God Does Not Call the Qualified, He Qualifies the Call

Take no money bag, no sack, and no sandals as you go.

We hear from the gospels that

Jesus selected twelve apostles at the beginning,

and he selected them to be close collaborators.

But we also know from the synoptic gospels,

they constantly missed Jesus' message over and over again.

They just seemed to miss the most obvious things.

It was only when Jesus was risen

that everything started to clicked for them.

So they were not the best and the brightest.

They were regular folk that were called to follow.

We have no doubt that the seventy-two that

he calls today were not of any different caliber.

They would have been the same group

of ordinary folk that were sent.

In this way, we are reminded that God and Christ,

does not call the qualified, but he qualifies the called.

He only asks of these disciples two things.

The first one is to have the desire to do his will,

to accept the call, to be discipled, and to go.

The second is to trust only in him.

Take no sack, no money belt, no sandals

and to trust completely in the Lord,

that He will provide for us. 

That message is not only for the disciples of that day,

it is for us would be disciples today.

We are all called to go,

and we are sent not to be just disciples,

but missionary disciples to go forth into the world

to proclaim it through our words and actions.

I sometimes fear that we are a little insecure,

and we think that we need theology degrees

or we need to be qualified as professionals.

That we need to be a priest or a nun to be sent to do this work,

that you need to be somehow more trained than others,

but that is not the case.

The case is that we are all sent on the way,

doing the work that we are called to do, he qualifies us.

He gives us the skills to do it,

but we have to have that desire first to do his will,

and then also to trust in him.

I will give you an example of

how this even happens to us professional ministers.

I remember at the beginning of my priesthood,

not quite the first few days,

but I remember it was the first few months of my priesthood,

I was called to a hospital deathbed.

Somebody in the hospital was dying.

I remember very vividly,

because it was 4:00am in the middle of the night,

and I was called by the nurse to come down

that this patient was dying,

was literally going to die before morning,

and that they needed me to come.

I got the number of the family,

and I called the family to ascertain the situation.

That is the good training part,

find out what you are getting into.

And when I was driving to the hospital,

I was anxious because this was my very first time.

I had only anointed a couple of people before this,

and now I was going to the death bed of somebody.

I did not quite know what to do.

I just prayed to the Lord to give me the strength,

the wisdom to say and do the right thing.

Again, the desire to do the right thing, and the Lord supplies.

When I got there, it shocked me.

When I got there the woman was alone in the bed.

There was no family.

And so I called the nurse, and I said,

“I am confused.

I talked to the family right after I talked to you.”

She said, “Oh, we have been talking to them,

hoping that they would come down, 

because she is getting close,

clearly, she is going to die tonight by herself.”

And it hit me in the chest, and I said to myself,

“No. Not tonight, I will not let this happen.”

So I sat down beside her.

I introduced myself.

I explained why I was there,

and I asked if it was okay if I stayed with her.

She said it was okay and introduced herself.

She said, “ My name is Betty.

I would love it if you stay with me.

I did not want to die alone, so thank you.”

And so I sat with her for hours.

For the first couple of minutes,

we talked about her family and her estranged children

who all lived within a couple miles of the hospital.

I did not get into the details of why they were estranged.

She talked about her predeceased husband

that she loved many years, but had not seen for many years

because he had died so many years ago.

And then she talked lovingly of her two parents who she missed,

who died when she was younger,

and she missed them greatly.

But we sat mostly in sacred silence.

Finally, I asked if it was okay if we did the anointing of the sick

and what we call the commendation of dead,

we used to call the last rites.

As I said that final prayer

“Now I commend you, good soul, go forth to meet your maker.

Go to meet the Lord”

she looked over my shoulder,

looked up into the sky and smiled brightly, said

“Mama, dada” and then she took her last breath and died.

I will never forget that moment

because I was there as she crossed the threshold

from this world into the next.

It changed me completely in that singular moment,

all because I was willing to be present to that moment.

Just present.

I was not qualified.

I was there just because I answered the call.

Now, I am not suggesting you are going to get a call

to go in the middle of the night

to go see somebody who is dying,

but you might be called to be with your mother

or your grandmother when they die.

Take the call.

Go. Be there.

Do not let them die alone.

But you also might get a call from a neighbor

who is just lonely, who needs somebody to talk to.

 Or maybe you need to call somebody else

because you are lonely.

Do not be afraid to do that.

Give somebody else the privilege to be there for you

and be present to you in your moment.

Or maybe there is another call,

a call to recognize so many of those

who are on the periphery of society,

not just the old and fragile, but maybe divorced.

Those who are immigrants who are fearful,

or maybe the LGBTQ community

who are fearful on the edge of society,

and we are called to just recognize them,

to stand with them, and give them presence.

Maybe that is what we are called to do.

It is not that we have to have degrees, my friends.

We do not have to have qualified degrees

to do the ministry of the Lord.

We are called to have those two skills.

Number one to listen to the call and be willing to go.

To be willing to go.

To desire to serve.

Second one is trust.

To trust in the Lord that

he will indeed qualify us as we go, and he will.

I promise you no matter where we go

or what we are asked to do,

he will give us the way.

So my friends, today, this week,

it is not enough that we come to the table to be nourished.

We have to receive this nourishment

and pour forth that to others and

to go like the seventy-two, who were sent in pairs,

two by two into the world to bring the good news,

to bring that news to all by our presence in the world.

There is no need for any money, no sack, no sandals. We just go.

Take no money bag, no sack, and no sandals as you go.