Okay, I know you picked up on the fact that our subtle theme in this worship service is Call and our responses to it. And one of the ways we can respond to life’s call is to sign up on Time and Talent Day, though of course there are lots of other beautiful ways to respond here and in the rest of life, too. I think it’s possible God is calling you to get engaged here, and you know you want to. I’m only half kidding, and here’s why.

Martin Buber the great theologian once wrote, “Living itself means being addressed,”—which I interpret to mean “call and response” and if living does mean being addressed (the call part,) then consider the many ways we are being invited, compelled even, to respond in these beautiful and stressful times in which there is so much need and such deep longing in our own souls to make a difference and to belong.

Young people sometimes can access that deep yearning and respond more easily, but we olders can also rediscover our own passion for life, spirit, purpose, and service. And indeed, we must, for young people need to see call and response vital and alive in older mentors, too. The poet Rumi once wrote, “What will our children do in the morning? Will they wake with their hearts wanting to play, the way wings should? I know all about the ways of the heart—how it wants to be alive. What will our children do in the morning if they do not see us fly?” Call and response…

Call and response is the central theme of these two old Scripture stories. The Hebrew Bible story of the young boy Samuel offers a cultural context arguably challenging like our own–a seemingly dim and hopeless time for the people—verse 2 says that visions of God and justice and right living were rare in those days. The young boy Samuel has gone away to boarding school—a sort of Hogwarts—to learn from an older and supposedly wiser mentor, Eli, who is, sadly, no Dumbledore. For we learn that the fire has gone out of his belly and old Eli, the guardian of the previous teachings and holy agenda has grown dim of spiritual insight, weary with the trouble and the years and no longer recognizes what God sounds like. He does not even get, at first, that it is God calling Samuel. What he used to see and feel and know of his purpose and the directions of healing has gone.

The artist Howard Ikemoto writes that his 7-year old daughter asked him once what he did all day at work. He said, “I work at the college and I teach people how to draw.” She responded with great surprise, “You mean they forget?” Yes, we can forget. We forget our inner exuberance, our wonder, our very selves.

In the Gospel story, Philip is still plugged in—he remembers his own call and he sees something beautiful in his curmudgeonly friend, Nathaniel. Samuel in the other story is an innocent–young, learning the power of the Force in his own life, but Nathaniel is older, skeptical, a xenophobe… “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” And yet, the call comes to him, too—for it is the voice of his friend Phillip who first is the voice of the call of purpose and of God for Nathaniel. Likewise, Jesus does not shame Nathaniel for his limits, but simply acknowledges that he sees him. He sees him. And in the act of being seen, Nathaniel is offered a call he can respond to. A simple call… Come and see. Learn the grace offered to you and through you–in your own experience.

Where and when I grew up, “getting the call” had a specifically religious connotation, meaning that one was going to, as they put it in Southern Baptist circles, “surrender to the ministry.” Which is not nearly as attractive an idea as signing up for one of our UCG Boards and Committees. Here, you don’t have to surrender anything, and we will refrain from using military metaphors at all—no more surrender, you won’t need to put on the full armor of God, no onward Christian soldiers, none of that. Nope, not today. But what you are called to do is to consider what sings in you, what grace or willingness you might offer here or just to life in general, out there. If you want, just stop by a table out there in the courtyard. There will be goodies. And as you’re standing there, gobbling up something yummy, and listen, just say, to the smiling people at the table, “Tell me about this Board,” and there you will get an earful of hope and purpose and joy and info about work and play and study and meeting to make a difference. The people here take their talents and their abilities and their time and the longings of their hearts, and in every case, when you are in service through this congregation, you get to bring it—directly or indirectly, you will get to ease a little of the misery in the world, or bring someone some hope who was fresh out, or you will get to be a worker bee behind the scenes because all of us are needed to respond to the call, and there will be work aplenty, and here’s the thing: of all the people and the causes and the places you can help, the one who will get the most, will be, wonderfully, ironically, you. And did I mention, no surrender, except, maybe to the brownies, if you mind the call here at UCG. No surrender, just opportunities to make meaning with your life.

The call is an invitation to a viewpoint and beyond that, to a state of being— to connect to and act from, our highest human integrity in every season of life, to choose our responses, over and over. Because ours is always a call and response kind of life. It is to learn gratitude for the simplest of moments and even in the harshest of conditions, to hear our own name when it is called, in love. In the Scripture, in many, many of the call stories, God often speaks the person’s name more than once. God says, “Samuel! Samuel!” three times that night before Samuel begins to wake up and to respond. It took Eli that long to remember who he was, too, the mentor to encourage the young one to listen.

And like Phillip and Nathaniel, I suspect there is someone in your life, maybe several people who need you and me to be the call of purpose and hope in their lives. They may or may not respond. But that is not our worry—the response is freely invited. As we relinquish control, expectations, and demands, as challenging as that is, others are free to respond to the call for them– to acknowledge love, to choose to live in their highest integrity, no matter their job, health, or age. Perhaps by watching or listening to you, someone else is influenced for good. How are we helping others to experience and to respond to the call to be their highest selves?

In the fields of slavery in the South, it was call and response that connected the kidnapped, enslaved persons to each other–calls that checked in, that revealed hidden realities, responses that cried out the pain, sang the hope. Maybe social action for change begins in call and response. Voices crying in the wilderness and then the prophets’ response– daring to resist the order of power-over and to call on all God’s people to respond and to rise up and to claim their personhood, a chain reaction of remembrance.

Call and response.

Years ago, a wonderful Quaker activist named Frances Peavey used to travel around the world and sit on park benches everywhere with a sign that read “American Willing to Listen.” What are you called to do, to be? No matter our age or stage, we, too, are called, by God, by life, to what theologian Frederick Buechener describes as: “The place where the world’s deep hunger and your deep gladness meet.”

Mind your call. Consider it. For me, it has never been a surrender to the ministry. I never put up a fight, or wanted to. It was my bliss, from the time I was a youth, and while never easy, it has always been worth every moment of the time I exchanged for it. Seriously, if you believe in God, or if you don’t, you too are being graciously called to respond in some way to the world’s deep hunger… to bring your deep gladness—if it is art, or music or organization or construction, or listening or walking dogs or cooking, or showing up and being a friend. It’s your deep gladness, so most days, it will not feel hard at all, though sometimes, honestly, it will. Once, Buechener wrote, “See your call for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, now less than tin the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.” Sign up. Here or somewhere. Put your whole self in. You know you want to. Amen.

I Samuel 3:1-10

John 1:43-51

April 7, 2019

Shelly Wilson