Sermons

 Receiving a Call: Who, Me?

John Wilkinson	Third Presbyterian Church
January 18, 2009	I Samuel 3:1-10. John 1:43-51

I noticed something bemusing last week in one of the many football games I watched. A field goal kicker nailed a long, important kick to put his team in the lead. And then he clenched his fists, dropped his head for a moment, then looked to the sky with arms raised and said what looked like “thank you.” Unless his agent was sitting in the upper deck, I presume he was thanking God, and because the kick was successful, I presume he was thanking God for a successful kick.

I am not sure what theological conversation was going on inside that kicker’s head, but clearly, he believed that God had something to do with his success.

What I want to know, without being too critical of him or cynical about all of this, is whether that same kicker goes through the same skyward routine when he misses a kick, because if God is clearly involved when he makes a field goal, then why would God not be as clearly involved when he misses? Thank you, God – you clearly wanted me to miss that one, and I am grateful.

Or why wouldn’t God be as equally concerned, or more so, about the kicker on the opposite sideline, so that rather than watching a football game, we end up watching a theological debate, or rather, a holy war?

I am more than a little serious. Take parking. People pray for an open parking space, maybe a little more vigorously at Eastview Mall on that Saturday before Christmas. They whisper a hushed thank you when finding an open spot. Why not the same hushed thank you when you can’t find a spot and end up a half-mile away. Clearly, God, you did not want me to be close to Best Buy – and I am grateful.

That is to say, if God has plans for you, for me, for us, for the world, then they must include missed field goals as well as successful ones and crowded AND empty parking lots and many more important things.

We are wading in deep territory here – big theological words like providence and sovereignty, and perhaps even predestination, a Presbyterian favorite. God being God – much bigger, much more mysterious, much more transcendent than ever we could comprehend. And God being God – more immanent, closer than our breathing, everywhere.

Sometimes we have understood sovereignty in a certain way – God as a kind of divine chess player, moving pawns here and there. On a whim. Arbitrary, even.

There is an old joke that has a good Scots Presbyterian going on a long walk – he walks and walks and walks and walks, and finally trips over a stone in the road. “Thank God that’s finally over,” he comments, as if God foreordained his little stumble.

I do not believe that God is a cosmic chess player, moving us around like pawns on a chess board. But I do believe in a providential, sovereign God, who is intimately involved in the life of the world and in the life of the people created in that same God’s image and called good.

I don’t know if Captain Chelsey Sullenberger, “Sully,” the captain of the US Airways jet who so masterfully landed his aircraft in the icy waters of the Hudson River this past Thursday, was “the right man at the right place at the right time,” as many have said. I do not know. I am grateful for Sully’s skills, and for the outcome, perhaps miraculous, certainly not lucky. I believe that God would have been the same God whether the plane crashed or landed safely as it did, concerned for the people, active, present.

The sovereign and provident God we have sometimes understood can seem cruel and harsh and arbitrary – a seeming contradiction to a loving and merciful God, made known to us more directly in Jesus, whose children are loved with deep and sacrificial compassion.

There are many things that I – and you – do not know, about why things happen and how things are put together. Field goals and parking sports and plane crashes. Cancer and job searches and elections.

We attach that notion of providence, and sovereignty, to another notion about God. Vocation. Calling. The notion that God has a purpose for our lives, a path, a destination for our journey.

And yet so much is so mysterious. God is not a micromanager. God has a purpose, yes, and gives us gifts and graces and abilities and talents to serve those purposes and to serve God’s children and God’s world.

That is to say, I don’t know if Roland Burris was destined to be Illinois’ next senator, or if Caroline Kennedy is destined to be our next senator. I do believe that God has called Roland Burris and Caroline Kennedy and every politician and every public figure and every private figure to serve one another, to serve the world, to serve the common good, to use the gifts given by God in the way they are most needed.

And I do believe that God is somehow involved in all of this, intimately involved, speaking, whispering, nudging, agitating, not micro-managing, but being God, calling.

On November 5, a little first-grader we know, an African-American young man, went outside to get the newspaper, and when he brought it in, he said to his parents: “Look, Mom and Dad, someone like me can be president. Someone like me.”

That was true on November 3, but November 4 gave the November 5 affirmation a little punctuation. For us, the truth of that affirmation must be nurtured, for at least two reasons – one a civics lesson, one a Sunday school lesson.

As citizens, we are called to do all that we can do, to exercise the very best of our liberties, to make sure that every child lives into that promise. When we remember Martin Luther King, Jr.’s life tomorrow, there will be a great deal of talk about dreams, and rightly so. But the realization of those dreams takes root as we as citizens do the hard work of education and gun violence and hunger and economic opportunity and neighborliness and equality. It cannot be a surprise, nor a fluke, that anyone looking like any first grader can be elected president.

That is a civics lesson, but even more deeply, a lesson of our faith. A divine chemistry of providence and sovereignty and vocation, a lesson that insists that God calls each of us, all of us, and offers to us graces and gifts in order that we might live full lives, hopeful lives, lives that honor God and make a difference in the world.

Eli the priest is aging, growing blind, growing weaker. Samuel, the young man, is ministering to him. Asleep in the temple, Samuel hears a voice calling him. He thinks it to be Eli. It was not. Again it happens, and again. Finally, the old priest, who will become the criticized target of Samuel’s prophecy later on, realizes it is the voice of God calling the young man. Eli instructs Samuel in his response to say “Speak, God, for your servant is listening.”

God calling the unexpected. And the unexpected responding to the voice of God to do the challenging work God calls them to do. A young man who will grow to be a prophet.

Centuries later, Jesus, walking in Galilee, Jesus spots a man named Philip. “Follow me,” he says. And Philip does. No interview. No resume. No vetting of his candidacy. This comes fast on the heels of the call of Andrew and Simon Peter.

Two stories. Two call stories. Two call stories whereby God reaches out and gives gifts to unlikely people to do the challenging work God has in store for them. Two call stories that translate rather directly to 2009, whereby God is calling unlikely people – you, me, us – to do the challenging work now in church and world that God has in store for us.

I don’t know what God had in mind for Martin Luther King, Jr. But I believe that like Samuel, like Philip, like each of us, King was called and gifted by God to do the work God had in store for him, to wherever it might lead him.

Similarly, I don’t know what God had, or yet has, in mind for Barack Obama. Given our field goal and parking lot consideration, I cannot say that God wanted voters to vote one way more than another – or if I say that, I need to be consistent when I do so.

I don’t know. But I do believe, and hold it as a central tenet of my faith, that Barack Obama has been, and is, called and gifted by God to do the work that God has in store for him.

And I do know that we live in an extraordinary and unprecedented and perilous moment. I had friends who believed that when push came to shove last November 4, that people could simply not vote for one whose first name nor last appear in my Microsoft Word spell-check, could not vote for him, not on the merits of his candidacy, but because of the color of his skin or the origins of his story. My hunch is that some still couldn’t, and wouldn’t, and didn’t.

And I know that the soul-crushing wounds of race in this nation will not be healed at 12:00 noon on Tuesday, but that they will be met in that moment in a new way.

Our economy is in trouble, and we may not yet have experienced the worst. Two wars are waging, on top of an uneasy Gaza ceasefire this morning. This week’s temperatures notwithstanding, our planet is getting warmer and resources are dwindling.

I’ve read everything I can. Some pundits say that expectations are so high that he can only fail. Others say that challenges are so great that he can only succeed. I don’t know. He has been likened to FDR or JFK or even Abraham Lincoln. I don’t know about that. Some call him Superman. I don’t know about that, either. Some call him “messiah.” I do know about that – one messiah is enough.

And I do know that we live in an unprecedented moment, one about which our children and grandchildren will read in history books. I don’t know if he was called to this office at such a time as this, as the book of Esther would say.

But I do believe in a sovereign God who is intimately and passionately involved in the life of the world and the life of this nation and the life of the people and in the life of the president-elect. And I do believe that God calls and gives gifts, and that is as true for Barack Obama as it is for any of us and all of us.

* In every baptism, we are all baptized.
* In every ordination, we are all ordained.
* In every inauguration, we are all inaugurated.
* In every dream where God speaks, we are all spoken to.
* And in every roadside encounter where Jesus calls, we are all called.

Our tradition invites us to “pray for the magistrates.” That’s old language, but a very present invitation, and pray we will, on Tuesday, on every day, pray for this magistrate, this new president, and all who lead in Washington, in Rochester, everywhere.

But that prayer must extend beyond Washington, beyond this one man and his vocation. It extends to all of us. Because the call of Samuel, the call of Philip, the call of Martin Luther King, Jr., the call of Barack Obama, is extraordinary only in its specificity.

Our call is equally as extraordinary, so much so that when God calls us, we respond “who, me?” for only a moment, and then, with a little trepidation, we say “speak, God, your servant is listening,” and then, with gratitude and hope, we say “here I am, send me.”

All to the glory of God, and for the reconciliation of the world. Amen.