If you don’t believe me, just wait around this week and watch
the news.
This week we commemorate The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King,
Jr. and there is no doubt that he was called… called to lead his congregation,
his people, his nation, to the civil, economic, social, and spiritual
liberation of African-Americans from a 400 year history of enforced servitude
and oppression… and that this call cost him his life.
And this week, we’ll inaugurate a new president, whom we
hope will bring out our better angels instead of encouraging what we saw eleven
days ago, when the countervailing forces of fear and evil were at work when
thousands of mostly white men and women turned what seemed like a protest into
an attempted insurrection so that they could overturn an election they lost at
the behest of a president who came to power on the very resentment fear and
anger that these people have harbored since well before The Rev. Dr. King first
came on the national scene in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955 and 1956.
Now here’s the thing that serious Christians, serious people
of faith, must come to terms with: both the civil rights movement and the
capital rioters last week used the language of “call”--- of adherence to
something higher than themselves—to justify and explain their actions, to
motivate their followers, and find energy for their cause. It’s just that one
was after a common good and the other perpetrated an evil.
As I said, “call” is a tricky subject.
How do we know if a “call” is from God or is coming from
someplace else… someplace contrary to God?
Today we hear a snippet of scripture that sounds wonderful,
even whimsical, at first: the call of God to Samuel. Samuel is considered a
prophet in Jewish and Christian tradition, but he was the last of the Judges.
Before Israel was governed by hereditary kings, they were governed by Judges.
These were not people in long robes presiding over courtrooms but were senior
religious figures who governed the nation. They not only took on the rabbinical
role of settling local disputes, but it was thought that they—being especially
attuned to God and particularly holy—could govern the nation.
Samuel was being raised by another Judge, named Eli, but while Eli
might have been a person of great faith, and wise in the way of faith, he was a
rotten judge of character when it came to his sons, Hophni and
Phinehas. Hophni and Phinehas were lazy, drunken, and spoiled. They were sexual
predators and thieves. Worse, they thought that because their Dad was a Judge,
they could do pretty much as they pleased, and they did not pay Eli any mind
when he would mildly rebuke them for their bad behavior. To top it off, these two
neer-do-wells assumed that they’d inherit the family business and be the next
Judges over Israel. When it came to his sons, Eli was a softy and a push-over
One night, the boy Samuel—who was the only child of Hannah, who had
dedicated him to God, and so was being raised by Eli the Judge—was trying to get
some sleep when he hears a voice calling his name. Samuel assumes it was Eli,
and goes to find out what’s up. Eli, shaken awake by his young student sends
him back to bed. Three times this happens! Finally Eli, realizes that it is God
who is calling Samuel, so he says to his young padawan, “the next time you hear
that voice, say ‘Yes, Lord, your servant listens.’” And that’s what happens.
Samuel listens and finds that he is called by God to be a Judge and a Prophet.
Sweet, right?
Well, not so fast. The thing that Samuel learns from God is
that God has pretty much had it with Eli not being able to discipline Hophni and
Phinehas—and worse, putting up with the evil they did in Eli’s name abusing
God’s name and authority in the process! And so, Eli is not only going to lose
his job as Judge but will die in the process. When Eli presses Samuel to tell him
what God said to the boy, he learns his fate and says “The Lord must do what is
right.” Or, as we might say today, “it is what it is.”
So… you see what I mean, right? Call is a tricky thing!
And, that is before we get to what we talked about
before… that sometimes we attribute some pretty horrible ideas to “being called
by God.” How many tyrants, opportunists, and even everyday insecure people fall
back on the language of “call” to justify their actions?
I mean, going back to the Rev.
Dr. King, how many segregationists and white supremacists justified their
active evil, or their passive acceptance of an obvious evil, by blaming their
actions on the “call” or “will” of God. How many could not distinguish between
“the way it’s always been” and the will of God?
In today’s Gospel, I can see
why Jesus liked and called Nathaniel. Because he was as faithful as the day is
long… and he was nobody’s fool. When Andrew and Philip come running to him about
having found the Messiah—his response was “yeah, right.” But his friends
persisted, and they invited him to come and see. Nathaniel’s call came through
his skepticism and Jesus knew not to shower him with sweetness but instead to
bust his chops. Nathaniel could take what he dished out and seeing that Jesus
knew him in a different way, followed Jesus’ call to discipleship.
But sometimes “call” takes us
beyond ourselves and these very human, very ingrained, ways of thinking.
To hear a call is to take one
above and beyond oneself. A sense of call is a heady thing but it can go to
your head, so one must be careful. And most calls, truth be told, are not
specifically religious or to a religious vocation. The other day, I saw on
Facebook, how a young woman who grew up in this parish, Keri Appleman, will
start her turn as a student teacher, fulfilling what her mother Shae says is a
lifelong dream… to become a teacher in a classroom! To undertake this calling
in a time of pandemic will be a daunting task, but Keri is up to the task and
we both congratulate and pray for her as she lives out her baptismal vows and
her calling.
This weekend, Peg and I have
been hosted by the Rev Can himself, Father Dale Grandfield and his husband
Brad, as we get ready to move to Florida this week. It was this congregation
that raised up Dale and sent him off to Seminary to pursue and test his call to
ministry. He was our music director, and any parish would have assumed that
this was enough, but Dale knew there was something more, and this community
nurtured and encouraged that in him. Hearing and pursuing a call may take us in
unexpected places.
This parish undertook a call
to share in the feeding and sheltering of the poor, the hungry, and the
homeless, and we know this ministry today as the Ark Community Meal. But way
before Easton had Safe Harbor and before the revival of Easton’s downtown,
this parish took turns with other churches in sheltering the homeless from the
cold. This parish community’s heart for ministry, led by the vision of Fr. Jim
Gill, Janet Charney, Fr. Cliff Carr, and so many others, attuned us to listen
for God in creative ways that this led not to only Safe Harbor, but also
ProJeCt of Easton, Cops’n’Kids, Turning Point, Third Street Alliance and so
many other local agencies and ministries that serve the poor, the outcast,
women, and children, and the elderly and those with special needs. Listening to
a call can draw out from out amazing, holy, creativity.
This parish chose once and
for all to repent of our past ambivalence (and resistance) about whether to welcome LGBTQ
persons into our parish, and were so led to embrace the ministry of Sr. Helena
Barrett, the first openly gay person to be ordained in the Episcopal Church,
and encourage her along with Sr. Alison Joy to form a new Benedictine religious
community. After the Pulse night club shooting, we as a parish decided to
proudly proclaim that welcome publicly in both word and deed.
This parish hosted a pilot of
the Episcopal Church’s “Becoming a Beloved Community,” and worked with
Lafayette College and other community agencies to speak out about the sin of
racism, held community workshops, and decided through the Vestry, that this
parish—as a whole—would be life members of the NAACP through the Easton Branch.
During my time here, we have
experimented in many ways responding to the call of God in a variety of ways.
Our concerts and artistic endeavors, the founding the Chautauqua of the Two
Rivers, our choral scholars—two of whom came to faith and were baptized as
young adults in this community—our work with Lafayette. We adopted a school in
Kajo-Keji, South Sudan, and made audacious decision to tithe our capital
campaign to build that school.
My experience of this
community over the past nineteen years that this is a community that strives to
listen for the call of God in big and little ways. Even our bike rides, our
picnics, and partnerships with other parishes were living responses to the call
of God to “discover, share, and live God’s love as friends and apprentices of
Jesus Christ.”
Now, the time has come to
listen again to the call of God. God is taking you to a hope-filled future. It
is a heady thing, this business about call, so be careful not to get ahead of
yourselves. Time and again, I have learned the hard way that good intentions
become pavers on the road to perdition when we let ourselves think that we know
better than God what God wants. So stop, pray, listen, discern, pray some more,
and—above all—don’t be bamboozled because the evil one wants our good
intentions to lead us someplace else. Meet your calling with integrity,
inquiry, and, yes, even humor, and God will honor you with great things and
trust you to follow him as friends and apprentices of Jesus Christ.
Listen for God’s call. Respond to God’s voice. Be discomfited by God’s urging. And may God go with you in all you do.
Sermon for the Second Sunday after Epiphany, Year B, January 17, 2021, at Trinity Episcopal Church, Easton, Pennsylvania. This was my final sermon as 13th Rector of that parish.
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