A Higher Calling

February 28, 2016

Stetson Memorial UMC

Third Sunday of Lent

“The High Way”

Adapted Sermon Series

 by Marcia McPhee

“The Way”

All Scripture is from the AMP Bible

Isaiah 55:1-9

Psalm 139: 1-18

Acts 10:9-16

 “A “Higher” Calling”

Prayer for the Spirit’s leading…

A reading from the Prophet Isaiah, chapter Fifty-Five, verses one thru nine…listen to the Word’s of Life from God to you and me, pilgrims on a journey…

Eating for free…getting to drink without a cost…buying something for nothing…why that is completely absurd…you can’t get something for nothing. In the world we live…we tend to think that if it doesn’t cost there must be some sort of catch. There must be some sort of hidden agenda if I am being offered something that I need for free.

We, as humankind, seem to think we have everything all figured out. We tend to think that we know it all and at times just close our ears and eyes to a new way of thinking. Remember…we have it all figured out. Or do we? Is there another way that we do not perceive? Is there a “higher calling” on our lives as Christ followers?

We are continuing our Lenten pilgrimage to the cross. During this journey we will bring Marcia McPhee with us as we look at her sermon series “The Way”. We are going to be looking at the different “ways” or paths that we take in life. My prayer is that as we journey together we will help each other and those in our lives find “the way”.

We began this pilgrimage on Ash Wednesday as we talked about “the way back”… taking a u-turn so to speak…back towards God…back to the relationship that God intended from the very beginning. We have talked about “the wandering way”…As Marcia McPhee would put it…when we walk through that maze trying to find the way to the right path instead of hitting those walls of a wrong turn. Last week we talked about “the way around” when Erica told us about how we need to follow God’s plan in our life and sometimes we need to make a way around those in our lives that would try to tell us different.

So, the question I asked was “do we as Christ followers have a higher calling in our lives? Do we understand differently than those who are not Christ followers? And if we have a higher calling in our lives what does that look like?”  

So…how sure can we be the scripture from Isaiah I read this morning gives us food for thought. God offers us living water when we thirst, the bread of heaven when we hunger, and all of this for free. Well it is free because Jesus paid the price for us to come to the table and be fed. So technically it did cost but God offers us the result of that cost for free.

So God offers all of this for free…even if we, as creation, do not understand why the Creator would do such a thing. Now here’s the question…because we follow Jesus, should we offer to others a place at the table, as we are offered, for that same price? Does God expect us to accept the higher calling on our lives to invite others to the table for the same price that we pay? Do we follow the thought process of the world or the thought process of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ?

Peter, The Rock, thought he had it all figured out. He followed the rules and regulations of God and he did it with all that he was. But one day, he was shown a blind side so to speak. He was living a life that had exclusion in it even though he thought that he had it all figured out. Listen as I read Acts ten, nine thru sixteen. This reminds us of a high calling and thought process that we are challenged…commissioned to live…

9 The next day, as they were on their way and were approaching the city, Peter went up on the roof of the house about the sixth hour (noon) to pray, 10 but he became hungry and wanted something to eat. While the meal was being prepared he fell into a trance; 11 and he saw the sky opened up, and an object like a great sheet descending, lowered by its four corners to the earth, 12 and it contained all kinds of four-footed animals and crawling creatures of the earth and birds of the air. 13 A voice came to him, “Get up, Peter, kill and eat!” 14 But Peter said, “Not at all, Lord, for I have never eaten anything that is common (unholy) and [ceremonially] unclean.” 15 And the voice came to him a second time, “What God has cleansed and pronounced clean, no longer consider common (unholy).” 16 This happened three times, and then immediately the object was taken up into heaven.

Peter thought he had it all figured out but God had a different plan. The vision was not so much about food as it was about exclusion. Peter followed all the rules but he had this blind side that God needed to illuminate. He told God that he had never broken the “rule of man” and God showed him a better way. We too at times can be blindsided and need to have the blinders taken off to restore our vision.

We are taught that everything costs. But our ways are not God’s ways, praise God. It is a higher way that we are called. We are all invited to the table of Grace without price. This is our higher way in which we are to embody others. Hospitality is the way. Now here’s the thought provoking, higher way thought…even when we do not agree on everything, we are still one family at one table.

Is God trying to lower the sheet before your eyes to show you something new? Is God trying to spring up a new thing in your life but you are blinded by the way you think? Do you want to follow the Light of the world but the world is clouding your view? Then have I a deal for you. It costs you nothing but it will be more rewarding than all the glitter and glimmer of the world. Taste and see that the Lord is good and He will give you new eyes to see a higher way, a new heart that beats only for Him and a new song in your soul. Try it…I assure you that you will like it…

Amen