The Rev. Frank Logue
King of Peace Episcopal Church
Kingsland, Georgia
January 22, 2006 

Following in Place
I Corinthians 7:17-23 and Mark 1:14-20 

Jesus begins his ministry proclaiming, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news.” In that one sentence sermon, we get the essence of Jesus’ teaching. Repent means to turn around and Jesus tells us we are to turn away from sin, which are the things that pull us from God. Then we are to believe, and that belief will draw us closer to God through Jesus.  

Jesus preaches this conversion of your life and then soon runs across four fisherman, each of whom hears Jesus call to “Come and Follow me,” and they actually drop their nets then and there and walk off to follow Jesus quite literally as he began his ministry. 

Then in the reading we had this morning from Paul’s first letter to the Christians in Corinth, we catch up with Christianity almost exactly 20 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection. Following Jesus no longer means dropping your fishing nets to walk the dusty roads of Israel with the Christ. As Paul writes, following Jesus has become something one does in place as it remains for us today. We follow Jesus by walking in his ways, but we do that following usually while keeping the same job and living in the same house.  

For Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John following Jesus was more straightforward. By the time Paul writes, other questions have arisen. Paul is suggests that rather than changing our station in life, we should bloom where we are planted. Or as Paul puts it, “You must accept whatever situation the Lord has put you in, and continue on as you were when God first called you.” 

If you are a slave, don’t worry about it. Serve God in that situation. If you are circumcised or uncircumcised stay as you are. So don’t worry about the outward marks of being Jewish or Gentile. Paul will write to the Galatians, that in Christ there is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female. He is not saying here in Corinthians or there in Galatians that these distinctions no longer exist, but that those distinctions don’t matter to God and so they don’t matter. Jesus spent his life in ministry breaking down the walls that separated people from God and from one another and Paul continues to do the same. 

Paul is teaching what is often described as an interim ethic, which is a way of making moral decisions for the short run. As Paul is convinced that Jesus will return in glory very soon, maybe even before the week is out, why bother spending that time changing your station in life. The most troubling aspect is that this whole section is in response to marriage, which Paul taught was OK if you couldn’t control your passions, but those who were not married would do better to remain unmarried and celibate so as to have more time and energy to serve our Lord.  

While what Paul wrote may have been because he pictured the interim between Jesus’ ascension into heaven and his Second Coming to be quite short, Paul’s writings are scripture and they continue to speak to us as God’s Word even if the interim is longer than Paul had in mind.  

Three key statements stand out to me in this passage:

You musty accept whatever situation the Lord has put you in.
The important thing is to keep God’s commandments.
And
You should continue on as you were when God called you. 

For Paul who left everything to hit the road preaching and teaching the Good News of Jesus Christ, it has become clear that some folks need to stay home and work. Not everyone needs to become the full-timed evangelist. God needs faithful potters, basket weavers, fruit sellers, farmers, and more. God even needs slaves whose good example can bring salvation to their master. This is harder to hear now after the awful blight of chattel slavery which took place right here. But Paul is writing about an economic-based slave system, which while it too had abuse and oppression, it was not as systematically bad for the slaves as the race-based slavery practiced here in America. 

Yet it sometimes helps to ask “What is this passage of scripture doing?” That shows you the principal being taught more clearly. What Paul is doing is to show how we can serve God in any situation and so we do not need to change situations. We can remain in the place we were, doing what we were doing when God called us, but doing it now to the Glory of God. 

As our service is concluding today, we’ll dedicate the gazebo which now anchors the memorial garden we are creating on our property. The work project to build that gazebo illustrates Paul’s point. I want to share some photos with you of the work being done here on our property by the advanced shop class at our neighbors, Camden County High School.  

I wrote at our website last month, “Whether it was the students’ intent or not, and certainly whether it was the school systems' intent or not, their work has been a prayer. Every bit of work has been done in God's presence and to the glory of God. From the students’ creative thoughts in the design to their attention to detail, God has been honored through their work.” 

In that same entry at the church’s web log, I quoted Thomas Merton who wrote of  the beauty of “doing ordinary things quietly and perfectly for the glory of God.” 

The work was not always quiet in terms of saws, nail guns and hammers. But it was a quiet work in that most of the high school and little of Camden County knew the great effort the class was putting into this one simple structure which they designed and built. Their class work was the situation to which they were already called and quite surprisingly they could serve God in that situation. 

But then there was the teacher who led them. Carlos Jones, Sr. is a minister. Not because he is ordained and has a church to preach in for he doesn’t. Carlos Jones, Sr. is a minister of the Gospel because he has taken the situation into which God has called him and he serves God in that situation. He doesn’t preach to his classes about the Gospel. He lives the Gospel among them the best way that he can and in so doing, Mr. Jones has positively influenced the lives of hundreds and hundreds of students.  

I think Saint Paul would be proud and I know Jesus is. We see through this one example how many examples there could be. I know of a retired hospital chaplain who bags groceries at a store about 45 minutes from here. He silently prays for all the people who pass through his check out line, making his prays part of his work. And this day when we commit Marc Dickman Sr.’s ashes to the earth, we remember that he served God in the ordinary situations of being a pilot in the Army Air Corps and then the Air Force, and later as a private pilot and entrepreneur. And if pilots, teachers and grocery store baggers can serve God in any situation in which they find themselves, so can anyone. 

And to bring that point home. This sermon was written before I went to the work day here at King of Peace yesterday. I was astounded to have written about how ordinary things could be done to God’s glory and then to see it so obviously being lived out by people of different ages, professions, etc. All of us coming together to work hard and enjoy ourselves as we worked on the grounds of our church. When we pray at the close of the service for God to consecrate the ground on which we will have our memorial garden, I know God will be faithful and do just that, but I also know that the work done already in that place, coming out of response to what God has already done for them has also begun to hallow that place.  

And we had a wonderful lesson yesterday from a toddler. Chris, Evan and Amanda were all kids working as harder or harder than the adults. Colby watched and wanted to be just like them. When they got rakes and worked, Colby got his grandma to get him a rake too and he actually used it from his stroller. That is how a church works as we learn from one another in all sorts of circumstances. Whether it be the airmen who served with Marc learning from his example as her flew under fire in World War II, or the students who learn by their teacher Mr. Jones example of a godly shop teacher, or Colby learning by watching everyone work at church yesterday. 

Bloom where you are planted might be a simple way to put it, but it is true. Better to realize that you can serve God in any and every situation in which you find yourself. God can and will use you in many different times and places. You don’t have to seek the situation in which to serve. Paul strongly suggested that you stay right where you are, continuing on as you were when God called you. In that situation, if you do ordinary things quietly and perfectly for the glory of God, you will find that amazing things can happen over time. 

Amen.