Written by professors, graduates, and others in
the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary community, these reflections, prayers, and spiritual practices will take you along the journey with Jesus through the cross toward resurrection.
Wednesday, February 18, 2015
• Psalm 130
• Matthew 9:9–15
The call of Matthew happens suddenly. Jesus speaks two words to a tax collector who follows without question or conversation. This jarring story captures a dramatic change in Matthew’s life, appropriate for a story that, at least in part, is about conversion. I imagine that Matthew could recall the details of that day, even years afterward: what his life looked like from one side of the tax booth before he met Jesus and what he saw from the other side after Jesus called him.
Some of us can point to a similar story, perhaps even naming a day and an hour when our lives were forever changed. Others of us, like me, don’t have a story like Matthew’s. I remember a time in high school when I was disappointed that I couldn’t point back to a time when the definitive change in my life happened. It was during a Presbytery-wide youth rally at my home church, complete with a Christian rock band. One of the speakers at the rally asked us to testify to a moment of conversion in our own lives. I couldn’t, and I felt inadequate. I didn’t speak up because it didn’t seem like I had anything to say. Or did I actually have something to say?
There is no one template for Christian discipleship. Our stories are as varied as our number. But among our stories is a common thread: Jesus’ call to follow is meant for our whole lives. Not to follow him one day of the week, not to follow him only in spiritual life, not to follow him to one place only. But to follow him. Lent offers one time in the Christian calendar when we can focus our discipline to follow Jesus’ call: not in order to deprive ourselves, but in order that we might live more abundantly.
Whether we can point to a definitive moment in our lives when we became aware of Christ’s call, or whether we awakened to it more gradually over time is not the point. The point is for our stories to be shaped by the story of the One who invites us every day anew, to taste life in its abundance each moment of the day, to hear the Good News that he proclaims as if for the first time. As if we had just heard it and had to leave the tax booth behind.
Gracious God, your Son calls each of us by name, but we often do not hear because of the noises that surround us. Yet your Son calls us still. Help us to hear our name, and to follow as if we were meeting your Son for the first time. Amen.
– Dr. David H. Jensen
Academic Dean and Professor in The Clarence N. and Betty B. Frierson Distinguished Chair of Reformed Theology
For the glory of God and to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary is a seminary in the Presbyterian-Reformed tradition whose mission is to educate and equip individuals for the ordained Christian ministry and other forms of Christian service and leadership; to employ its resources in the service of the church; to promote and engage in critical theological thought and research; and to be a winsome and exemplary community of God's people.
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