Over the past few weeks we have been hearing a good bit about call, God's call to us. Two weeks ago we prayed in our opening Collect to follow God's call: Give us grace, O Lord, to answer readily the call of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Then we went on in our Epistle to hear Paul talk about different calls we might have. Some are called to be apostles, some are called to be teachers, some are called to healers, etc. all with the idea that there are different calls within the church and are all an important part of the Body of Christ.
Last week we heard about Jeremiah's call and his resistance to it. And we also heard, again from Paul, when he talked about the greater call to love. Deacon Nancy preached a beautiful sermon tying those two senses of call together and inviting us to listen to God for our call.
Today the theme of call continues. In our first reading we heard Isaiah's call story, and in the Epistle we heard about Paul's call to be an Apostle. In the Gospel we heard Simon Peter's call to follow Jesus. Although many only think about "call" in terms of clergy and ordination, it is, in fact, a broader concept that applies to all of us. Call or vocation is not just for the clergy.
The first call for all of us is the call to baptism, and as an extension, the call to baptismal ministry. You have been called by God to something or many somethings and the baptismal covenant lays out some of those fundamental or foundational calls that all of us, as baptized members of Christ's body, are to try and follow.
There are calls within the church, like the call to the Altar Guild to prepare the Sanctuary for worship, or the call to cook eggs or make sandwiches with our Saturday breakfast in order to fee our hungry neighbors, or the call to make music by singing in the choir or when you join in singing the hymns with the congregation.
And then there are our calls out there in the world, like the call to educate as a teacher, or the call to heal as a doctor or nurse, or the call to help house people as a realtor, or the call to paint or build or fix or clean or design or.........There are so many calls.
There are the big vocational matters, like I am called to be a priest. Then there are the more specific issues, like I am called to serve at St. Mary's. Then there are the daily vocational matters, like what am I called to accomplish today?
The stories of call in scripture always seem to be the dramatic ones, or at least that's the way they are told, but often God's voice is much more subtle. God is not always going to call out your name, like when God called Samuel. Often the call will be more like that sound of sheer silence that Elijah heard when he went up on the mountain and heard God. Frederick Buechner says that our vocation, God's call to us, can be heard in that place where our deep, great joy meets one of the world's deep needs, that intersection of joy and need that God is calling us. Parker Palmer says that God's call can be found when we start listening to our own life, to who it is God made us to be because our vocation or God's call is intimately tied up in our identity.
In our readings today there is a thread, and that is the thread of inadequacy. Isaiah thinks he is not worthy, Paul thinks that he is unfit, Peter thinks he is too sinful. When Isaiah protests, he says I am lost, I am lost. But just like John Newton wrote in that old great hymn, he says I once was lost but now am found. God has found Isaiah and called him to this task. God has found Paul and called him to this task. God has found Peter and called him to this task. Because in the end it is not ultimately about our adequacy. It is about God's adequacy. It is not about our faithfulness. It is about God's faithfulness. It's not about our worthiness. It's about God's worthiness. Maybe we feel that way sometimes. We can feel lost, but God eventually finds us, too, and when we hear that call and we ask if we are up to the task, we can remember that it doesn't really matter if we are or are not because God is. God is up for it. God will fill in whatever holes need to be filled to supplement any limitations we may have. God can even transform our very failures, just like God transformed that ultimate failure of the cross by turning it into resurrection.
There is another use of the word call in our readings today and that comes from our Psalm, and this is our call to God. When I called you answered me, the Psalmist says. The pairing of these two types of call, God's call to us and our call to God, remind us that ultimately call is not a one way street. Communication with God is not a monologue. Communication with God is a dialogue. Discerning our call, discerning our vocation, is about conversation with God.
This pandemic has upset so much about our lives, but it has also given us a great opportunity to listen more attentively to God and to discern our vocations again. Perhaps in that big picture major move career kind of way. I know some people are making those kind of discernments right now, but probably for most of us it is in the smaller ways. What am I called to do and be, even in the midst of this pandemic. Like the call to get vaccinated and boosted as an act of love for my neighbor, or the call to reach out to a friend or acquaintance who might be lonely.
Listen to the call, my friends. Converse with God about it and follow in the way. For God will be with you as you do.
AMEN.
