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What if, at the beginning of this year, we could rise above the everyday, the familiar, the cold, straighten out our drooping wings, shake off the weight of the previous years’ cares and pains – rise up and, together with the Son of God, take flight – into the freedom in which He has called us to live out our dreams and our calling?
Let us remember the biblical hero Noah, who received from God the call to build an ark. God told Noah and his family to prepare for a flood at a time when rain was an unknown phenomenon, because rain had never fallen from the heavens before. In other words, God told Noah to do what was unreal and unimaginable. By the word “unreal” I mean that about which nothing is known, that which has not been experienced, that which frightens, that which the majority of people do not believe in. Logically, well-wishers in such a case try to talk one out of or dissuade one from actions that seem foolish to the majority.
The story of Noah’s flood can be analysed in various ways. One can ask the question of the authenticity and historicity of this story. There are Christians on both sides of the discussion. But for now this discussion is of little importance to us, because we are focusing on the content of the story and on the aspect of Noah’s calling. God had a plan, and God had Noah, who heard a specific call from God. The task that Noah received was an impossible mission – to build an ark, gather the animals and save his family from a worldwide catastrophe.
A certain Brazilian song, in my opinion, wonderfully reflects the call that Noah received:
Noah, look at Me,
The flood will come,
Noah, begin to build that which will protect you,
You have found favour with Me, Noah,
Listen to what I will say:
If you build your ark,
All will be made new.
(authors – pastor Lūkass (pastor Lucas) and Josué Godoi; transl. A. L. from Portuguese)
God calls people at any moment. Today as well. That is the central thing we must understand in the story of Noah. What is not unimportant – Noah received the call from God, not from people. That is, Noah was not ordained in order to fulfil God’s call! This aspect is essential to the question of ordination, because the apostle Paul too was not ordained. Jesus’s disciples were not ordained; they were witnesses and acted solely on the basis of the inner faith and conviction that they had received from Jesus. Ordination is the community’s expression of trust in a certain person and the recognition of that person as the community’s spiritual leader. In history, ordination has been a procedure for installing rulers. Let us remember Saul, who was crowned. But that was only for a time, because Saul was not fit for his ordination; he was too arrogant. While Saul was still in office, God was preparing David, whom He called from his youth. Jesus, on the other hand, chose his disciples not from among the qualified theologians, who in his time were the Temple priests of the Levite order who had inherited the priestly office, but from among fishermen, tax collectors, peasants, the unemployed, the sick and the outcast. Jesus called and empowered people to bear witness; he did not occupy himself with ordination. Ordination is nothing more than a matter of bureaucracy. People’s spiritual life and the worth of every human being is the central question of Christianity. But as so often happens, in institutions that have turned into bureaucratic machines, the human being ceases to be a person who needs help; the human being is no longer a value but a unit that exists in order to feed the bureaucratic machine. The same thing happens with a church that is preoccupied with bureaucracy and questions of hierarchy. The human being in it is a unit. When a person understands this, he or she begins to attend church twice a year, but does not understand that the fault is not in them, but in the bureaucracy.
In this time, when we have allowed inverted priorities to divert us from the path of the Kingdom of God, Noah’s calling reminds us – despite the fact that what we have received from God seems absurd to the surrounding society – if God is the One who calls, then He is also the One who empowers. He gives the wisdom and the abilities to fulfil His calling, whatever the individual calling may be, because His favour is with you.
In the continuation of the aforementioned song about Noah, the author builds a bridge between Noah’s calling and his own calling, and says:
I will build an ark of faith,
An ark of victory,
Just like Noah,
And the flood will not reach me,
For the Lord has found favour with me.
(authors – pastor Lūkass (pastor Lucas) and Josué Godoi; transl. A. L. from Portuguese)
That’s exactly it! We can apply this Bible story (and others too) to our own life and our own situation. The biblical heroes are written into the Bible in order to awaken in us faith in the fact that God has called us to that which He Himself placed within us before our birth. I will allow myself to disagree with the view of Martin Luther, which he inherited from the Church Father Augustine, that there is nothing good in the human being himself. From this view there arose the notion that God’s call to a specific person must be tested against the opinion accepted in society – i.e., it must receive the quorum of the majority. That is not so. If nothing good had remained in the human being after the fall into sin in Eden, God would not have saved Noah’s family. What prevented God from wiping absolutely everyone off the face of the earth and creating anew? He did not do it. God values His creation so highly that He chose to become a human being! God, in the person of Jesus Christ, dwelt among people, healed the sick, lifted up the weak, and invited the rejected into the Kingdom of Heaven. God has given us, human beings, the spirit of adoption as God’s children, which cries Abba – Father. When parents call, the child hears the words of its father or mother. It is exactly the same with God’s call, which God has placed in our hearts. God speaks, we understand. A quorum of the majority is not needed in order to interpret God’s will for us. Noah did not ask for it, Paul did not either. Jesus did not either.
May God this year awaken His calling that is within us, however unreal this calling may be! Noah accomplished his impossible mission, in spite of both inner unbelief and doubt and the mockery, spitting and jeering of those around him. Noah was focused. He accomplished it. We will be able to as well! With God all things are possible.
What will happen when we fulfil our calling? Only God knows exactly, but we have an inkling – there will be something new, and it will be one more step towards the Kingdom of God.
May these words from the song be your and my inner prayer in 2016:
My God, how much I have lost,
How much I have wept,
My God, how much I have dreamed
And have not understood;
It does not matter what price must be paid,
I have resolved to sacrifice,
I will build my ark,
I will not drown in the flood.
(authors – pastor Lūkass (pastor Lucas) and Josué Godoi; transl. A. L. from Portuguese)
The song in Portuguese can be listened to here:
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Aļesja Lavrinoviča