Sermon Archive #3

January 18, 2006 - Second Sunday after Epiphany (Year B)

Readings: 1 Samuel 3:1-10(11-20), Psalm 63:1-8, 1 Corinthians 6:11b-20, John 1:43-51


"Where did you come to know me?" What an appropriate question for someone about to give up everything he ever knew to follow Jesus! Reflecting on this morning's readings, it seemed particularly appropriate that as someone who has been discerning God's call with similar questions for most of my life - I should get to come back home to St. Homechurch's to explore again this amazing question at the heart of Calling... Over the past years since leaving Saint Homechurch's for CDSP I've been so focused on learning to hear God's voice - yet when it came down to thinking about what I would preach today, it took several days reflection before I fully realized that the central focus of this morning's scriptures is just that - hearing God's personal call.

In first Samuel we get to experience Samuel's calling - a very literal and physical calling that he wasn't yet prepared to hear until Eli explained what it was that he was hearing. In the Psalm we get to experience the raw, powerful yearning of the psalmist for God's call, God's voice, God's presence - "my soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you." ... In Corinthians we hear Paul's exhortation to heed God's call in body and spirit - As the temple of the Holy Spirit we are each individually (and collectively as the Body of Christ in the world), called out of sin and into communion with God. And finally in today's Gospel we hear the calling of Philip and Nathanael to be disciples of Christ.

From these four readings we get four unique viewpoints on the subject of calling... but what do they really teach us about ourselves and God's personal call to each of us? How do they help us answer Nathanael's question - where did you come to know me?

I very much believe that God calls each of us in different ways and to different vocations. In my own life, I have felt a strong calling to be ordained since I was a child. My earliest experience with sorting out my calling was telling my parents when I was five that I wanted to be a minister when I grew up. Although my mom was very supportive of the idea, my dad told me that ministers lived in glass houses and had no lives of their own. As a result I pushed aside God's call and, throughout my adolescence, I sought other lucrative careers in medicine, architecture, and engineering, but with little long-term interest.

I had stopped attending church when I was twelve (shortly after confirmation), and I had stopped listening for God's call in my life. Thankfully, as happened for Samuel, God did call again. My best-friend in High School hounded me to come with him to his youth group until he finally tricked me into going with him. I always worked on Wednesday nights when he had youth group, but I had said on many occasions that if only I didn't work Wednesdays I'd come. One week I had the night off and he knew it. "Hey what are you doing tonight?" he asked. "Actually I have the night off," I replied, "did you wanna' hang out?" "Ya," he said triumphantly, "we're going to Youth Group." Inwardly groaning, I reluctantly agreed to go. That first night was the first time I met Father Homechurch Rector, and was the first time in over five years that I reluctantly heard God's voice calling me. I wasn't ready to recognize the call as God's, but I did come back to youth group every week - changing my work schedule didn't turn out to be a very big deal.

Before long, my friend, Grasshopper, and Father Homechurch Rector had convinced me to try coming to Sunday services. Eventually they asked me to acolyte, and I accepted. But I still had grand ideas that didn't include God's call.

Later that year I was invited to go to a youth retreat called Happening. I was technically to old to attend, but Father Homechurch Rector believed the retreat would benefit me and between him and my youth group friends, they convinced me to go and convinced the coordinator to let me sign up.

If Samuel's training to hear God's call was Eli, mine was Happening. I experienced first hand the amazing love of God - I experienced the powerful joy and pining for God that today's Psalmist puts beautifully into the words, "my soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you." God didn't call again for a couple of months, but the next time, I was prepared to hear the call.

I was nineteen when I finally heard God's call to fulfill what I had long just considered a "childhood dream." I've spent another thirteen years working in discernment and preparation to live into that calling. Where did Christ come to know me? He saw me in spite of the world and recognized me in a five-year-old's dream. He knew me before I knew myself.

The story of my calling is not so very different from anyone else's. It may happen in different ways to each of us, and we are obviously not all called to the same vocation, but God calls each of us throughout our lives, seeking from us that we learn to hear and learn to serve God in whatever we are called to do.

Paul reminds us today in I Corinthians that each of us, as members of Christ's body in the world, is a temple of the Holy Spirit. In everything we do, we carry God with us and we are exhorted to be mindful of this amazing gift in everything we do. In the context of calling and vocation, this means that each of us has the capacity and the spiritual capability to be Christ's body in whatever occupation we've chosen and wherever we are. God's calling to us to reach out in love transcends the boundaries of church and state, public and private life, family, strangers, friends, enemies, in everything we do we carry God with us. How could God not know us? The ability to hear God's voice and to respond is not limited to those discerning a call to holy orders, but extends to every one of us who has had ears to hear the Good News of Christ Jesus.

How we hear and respond to God's call depends very much on who we are and how we have learned to listen, but the result will always be visible in the seeds we sow and the fruits we bear. Taking time to listen to a friend, coworker, or even a stranger in need, stepping out in faith to act on what we've heard by offering a helping hand, a word of encouragement, a free meal to the hungry, or standing up for the rights of others. God calls us in many surprising ways and from some pretty surprising places.

The recent rounds of disaster over the past year have been an amazing testament to God's ability to work miracles out of disaster and chaos, and to call us from unexpected places. The Tsunami in Indonesia a year ago inspired a global response and outpouring of sympathy and aid, Hurricane Katrina brought offers of aid from countries vastly poorer than the US, even including some of our former enemies, and still calls volunteers from all over the U.S. to Houston and Louisiana to help others. The country sat in awesome wonder as twelve miners were declared alive and sat in stunned silence as "only one miracle" was actually made manifest. Yet even in letters from the trapped miners, there is testament to God's presence. One miner, Martin Toler, wrote to his family: 'Tell all I see them on the other side. I love you. It wasn't bad just went to sleep.'

Our Gospel today shows us an all too familiar example of the unexpectedness of God's call to us coming out of a year filled with heartache and bad news. Nathanael wonders aloud to Philip who has told him that the messiah has come, "can anything good come out of Nazareth?"

I remember a similar comment from a good friend of mine a few weeks after Hurricane Katrina, "can anything good come out of all this in New Orleans?" About a week later, he signed up with the Red Cross and around the same time Rev. Moving-to-Colorado went to Mississippi, he flew out to Houston to help the refugees at the Astrodome and to bring aid to the affected areas of Texas. "I'm no hero," he said, "I had my own selfish reasons for going - I just needed to get out of my own problems for a while and help those who have so much less than I do."

Our Gospel reading gives us one of the most complicated looks at God's calling from our readings today, pulling together all three of our other readings. On the surface it seems short and just a bit confusing - Philip is called to follow Jesus, he goes and tells Nathanael about it, who asks if anything good can come out of Nazareth, and Philip simply replies "come and see!" Jesus tells Nathanael he saw him under the fig tree before Philip called him, and suddenly Nathanael proclaims Jesus to be the son of God - even Jesus seems a bit surprised... so what is going on?

Nathanael is the surprise witness in today's Gospel - he isn't called directly by Jesus, rather Philip is called and rushes out to tell his friend, who is skeptical and isn't afraid to hide it. Yet he is intrigued enough by Philip's story that he heeds his friend's call to "come and see." From a distance Jesus seems to recognize him and Nathanael asks him "where did you come to know me?" Jesus replies that he saw him under the fig tree before Philip called him. For whatever reason, this was all Nathanael needed to hear to convict his heart of God's call. In that one moment, Nathanael gets it. He hears God's call and like so many of us who clearly hear God's calling in our lives for the first time, is overcome by God's presence and purpose in his life.

From an unexpected place and at an unexpected time, he suddenly became aware of God's call, and he answered that call much in the same way that Samuel answered, much in the way that my friend answered in going to Huston, much in the way that Rev.Moving-to-Colorado answered in going to Mississippi, and much in the way that each of us is called to answer as we continue our work to God's glory in all that we do. Echoing Nathanael, the question we are left with today is - Where did he come to know you?

Today, we remember a modern day prophet, who similarly heard God's call. Like so many, he didn't believe himself to be a hero. He simply heard God's call and stepped out in faith to help those less fortunate than himself. The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Junior became God's prophetic voice to America's conscience, speaking out against racism, speaking out for civil rights, speaking out for economic empowerment of the poor. Lesser Feasts and Fasts reminds us that the Rev. Dr. King lived in constant danger: his home was bombed, he was stabbed, he was constantly harassed with death threats, and he was jailed thirty times. After a particularly vicious telephone threat in 1957, he sat alone in his kitchen weeping and praying. He later recalled hearing the Lord speaking to him and saying, "Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness, stand up for justice," and promising never to leave him alone. He recalled this vision in his "I have been to the mountain top" speech the day before his assassination. Hearing God's call loud and clear, he lived every day of his life in affirmation of that call - standing up for righteousness and justice until the day he died.

May each of us strive to hear God's call in our lives, asking and praying, "where did you come to know me?" And may God empower each of us to stand up and step out in faithful obedience to God's call - to live out the dreams that we have been given the hope and the power to dream. Amen.