THE THIRTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME – C: July 1, 2007

1 Kings 19:16b, 19-21
Galatians 5:1, 13-18
Luke 9:51-62

Dear Jesus,

This whole question of vocation is troubling. That’s the basic theme in this Sunday’s readings, isn’t it? The call, the invitation to follow you, to be a disciple is daunting. I begin to see that there is no other vocation like it. I mean, a person can sense an inclination to be a doctor, or a lawyer, a teacher or a rock star. A number of motives can support that inclination. And one can set out on the path to the realization of the imagined goal, try it, and depending on the sense of satisfaction derived from the doing, continue in the discipline or change and do something else. But that is not the way it is with you. Those you call aren’t given options. Oh, they can say yes or no. It is an invitation, after all. But if they, or rather, if I say yes, that yes has to be absolute without reservation, nothing held back, because this invitation isn’t about doing something or even about going somewhere. This yes alters my very being.

What is curious, at least as the vocation stories are presented in the Gospel, is what is not said. There is no indication about how well those summoned know you. Obviously, these would not be first encounters. But how much do they know? How much of the story have they heard? Have they seen miracles? Or, have they been loved for the first time in their lives by your followers striving to love others as they have been loved?

Certainly they have no idea what following you will mean practically in their lives. What would the command to take up your cross every day possibly mean to them? Have you told them that if they follow you they will have to sell what they have, give to the poor, and only then follow you? What is clear is that with you there is no such thing as a partial acceptance, much less is an acceptable response one that is yes-and-no. A lyric from an old song comes to mind: With (you) it’s all or nothing. It’s all or nothing at all. And certainly you don’t seem to be open to the invited’s asking, what’s in it for me?

The other day, I walked the path of a prayer garden with a stranger. In retrospect, I wonder if you hadn’t arranged for our meeting. He started the conversation by asking what I thought of the place. My response was noncommittal. It was my first visit. Everything was new. I don’t think he was interested in what I thought of the garden as much as he wanted conversation, or rather, a sounding board. And so began his telling of an odyssey, of periods in his life when he thought about you and wondered about being a Christian and of periods when he was Buddhist, Hindu, and even atheist. Now he was back to thinking he liked the Christian message and its optimism. I wondered if perchance you weren’t knocking on the door, so to speak, issuing that invitation again to follow me. And I wonder, too, if the stranger’s quest will continue as long as he is sampling rather than committing, as long as he ponders from a distance rather than yields, emptying himself so that you can become all in all in him. What if the good times he expects to follow for those called Christian don’t happen?

Emptiness is hard to live with. Nature abhors a vacuum, the adage goes. But isn’t that what encountering you challenges the person to live with and so find God? The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins said: The earth is charged with the grandeur of God. But that doesn’t speak of another and separate Being. Rather, isn’t Hopkins’ a recognition of an absence that all of nature, the world, and the universe reveals. The dynamic that is God is espied through the eyes of faith gazing on a reality that every creature encounters but not every creature perceives. What makes the difference? That’s what I wonder as I think about this question of vocation. Why is it that only some see what the same poet describes as the wondrous glint darting out from crushed foil shook?

I come to see that with vocation comes restlessness and longing. From the moment of invitation, you expect the response to be total and unqualified. Traditional demands that would be recognized by most everybody else serious and therefore mitigating, you do not accept as legitimate excuses making demurral understandable on the part of those you call. Yes is what you seek. An unqualified yes is what you demand. Anything less is tantamount to a refusal. Those who say, I’ll give this a try for a while, have not said yes at all. But to say yes is to enter into that absence that is a presence that only you can be.

What is the use of this musing? What is the merit of my questions? Even as I write this letter to you, I know what the outcome for me will be. Long years ago, I naively said my yes. I died with you in the waters and rose out of them with my new identity that is you. You know that I have been surprised, have even felt broadsided by the implications flowing from that response. On occasion during dark days of disappointment, I have wondered if, had I to do it over again, would I? And each time I have let my thoughts wander there, I conclude that I could never take back that yes. My heart is grateful for the call and even more so for that mysterious strengthening that empowered my yes.

When I falter, I continue to do what I have done weekly through these years. I’ll gather around your table with my brothers and sisters, fellow journeyers. Together we will be nourished by your word. Together we will enter into mystery and there break bread and share the cup. And, strengthened by the meal, we will be sent by you to continue the work until you come again.

Sincerely,

Didymus