The Rev. Neale L. Miller

Sermon for January 18, 2009

Texts: 1 Samuel 3:1-10/John 1:43-51

Title: "The Calling"

              Though she may never have characterized her work in precisely the way I have chosen to do, I believe, and I believe many who knew mother would confirm the fact that Arlene Miller had a calling. She had a calling, but I might just as well have said that mother was one of those people who discovered her niche, her vocation.

              My mother operated her own restaurant for twenty-five years. Open twenty-four hours a day, six days a week, she had her hands full. Burdened by recurring challenges over the years, particularly in keeping all the shifts staffed, keeping the place clean, and the pantry and coolers stocked, there were times when she felt pretty overwhelmed.  I’m sure she was tempted to close up and move on.  She never succumbed.  When it was time to move on she did it on her terms. 

              Mother had a calling, and her calling was hospitality.  Everyone knew Arlene at Miller’s Restaurant, at least that is the way it appeared to me every time I went in there when she was working, and over the years she worked each of the three eight hour shifts whenever the need arose.  At breakfast, lunch, or dinner I might she her chatting up a salesman, a workman, a banker, undertaker, or one of the kids from my high school. 

              Mother had a calling, and her calling was hospitality.  Her calling in turn rewarded her. Over the course of years she made many, many friends, while providing a service into which she poured her heart and soul. Yet despite the extraordinary effort required to keep the business running six days a week, twenty-four hours a day, I never saw my mother really complain, even after receiving a phone call at eight o’clock at night that the person scheduled for ten couldn’t make it.  When you are fulfilling your calling you get dressed and take the shift yourself, even though you just finished working an eight hour shift six hours earlier.

              Mother was one of those people God blessed with the privilege of fulfilling her calling.  In the restaurant she owned she found an outlet through which her life came to its authentic expression.

              There was a rather tortured time in my life many years ago when I was struggling to identify my calling.  I had been working in a job out of college that definitely wasn’t my calling, when I decided to accept Princeton Seminary’s invitation to spend what they billed as a “vocations discovery” weekend on the campus.  A vocation in the church was something I had in fact been mulling over for some time, and I reasoned that the discovery weekend might reward me with some clarity about what I might do with my life.

              The seminary arranged for all of us who were visiting to spend time with students and faculty. They couldn’t have been more gracious and helpful, but the time spent with them really didn’t provide any new clues into what I should be doing with my life. 

              I remember well our last scheduled event for the weekend.  It was a meeting with the seminary president, Dr. James I. McCord.  Dr. McCord was a wise and imposing man, a man who would establish himself as one of the seminary’s greatest leaders. This would be my last shot at picking up some of that clarity and insight I had come for.  

               I recall little of what Dr. McCord said to us that Sunday night.  It was probably the standard message he rolled out for each group of prospective student.  One thing did, however, stand out in his conversation with us. In a question period following his remarks one of my peers who was visiting the seminary asked Dr. McCord how it came about that he had chosen a vocation in the church.  With virtually no hesitation---he had probably been asked the very same questions many times before----[with no hesitation] he responded that there had never been a time in his life when he had thought of any vocation other than the church.

              Dr. McCord had found his calling, or more true to the facts, his calling had found him.  I had hoped that he would offer something to help me, and I was disappointed. My path to ministry would turn out to be quite different than Dr. McCord’s.  I left the seminary even more confused about my calling than when I arrived.

              The calling is widely celebrated in Scripture isn’t it?  Behind each great event in the biblical history there was a person responding to a calling from God. Abraham was made the father of a great nation, responding to a call directly from the mouth of God.  Moses led the people out of Egyptian captivity but first there was his call at the burning bush.  David, the great king, made an indelible mark on the history of the Jews.  God called, but also equipped him, to unite the people and establish them as an independent nation.   

              One week ago we celebrated the baptism of Jesus, Mark informing us that as Jesus was baptized a voice was heard to declare, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.  Baptized at the river Jordan, Jesus received his calling from God.

              Samuel was but a boy, perhaps not even an adolescent, when God called him.  No prophet called by God was wet behind the ears than this one. The calling found Samuel while he was serving in the temple of Lord. How he got there is an interesting story we can’t get into now, beyond saying that his mother, Hannah, presented him to the priests as a thank offering to God.

              In the whole history of the Bible it is only on rare occasions that God is depicted as he is in our lesson.  Here God is heard addressing one of his children directly “Samuel! Samuel!” With that address, friends, Samuel’s whole life would be established on a bold new trajectory, that fact, of course, would only be disclosed to him sometime later.  For now it was but an unidentified voice Samuel heard.

              Who was calling him?  Samuel was literally in the dark.  It must be the priest Eli’s voice he heard?  “Samuel!  Samuel!”   

              Our calling in life seldom comes in the form of direct address: “Samuel! Samuel!” “Neale!  Neale!” “Beth! Beth!” “Christopher! Christopher!” Sometimes discernment comes aided by a helping hand.

                In the priest Eli Samuel had a helping hand, a mentor, who helped him to identify his calling. While some, like Dr. McCord to whom I referred earlier, where never challenged to define their calling, and perhaps some of you here today have similar background, we know that a wise parent or friend, career counseling, or interest inventories have helped many of us define our calling.

                 A calling as I have been defining it is our vocation, our niche, the path by which our lives achieve their most authentic and genuine expression. Now you have heard some say, you might even have said yourself, “I have missed my calling.” Some cannot equate what they do in life with any kind of call at all.   

               I briefly shared with you a conviction that my mother found her calling. I doubt that my dad, on the other hand, would ever have talked about his several years as a foundry laborer as his calling.  His work represented a paycheck for him, but not a calling. There are people by the score who would reject any notion whatsoever that their labor cleaning an office building, or laying bricks, or clerking in a Sam’s Club is a calling. 

              Can it be validly claimed that a person’s life comes to its most authentic expression by picking Tomatoes in the hot Florida sun for ten hours a day or by digging sewer lines nine to five?  Perhaps a calling is a privilege accorded a select few, while many others toil along with little hope of deriving any personal benefit beyond a paycheck from what they do. 

               But let us frame this as a theological question, “Is each human life capable of reaching its most authentic and genuine expression?” [repeat] Perhaps some of us are destined to capture the gold ring of personal fulfillment and others not. Should that reality, cruel as it may be for those who never discover their calling, be somehow deemed an unavoidable byproduct of the world God created?   

               Any person who attempts to make sense of the world on the basis of religious faith must ultimately account for the inequities that God must, at least from the standpoint of human logic, approve.

               Based on the inequities that are so prominently displayed in our world a good case can be made that God [of course his existence is an open question for many], really doesn’t involve himself in life’s outcomes.  Instead, having given us life, perhaps God is content to leave us on our own. Let me say very clearly that faith rejects that notion outright. God ordained that your life and mine come to their most authentic expression, to argue otherwise would be to mistake God’s purpose in creating us.  We may well face circumstances in life that undermine that belief, however, not one person born of God was born only to be deprived of the best God has to offer. Each of us was born to fulfill our calling.  Each of us was allotted gifts and potential that we might make a positive contribution to the betterment of the world. But sometimes we chose not to use those gifts and potential, or instead, abuse them

            The prophet Jeremiah had a calling from God.  It was not however the best time to pursue it.  Israel, you see, was in a tight spot. Threatened by a foreign aggressor, Israel’s monarchy and her citizens, were terrified.  Appointed to deliver the word of God in such circumstances, Jeremiah would have taken a pass.  He protested, “I am only a boy, I do not know how to speak.” He wanted nothing to do with a prophet’s calling, a calling that could very likely place him in vulnerable circumstances.

                So how did God respond?  “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet of the nations.” Friends, there is not a single person living, or who has ever lived, to whom that statement has not applied.  Before we were formed in the womb God knew us.  Before we were born God consecrated us. Consecrated---placed his spirit upon us. Having formed us and consecrated us, he also appointed us for ______.  Here we must fill in the blank.  He appointed us to our calling, that vocation where our lives achieve their most authentic and genuine expression.

           Now that calling may be fulfilled through what we do to earn a living, but our calling as children of God will never be completely fulfilled in a career, no matter how satisfying and enriching it might be.  Our lives achieve their most authentic and genuine expression when we place ourselves in a position to hear God’s voice in each circumstance of our lives. The problem is we live in a world alive with voices, voices of obligation and necessity. We live amid voices of temptation and responsibility. Cell phones have made us available to calls 24/7 anywhere we happen to be.   

                We live amid so many voices, in fact, that researchers tell us that the amount of time a person can focus on an object without a lapse is as short as 8 seconds. Research also shows that our maximum attention span is a mere twenty minutes. It is a challenge for people like me to hold your attention for twenty minutes.

                Many of us remember the lyric from the Stephen Stills song made popular in the movie “Midnight Cowboy.”  “Everybody’s talking at me.  I can’t hear a word they’re saying, only the echo in my mind.”

               Short attention span, seldom in a place free of voices and noise, we are perpetually distracted by echoes in our minds, all of which may distract us from our calling. We waste our potential in distractions, even as IPhones, cellphones, text messaging and email encourage us to think that we are maximizing our potential.    

           Technology is amazing and useful, but it also is a distraction. I can well imagine that had Samuel owned an IPhone, Blackberry, or a similar gadget, God’s call may well have gone completely unheard. But, in fact, God will not be ignored.  We are his after all, and our lives will not achieve their most authentic and genuine expression without his help. Oh yes, some have used things like money, power, and hedonism in their quest for fulfillment.  But those things never work. The hunger for meaning and purpose never goes away. The calling never goes away.

             Each of you is here this morning, though you may not be consciously aware of it, to fulfill your calling. That you are here is not entirely your doing, it is in large part God’s doing. But credit where credit is due.  You have helped. You are here.

               You are here, the cell phone turned off, I hope, to listen for a voice you have heard somewhere before and want to hear again.  Though it may not be self-evident, you are here in response to your call. God is offering you yet another opportunity to bring your life to its most authentic and genuine expression.

               This, friends, for most of us anyway, is the only hour in the week when that offer is made openly and explicitly. Each of you will judge if the hour is well spent, but there is this much I can tell you.  This hour you are devoting to the life of the Spirit is a very small down payment on the life God has created you to live. Consider making a larger investment.  You may be amazed where that investment might take you. AMEN.

PRAYER

             Lord and master of this house, we have come here at your bidding. You have called and we have answered.

             You know us well and you have been expecting us. We will make no false claims about ourselves, for our pretensions and deceits do not deceive you.  You know us, O God, full well.  Fact of the matter is, we are uncomfortable for you know us too well. Yes, we have fallen, we have failed you, but you bid us to get off of our knees and come, for the welcome mat is never withdrawn from the door to your house. Unworthy as we may be, and often are, your arms, O Lord, are ever ready to enfold us.

              Living God, guardian of our souls, we live at the beck and call of cell phones and laptop computers and other gadgets, the convenience and immediacy of communication inducing us to use those devices simply to pass the time, even when we have nothing to communicate. We have convinced ourselves that more gadgets make for a more enriching life, even when our gadgets fill our lives with voices we really don’t need to hear and memos we don’t need to read. Not in the thunder, not in the earthquake, God introduced himself to his prophet Elijah in a “still, small voice.”  Grant us the wisdom to distance ourselves, O God, from all the chatter to which these active lives of ours are subjected that we might hear your voice, “still and small” as it might be.

              Lord even as we worship together there is a team of speech writers laboring over the words our president elect will deliver to the nation on Tuesday.  O God, the inauguration of a President is always an occasion for soaring rhetoric elevated bold visions.  President elect Obama and his speechwriters will surely compose an impressive document.  We know, however, O Lord, that words alone cannot end wars, deliver jobs, provide health care everyone can afford, educate our nation’s children in good schools, reduce harmful emissions into the atmosphere, or save a family’s home from foreclosure.

                An extraordinary challenge will be placed at the feet of our next president and his administration, O God, a challenge with few precedents in the history of our nation. Never in the past several decades have so many hopes resided with one man. May your Spirit enfold him and your wisdom guide him as he leads our nation.  May rhetoric be converted to deeds, acrimony and backbiting over priorities and methods converted to statesmanship and cooperation.

                 Be with the Congress whose cooperation will be repeatedly sought as our President’s agenda is laid out.  May non-partisanship be the defining feature of the Congress, and may their example inspire the citizens of the nations to unite in common purpose and commitment to do what is necessary to make our nation a beacon of hope to the world.         

                 Even as we inaugurate a new president, O God, we give thanks for the man he will succeed, President George W. Bush.  We pray your blessing on him as he returns to private life.  May he enjoy the rest and restoration he so richly deserves. 

Lord, we continue to pray for the secession of war that grips Gaza.  The toll of the dead and injured continues to rise, with no end in sight.  Have mercy on the suffering.  May those whose hearts have turned to stone as a result of a history of grievances be returned to flesh as a first step in making peace.

               Abide with our military forces stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan.  We pray for the day when their missions end and they may be brought home.

               O God, ever faithful, in Christ you bring hope and new possibilities into this very hour, may this church be given grace to embrace hope and new possibilities as we take up the challenges of a new year.

                In confidence that you hear and heed our prayers we have come.  Abide with those we name who have special needs.