Year 5, Day 153: Mark 6

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Calling

• Calling asks whether or not God has called the person to the particular work at this point in their life.

Today I’m going to look at this topic of calling from a bit of a negative perspective.  I often hear people talk about calling as if we can discern our calling by whether or not things go well for us.  In today’s chapter, we get three stories that speak against this thought.

First, Jesus heads to Nazareth, His hometown.  Is Jesus called to go to Nazareth?  Absolutely.  However, does that mean things go well there?  Not at all.  Jesus can do very little in Nazareth.  That doesn’t mean that Jesus wasn’t called to go there!  What it means is that Jesus went there and exposed the truth about the people of Nazareth.  God can do little with hearts that are not open to His hand at work.

Second, we hear the interlude story of John the Baptizer.  John goes before Herod and denounces the sin that Herod has chosen in marrying his brother’s wife.  This makes Herodias very angry, angry enough that she has her daughter Salome request John’s head on a platter.  Because John lost his head and things went poorly, does that mean that he went in and did something contrary to God’s calling?  Absolutely not!  John did the right thing.  Sometimes the consequences of doing the right thing are harsh and difficult.

Not unlike Jesus who went and died on a cross, mind you.

Then we get to the third story of difficult calling that is found in this chapter.  Jesus has His disciples get into a boat and row to the other side.  In the middle of the lake they find themselves in a storm.  They struggle mightily with the task of getting to the other side safely.  Does this mean that they are in the wrong place?  Does their struggle imply that they should have disobeyed Jesus and stayed by His side?  No way!  They are right where they need to be.

You see, calling comes from God.  We can only evaluate our calling based on God’s terms.  When we start to evaluate our calling based on the terms of success, or ease, or even personal skill we find that our evaluation is skewed and no longer according to God’s perspective.  Like Jesus, John, and Jesus disciples, God has called us to truth and the proclamation of it.  Proclaiming the truth is not often easy, not often something with which we are comfortably skilled, and seldom easy.  But it is our calling.

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