The Fifth Week of Easter: From FEAR to BELOVED

STEP ONE: BREATHE

Take a deep, cleansing breath. Allow the air to fill your lungs and expand your body. Exhale and empty yourself into the room. Repeat three times - once for the one who Created you, once for the Incarnate One who walks beside you, and once for the Spirit whose life fills your being.

STEP TWO: DWELL IN WORD

“Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.”
”

— Luke 5:10

A PERSONAL STORY

During this period of sheltering in place, I’ve taken some time to explore my heritage on Ancestery.com. I’ve been able to go back several generations. There I have found house painters, photographers, seamstresses, home-makers, and craft folks. What you do not see in my family tree are any Church workers, no, not one pastor, deacon, educator, nothing.

It was a time of mixed emotions when I loaded up my 1972 Datsun 510 wagon and started the three and a half hour trek from Detroit, Michigan to Columbus, Ohio and the church’s seminary there. The reason I had enrolled there was two-fold. First, on a whim, I had taken several classes on religion at the University of Michigan and they quickly became my favorite classes. So much so that I declared “Studies in Religion” as my undergraduate major. At that same time, the pastor at my home church keep planting the seed that I should consider the ministry as a vocation. Finally, I believed those two facts were God’s way of pushing me toward the seminary.

So it was with excitement that I set out knowing I would be doing graduate level work on the subject I loved, but at the same time fear over the fact that I had no idea what a seminary was like. That fear grew the closer I came to Columbus. I had visions of very pious people silently studying away, Bible always in hand (that was certainly not the case but that’s another story for another time).

My first year went well. I liked my classes, my professors and my classmates. All was well until we were assigned an “integrative theology” paper whereby we had to identify and research a societal problem that touched people in the church or which the church should be addressing, write on that subject, then reflect theologically on the issue and finally, write a sermon that one could preach on the subject.

Quickly fear set in. I had no idea what issue to identify, no clue as to how to reflect theologically on it, and while I had preach a sermon or two at my home church during my college years…these were hometown folks who were rooting for me, not PhD professors of theology.

Fear set in and then panic. I began to question whether I was cut out for the ministry. Was I just fooling myself? Why am at this place? Who am I really? It all came to a head one night as I tossed and turned in bed. I finally laid on my back, looked to the heavens and said “Lord, if you are calling me to the ministry you had better give me an idea about this paper or I’m packing up and heading back to Michigan…pronto.”

Well, come this August I will celebrate the 40th anniversary of my ordination so you can assume what God’s answer was. Over those 40 years there have been other times when I have felt fear and doubt, when I wondered if what I was doing was making a difference, when I wondered if the whole thing was just a bunch of hooey that I was perpetuating. Those times have called into question my identity but I have always landed and fallen back on that call of Christ which sustained me in those times of fear and doubt.

For all of us our vocational callings in the world are huge part of our identity. Most often when we meet someone new the first questions we ask are what’s your name? Where you from? What do you do? When that is called into question, it’s tough…it is the “dark night of the soul.” But as Pastor Scott stated on Sunday, even in our doubt, our fear, we are the Lord’s. Each and every one of us called to work and service in the world by Christ to serve God and neighbor. It is that identity that is the rock we must stand on.

There is a legend about Martin Luther, that any time he began to question and doubt and fear that what he was doing was not of God but of himself, he would crawl on his hands and knees to the baptismal font and hug it…knowing that right or wrong he belonged to God and to Jesus, forgiven and beloved.

I never quite got to that point but I sure can understand the action!

STEP THREE: PRAY

Precious God, so often we let the world dictate much of our lives including our identity and our worth. When we begin to doubt and when we fear the loss of our calling through no fault of our own, bring us back to our baptismal font where you claimed us as your own, brothers and sisters to Jesus and to each other, and where you declared us to be your beloved child. Thank you Lord. Amen

Today’s devotion is by Pastor Dennis Sepper.