to one who hides himself and keeps us at a distance; we go to one who stands waiting for us, and who even takes the initiative by coming to meet us on the road. [ATTRIBUTION: William Barclay (Ed.). (1975). The Gospel of John (Vol. 1, p. 86). Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster John Knox Press.]

So Jesus turns to them and asks them what they are looking for. We don’t know that He knows John had pointed Him out as the Messiah, although He does seem to know a lot about people He’s never met, as we’ll see later this morning. But it’s a natural question in that day and time of nationalism and people wanting to overthrow Rome, and people wanting to overthrow the over-legalism of Judaism, and people wanting to seize religious power and authority from the religious leaders. Or are they part of the Quiet in the Land movement that was waiting patiently for the Messiah and looking for God and His will in their lives? Or, as Barclay points out, perhaps they were “puzzled, bewildered sinful men looking for light on the road of life and forgiveness from God?” He suggests it would be good for us today to — at least every now and then — to ask ourselves: “What am I looking for? What’s my aim and goal? What am I really trying to get out of life?”

It’s interesting that the two men don’t answer the question about what they are looking for. Their response is to call Him “Rabbi” and ask where He is staying. The Rabbi part is significant. Here is a man they’ve never met and they immediately address Him as “Rabbi,” a Hebrew word for teacher that literally means “My great one.” The term is used as a title of respect from students toward their teachers, and you’ll notice that John — in just three or four verses here — explains to his Greek readers these various Hebrew words and phrases. But the two men are not looking for a brief chit-chat on the road. They want more than that, or as Barclay puts it, They want to “linger long with Him and talk out their problems and their troubles. The man who would be Jesus’ disciple can never be satisfied with the passing word. He wants to MEET Jesus, not as an acquaintance in the passing, but as a friend in His own house.”

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COME AND SEE

Jesus says, “Come and see.” There’s a significance to that phrase, too. A Jewish Rabbi would ask his students, “Do you want to know the answer to this question? Do you want to k ow the solution to this problem? Come and see, and we will think about it together.” [ATTRIBUTION: Barclay] So Jesus says, “Come and See.” He’s got the answers, so He’s inviting them to come and talk and learn about things that they could get nowhere else.

And so Andrew and the unnamed other man join Jesus and stayed with Him all day, starting at about 4 p.m. How else could John be so precise about the time unless he was one of the two former disciples of John the Baptist. But John is not formally he second disciple called. His Gospel tells us that. Almost immediately after that personal encounter with Jesus, Andrew hunts down his brother Simon and tells him, “We have found the Messiah.”

But more than that, John says Andrew “led” his brother Simon to Jesus. That could be looked at like “took him to where Jesus was” or more like what we call “leading a person to Christ,” although I prefer to calling it “introducing a person to Christ.” We don’t do the work of someone coming to Christ — we just introduce them to Christ and they see in US something they want to know more about. GOD leads them and invites them to believe in the Christ.

Andrew is not mentioned much in the New Testament, but one of the things he is known for is introducing others to Jesus — he’s the one who brought the boy with the bread and fish to Jesus when Jesus fed the 5,000, and later, introduced Jesus to some Jewish Greeks in Jerusalem to worship at the Temple who wanted to know more about this new thing they had heard of.

So Andrew takes/leads his brother Simon to Jesus, who looks deep into Simon’s heart and gives him a new name, sort of. That is, Simon already had two names — everybody did in those day. You’d have a Greek name, because it was the universal language at the time and you’d have a name in whatever your everyday language would be. Simon was the Hebrew name and Peter was the Anglicized version of the Greek name Petros,” which means rock. Jesus saw something in this Simon/Peter that would was rock-like — He saw something more in the man. Barclay describes it this way:” He sees not only the actualities in a man; he also sees the possibilities. Jesus looked at Peter and saw in him not only a Galilean fisherman but one who had it in him to become the rock on which his church would be built. Jesus sees us not only as we are, but as we can be; and he says: “Give your life to me, and I will make you what you have it in you to be.”[ATTRIBUTION: BARCLAY]

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THE NEXT TWO DISCIPLES

OK. Two disciples have formally been called — Andrew and his brother Simon Peter, who are from the town of Bethsaida. Our designated reading today talks about two others. One of these is Philip, who just happens to be from the same town as Andrew and Simon Peter but now is in Galilee. Not a coincidence, I think, that the next place Jesus goes, the very next day, is to Galilee, where He finds Philip and says to Him, “Follow me!” Jesus went LOOKING for Philip, found him and called him, and Philip immediately responded.

What does Philip do? He becomes an Andrew. He goes to his friend Nathanael and tells him of this great new person he has met — the person he believes is the Messiah prophesied in Scripture who would deliver Israel, this Jesus, son of Joseph, from Nazareth. That’s when Nathanael asks the weird-to-us question, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” One way of looking at that is hometown rivalry — A Red Raider fan is going to ask, “Can any good football or basketball player come out of AUSTIN?” But there’s probably more to it than that. For one thing, there are no prophecies connecting the Messiah to Nazareth, which was at best a back-water town that had never produced anything or anyone of note and where one certainly never go looking for a Messiah.

Philip doesn’t answer that question but simply says, “Come and See” — a simple answer that has led at least people to Christ. These are words we can use as well: “Come, let me show you.” “Come, let me introduce you to Christ” —if we ourselves know Jesus already and our lives are noticeably different from what were before to someone who has known us a long time.

At any rate, Nathanael goes to check out this Jesus. And again, Jesus looks deep into the heart of a man and pronounces what He sees -- a genuine Israelite in whom there is no deceit.” These are words of high praise, coming straight from the Old Testament. Psalm 32:2 says “Blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity and in whose spirit there is no deceit” and Isaiah 53:9 says “He had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.”

Jesus sees all that in Nathanael, who quickly asks how this stranger could possibly know that about him, and Jesus responds by saying, “Before Philip called you, I saw you under the fig tree.” What does that mean? Well, it almost definitely means Jesus saw Nathanael under a fig tree at some point, and the significance of that is that the fig tree stood for peace — that is, Old Testament Scriptures in Kings and in Micah indicate that a man could be undisturbed under his own vine and his own fig tree. Plus, the fig tree was big and leafy and offered much shade, so men often sat under one to ponder, and perhaps in Nathanael’s case, praying for the arrival of the Messiah.

And here He was, right in front of him, and Nathanael says so — He says Jesus is God’s Son, one of the first to make that declaration, and more — the “king of Israel.” That’s a metaphor for the Messiah, since the word “Messiah” means “the one anointed with oil,” which was an act performed of persons designated for priestly, royal or sometimes even prophetic roles.” [ATTRIBUTION: Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs: The Image of the Messiah in Judaism and Christianity.”]

Judaism considered the term to mean the “future Jewish king from the Davidic line, who will be ‘anointed’ with holy anointing oil, to be king of God’s kingdom, and rule the Jewish people during the Messianic age. “ However, the Jews did not consider that this Messiah would “BE God or a pre-existent, divine, Son of God.” [ATTRIBUTION: Wikipedia article on the Messiah].

But who was this man Nathanael, sometimes spelled with an “ael” and other times with an “iel”? A disciple named Nathanael is mentioned only twice in the Gospels, and then only in John. Scholars speculate that he was another one of those with two names : Nathanael and Bartholomew. In their lists of disciples, neither Matthew nor Mark name John and they pair Bartholomew’s name with Phillip (the man who brought Nathanael and Jesus together), so it’s a natural connection. John never mentions Bartholomew, so perhaps they are the same person.

At any rate, Nathanael declares Jesus to be all of the above: God’s Son, the King of Israel, the Messiah.

Then Jesus asks a puzzling question: “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree?” This question is reminiscent of the question Jesus asked the one we call “Doubting Thomas,” who wouldn’t believe that Jesus had risen from the dead unless he actually saw Him and touched Him. Jesus asked Thomas (in John 20:29. CEB): “Do you believe because you see me? Happy are those who don’t see and yet believe.”

I want to come back to that in a minute, but let’s finish up with the story of Nathanael first, After Jesus asks Nathanael if it is because He saw him under a fig tree that he believes, He tells Nathanael that he will see even greater things — heaven open and God’s angels going up to heaven and down to earth on the Human One” (or the Son of Man.) Just a note: Jesus often called Himself the “Son of Man,” but the Hebrew words for that are “the Human One,” so that is why that explanation often appears in the Common English Bible.

But where does that whole thing about angels ascending and descending to heaven come from? I think there are a couple of explanations. One is that Jesus is using the story of Jacob seeing the golden ladder leading from earth to the sky and God’s messengers — His angels — ascending and descending on the ladder up to heaven. Barclay says it can be like a metaphor for Nathanael or all of us — that Jesus “is saying to us: 'I can do far more than read your heart. I can be for you and for all men the way, the ladder that leads to heaven.’ It is through Jesus and Jesus alone that the souls of men can mount the ladder which leads to heaven.” [ATTRIBUTION: BARCLAY]

Or maybe it’s more a reference to Nathanael’s eventual death, using the stoning of Stephen as a metaphor. Just before he was martyred for his belief in the Messiah, Stephen looked up toward heaven and saw God Himself and Jesus standing at God’s right hand, and Stephen said, “I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right side of God!” (Acts 7:56) If Nathanael really was Bartholomew, he met a terrible end. Early church legend has it that he was skinned alive and beheaded. [ATTRIBUTION:” Wikipedia article on Bartholomew] However he died and under what name, this disciple of Christ lived and died for Christ

Jesus is not always calling us to die for Him, although He might. But He does call for us to live for Him, to put aside everything else to be a disciple of Christ.

change to OUR HEARTS RESPOND TO THE WORD slide

OUR HEARTS RESPOND TO THE WORD

And now we come to where we talk about how we respond to what we have heard God saying to us. Basically it comes down to What Does It Mean to Be Called? Or What Does It Mean to Be a Disciple? In some ways, those are two different questions; in other ways, just one question. Is the call to accept Christ as your personal Savior or to BE Christ to those around you? Is it one or the other or BOTH? Do others see that YOU have answered that call to serve others and to be Christ’s light TO and IN the world? But the answers about putting God first or putting self first are at opposite ends of a spectrum, and THAT all has to do with personal discipleship with our Lord.

What does a call LOOK like? For example, we read today about little Samuel’s call. Not many get thrust into Temple life at a very young age and called at about the age of the age of 5 or 6 or given a task to tell an old man that he is about to have everything taken away from him because he has not lived up to his ideals. I’ve heard of preachers hearing the call to preach or be a missionary at a very young age, and I know my father was just a teen when he heard the call to preach and answered it. I, on the other hand, was in my 60s. Or, on the other hand, maybe I just wasn’t listening. Maybe God had been calling me for years and I wasn’t paying attention enough. Eli may have been little, but he was paying attention and God used him in mighty ways for many, many years.

Moses was called from a burning bush, and Saul was on his way to kill as many Christians as he could when he was knocked off his horse and blinded for several days. Now THOSE are ways to get your attention. But sometime the call comes as a slight nudge or a quiet whisper. It can come in many ways and it could come at any age in your life. But when it comes, how will you answer?

And once we understand the call, how do we DO it? I think about some of the other people we’ve talked about today. In those first few verses we read this morning, we read of ways Jesus responded to people and got them interested in Him and His message and three men who heard and answered the call by immediately introducing a friend or family member to Jesus directly or indirectly. Andrew got his brother Simon; those two men came from the same home town as Philip and probably suggested Jesus talk to him, and Philip went to Nathanael. Four calls. Four days. Of course, it doesn’t always work that way. Sometimes it takes years and sometimes you never know the impact you had. But it’s the trying that’s important.

And that’s why using Jesus as our model is our best answer. He made Himself available, like when the two men were following Him and he turned back and walked toward them, meeting them where they were, both in a physical sense and a spiritual and emotional sense. In that whole afternoon of talk, Jesus surely showed them that He cared about what they were thinking and their goals and desires. “What are you looking for?” He asked, and then He showed He had the answers. We don’t have the answers, but we know the One who does and we can share that One with someone else.

It sounds like we’re talking about asking you to go be a missionary in some foreign country and help build water wells or teach farmers how to grow crops or bring food or warm clothes to some poor families or go to some poor American towns and teach children to read or.... hundreds of impossible-sounding things we know we don’t have the resources to do or are too old to do or whatever.

But I think the point of today’s lesson is that God is not necessarily calling you to do some BIGGGG thing. He MAY be, but He could be calling you to do something small, just do it more often. I don’t know what God is calling you to do, but I do know three things:

God IS calling you to do something.

He thinks you can do it because He has given you what you need to do it.

He will be there with you and help you with it and through it.

So go find out where God is, where He wants you to be and what He wants you to do, and answer the call of Christ this week. change to the words to the Affirmation of Faith

AFFIRMATION OF FAITH

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ his only Son, our Lord;who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried;the third day he rose from the dead; he ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church,the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body,a nd the life everlasting. Amen. change slide to INVITATION slide and leave up a second or two

INVITATION

after the INVITATION, change to INVITATION HYMN slide, which gives the name of the hymn and stays up for a short introduction of the hymn . After the hymn introduction, change slide to words to the second hymn, which will look like a single slide, but will include several slides, depending on the number of verses, etc. If a verse is broken up into more than one slide, the signal for the slide change is a dash (—)

INVITATION SONG — “Be Thou My Vision”

Our first hymn was “Jesus Calls Us” and our second hymn was “Open My Eyes that I May See.” Jesus calls US to follow Him and serve Him, and to open our eyes to His vision of what we should be and what the world should be. Accordingly, our hymn of invitation is “Be Thou My Vision.” We’ll sing two verses.

Verse 1

Be Thou my vision

O Lord of my heart

Naught be all else to me

Save that Thou art

Thou my best thought

By day or by night

Waking or sleeping

Thy presence my light

Verse 2

Be Thou my wisdom

Be Thou my true Word

I ever with Thee

And Thou with me Lord

Thou my great Father

I Thy true son

Thou in me dwelling

And I with Thee one

change to BENEDICTION slide and leave up

BENEDICTION

Text for Benediction prayer goes.

After the Benediction and the “Amen,” change to FINAL slide and leave up

FINAL SLIDE

STOP LIVESTREAMING AND RECORDING IN PROCLAIMING AND OBS