Ego Ioannes Vocabitur – Called to Serve: A Sermon

Ego Ioannes Vocabitur – Called to Serve

Sermon at St John The Baptist Felixstowe – 3rd Sunday after Trinity – 25 June 2023

Text: ⁶³He [Zechariah] asked for a writing tablet and wrote, ‘His name is John.’ And all of them were amazed. ⁶⁴Immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue freed, and he began to speak, praising God. (from Luke 1.57-66,80)

God give you peace my sisters and brothers.

In the history of the Church choosing the name ‘John’ in contradiction with family tradition (as with our patron John the Baptist) has a modern day parallel.

Cardinal Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, when he was elected as Pope said, ‘Ego Ioannes vocabitur’, (I will be called John).

Not a large decision one may think but, as there was an aversion to new Popes choosing the name John due to a number of anti-popes, it was a name that had not been used since the 15th Century.

He explained his choice of name with these words.

‘I will be called John… a name sweet to us because it is the name of our father, dear to us because it is the name of the humble parish church where we were baptized, the solemn name of numberless cathedrals scattered throughout the world, including our own basilica. Twenty-two Johns of indisputable legitimacy have [been Pope], and almost all had a brief pontificate. We have preferred to hide the smallness of our name behind this magnificent succession.’

Like our patron John the Baptist who said of Jesus ‘He must increase, but I must decrease’, Pope John knew the importance of not making much of himself and, making himself into a small cog of a large machine; turned the Church on its head with the Second Vatican Council, challenged us to not be guardians of a museum but workers in the garden of Life, brought reconciliation with nations in the Communist Bloc, and refused to see any distinction between peoples.

His words, ‘We were all made in God’s image, and thus, we are all Godly alike’ seem to be an earlier version of our own Parish motto of ‘Open to God, Open to all’. He was someone who spent his life, like the Baptist, including people not excluding them and calling them home to God. It is not for nothing that he came to be known as il Papa buono, the Good Pope.

And all this because he chose a small name with a long heritage of a short time occupying the Throne of St Peter. (His own papacy mirroring this with a brief three and a half years). But this old man, chosen as a safe candidate, an interim pope until the next one could be found, this man with small name and not much time left in which to do anything, arguably did more than any Christian leader of the last or current Century.

Was this all because he chose the name John?

Was all that the Baptist did because he was called John?

Surely not!

They both changed the world and the world’s view of the God of love because they listened to God calling their name and gave their lives to call others to know God’s love.

Our name and how it is used is important. For myself there are, since my mother died, only three people with whom I am comfortable being called ‘Andy’. If anyone else abbreviates it from ‘Andrew’ I squirm a little inside. But there are also the titles and roles we carry as well as our nicknames? People tell me much about themselves by the way they address me;

Rev – middle of the road Anglican,

Father – high church Anglican,

Brother – almost definitely a franciscan.

But it happens beyond the walls of the church as well;

Sky Pilot – someone from the Air Force,

Padré – definitely the Army,

and Bish by all ‘them that go down to the sea in ships’.

And if someone across the street shouts out ‘How are you doing Vic?’ you just know they’ve spent too much time watching Eastenders!

Looking a bit deeper though it is not the name that is important is it? What is important is that people call out our names, and even more than that God calls us by our name, dispels all fear, and proclaims ‘You are mine!’ Notice how it is when John the Baptist is finally named that his father’s tongue is loosened and he is set free to praise God.

If there is one thing I have learnt from the lovely story of the naming of both Pope John XXIII and John the Baptist it is that God is quite good at calling small people, with unfamiliar names, from insignificant backgrounds, to do great things. And so God calls us, small as we are, to do what may seem to be small tasks, in God’s name to those whom God cherishes.

You may have heard this story before….

Throwing Starfish

There was an old man who lived next to the sea and had a habit of walking on the beach every morning. Early one morning, he was walking along the shore after a big storm had passed and found the beach littered with starfish as far as the eye could see.

The old man noticed a small girl approaching. As the girl walked, she paused every so often and, as she grew closer the man could see that she occasionally bent down to pick up an object and throw it into the sea. The girl came closer still and the man called out, ‘Good morning! May I ask what it is that you are doing?’

The young girl paused, looked up, and replied ‘Throwing starfish into the ocean. The tide has washed them up onto the beach and they can’t return to the sea by themselves,’ the youth replied. ‘When the sun gets high, they will die, unless I throw them back into the water.’

The old man replied, ‘But there must be hundreds of starfish on this beach. I’m afraid you won’t really be able to make much of a difference.’

The girl bent down, picked up yet another starfish and threw it as far as she could into the ocean. Then she turned, smiled, and said, ‘It made a difference to that one’ ^[1]

Here is our challenge. We need to tell those around us that God loves them and calls out their name because, ‘When the sun gets high, they will die, unless I throw them back into the water.’

When it comes to answering God’s call to be those who tell of God’s love for everyone we may find ourselves with a case of ‘Poor Little Old Me Syndrome.’ We argue with ourselves about not knowing what to say. We are frightened that people might think we are a bit weird and religion has ‘gone to our head’. All God asks of us is to let those we love know that they are loved and cherished by God and spend ourselves in loving and serving them in the same selfless way our generous God loves us.

As we come to the end of our Everyday Witness Course we find ourselves at the beginning of living out the Call of God to share the Old Old Story of God’s love for everyone. To mark this beginning in a moment I will ask each of us to respond to the words of Thanksgiving for the Mission of the Church on the paper we have in front of us.

Today let us together commit ourselves to listen to the sound of God calling our name and then, protected from danger and with fear banished, go and proclaim in word and deed the glorious generous love of God for all people.

I invite you to stand….

Thanksgiving for the Mission of the Church

We proclaim not ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord

and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.

For the God who said, Let light shine out of darkness,

has caused the light to shine within us:

to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God

in the face of Jesus Christ.

Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?