If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again!

Back in June, I sent out my application for a PhD program in physics at the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT). I found out last week that I got picked up for that program, and I’ve been puzzling through the ramifications since then. The current outlook is that I’ll start probably in Fall 2009 and study at AFIT—at Wright-Patterson AFB—for three years. I’m then committed to stay in the Air Force for five years after that, at least four years of which will be as a professor at the US Air Force Academy. So I’ll be an Air Force physicist until 2017, which puts me at 12 years of service, more than halfway to retirement (assuming I at least make Major).

I say try again because I attempted a PhD program once before. Although I had some really good people supporting me in that program, I really felt the need to get out and stem the tide of rising student loan balances. Now, the Air Force wants to pay me and send me back to school at the same time, in a program that is extremely focused toward quickly and efficiently shaping students into researchers. (That’s not to say that civilian institutions are good or bad; they just function differently as far as funding and carrying out research programs, which translates into a significant difference in the normal time required for a student to complete a PhD degree.)

Where does that leave me with respect to a call to ordained ministry? And where does that leave me in my attempt to discern what God wants for me? Well, as I’ve said before, God is more subtle than many of us would like. There’s plenty of room to be indecisive in life, especially if one stands around waiting for God’s purpose to become clear. Meanwhile, life (and God!) keeps going on. In the end, I can wait around, beating my head against a wall (figuratively, of course, though I sometimes have the appropriate headache…) as I continue to ponder my purpose in a place where I probably won’t be ordained anyway. Or I can make a decision, take a leap of faith, and pray that God has placed me where I can do some good.

In any case, as I’ve mentioned before, the first call I experienced was more of a long-term call, in which I would seek ordination after finishing my military career. In my current context, I feel like the more urgent call may have been what was needed to prod me toward what I needed. I enjoy the theological education I’ve had so far, and I find that it feeds both my mind and my soul. So I still intend to complete my Master of Divinity program. In the future, depending on where I am, relative to appropriate schools, I can pursue a Doctor of Theology degree. And there’s still plenty of life left for me to live—with God's grace, maybe I’ll answer the original call after all.

Lord, keep my eyes, heart, mind, and soul open to new possibilities!

Amen.

Other Plans: A Sermon on Matthew 22:1-14 (Proper 23A)

How many of us have been lonely on a Friday night, or just felt like having people over for dinner, or wanted to go out with friends to a show? How many of us have had those plans frustrated by the answers of our friends, “I have other plans.”?

How often that happens in today’s culture! With all the activities, with all the work, with all the possible things to plan to do, perhaps it’s more amazing that we can actually find time to invite others to spend time with us in the first place!

The king in Jesus’ parable must have felt a little like that. He’d gone to all this trouble, spared no expense, so that his son’s wedding banquet would be something worth remembering. But when he sent out the invitations, those invited had other plans. And some went so far as to seize and to kill the messengers.

What a terrible time to be a messenger!

God must have felt the same way. After all, God has gone to all the trouble of creating the world in which we live. God has spared no expense so that Jesus’ wedding banquet will be something to remember.

Of course, Jesus’ wedding banquet is not a wedding as we understand weddings, but another way of seeing the end times, what theologians call the eschaton, what we see in today’s reading from the prophet Isaiah, as the eschatological banquet. At this banquet, as Jesus says in John’s gospel, “I will draw all people to myself.” The eschaton, from the Greek for ‘ending’, is the final consummation of the community of God, so the parable from today’s gospel reading is especially appropriate.

At the time, God had prepared all this for the chosen people, and sent out messengers to invite them to the banquet. But they had other plans, and so they went off to those plans. But some stuck around, just to seize and kill the messengers—The prophets.

Like the king, God has sent out another call. This call has gone out to the whole of humanity, just as the king sent his messengers out to the thoroughfares and the main streets to invite everyone they found. God has invited us into the hall for the banquet.

God’s invitation is real enough, as we all probably know, at least somewhere in our hearts and souls. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be in church early on a Sunday morning, when a nice warm bed tempts us to sleep in. But, although God’s invitation is real enough, God is a lot more subtle about inviting us in.

Or did I miss the engraved invitation?

The LORD our God invites you this day

To a celebration of the wedding of Jesus Christ,

The only Son of God,

To the one holy catholic and apostolic church.

Who among us, upon receiving such an invitation, could possibly ignore it?

Or would we drum up an excuse? Would we find that we have other plans, that something else is keeping us from going to the wedding banquet?

We also find that we have work to do, to prepare ourselves for the banquet. After all, we would prepare ourselves for an ordinary dinner party. We would probably shower, and we would dress appropriately, just as did most of the guests at the banquet of the king in Jesus’ parable.

Everyone except the one guy who was not wearing a wedding robe—that guy, who came as he was, with no thought about what might please the host who had gone to all the trouble to have a banquet. That must have been a grave insult, for the king ordered that guy to be bound and thrown out. In the Air Force, we have an expression that fits especially well here:

“Don’t be that guy!”

We generally do quite a bit to acknowledge the host of a dinner party in our culture today. We generally groom and dress appropriately, and we generally bring a gift, some small token of appreciation, or something to share with the rest of the party, like a nice bottle of wine.

If that’s a lot of preparation to attend an ordinary dinner party, how much more preparation do we owe to God, for the invitation—engraved or not—to share in the eschatological banquet? Answering God’s call requires much more than just saying, “Here am I,” more than just saying yes.

We have to commit ourselves to God’s call, we have to clear our calendars of other plans, we have to prepare ourselves for God’s call, and then we follow in the words of the prophet Isaiah, “Here am I; send me.”

Amen.