IT’S ALL ABOUT CALL (Part I)
A Sermon for the Second Sunday after the Epiphany

Betty was her parents’ first child. Even when she was very small, they knew Betty loved God. She grew up studying her Bible, learning about Jesus, singing familiar hymns and saying her prayers. One day, after graduating from high school, Betty was old enough to go off to a Bible college. She thought she wanted to be a missionary.

But that never happened. One day, a bus full of teen-agers went off the road and crashed. Some were killed. Betty was severely injured. A doctor told her she would never be able to have children. But he was wrong. Years later Betty found the doctor. She showed him a photograph of all five of her children.

Betty may have been called to be a missionary. She may have been called to do something else with her life. In the 1930’s women didn’t have the kinds of choices they have today. But Betty did answer a call to spend her life with someone who loved her and wanted to share a family with her. As it turned out, Betty’s mission field was quite full, ripe for harvest in a way she never expected. Yet I wonder: did Betty answer God’s call? Did she follow her heart’s desire?

That story of Betty, a true one, is a story about call. Our stories today, first of Samuel and Eli, then of Philip and Nathanael, are about call. In fact, we might say that this week and next, when we will hear stories about Jonah and Peter and Andrew, these are Sundays when “it’s all about call.” It’s all about God’s call – God’s call to those biblical men, God’s call to Betty, God’s call to us. But what do these stories tell us about how God calls us to ministry, into the mission field?

Three things, I think. First, when it comes to God’s call, to what the church calls “vocation,” Jesus invites. Jesus always invites people. Jesus never makes demands. When Jesus says, “follow me,” he is not issuing an order to be obeyed “or else.” Jesus meets people where they are, not where they are not. Then Jesus invites people to come with him, to follow him, to join him on a journey to a place where they – where we –would probably not otherwise go.

In today’s gospel account Jesus sees Nathanael, a possible disciple, and welcomes him. In the eight verses before the ones we have just heard, Jesus utters the same words Philip speaks when he invites his friend Nathanael: “Come and see.” Come and see. With Jesus and his disciples, it’s always “come and see” before “follow me.” It’s always an invitation, never a demand.

Which brings me to the second thing I think these stories tell us about God’s call: People resist. When God is calling, we, if we are in any way paying attention, will probably want to say, “no, thank you” or “no way.” We will likely resist, because it all seems quite unbelievable. Dare we trust the unbelievable?

“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Nathanael’s question of Philip is one of unbelief. Yet Jesus says Nathanael is someone who is honest to a fault. Both Nathanael and his unbelief are genuine. Like Thomas and other disciples down through the ages, he needs proof. But he will find no proof as such in Nazareth. A sleepy little village of a few hundred people, Nazareth was economically dependent on other towns. It’s not even mentioned in the Old Testament. Nazareth was hardly a hero’s or a Messiah’s home.

So Nathanael is just plain perplexed by this Jesus, who hails from a hick town. How could this guy be someone special? And just how did Jesus get to know him, anyway? Nathanael is working hard here to figure things out. Try as he might, he just can’t solve the mystery of Nazareth or of Jesus. Yet all Jesus did was to pay attention. He watched Nathanael under the fig tree. Then he saw his disciple Philip go over and invite his friend Nathanael to come and see Jesus. Philip trusted Jesus, Nathanael trusted Philip, Jesus trusted them both. That’s all it took. That small circle of trust is what broke down Nathanael’s resistance.

The third thing these stories tell us about God’s call is that God persists. God persists when we resist. God doesn’t stop calling us. Like a faucet that drips until tended to, God keeps it up, over and over again. “Samuel! Samuel!” God keeps trying until God gets our attention. And sometimes, God’s call to us is something to which you and I can no longer say no.

Last week I told the folks at our Sacred Conversations class that I had said “no” to All Saints’ in the fall of 2007 before I said “yes.” At one point, I withdrew from the search. In fact, I was planning to take a sabbatical when all that happened. In more than twenty years as a priest I had never claimed for myself that kind of extended Sabbath time, and I was ready. I had even been awarded a sabbatical grant, and my plans were in place. Now, it’s possible that I made a big mistake by not taking that sabbatical, by not staying in Memphis. While that’s possible, I have come instead to believe the unbelievable: God, working through your rector search committee, kept persisting, until I could no longer say no.

The poet Mary Oliver speaks of God’s call this way. She asks, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” (“The Summer Day”). I wonder: in light of God’s call, in light of the biblical stories we have heard, in light of Betty’s story – what is God’s invitation to us? What might Jesus be inviting you, inviting me, inviting us as All Saints’ Episcopal Church to do with our one, wild and precious life? How might we be resisting that call from God? And how might God be persisting in calling us?

I began with a story about Betty. And now, I must make a confession: I am Betty’s oldest son. If it were not for God working through Betty, I would not be here today. If Betty had graduated from a Protestant Bible college, she would never have met my Roman Catholic father, nor would they have been called by God into a marriage they have shared for fifty-eight years. Neither Betty nor Bob would likely have become Episcopalians. Almost surely, I would not have gone to an Episcopal seminary, let alone entered a search process to be the rector of All Saints’ Church. And it would be fairly unrealistic – no, downright unbelievable – to think that I might be standing, on a regular basis, in this pulpit.

Does my mother feel she never got to answer God’s call? After all these years, with five children, fourteen grandchildren, three great-grandchildren, after multiple health and other challenges in her later life, does Betty still carry a sense of disappointment? I don’t know. What I do know is that she is crystal clear about my call to be a priest of the church of God.

Her story, my story, these stories are not all about us. As Eugene Peterson puts it, “None of us is the leading character in the story of our life….God,” says Peterson, “is the larger context and plot, in which our stories find themselves” (The Message, p. 459). The stories of scripture – the Scriptures of the Bible as well as the scriptures of our own lives – these stories are all about the call of God. “There is one hope in God’s call to us,” we heard last week while renewing our Baptismal vows. Dear friends in Christ, it’s all about call. And God’s call to us springs up from the well of hope God has formed deep within us. No matter what happens, no matter what tragedies befall us, no matter how discouraged we get, let us remember God’s deep, deep well of hope, God’s ongoing, never-ending call. Because we worship a God who keeps inviting us, who persists in calling us, no matter what, to a love far deeper, to a hope far greater, to a faith more unbelievable than we can dream or imagine.

God is calling each of us, all of us together. God is calling us to one wild, precious life in Christ. The question is: how will we answer God’s call?

The Rev. Thomas A. Momberg
All Saints’ Episcopal Church - Frederick , MD
January 18, 2009