Called

Scripture: The Second Sunday after Epiphany, A.D. 2015 B

Sermon:

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. AMEN.

What is your calling in life?

Everyone in this congregation, everyone in this community, has a calling from God. If you think of a calling as something religious, you’re right; if you think of it as something limited to the four walls of this sanctuary, you’re wrong. God has called you to do something in this world, something specific to you, something that God has chosen to do through you and through no one else. What is it?

The word “vocation” comes to us from the Church, and it literally means “calling”. Our vocation is not our career but our mission. It’s less about making a living and more about actually living. But vocations, callings, are not things limited to preachers and deacons and missionaries. Some are called to serve and protect. Some are called to educate. The oldest calling is that of the gardener! God formed Adam to steward and shape the earth. Many of us long to do great deeds and have a famous name, but the most powerful callings in God’s eyes are often the quietest and humblest in the world’s.

Marriage, for those who may be wed, is a calling. We are called to give ourselves to one another, as Christ the Bridegroom gave Himself for His bride the Church. Parenthood, for those of us who have children, is a calling. We are called to love and guard and teach and, yes, suffer for our little ones. Why do you suppose God calls Himself our Father? Even living responsibly in community, which involves justice and service and brotherly love, is a calling. It is God working through society to bless this world of His.

It may be hard, however, to discern exactly what God is calling us to do. We may pray that He would call us in the night, as Samuel heard the voice of the Lord calling to him. We may long to see Jesus face-to-face and have Him unfold for us our story, as He did so effortlessly for Nathanael. But this is a gift given to few. Often in life we may feel lost, adrift. At times it is easy to discern the will of God: we clearly see the right and the wrong, even if the right be difficult. But at other times life is more nuanced, full of shades of grey.

We may have to choose between two different good paths entailing two different sets of consequences. These are the times when we could really use some heavenly guidance. But like all good parents, God often leaves the decision to us. We may find this liberating, or we may find it frustrating.

Now I don’t want to leave you thinking that there is only one path that God has predestined for you. Christians do not believe in fate. Our futures are not written in the stars. Fate robs God of His freedom to act, and robs us of our free will. God did not set space and time in stone. At the same time, however, we do not believe that things are left to chance. Our lives have purpose and meaning, crossroads to discern. Christianity strikes the middle path between fate and chance, and calls it Providence.

We’ve probably heard that word a lot over time, haven’t we? But what is Providence? Providence is God working in this world, being active in this world, through the power of the Holy Spirit and through Jesus’ Body the Church. Providence is God neither enslaving us to fate nor abandoning us to chance, but working with us, cooperating with us, responding to our prayers and to our needs. Providence is God acting like a good parent: offering support, offering guidance, but also offering freedom, offering a degree of independent responsibility.

When I say that God has given you a calling, it doesn’t mean that before you were born He proclaimed, “Okay! I have determined that John is to be a great firefighter!” And then if John fails to become a firefighter—if he instead becomes an accountant or an author—then John has failed in his calling and wasted his life. Heavens, no. It doesn’t work like that. Life is not a maze with one true exit and innumerable dead ends.

Rather, when God gives to you a calling, He says: “Welcome to the world, my child. I have given you many blessings and many burdens unique to you. There are many paths before you, and whichever you choose to take, however you choose to use the gifts I have given unto you—I will work with that. And no matter what, I will always be your Father, and you will always be My child.” That’s what Providence is all about. And that’s what our callings are all about. Together we forge the story of our lives in cooperation with the God Who loves us.

You may notice in the Bible that sometimes human beings are said to consist of a union between body, soul, and spirit. Now I think we’re pretty comfortable with the idea of body and soul, but what’s a spirit if it’s distinct from the soul? The Church often speaks of the human spirit as the mysterious interaction, the connection, between our corporeal body and incorporeal soul. It’s what makes us amphibians, half angel and half ape, with one foot in the material and one in the ethereal. But the spirit is more than this. It’s not just the connection between body and soul but how we connect them in order to best live out the lives we are given.

Judaism speaks of the spirit as the sort of paper that God gives to our soul on which to write the story of our lives. It is the medium provided for our art. In other words, the spirit God gives to us is what we mentioned before: it is the unique set of inclinations, of gifts and talents, of blessings and burdens, given to each of us. Some of us have a natural talent for music or for sports. Some have a natural talent for listening or for patience.

You know what I’m talking about. We all have folks in our lives who seem to thrive effortlessly at tasks we find difficult. And we all have abilities that come easily to us that may indeed baffle those around us. In life, there are some things that will come quite naturally to you, and others that will be harder. These are your individual gifts and burdens. These are the tools that God has provided, unique unto you, in order to fashion the sort of life that glorifies God and blesses mankind. This is your spirit.

Spiritual gifts are important to discern. Thomas Merton once wrote that many in the monastery fail to be good monks because they’re trying to be some other monk rather than who they are themselves. Friar Bob wants to be St. Francis or St. Patrick or St. Nicholas when in fact God has not called him to be any of those people, but instead He has called Friar Bob to become St. Bob. Don’t try to be someone else; that’s not your calling. Your calling is to be most truly you, to be yourself as God envisions you—not yourself to your own glory, but to the glory of the God Who made you both fearful and wonderful.

And even if we lose our way along this path, even if we fail in the offices to which God calls us, God will still be our Father. He will still walk beside us, even if our sin requires that we take a different path than the one we had intended. In our Old Testament reading this morning we heard the story of Eli, who was called to be a priest before the Ark of God in the holy Tabernacle. Eli failed in his calling not because he was a bad priest but because he was a bad father. So God removed Eli from his public office, removed him from his call. But God was still with him. There were consequences for Eli’s actions, for his poor choices, but God remained Eli’s father. And Eli still trusted in the Lord to do what was right.

Every person we meet is fearfully and wonderfully made, knit together by God Himself in the womb. God knows us before we are born—knows us in relationship, as a Father most intimately knows His own sons and daughters, knows their strengths and faults, knows their successes and mistakes and loves them through it all. Every person has a calling to live out the glory of God in daily life. Every person is given a spirit uniquely his own, to become the saint that only he or she can be. And though nothing is set in stone, and nothing guarantees our success along any given path, nevertheless God is always with us, always offering forgiveness for those who desire it, always granting new birth to those who need it.

Discern your spirit. Find your calling. Live it to the best of your ability all for the greater glory of God. And if you fail, fall—well, what the heck. God will raise you up again, set you on your feet again, and walk with you along the new path that you choose to explore together. This is the glorious life of Christ within us. And we are called to live it for the world.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. AMEN.