By Rev. Robin Martin
Interim Rector
My mother was not one to draw her children, even her female child, into the kitchen. She worked, and when she got home she wanted to get supper cooked and over with as quickly as possible. My brother and I basically set the table and did the cleaning up afterwards. It wasn’t until John and I were engaged that it suddenly dawned on her that, no matter how inconvenient it might be, she really did have some responsibility to help me become at least minimally proficient in the kitchen. We then commenced about nine months of intermittent on-the-job training, although I don’t ever remember being completely responsible for planning, cooking and serving a meal before I was married. The very first meal I ever prepared after we were married was a Sunday lunch. It never occurred to me that it might be wise to start with something simple. We were Southerners, and what Southerners had for Sunday lunch was fried chicken…and rice…and gravy…and something green…and biscuits or cornbread. I don’t remember how long it took me to cook that meal, but I do remember it as an anxiety-ridden experience. You see, I was on my own. John knew even less than I did about cooking, and my mother wasn’t there to coach and help.
A couple of years later, our first child David was born. I was one of those people who had a great time being pregnant. I was never very sick, and being a nester at heart, I loved getting ready to have a baby in the house. The labor was long, but when he finally came, we had our three days in the hospital to recuperate. In the hospital, all I had to do was feed him and play with him. But then we were home, and between us, John and I had to do everything. We were on our own, and John knew even less than I did about caring for an infant. Going home was an anxiety-ridden experience because my mother wouldn’t be there to coach and help for at least a couple of days. I’m pretty sure I’m no different than a lot of people because we human beings struggle through our young lives to be on our own…and then we are! And often as not we experience that new-found independence with at least some anxiety.
Paul is writing to the Philippians in the reading we hear this morning. He’s been gone from them for a while, but they’re obviously very dear to him. He helped birth their faith, but now they’re on their own, maturing in their faith without his day-to-day guidance. To encourage them he says, “Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” This is not some great call to individualism, the kind we Americans are so keen on, with each of us working out our own salvation in our own way…privately…separately…egocentrically. It’s not a sort of “whatever works for you” encouragement. But neither is he saying that God is so distant and removed that we have to guess what God wants from us, or that we need to fear not getting it just right.
What Paul’s writing about to the Philippian Christians, and through them to you and me, is discernment. Discernment is about perceiving; it’s about recognizing and comprehending. For Christians it’s the willingness to listen for and respond to the call of God. All of us are called by God, and no one call is higher or better than another. They’re just different. But in each of our lives some of God’s calls to us are big ones. The big ones are about what our life’s work will be. They’re about who we do and do not enter into relationships with. Other calls are to discern what’s right for the moment: what to say to this particular person about this particular situation; what to do about this particular problem or opportunity in our lives.
Discernment led me into the priesthood. Discernment led and kept me at the Church of the Advent in Hatboro for over a quarter of a century. Discernment led me to come to St. James as the interim rector. Discernment led me into personal psychotherapy and to take singing lessons for the sake of my soul. But I also know that I’ve been undiscerning at times, blind to what God would have me do and be. And still other times I’ve discerned but disobeyed. I’ve known what I thought God would have me do, but I didn’t do it. Because of fear or indifference or arrogance or whatever I have not spoken the word that was given me to speak. I’ve neglected the action that was called for.
To live out our own salvation with fear and trembling means that we seek to be obedient to God’s leading while living in the midst of every reason in the world to be disobedient. It means to speak a word or to take an action, never knowing for certain that it’s the best or the ‘rightest’ word or action, but knowing that it feels like the most faithful thing to do at that moment. It means being willing to live with the consequences of the word or action because we trust God to honor our attempts to be faithful even when those attempts are not successful. To live out our own salvation with fear and trembling means being willing to get up and try again when we fail, still trusting that God will guide and direct us if we allow it.
Discernment of God’s call to us is never limited by age, by physical condition, by emotional stability, by education, by past experiences, by resources or the lack thereof. Young and vigorous or old and incapacitated, God calls us to the fullness of whatever being we have. If someone is fifty-two years old and has the mental and emotional capacity of a ten year old, then God calls that person to discern what he or she must do to be fully ten years old. God calls each of us to use fully and gracefully the gifts and skills, the knowledge and wisdom with which we’re endowed. We’re called to allow God to be in and to use all those ways, both great and small, that life has damaged us; allow God to use us, however we are, for the sake of God’s world and to the glory of God’s name.
Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. Work at discovering who God would have you be and what God would have you do. Let discernment be an exercise entered into in hope not fear, trusting that the God who made you, who redeemed you, who sustains and upholds you has in store for you better things than you can ask or imagine.