A Call To The Market Place Series

When you hear that someone has been called to something or has answered a call on their life, who do you think of? A preacher? A missionary? Maybe a doctor, a nurse or a teacher. There seem to be certain professions that we feel particular folks are called to.

For many people, a call means that they have responded to something, which seems, at least in some people’s minds, to have a higher purpose.

Our series over the next couple of months is entitled “The Call,” and we will look at the various calls on the lives of certain people in the Bible. I’m sure if you were in one of our planning sessions, you would have had suggestions of where we could go with this series. And hopefully, those are some of the stories that we will land on, but maybe not.

Throughout the Old Testament and New Testament, we see men and women who were called to be prophets, priests, judges and preachers. Jesus called 12 to be apostles, while others he called to be disciples.

Sometimes it’s easy when we are talking about someone being called, in a Christian perspective, to think of someone being called into full-time ministry. The pastorate or the mission field. And we often add a mystical element to it.

I remember the day that I was called into the ministry. It was a beautiful hot summer day in Saint John New Brunswick. I remember it so distinctly because it’s the only beautiful hot summer day in Saint John, that I can remember when I was growing up. Just kidding. And I heard a voice from heaven calling me to the pastorate.

I wish.

On the evening that I committed my life to Christ in 1979, at Saint John First Wesleyan Church, I felt a call on my life. But I really had no idea what that call was or where it would lead.

The day after I became a Christ follower, I drove to Sussex, New Brunswick and enrolled at Bethany Bible College, which is now Kingswood University. But I had no clue where that would lead.

For the first three years at college , I was officially undeclared, because I hadn’t chosen a major. I did know that I definitely wasn’t enrolled in the ministerial program.

Others seemed to have had different ideas for my future.

My pastor, Jack McKenzie, called me preacher after I had preached the first time in my home church when I was 19. He seemed to feel that there was a calling on my life to go into the pastorate.

The nurse at the college was a lady by the name of Uta Chase, and Miss Chase had been a career missionary nurse, and I remember her telling me, that she coveted me for the mission field. She felt that I was called to serve overseas.

It really wasn’t until late in my third year that I felt that maybe, perhaps, possibly, I might be called to the pastorate. Now, I might be a bit of a slow learner, because by that point I had actually been pastoring a church part-time for about a year and a half.

That being said, when we think of being called, we think of someone being called into full-time vocational ministry, and that isn’t always the reality.

The truth is, God doesn’t just call pastors and missionaries. He calls people into classrooms, workplaces, coffee shops, and neighbourhoods.

The scripture that we read this morning was about the early church’s response to an internal problem.

As the church was beginning to take shape, we saw two distinct groups, both were Jewish, but they had different backgrounds.

First you had the Jerusalem Jews, who spoke Aramaic, which was derived from their traditional Hebrew language.

Then there were those who were CFA, the “Come from Aways.” These were Jews whose ancestors had been away from Palestine, sometimes for generations, and they no longer spoke Aramaic. Instead, they spoke Greek, which was the universal language of the time, but was considered inferior by the Aramaic-speaking Jews.

And as often happens when you have us and them, you have tensions arising. In this case, it was over how care was being distributed to the widows.

I could take a lot of time explaining why and how the church was taking care of the widows in the church community and the historical context behind it, but I’m not.

The problem is outlined in Acts 6:1 But as the believers rapidly multiplied, there were rumblings of discontent. The Greek-speaking believers complained about the Hebrew-speaking believers, saying that their widows were being discriminated against in the daily distribution of food.

Kind of like Sneetches with Stars on their bellies and Sneetches without.

The solution to the problem is revealed when we pick up the story in Acts 6:2–4 So the Twelve called a meeting of all the believers. They said, “We apostles should spend our time teaching the word of God, not running a food program. And so, brothers, select seven men who are well respected and are full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will give them this responsibility. Then we apostles can spend our time in prayer and teaching the word.”