PROPER 5-A, June 5, 2005

Someone once said that the universe is made up not of atoms or molecules or anything material. Rather the universe is made up of stories. And isn’t that so true? This universe of ours, this world of ours is made up of stories about people, usually very, very ordinary people, people like you and me, people like Abraham and Matthew and the man whose young daughter had died and the women who was ill for over twelve years – ordinary people, very, very ordinary people.

Ursula LaGuin tells the story about a spaceship that comes to earth. The captain says that they have room for only one passenger. He asks those who greet him, "Will you spare us a single human being so that we might converse at leisure during our long trip back and learn from this exemplary person the nature of your race?" The first response of the people is to send a fine, bright, brave young man, highly educated, at his physical peak. But that would have been a mistake.

What the people did, according to the story, was go to the local K-Mart and pick out an older woman, about sixty-three, from behind the costume jewelry counter. She had worked hard at small, unimportant jobs all her life, jobs like cooking, cleaning, raising her children, selling little objects of adornment or pleasure to other people. She had given birth several times and had faced death several times – the same times. She is facing her final death a little more nearly and a little more clearly every day now.

She was never educated to anything like her capacity, which was a shameful waste and a crime against humanity, but so common a crime could not be hidden from these people from outer space. She has a stock of sense, wit, patience and experiential shrewdness. When this little lady was asked to represent planet earth, all she could reply was "Me? Why me? I’m just an ordinary person. I never did anything." But, of course she was wrong. She had done and understood more about life than most PhD’s ands scientists and know-it-all clergy ever could. And so this very ordinary woman went into the spaceship.

Ordinary people, people like you and me: that is what this world is made up of. Sometimes I think we miss this truth. Sometimes we spend so much time trying to be extraordinary, chasing after and honoring what we think is extraordinary that we forget that the ordinary is what is normal and is what is expected of us. Think of all the people we find in scripture. Almost to a person they are very ordinary human beings whom God chose because of the ordinariness.

There’s Abram, who later was called Abraham, whose story begins in today’s Old Testament lesson. In truth Abraham was no one special. Yes, he was a successful businessman. But he was also an old man who, on the home front, was not always kind and caring to his wife, a man who often put his own wants and needs above those of his wife Sarah. In truth, his family life, his marriage, was mostly a mess. But God chose this ordinary, sinful, fallible human being to become the father of the Jewish people. If we did not know the end of the story, we all might wonder if God had lost his mind in choosing such an ordinary man like Abraham.

Then there is Matthew. We don’t really know that much about Matthew. But what we do know about him is not very good. He was not the type of son any mother would brag about to her friends. He was a tax collector, a hated tax collector, which is truly redundant. He collaborated with the Romans, robbed widows and orphans and got rich by cooking the books. He was a real snake in the grass. Perhaps the only thing Matthew had in common with everyone else was that he was a sinner, but what a sinner! And yet Jesus chose Matthew to be his disciple. If we did not know the end of the story, we all might wonder if Jesus had lost his mind in choosing such an ordinary and hugely sinful man like Matthew to be one of his Apostles.

And the people Jesus ministered to: they were ordinary human beings just like you and me. It did not matter who they were or what they needed. It did not matter if what they asked of him was more than anyone had a right to ask – like the leader of the synagogue whose daughter had just died, or if they asked at all – like the woman who suffered from hemorrhages for over twelve years. None of that mattered.

We can wonder till the cows come home why God chose Abraham and why Jesus chose Matthew out of all the possible choices they could have made. But the Bible doesn’t explain. It only reports. I suspect, like the lady at the K-Mart both Abraham and Matthew must have asked, "Why me?" But over and over again the people God chooses are usually utterly ordinary people, people with their share of marital and family problems, people with a past, ordinary people, people like you and me.

The universe is made up of stories about ordinary people. Who wants to hear those stories? Who needs to hear those stories? You and I do. The Church does. Each one of us here on this June day is another story of an ordinary person like Abraham and Matthew who got called by God to be a disciple. Maybe our past has not been as corrupt as Matthew’s. Maybe our family has never been in a mess like Abraham’s. But if God could use them, God can use us. And like the leader of the synagogue and the ailing woman, God takes care of our needs whether we ask God to or not. Yet if the truth were told, we sometimes must wonder if God had lost his mind in choosing such ordinary people like you and me to be his disciples.

We have a good reason to wonder, too. Sometimes we don’t always feel like a disciple. Sometimes we don’t always act like a disciple. While each of us would like to feel, act and think like a Christian, today’s readings remind us that our feelings, our actions, our thinking are really not the main point in all of this. As it was for Abraham and Matthew, so it is with us. Our relationship with God was God’s idea before it was our idea. So we can relax. God who called us will keep us. We are disciples because it was God’s initiative and not ours.

There’s a story about a father taking his two sons fishing. They are headed down the road looking for the prized fishing place they had been told about. Turning down one country road after another, they began to wonder not only if they were lost but also if the trip was even worth it. The father tried to calm their fears and told the boys that they were on a journey. "No, we’re not," the older son said. "We’re on an adventure." "What’s the difference?" the father asked. Explained the boy: "A journey is when you know where you are going and an adventure is when you don’t know where you are going but go anyway."

Abraham and Matthew were on adventure. In a similar sort of way so were the leader of the synagogue and the ailing women. God never told Abraham where he was sending him nor did Jesus tell Matthew where he would be going or what he would be doing. The leader of the synagogue and the woman did not know where their journey to Jesus would lead or how it might end. But they all went anyway, such was their faith.

We are on a great adventure, you and I. God is working God’s will and God’s way for this world in and through you and me, through very ordinary people. Why God chose us and what God has in mind for us, only God knows. What we know is that like Abraham and Matthew we have said our "yes" to that invitation; and like the leader of the synagogue and the ailing woman, we have faith that God will take care of whatever needs we have to fulfill whatever mission and ministry it is God is calling us to. Like the two boys going fishing with their father, we may not know where our adventure in faith will lead us, but we’re going anyway.