Call and Response
A Homily based on Genesis 12:1-9  and Matthew 9:9-13; 18-26
By Rev. Thomas Hall

Our lesson for this Sunday looks at two characters who share something in common. That’s a little unusual given that the characters are separated by a millennium-Neolithic vis-à-vis late iron age guys. Not only that but their occupations are completely different. One is a nomad surrounded by herds and flocks in the desert; the other does a brisk business at his tax booth in the city. Even the ages are uneven: the first guy is already an old guy when his story begins and the other one is probably a young man. What could they possibly have in common? Both Abraham and Matthew are unremarkable, woefully ordinary people.

Let’s look at Abraham. He’s done okay in life; persevered as a rancher and come away with some wealth. Far as we know Abraham is comfortable in Ur-probably an ancient version of post-modern exurbia. He could be satisfied with retirement to the good life-just lay back and enjoy whatever life he has left. He may have been religious at the time his story begins. We just don’t know. Whatever gods lived in Mesopotamia-and there was quite a collection to choose from-Abraham could have continued to mollify and placate them. After all, they had served him well and he had done okay by them. Lots of sheep, goats, camels, donkeys, and extended family and servants.

Can’t help but wonder if maybe he didn’t do what we sometimes do. Just when we have accomplished some of our lifelong goals . . . when we finally arrive at the new house, move to the new neighborhood, make the lateral move at work, earn the degree, enjoy the friends . . . one night after a party or concert we stroll down the sidewalk that leads behind our house and happen to gaze up into the vast universe. We just stare up at that dark dome with all of those millions of points of light hanging out there light years away. In that moment we realize how truly insignificant we are in view of the larger scheme. We are ants. Little microbes in a huge universe. And we wonder about our accomplishments in light of a larger mission. Has our life really made a difference?

Maybe Abraham was thinking like that when one day from deep within his settled life, Abraham hears a knock at the door . . .

We don’t know even that much about Matthew. But we know that Matthew did not have much of a name around his old neighborhood. Nice guy, maybe. But his profession was the bad egg. Tax collectors were sinners primarily because their very profession was in violation of the Torah. Respectable people never went into the IRS business. "Next," he mutters, face squinted, nose wrinkled as he writes the numbers down. "Is this all I’m supposed to be doing in life?" he wonders as the next wag comes through the line. Maybe that’s what he was thinking when he heard a knock at the door . . .

You have to wonder, don’t you, why God would choose someone like Abraham to become a conduit through whom God would bless all humanity-"all the nations in the world," as the writer in Genesis puts it. And you have to wonder why Jesus would have chosen Matthew over someone else given the extraordinary people available from which to choose.

Why God makes choices like these, well, we just wonder. One thing for sure: most of those who receive the "call" are ordinary folk, people with their share of marital problems, people who have skeletons in the closets of their lives, people who’ve made less than stellar choices. At times they might feel that they offer little promise for future contributions. Ordinary.

Maybe your past business dealings aren’t as shady as Matthew the Tax Collector. Maybe your problems-ones that Abraham will confront head on in the coming chapters-aren’t in as big a mess as Abraham’s. If God can call to them to journey with him and use even them, think how much more God can use even us!

Maybe we’re more like these two characters than we would like to admit. Maybe we don’t always feel like a disciple; maybe we don’t always act like a disciple. But the stories in both cases suggest that our call and our ability to respond is not really the point. God has investment in humanity and when we respond to God, we can begin to live, really live life that has meaning and fullness.

Meet Shane Claiborne. I met him on a Saturday morning a number of years ago at Eastern University. I had come with my youth group to help him pack lunches to feed Philadelphia’s poor. In my opinion, he was just a do-gooder kind of college kid. A bit geeky. Gangly. But a nice guy. He would graduate and return to Atlanta or wherever and pastor or administrate or whatever.

But it’s like he gets this knock on the door . . .

Next time I meet Shane, he’s living in the poorest neighborhood in Philly. So dangerous is this area that the city government people only drive in to work there . . . and drive out at 5 pm. No one lives there if they don’t have to. I can understand that. They have over 30,000 abandoned houses in his section. Can you imagine how how much crack addiction this neighborhood can support? Graffiti scrawled on walls and houses. Dirty words. Anguish. Hopelessness. Two people murdered two doors down.

But Shane heard a knock on the door. So he lives in Kensington under the L. Opens a used clothes shop on the corner; begins to feed 50 of the poorest each day. Takes on City Hall to get control of one of the abandoned houses and has big plans.

"I’m going to use this building for piano and string lessons, drama and other arts," he told me. "But we’re not going to bring people in from the outside, we’re recruiting teachers from our neighborhood." In the upstairs of this former crack house he hosts "the underground seminary" each week, an urban movement that brings the poor and homeless into dialogue with theologians and seminarians in the heart of urban plight. A rabbi had taught that week’s lesson from Deuteronomy about Jubilee and the theme that runs through Hebrew Scripture: The Earth is the Lord’s and all its fullness." I wondered how squatters living in these abandoned houses would have heard that.

From that dirty street corner, Shane now flies around the country to some of the nation’s wealthiest street corners to share his message of how God is birthing people into a Kingdom that shares wealth and treats every human being with dignity and hope.

Shane is no hero. No theologian. But no tax collector, either. Just an ordinary sort of guy. Just a gangly guy who happened to respond to the "call" of an extraordinary God. He just took the sidewalk that led behind the university one night and there looking up into the dark dome with millions of points of lights asked, "I’m yours; where do you want to lead me?"

God isn’t looking for extraordinary people, just faithful persons through which he can bless the world. The call to walk with Christ isn’t always spectacular, just faithful. All Abraham had to do was to keep his mouth shut, keep moving, and father a child at ninety. All Matthew had to do was to stand up, leave his computer accounting office, and stumble down the sidewalk after Jesus and then later write a gospel.

The journey is extraordinary. The conversation sweet. But know that when you hear the knock . . . you must answer the door and leave the rest to God. Amen.